Tricycle | Awake in the World

Here's a great clip from Ram Dass: Fierce Grace, the new film at the Tricycle | BuddhaFest Online Film Festival. It's the final week of BuddhaFest, so make sure to drop by the festivities. More »

The great thing about Ken McLeod's series on the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva is that these 5-minute videos manage to pack in a complete teaching and include a practice you can begin right now. "What are you waiting for?" Ken asks. They may just change the course of your day if not your life. From Ken's commentary this week on Verse 35: Patterns of emotional reactions are expert at one thing: survival ... They may have been effective coping mechanisms in the immediate circumstances in which they formed, but they are now deeply habituated dysfunctional patterns ... To crush a reaction all you have to do is experience it completely without being consumed by it. Watch Verse 35 below for a fuller explanation of the application of this simple but powerful practice. No promises of immediate enlightenment, however. As Ken points out, these are practices for a lifetime. Still, the pracitce itself is its own reward. More »

In our latest Tricycle | BuddhaFest Online Film Festival talk, Ven. Pannavati Bhikkhuni explores what it means to move beyond practice and extend our awareness to take action in the world. Pannavati was raised in the Christian church and has subsequently ordained in several Buddhist traditions. Over the course of her religious journey, she has realized the important role of wakeful service. Watch her talk about how she applies wakefulness to determine what is needed in the world. The full talk can be viewed here. Other talks and films from this year's festival are available through July 6th.  More »

Meet Daeung Sunim, a 42-year-old Korean Buddhist monk currently on a 20,000 mile bicycle journey through the Americas. Starting from Vancouver, British Columbia, last April, by the time Sunim's voyage ends he'll have biked to the eastern tip of Canada, down the east coast of the U.S., west to California, and finally south through Latin and South America to the southernmost tip of Argentina. Sunim has limited English skills, no Spanish skills, no set itinerary and knows almost no one in the Americas. This trip marks the first time that Sunim has ridden a bicycle, and it is already wearing down from hard use. He is unable to carry as much cookware and food as he needs to ensure he can last through the exhausting days. Since he began pedaling in April, he's taken only four days of rest. More »

Today we've posted another great talk by Tsokyni Rinpoche from this year's Tricycle | BuddhaFest Online Film Festival. Take a look at this preview of Rinpoche's talk where he tells a wonderfully illustrative talk of how he finds buddhanature in the modern speedy world. For those with a festival pass, the full talk can be viewed here. More »

It's not enough to simply resolve to speak only what is "truthful, helpful, kind and timely." After all, we scarcely know which of the hundreds of voices in our head is going to "grab the mic" next. Vajrayana teacher Ken McLeod suggests we begin with a pretty straightforward method in his discussion of verse 34 of the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva. Here's how it works: When you speak, listen to the sound of your own voice as if you are listening to another person talk. When you do this you hear immediately when what you are saying or how you are saying it is out of sync with the situation. If you are angry but aren't unaware of it, you hear the edge in your voice...you also hear when there's fear...or when you are trying to sell someone an idea, or when  you are trying to seduce someone against their will.... There will be a little insistence or insincere charm in your voice. You may be surprised to hear your mother or father speaking..." More »

Since the 1950 Chinese invasion that ended with the forced integration of Tibet into the People’s Republic of China, Tibet has been simmering. It has boiled over more than once, most notably for the first time in 1959, when uprisings swept through the Tibetan plateau and the current Dalai Lama fled to exile in India, as well as in 2008, when the unrest spread to the Tibetan diaspora. More »

A unique aspect of Vajrayana Buddhism is how it actively works with darkness and negativity to transform them into luminous wisdom. My first experience with Tibetan Buddhism’s wrathful deities was in Bodhgaya, India in 1971. After completing two months of intensive meditation with S. N. Goenka, I climbed to a legendary charnel ground outside of town used for sky burial. The monks there welcomed me into a very small temple with a large statue of Maha Kala, The Fierce Dark One. More »

While Tricycle is a nonsectarian and independent publication, most of our content reflects a perspective of what might be called meditation-oriented Buddhism. Most of our readers and contributors know Buddhism primarily in terms of the meditation traditions of Zen, Vipassana, or Vajrayana as they have been presented to a Western audience. Indeed, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that, for many of our readers, approaches to Buddhism, such as Nichiren, that are not based on a practice of quiet, focused sitting meditation are, other than in name, scarcely recognizable as Buddhist at all. More »