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    Plenty to Practice Paid Member

    A FEW YEARS BACK - not long before revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib - U.S. Army Specialist Benjamin Thompson wrote us from the soon-to-become notorious prison site with a simple request: Could we send him a few issues of Tricycle for support in his meditation practice? Thompson’s unit had arrived at Abu Ghraib to replace those who were later implicated in the routine abuse that More »
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    Buddha and The Beasts Paid Member

    WESTERNERS WHO KNOW little of Buddhism often associate it with vegetarianism. Zen monks in Japan are mistakenly thought to subsist on a diet of nothing but brown rice. A book of "famous vegetarians" features an image of Shakyamuni Buddha on the cover, but it makes no mention of Adolf Hitler, despite his well-documented vegetarian eating habits. As we see in this issue's "Debate on Food and Practice," our assumptions about Buddhism and vegetarianism are not… More »
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    Buddha and The Beasts Paid Member

    By Helen Tworkov
    Westerners who know little of Buddhism often associate it with vegetarianism. Zen monks in Japan are mistakenly thought to subsist on a diet of nothing but brown rice. A book of "famous vegetarians" features an image of Shakyamuni Buddha on the cover, but it makes no mention of Adolf Hitler, despite his well-documented vegetarian eating habits. As we see in this issue's "Debate on Food and Practice," our assumptions about Buddhism and vegetarianism are not always correct. Tibetans in exile are notorious for their love of Big Macs. Their general predilection for red meat is often explained by the agricultural limitations of their snowcapped country. Yet their Burmese neighbors to the south keep their monks well-supplied with pork, which they believe to have been the last meal of Shakyamuni Buddha—never mind that tainted pig meat may have been the cause of his death. More »
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    No Time For Anger Paid Member

    By James Shaheen
    NOT LONG AFTER 9/11, actor Richard Gere stood before a crowd at Madison Square Garden and spoke of compassion and understanding. When I read about it, I remember thinking that it was far too early for forgiveness. Who was ready to hear it? The crowd didn't take it well; they booed. More »
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    No Time For Anger Paid Member

    NOT LONG AFTER 9/11, actor Richard Gere stood before a crowd at Madison Square Garden and spoke of compassion and understanding. When I read about it, I remember thinking that it was far too early for forgiveness. Who was ready to hear it? The crowd didn’t take it well; they booed. At the time it seemed to me that forgiveness was the culmination of a process - it followed grief, anger, and any attempt to negotiate reality - a� More »
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    Of Cults & Clones Paid Member

    By Helen Tworkov
    Following the cloning of Dr. Wilmut’s ewe, we asked various people to comment on this historic event. In response (see p. 36) Ravi Ravindra, Professor of Comparative Religion and of Physics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said, “A more serious issue is how our propaganda, our social-psychological manipulation through the media, actually makes people behave as if they were clones.” A month after Professor Ravindra’s reply came into the office, the mass suicide by thirty-nine members of Heaven’s Gate dramatically proved his point. More »