Tricycle | Awake in the World

The Dalai Lama visits Minnesota and discusses meditation and compassion. The meditation talk will include Daniel Goleman and will be for Mayo Clinic employees only. He also gave a thank-you scarf to his physician, Dr. More »

Hunger is on the rise across the globe as food prices rise out of reach of the poorest families. With the sinking economy, with climate change, with war  -- the poor are always the most vulnerable. More »

The relay begins amid heavy security in New Delhi. Meanwhile, China cancels its plan to open Tibet on May 1st and seals the borders. And if you wonder why Nepal is cracking down on protesters so hard: Chinese security police in athletic wear can be seen lounging in tea shops and strolling the sole street in the border town of Liping. More »

A museum in Beijing that tells the Chinese side of the story and buries any notion of an independent Tibet. This is the viewpoint Chinese citizens are being bombarded with every minute. For example, when the international news came to the protests, the screens went black in China. Beijing is being scrubbed clean -- and this includes the news. And Chinese internet users are taking to the web to fight back against what they see as international bias against their country -- seeing red, if you will. More »

Prominent Tibetan TV personality Jamyang Kyi has been seized by Chinese authorities. UPDATE: More on the abduction of this reporter from the Times. More »

This article on Coke and the Olympics reminds me a bit of Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed today. More »

Grace Wang tried to walk the middle path but took heat from both sides. More »

[The following is a guest post from Tricycle's Copy Editor Karen Ready.] I'm puzzled that virtually no New York bloggers have posted anything about Evan Brenner's work in progress The Buddha-In His Own Words, a one-man performance of excerpts from the life and teachings of the Buddha taken directly from the vast collection we know as the Pali canon. These texts form the basis of the Theravada tradition: discourses, teachings, monastic rules, and philosophical texts attributed in large part to the Buddha and his disciples, they were passed on orally and committed to writing only after the Buddha's death. The play is the result of some four years of work (so far) on Brenner's part to "assemble the life of the Buddha." I like his choice of "assemble": in fact, Mark Epstein has referred to the play as "masterfully crafted," and both terms provide a good sense of Brenner's deceptively simple eighty-minute creation, like the attentive folding of an origami shape. Here the actor-playwright takes on all the roles, from the young prince who leaves his royal surroundings to seek an answer to the world of suffering and death he finds beyond the palace gates, to those he encounters along the way (including Mara the tempter), to members of his ever-growing following as well as opponents who brought tragedy to his later years. More »

In honor of the Pope and Dalai's simultaneous visit to our fair shores, the Supreme Court decided by a 7-2 margin that lethal injection as used to kill convicts in Kentucky does not violate the Constitution. More »