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thus have i heard
  • Tricycle Community 2 comments

    Busy Signal Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    When the Buddha says, “I know of no single thing more conducive to great harm than an unrestrained mind,” I think he is referring, in part, to the current penchant for multitasking. When the mind tries to do several things at once, it does not do any of them very well. This is an empirical fact proven by numerous experiments, and it is easy to test out for yourself: try texting a message while catching the latest baseball scores on the radio and discussing some recent relationship difficulty with your partner. More »
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    Appearance and Reality Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    Fear of Death, Yayoi, Kusama, 2008. © Yayoi Kusama; Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York; Photograph by Rob McKeever   More »
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    Burning Alive Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    “Everything is burning!” said the Buddha almost 25 centuries ago. “Burning with what? Burning with the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.”(Samyutta Nikaya 35.28) These words seem prophetic today, as our planet is slowly warmed by the fires blazing in our furnaces and engines, by the explosion of our bullets and bombs, and by the raging delusions around which our entire world seems to be organized. There is not a single problem we face as human beings— other than the tectonic (earthquakes), the astronomical (meteor strikes), or the existential (aging and death)— that does not find its origin in greed, hatred, or delusion, whether of people or their institutions. More »
  • Tricycle Community 9 comments

    Karma in Action Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    The Nerve Center of Our Massive Corporation, Elif Soyer, 2005, digital print, 10 x 10 inches © Elif Soyer Karma is a word one runs across more and more these days. It’s too bad it is almost always misused. Somehow in English it has come to mean “fate” or “destiny” (American Heritage Dictionary). This is an unfortunate, if inevitable, distortion, because in its original Buddhist context karma is a concept of unparalleled profundity and significance. More »
  • Tricycle Community 5 comments

    Unreal Imagination Exists Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    One of my favorite expressions from Buddhist literature is the three-word opening line of the Madhyantavibhaga, a late Sanskrit text attributed to Maitreya, the Buddha to come. The phrase, which nicely captures the subtle, paradoxical view of reality so unique to Buddhist thought, is abhutaparikalpo'sti, and translates as something like "unreal imagination exists." More »
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    In the Blink of an Eye Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    HOW FAR AWAY from one another are suffering and the end of suffering? The distance can be traversed in the blink of an eye. That is the good news delivered to us by the Buddha in the Indriyabhavana Sutta, the very last text of the Middle-Length Discourses (Majjhima-nikaya 152). In an exchange with a Brahmin student named Uttara, the teaching begins with a description of something universal in human experience: More »