The New Kadampa Tradition is an international association of Mahayana Buddhist meditation centers that follow the Kadampa Buddhist tradition founded by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
Arts & Culture |
The growing influence of Buddhist artistic expression in contemporary culture |
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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
Every once in a while I read a book that insists on being taken on its own terms— a book that teaches you how to read it. When I first picked up the Zen monk Seido Ray Ronci’s seventh book of poetry, The Skeleton of the Crow: New & Selected Poems, 1980–2008, I found that it expressed the clarity, simplicity, and profundity of Zen in language that spoke to me as a practitioner. As I read more of his work, I came to appreciate the range of his subjects (from childrearing to painting to the austere solitude of his time as a monastic), as well as his humor, and perhaps most of all, his sensibility for the everyday. Like other writers working in the centuries-old tradition of Zen poetry developed by Ikkyu, Basho, and Ryokan, Seido Ray Ronci is concerned less with the words on the page than with the reality they point to. 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 » -
Topping the Charts for Freedom
In your book you speak openly about your childhood with a father who routinely beat you and a mother who was unable to intervene. How has your practice of Buddhism helped you make sense of the past? What happened happened; I can’t undo it. I’ve learned that it’s stupid to live in that unpleasant experience forever. The most painful situation took place long ago, but as you relive it you make yourself suffer over and over again. The main question is how much you want to break free of your patterns and dissatisfaction regarding what you’ve been through. More »
