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    Just Say Maybe Paid Member

    To celebrate our fifth anniversary, we have chosen to focus on a controversial issue that claims both a complex history and a contemporary revival: Buddhism and psychedelics. Dozens of controversies surround the subject of psychedelics. Some involve legal and medical issues; others, issues of empiricism and religion. Beyond controversy, however, is the historical relationship between Buddhism and Psychedelics (See Rick Fields’ “The High History of Buddhism,” p. 45). For the new Buddhists of the 1960s… More »
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    Take it on Faith? Paid Member

    By James Shaheen
    WESTERNERS PLAY FAST and loose with the Buddhist notion of faith, says frequent Tricycle contributor Thanissaro Bhikkhu. While the Buddha did encourage a healthy skepticism, he nonetheless taught faith. In this issue’s “Faith in Awakening” (page 70), the American-born Thai forest monk writes, “If you sincerely want to put an end to suffering, you should take certain things on faith and then test them through following the Buddha’s path of practice.” He goes on to say, “Just as you shouldn’t give unreserved trust to outside authority, you can’t give unreserved trust to your own logic and feelings if they go against experience and the genuine wisdom of others.” More »
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    This is Where We Find Ourselves Paid Member

    William Sloane Coffin, the Yale University chaplain who famously opposed the Vietnam War, had himself been an undergraduate at Yale, and a classmate of George Bush's. Long after both men had defined their positions, Coffin's observation of President Bush's ascent was that, "skim milk does rise to the top." It's a funny way of putting it, but a damning rebuke of the democratic process nonetheless; and the current situation seems particularly pathetic because, for so many people, comparing Clinton to skim milk is a compliment. Well, well, grumble, grumble, love it or leave it, go back to Russia. To anti-Semitism. Stalin. Communist dictatorships and five-year plans. Escape to America only to develop laryngitis denouncing Larry King's guests. Practice the politics of monkey-mind. More »
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    A Religion of Practice Paid Member

    By James Shaheen
    To the chagrin of some and the delight of others, syncretic practices and novel applications of Buddhist wisdom continue to spring up in contemporary life. As we sent this issue to press, what struck me once again was the broad range of views and activities that have come to characterize the unfolding of dharma in the West. In “Eating and the Wheel of Life”, Vipassana practitioner and psychotherapist Sandra Weinberg asks what happens when food, a primordial source of comfort, becomes the primordial source of suffering. Weinberg uses images from the Tibetan Wheel of Life to map out a step-by-step process to break the grip of addiction—in this case, compulsive eating—and brings the Buddha’s teachings to bear on a binging nation. And in “Eye on the Ball”, L.A. More »
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    So you think I'm going to hell? Paid Member

    By James Shaheen
    WHAT DO YOU SAY to a fundamentalist Christian who’s certain you’re on the fast track to hell? Keep in mind she may be wondering what to say to you, too, since she knows you probably think she’s impenetrably ignorant. And yet the two of you very likely have no trouble being polite to each another in the checkout line at the local supermarket. Why go further than a simple hello and a strained smile? More »
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    The Karma of Words Paid Member

    President Clinton has certainly carved out an odd legacy of language. Only months ago, his behavior in the Oval Office turned prime-time television news into salacious reports in need of parental monitoring. Now, the White House has introduced us to “Immaculate Destruction”—its inane description of what the administration hoped against hope would be a bloodless war. If, in the Christian tradition, the Virgin’s birth - she was said to have been born free of original sin, hence “the Immaculate Conception”—made her worthy to bear the incarnation of God, will coopting the language of the sacred make us sinless too? In the land that has idealized the separation of church and state, are we to suppose that we have waged a war without sin and wrought destruction with the righteous aggression of a holy war? More »