Tricycle | Awake in the World

It's not everyday that you get to see the Dalai Lama brush his teeth. I don't know what I expected—maybe a beautifully ornamented golden toothbrush—but as it turns out, his toothbrush looked a lot like my own. Such are the moments captured in Sunrise/Sunset, a documentary film directed by Vitali Manski. Several years ago the filmmaker and his crew were allowed to follow and film H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama for 24 hours—through press conferences, private audiences with Tibetan refugees, meditation, and even his morning fitness routine. But though there is certainly something captivating about watching the Dalai Lama doing morning exercises on a treadmill, the most powerful moments in the film are the candid interviews, which—characteristic of the Dalai Lama—are both jovial and serious. In a brief interview on the monastery balcony, the Dalai Lama explains the relativity of moments before good humoredly laughing at the overwhelmed film crew. More »

In a recent post on his blog Musings, Ken McLeod discusses two familiar terms: faith and belief. How he understands these terms, however, might not be so familiar. He argues that belief is a closed system in which we rely on past conditioning and ideas to interpret our experiences. Faith, he says, is a much more open way of operating where we still allow past conditioning and ideas to arise, but we are not bound by them: We remain open to both mysteries and new ideas. Ken writes: In ordinary English usage, the words "faith" and "belief" are often used interchangeably and the difference between these two ways of meeting experience is confused or lost. More »