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    India and China fight over... Buddhism Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 20 Jun 2007
    This from the Times of India: India and China are engaged in a competition for soft power supremacy in Asia - the battlefield is ownership of one of the world's oldest religions, Buddhism. Well, we all know China and India aren't really fighting over Buddhism. Neither country really cares about that. What's at stake is being Asia's economic top dog, and no religion is as pan-Asian as Buddhism. More »
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    Does it belong in a museum? Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 19 Jun 2007
    According to the good people at Empty Hand Zen Center, for three Saturdays in July, meditation will become art at the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase in Purchase, New York. (I recall another mixing of meditation and art in Dallas in early June, as mentioned on Bad Buddha.) It sounds very cool. I was recently at the Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York, which seemed like a good place for meditation too. I guess museums are designed to be interesting spaces, so it shouldn't surprise us that other activities flourish there too. More »
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    China's Busy. Are You? Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 15 Jun 2007
    The PRC is working overtime, making everything we'll ever need or want to buy (including, of course, our food and foodlike products) and destroying Tibet piece by piece. More »
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    Karmapa on MySpace Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 13 Jun 2007
    The media's tittering over the Karmapa's MySpace page -- supposedly set up in anticipation of his visit to the West this summer. The attention is great, but all the interest over the page's existence seems to betrays a common Western notion that Buddhists all live in caves and have never heard of the internet, pop music, sports, or Lindsay Lohan. Some will argue the oddness of the cultural encounter is not the stupification on the Western end but rather a culture where designating young people as incarnations of dead people or saints is accepted as an everyday thing. Well, fair enough. Our understanding of monastic culture is very dim in any case. More »
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    Negative Theology Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 05 Jun 2007
    "Yoga classes during Eucharistic adoration" in Florida? What's next, the Black Mass during CCD? The National Catholic Register asks, "Do Catholicism and Buddhism mix?" Short answer: No. Also, a writer for Psychotherapy Networker attends a week-long meditation retreat, and writes a long article about it. - Philip Ryan, Webmaster More »
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    Zen and the Art of Celebrity Prison Stays Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 30 May 2007
    Sometimes the Dharma has a habit of popping up in the last place you’d expect. A perfect example is the bags Paris Hilton is packing for her upcoming 45-day prison stay on a drunk-driving charge. Along with the Bible, infamous heiress and socialite Hilton was photographed holding a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now,” which, while not explicitly Buddhist, essentially reframes Buddhist teaching on suffering in terminology even a Hilton could understand. Tolle’s book will teach the famous blonde that her suffering arises from attachment to her own mind and her concept of ego, and that freedom from needless pain arises from mindfulness and from being fully present in the moment—a concept familiar to most Buddhists as the Four Noble Truths. More »