Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Between the 7th and 12th centuries, in the long morning of Japanese literature, women shaped one of the world’s most refined poetic traditions. The poems presented here are waka—thirty-one-syllable lyric vessels cast in the pattern of 5–7–5–7–7—forms small enough to fit in the palm, vast enough to hold grief, longing, weather, memory, politics, and desire. From this lu...

At Empty Cloud Monastery, the clouds were not empty: They were fit to bursting, and they poured. On July 18–19, beneath the sound of rain on a tent roof, monastics and laypeople gathered to talk about peace. 

We were there for the inaugural Metta Convention USA—organized by Metta Centre, and hosted in partnership with Buddhist Insights at its affiliate monastery, Emp...

There is a sutta where the Buddha talks about what it was like in his lifetime before he started practicing. And I don’t want to be the one to have to tell you this, but we’ve been doing the same things over and over and over since human beings have been walking this earth. We have been hurting one another. It is the nature of samsara, the world we live in, which is the cycli...

I’m mostly in denial that I’m getting older. I often find myself saying, “Let’s just not think about it. I’ll pretend it isn’t going to happen.”

But of course, as I contemplate each new birthday with disbelief, I remember that I’ve spent all these years in a Buddhist tradition that encourages reflecting on your own mortality every day. So maybe it’s not something I sho...

For mom(s)

A few months back, I was returning from a dharma retreat in Mexico City—three days in the city to walk in silence and be in community. One of the retreatants I had the good fortune and blessing to spend those days with was a beautiful and powerful birth doula named Erica Pinilla. As it turned out, it happene...