Tricycle | Awake in the World

An old Buddha head (from a statue) was dug up in Pakistan. No, it wasn't cut off by the Taliban, but rather dates way way back, maybe all the way to Bactrian Greek times when the first Budda statues were made, since a coin from that era was also found in the vicinity. And this exhibition of Buddha relics in Malaysia includes saliva relics. Excellent. And nine Buddhist leaders including Bob Thurman speak out on issues of the day. Buddhist leaders don't have to be calm and polite all the time, and they're always engaged. More »

In his teaching of the First Noble Truth, the Buddha asks, “What now is the Noble Truth of suffering?” Answering his own question he cites the forms that human suffering takes, naming such things as sickness, old age, and death along with the sorrow pain, grief, and despair that accompany human decay and loss. “Not getting what you want,” the Buddha says, “is suffering.” What he doesn’t say at the time is that getting what you want is also suffering. Wanting is generally thought of as wanting something in particular, a specific object or outcome, like wanting a new car or a bigger house, a different job or mate or hair color or personality. Some “wanters” think bigger than others, wanting an entirely different life from the one they’re currently living. Their dissatisfactions are comprehensive and they yearn for a life with more freedom, interest, excitement, adventure, respect, or fame than they’re accustomed to getting. But while wanters always want something specific, I’ve observed that wanting is more a state of mind than it is an attraction to a discrete object. A person with a “wanting mind” is perpetually on the lookout for something to want. It’s a habit of preferring almost anything other than what one already has, a chronic dissatisfaction with one’s circumstance, a persistently distressed mood. A wanting mind is a mind with a predilection toward need. If wanting is your thing, then it’s easy to see how getting what you want won’t relieve the suffering of not getting what you want. Let’s say that you want to write a novel, not just any novel but a really good novel. You tell yourself that if you could just do that, you’d be satisfied. Suppose then you get what you want. You write just the very novel you had in mind. But since wanting is of your very nature, your satisfaction in having written the novel you’d so desired will be short lived, and your wanting will simply transfer itself to a new object of desire. There’s no satisfaction in having written a novel unless it gets published. And then of course it must get good reviews and sell well. The obvious point here is that wanting and dissatisfaction go hand in hand. And they go hand in hand because wanting is an expression of dissatisfaction. It’s not the lack of the thing wanted but the wanting itself that constitutes the suffering. More »

The Dalai Lama canceled an upcoming trip around Latin America due to exhaustion. The Olympics were a stressful time for anyone concerned with Tibet. Tibetan exiles are still protesting in Nepal -- very brave, considering the brutal crackdowns there recently and the newly elected Maoist Prime Minister. Nicholas Kristof discusses Tibet after the Olympics in the Times. More »

Protesters call on the government to resign in Bangkok. They call the current leader, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a puppet of former P.M. Thaksin Shinawatra. There's more displeasure with the government in Korea, where Buddhists accuse President Lee Myung-bak of Christian bias. Mr. More »

I turned 56 recently. I was trying to send a fedex the other day, and for the first time ever,the helpful clerk told me that if I was 55 or older, i could get a 10% discount. gulp. My first discount based on age. When Ted Kennedy took the stage last night at the Democratic National Convention, I, like so many, saw the journey of my life flash in front of me...his brother John's inauguration and assassination, his brother Robert's assassination, the personal tragedies, the long tenure in the Senate, and now his bout with cancer. To see him on that stage, with a big chunk of his hair not yet grown back from the brain surgery, his voice so firm and filled with life, was amazing. The span of my life seems to fit so completely within the span of his. And it is so dreamlike: where did the time go? What makes a lifetime? I so admired his commitment in coming, and his expressing his passion and dedication. More »

I was on the bus to work the other day, when a taxi passed by bearing the slogan: ‘More is always on the way’. It turned out to be an advert for holidays to Turkey. More is always on the way? This could almost be the signature of the present consumer culture. In the present time, more is always regarded as desirable because we can never have enough. More »

Two elderly women in China were just sentenced to a year of re-education. Their crime? Protesting at the the Olympics. The heads of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism convened to ask for an apology from the government for religious discrimination. Paul Ekman says right after the Olympics will be the perfect time for the Dalai Lama and Beijing to sit down for some good faith discussions. What a nice thought. Indeed it seems the current Dalai Lama has a repsonsibility to do all he can vis a vis Beijing in his lifetime because after he is gone, the opportunity will have passed. More »

The New York Times reports on the lack of protesters in Beijing's designated protest zones: Ten days into the Games, the government has yet to permit a single demonstration in any of the three official protest zones. According to a report Monday by Xinhua, the official news agency, 77 applications have been received since Aug. 1, from 149 people. All but three of those applications, however, were withdrawn after the authorities satisfactorily addressed the petitioners’ concerns, Xinhua said. Two of the remaining requests were turned down because the applicants failed to provide adequate information, and the last was rejected after the authorities determined it violated China’s laws on demonstrations. More »

Sharon Salzberg's Cabbage Sutra, now on Huffington Post. More »