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  • Buddha Buzz: Dating, Drugs, and Death Paid Member

    First off, Happy Lunar New Year! Welcome to the year of the dragon. As befits such a year celebrating a creature who is often associated with longevity, some Buddhist monks in Japan have a similar concern in mind: from the Japan Times, "Matchmaking Service gives Buddhist monks a boost in dating market." From the article: In Japan, it is typical for relatives of monks—especially head monks—to inherit caretaker duties of their temples. But because of a lack of successors, the monks have become desperate to find wives in order to preserve this tradition and save their temples from being closed or integrated. More »
  • Buddha Buzz: Yue-yue, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and an Anonymous Monk Paid Member

    Our first Buddha Buzz item this week was brought to my attention by a Tweet from the blogger behind American Buddhist Perspective, Justin Whitaker. It's about a photo that recently struck a chord with China and the world, of an anonymous monk praying over the dead body of a man in a Chinese train station: More »
  • Buddha Buzz: Religious Freedom, Swastikas, and the Giving High Paid Member

    We're starting off this week's Buddha Buzz with a pretty clear example of religious intolerance in Hudson, Wisconsin. Don Chering, a Buddhist, put up an American flag and a string of Tibetan prayer flags on the day that his son left for U.S. Army basic training. The flags stretch across the front of his house and over his garage door. Soon, his landlady contacted him with an order from the Homeowners Association in charge of the housing complex where Chering lives to remove the flags (it's unclear as of yet if they are requesting that the American flag be removed as well).  More »
  • Tricycle Talks: Patrick Groneman, Executive Director of the Interdependence Project Paid Member

    Welcome to our second Tricycle Talk: our new audio interviews with Buddhists of note. Today Tricycle Editorial Assistant Emma Varvaloucas speaks with Patrick Groneman, the Executive Director of the Interdependence Project (IDP). Not familiar with IDP or their work? Listen to the interview below to hear about IDP's mission, their experiences meditating at Occupy Wall Street's Zuccotti Park, and whether bearing witness at protest sites is a truly effective social activism tool. As Groneman says in the interview, it is important to examine your own intention when meditating in public: More »
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    Burma in 2012: A Political Report Card Paid Member

    This guest blog post is from Deborah Weinberg, who is currently traveling in Burma (Myanmar). The post originated as an email to the author's friends and was forwarded to Tricycle—it is being published with her permission. In it, she tells us of Burma's new year political report card: A fresh wind of freedom is in the air, she says. Burma recently gained political attention when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country in late November, ending a fifty-year estrangement between the U.S. and Burma. Despite this and though the government has been promising to continue reforms, Weinberg writes, "The generals are still holding the cards." More »
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    The Meaning of Nice: A New Book from Tricycle's Editor at Large Paid Member

    The Meaning of Nice: How Compassion and Civility Can Change Your Life (and the World), a new book from Tricycle's editor at large, Joan Duncan Oliver, takes a closer look at the cliched idea of "nice" as a mild, inoffensive, and rather bland sort of praise. After examining the word through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and religion, Oliver concludes that "nice" is, in fact, complex, multifaceted, and less a single quality than a group of qualities that constitute a way of being in the world. Being a "nice" person is taking an approach to life that's grounded in kindness, compassion, integrity, loyalty, generosity, courtesy, respect, and humor. Character, in other words. More »