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Arts & Culture |
The growing influence of Buddhist artistic expression in contemporary culture |
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The Natural
Jeff Bridges enters the living room of his hotel suite carrying a dark blue Shambhala paperback by Chögyam Trungpa entitled Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-kindness. “One reason I’m anxious—because I have some anxiety about this interview, like you do,” he says, as he arranges his long body on the couch, “is that I wish I could be more facile with these things that I find so interesting and care about and want to express to people.” He opens the book. “This will be a challenge for me,” he says. “But I’ll attempt it.” More » -
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To Not Be, Or Not Not to Be
What do William Shakespeare and Buddha have in common? Call it Jungian synchronicity: both left their wives and families in search of the meaning of existence, emerged during a religious revolution, and were sublime philosophers. More importantly, they held very similar viewpoints regarding how one should live life in order to attain bliss. The Buddha taught the Eightfold Path: 1. Right thought2. Right understanding3. Right speech4. Right action5. Right livelihood6. Right effort7. Right mindfulness8. Right concentration More » -
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No Words
You’ve said that you were once a poet who practiced Zen but over the years became a monk who practices poetry. Could you say more about this? My interest in Zen started in high school, but it wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I learned how to meditate. It was then that I met my teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi. I vividly remember my first sanzen [private interview] with him. He asked me, “What do you do?” I stupidly replied, “I’m a poet.” He laughed, rang his bell to dismiss me, and said, “You’ll never be a poet.” Soon after this exchange, Sasaki Roshi gave me a koan that took me several months to answer. When I did finally answer it—without the use of any words—he said, “Now you become poet!” More » -
Right Acting
You’ve said before that your skills as an actor are some of the very same skills you use in your practice. Can you talk about that? I went to the Lee Strasburg Institute, which teaches an approach to acting that originated with Stanislavski in the Moscow Art Theatre. The first thing you do when you start to study is, you sit in a chair and try to become aware of your body and your muscles, releasing all tension. Then you make a resonant sound—an “ahhh”—and try to connect to your emotion and see what’s there. It took me a while to put it together, but it’s a lot like meditation. It’s about simple things: creating simple sensory realities. Another exercise uses an imaginary coffee cup. You create it and feel the weight of the thing—not by pantomime, but through your senses. More » -
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Spontaneous Intelligence
Allen Ginsberg was an undergraduate at Columbia University in the early 1940s when he met Jack Kerouac. Together they became charter members of what would become known as the Beat Generation. In 1972, he began studying with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and continues practicing in the Shambhala tradition, as well as practicing with Gelek Rimpoche. Tricycle interviewed Mr. Ginsberg in his apartment in New York City in the Spring of 1995. More »
