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    Can do Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 21 May 2007
    Violence in northern Sri Lanka and southern Thailand continues. . . Isn't there any cheerful news in the Buddhist world? Well, this self-described "Unitarian Buddhist," reported about in Northwestern University's Medill Reports (from their Graduate School of Journalism) apparently gathered enough aluminum cans to start a real live retreat center. There's something to think about next time you polish off a can of your favorite fizzy. Also, Deepak Chopra, whose new novel was reviewed in the current Tricycle, writes about the Buddha's take on fear and anxiety for the Huffington Post. Read it before you judge it! I mean the HuffPo article, of course. More »
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    Hot News! Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 14 May 2007
    So it seems the Naga Jolokia pepper is the hottest in the world, with a Scoville scale rating of about 1,000,000. (Jalapeños clock in at 2,500 to 8,000, according to Wikipedia, but I bet that doesn't mean the Naga Jolokia is 125 to 400 times as hot as the jalapeño. Numerical scales can be very misleading in this way. Like, when it's 80 degrees Fahrenheit out, does that mean it's "twice as warm" as 40 degrees Fahrenheit? Although the Kelvin and Centigrade / Celsius scales may be more accurate in this respect... More »
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    Tough times for the Bodhi Tree Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 10 May 2007
    You remember the uproar a year ago about a missing branch of the Bodhi Tree? As far as I know it was never resolved -- maybe the branch wasn't missing at all, and if it was, there was no clear trail to who took it, or damaged the tree. Here's an update that doesn't answer any interesting questions but says the tree is not looking so hot. Apparently the tree was diseased a few years back and needed some intervention, and the missing branch isn't helping much. Of course, it's not THE Bodhi Tree -- The article today says temple officials say it is a sixth-generation cutting from the original. More »
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    Dukkha, Kung Fu Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 02 May 2007
    The Wall Street Journal, which recently said 'No, thanks' to Rupert Murdoch, pontificated today on what satisfies us. We constantly hanker after fancier cars and fatter paychecks -- and, initially, such things boost our happiness. But the glow of satisfaction quickly fades and soon we're yearning for something else. Well, gee, this assumes we get the fancier car and fatter paycheck. But of course we all have our own version of things we want. (If yours is a fancier car and fatter paycheck, you may want to subscribe to the WSJ.) The article looks at happiness from an evolutionary standpoint and says happiness doesn't necessarily help pass on our genes and so is useless. More »
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    The Inevitable Buddhist Connection to the Virginia Tech Tragedy Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 19 Apr 2007
    Check out the English version of pravda.ru for a Buddhist tie-in to the Virginia Tech killer. (They have an interesting take on the Imus situation too. If you're at all interested in how this Pravda connects with the well-known Soviet publication, see here. I'm guessing the Soviet one was a little less lewd, though the comments about the U.S. and Europe in the contemporary version wouldn't be out of place in the Brezhnev era. . . Brezhnev had incredibly intimidating eyebrows.) What this article really shows is a preposterous amount of overthinking and overanalysis bordering on the whimsical in our collective need to make sense of events like these. More »
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    "Zen Buddhism, very hard to understand, thank you." Paid Member

    Posted by tricycleblog on 14 Apr 2007
    The title of this post is (allegedly) the complete text of a speech made by D.T. Suzuki at U.C.L.A. back in the day. The story of this and other Buddhist ha-ha's here. (I realize ol' D.T. Suzuki is way way way out of fashion in contemporary Buddhist thinking, and is so for a lot of reasons, but once upon a time he was one of my -- and a lot of other people's -- first glimpses into something new. And people are still being introduced to Zen Buddhism -- D.T.'s own special blend of it, that is -- through his work. Someone is learning about Buddhism in one of his books right now! . . . Probably. Like, did anyone else try and read those Bernard Faure books, in school or out? Speaking of very hard to understand. More »