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    Himalayan Intrigue Paid Member

    By Keith Dowman
    ON JUNE 17, 1992, a seven-year-old nomad boy from the steppes of eastern Tibet was installed as one of Central Asia's great religious hierarchs. The child, Ugyen Thinley, was recognized as the Seventeenth Gyalwa Karmapa. His predecessors—the Guru Lamas of Kublai Khan and successive Mongol Chinese Emperors—had been virtual rulers of Tibet before the Dalai Lamas. Princes of an immensely wealthy theocratic establishment, they were buddhas in the guise of sacred magicians, high priests, and god-kings. The recognition of the last Karmapa was greeted with exultation and delight, rejoicing and relief—in Tibet, across the Himalayas, among Tibetan communities in exile, and by devotees of the Karmapa throughout the world. The ceremony itself was attended by thousands of Tibetans. More »
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    The Science of Compassion Paid Member

    By Jeffery Zaleski
    I EXIT THE SUBWAY to my quiet Brooklyn neighborhood and there he is again, wearing a ragged T-shirt, torn jeans, and dirty sneakers, sweeping the subway steps with an old broom. He looks at me pleadingly. Feeling generous, I reach into my pocket for a coin but find only crumpled bills. Too much, I think. Mumbling a quick "Sorry," I avoid his eyes and hurry on past. More »
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    Rebirth: A Case for Buddhist Agnosticism Paid Member

    By Stephen Batchelor
    In 1254 the Franciscan friar William of Rubruck, a missionary in Mongolia, became the first Westerner to describe a reincarnate Buddhist teacher. In the report of his mission to King Louis IX of France he recounted the following episode: A boy was brought from Cataia [China], who to judge by his physical size was not three years old, yet was fully capable of rational thought: he said of himself that he was in his third incarnation, and he knew how to read and write. (Peter Jackson's The Mission Friar of William of Rubruck, Hakluyt Society, 1990.) Seven hundred and thirty years later, the same phenomenon was reported in the heartland of Christian Europe: More »
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    Report from Rio: The Earth Summit Paid Member

    By Lavina Currier
    Monday, June 1 Flying to Rio de Janeiro from New York, we pass over Freshkill Landfill, the largest man-made object in the world. It reminds me that we Americans throwaway twice our body weight in garbage every day. In Miami Airport's red-carpet lounge a journalist calls in his "angle" on his way down to Rio: "I've got it. It's good. Are you there? Yeah, well here it is. It's chaos, it's impasse, gridlock if you will, but it's the future of diplomacy. It's how business will be done from now on—big, unwieldy gatherings. Okay? Good." I talk with a lobbyist for a breast-feeding advocacy group. Talking with her reminds me of the baby, just weaned, who I've left behind with his father. Why am I on this plane to Rio? As a mother of a child of the twenty-first century, as an environmental foundation director, or as a dharma student? More »
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    Living With The Devil Paid Member

    By Stephen Batchelor
    In popular mythology, devils are quixotic and cruel tyrants who relish tormenting their victims. Their vitality obscures how the demonic is subjectively experienced as a state of existential and psychological paralysis. When seized by a demon, one feels suffocated, oppressed, and fatigued as one struggles to be free from what entraps one. The devil is a way of talking about that which blocks one’s path in life, frustrates one’s aspirations, makes one feel stuck, hemmed in, obstructed. While the Hebrew “Satan” means “adversary,” the Greek diabolos means “one who throws something across the path.” In India, Buddha called the devil “Mara,” which in Pali and Sanskrit means “killer.” In an early discourse entitled “The Striving,” Gotama recalls: More »
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    The Transcendent Imperative Paid Member

    By Andrew Cooper
    The truth is that the more ourselves we are,the less self is in us.                                      –Meister Eckhart In a glowing passage from Anna Karenina, Tolstoy describes an experience of self-transcendence with such color and detail that one feels its living quality as though from the inside. Oppressed by worry, the ruminative Konstantin Levin decides one day to work in the fields alongside the peasants, a highly unusual thing for a landowner, even one as eccentric as Levin, to do. Although unaccustomed to the hard physical labor, Levin eventually falls into a rhythm that washes away extraneous thoughts and brings his senses to life. More »