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    Treasury of Lives Paid Member

    By Alexander Gardner
    The life story of the Buddha is one of the central teaching tales in all Buddhist traditions. It is an inspirational story that is meant as a model for all people: a man turns his back on the pleasures and sufferings of human society, sets off on a rigorous path of practice and reflection, attains a state of freedom from suffering, and then teaches the theory and method of his accomplishment to others. Tibetans, who have produced what is possibly the largest collection of sacred literature in the world, adapted the format of the Buddha’s quest for enlightenment to the telling of the life stories of their own religious masters. These biographical works are known in Tibetan as namtar, which literally means “enlightenment.” The Tibetans have produced a dizzying number of them. More »
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    Pixel Dharma Paid Member

    Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) isn’t merely an online museum or collection of Himalayan art. What are you? HAR is a service organization. Our mission is not only to record all of the Tibetan and Himalayan style art that we can find—everything that’s in museums and private collections around the world—but also to make it available for educational purposes: for art history, the general study of art, and for religious studies. More »
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    My Technology, My Self Paid Member

    By Richard Eskow
    “Can technology set you free?” That was the question posed as the theme of a two-hour long “Battle of Ideas” by a British organization called, appropriately enough, the Institute of Ideas. The “Battle” failed to resolve the question, which should hardly have been surprising. The question has, in one form or another, been debated for centuries, and there was no reason to think it would be resolved on a chilly November evening in 21st-century London. More »
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    The Buddhist Geek Paid Member

    You’ve suggested that contemplation is becoming an information technology. What do you mean by that? I was at the South by Southwest Interactive Technology Conference last year, and I heard the technologist and inventor Ray Kurzweil point out that genetics became an information technology when the human genome was mapped and could then be understood in terms of digital information, mostly through the four base pairs of DNA. Since then, DNA has actually even become a digital storage medium; people are storing information in DNA. In the same way that we’ve been able to decipher the information that makes up our genetic code, perhaps as our understanding of contemplation improves through the collective inquiry of science, philosophy, and introspection, we might also begin to decipher some of the information underlying contemplation. More »
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    Special Section: Buddhism & Technology Paid Member

    This August, Tricycle is teaming up with Buddhist Geeks to explore the interplay of Buddhism and technology. We thought there was no better way to prepare for the event than to feature a series of articles exploring the impact of technology on our perceptions of Buddhist art, history, and practice. We begin the section with the Buddhist Geek himself, Vincent Horn, who has spent nearly a decade reflecting on how Buddhism and technology have been shaping each other. We like to think of this special section as an opportunity to initiate a conversation with our readers about the future of Buddhism and the effect that technology has on its dissemination and on our understanding of the dharma.   Buddhism & Technology: Table of Contents More »