Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Have you ever championed a belief so wholeheartedly except for one tiny, inconvenient case? That was me, the do not kill precept, and spiders. Ever since childhood, I have been particularly perturbed by household spiders. Ants, beetles, and other creepy crawlies were easy to ig...

The path to Vulture’s Peak is broad and the slope is gentle, but the way is not easy. It winds along the hill of Gijjhakuta, one of a series of ridges that enclosed the ancient city of Rajagriha (now Rajgir) like the ramparts of a fortress. Fringed by dry brush and broken rocks, the path is paved and even, but is largely unshaded and heats up rapidly as the sun rises. 

In a perhaps apocryphal tale, the poet Ryōkan was once robbed in his thatched-roof cottage. Allegedly, after being robbed, he “chased after the thief, stripped naked, and gave him the clothes he was wearing as well.” Once he returned to his hut, he proceeded to sit zazen, naked and alone, and composed his most famous poem:

Left behind by thief
bright moon
in m...

Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It’s cold, but the air is thick with urban sounds: horns, traffic, the occasional shout. On Broadway, a blur of suits and tourists jostle shoulders, back and forth. 

Nearby, in Bryant Park, an American woodcock stands apart. Her little body, dappled brown and patterned like a snake, is the size of my fist. Her beak is flamboyantly...

It is said in Tibetan Buddhism that, upon death, an individual passes through a borderless land between where corporeal illusions fall away and just before they approach boundless freedom. A practitioner’s entire life may be spent preparing for this kairotic moment, when one’s emotions or attachments determine whether they will embark on another cycle of rebirth. If the ultim...