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    Workshops, Seminars & Conferences; The Art of Dying Paid Member

    By Amy Gross
    “There are no dead people,” Bob Thurman says. “No one is going to become a dead person. There is no death.” He's launching the third Art of Dying conference in New York City, cosponsored by Tibet House, of which he's president, and the New York Open Center. He will talk for four hours, without a lull, a rapids of ideas, imprecations, riffs. The truth is, Thurman says, “there's no way out, no lunch break, no nirvana break, no death break.” After forty years of involvement with Buddhism, Thurman says, he is “unintimidated by death.” It's liberation, transformation. The awareness of death “is the door for us to be alive.” More »
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    In the Land of the First Noble Truth Paid Member

    By Robert Hirschfield
    We had just opened our building in lower Manhattan when we saw smoke sliding out from under Rooster Vargas's door. My then supervisor, a sultry woman in her mid-twenties who did not know what she was getting into (and who soon became conveniently pregnant and left), pounded on Rooster's door. She got no response. She barged into his room with a fire extinguisher so shiny and immaculate it resembled a religious object. We found a chicken defrosting under a scalding shower. Rooster had gone shopping. Seven years have since past. Rooster's residence is without Rooster. After interminably shooting up, snorting, tormenting staff, inflicting on other residents his bug-laden cart that clung to him like a second body, Rooster was evicted. I am still a case manager at the forty-four-unit independent housing facility run by my agency for people who are mentally ill (there are also rooms for people who are handicapped, either physically or financially). More »
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    Riding Two Horses Paid Member

    By Anne A. Simpkinson
    Anne A. Simpkinson on the increasing numbers of dharma teachers who are also therapists. What happens when your teacher is your shrink? For the past several decades, Westerners have generated new forms of Buddhism that reflect their own values and social contexts. A meditation hall where the cushions are arranged in an egalitarian circle-a nod to Native American council meetings-has a different feel from a classical Japanese zendo where the seating spells out the pecking order of the monastery. In the West, as many women as men are practicing today; this, and the increasing presence of women teachers, put another new face on Buddhism. More »
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    Stepping to a Different Drum Paid Member

    By Lee Yu Ban
    I noticed the afternoon was getting hotter as I unloaded my family from the car at the Subang Jaya Buddha Vihara in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “It's going to be great,” I convincingly reassured my two kids. “How often do you get to see someone ordain for real?” We had come to witness Chin Leag's pabbajja, or ordination as a novice monk. More »
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    Falun Gong Paid Member

    By Kenneth S. Cohen
    Kenneth S. Cohen on what got China's hackles up about the mysterious Qigong meditation movement. Is Falun Gong a turning of the dharma wheel or a new fundamentalism? More »
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    The Science of Enlightenment; Cause and Effect Paid Member

    By Brad Marston
    Winter was cut short again this year. Cherry trees on the Brown campus blossomed in December, and crocuses emerged at the start of March. The National Climate Data Center reported that the last three winters were the warmest on record. And this past winter was the warmest of those three. It is hard to deny that the modern world is out of balance. Carbon dioxide levels in the air have been rising since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and now surpass those of the previous half a million years by a wide margin. The global temperature of the past decade exceeded that of the preceding thirteen decades, and probably even the past millennium. Polar ice is thinning, glaciers are melting, and oceans are rising. Chanting the four great vows every day, I am reminded of the influence that we humans exert on the world around us, and of our vast ignorance of it: Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them all. Delusions are endless; More »