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  • Tricycle Community 7 comments

    Interbeing with Thich Nhat Hanh Paid Member

    Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in October 1926 and became a monk at the age of sixteen. During the Vietnam War, he left his monastery and became actively engaged in helping victims of the war and publicly advocating peace. In 1966, he toured the United States at the invitation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation "to describe the aspirations and the agony of the voiceless masses of the Vietnamese people." As a result, he was threatened with arrest in Vietnam and unable to return. He served as the chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation during the war and in 1967 was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. More »
  • Tricycle Community 3 comments

    The Art of Doing Nothing Paid Member

    Tricycle: Who was your first teacher? Rosenberg: Krishnamurti. I met him in 1968 while I was teaching at Brandeis University. Brandeis had this program where they’d invite a person to give talks for a week. I didn’t know who Krishnamurti was, but fortunately for me, no one else did either so we started taking walks and talking. I’d never met anyone so awake. I’d never been listened to so totally and I found it quite unnerving at first. Then, as I got to know him, I just felt so at home with him. I told him that I was a professor, but the whole academic thing was dying out from under me. I’d been extremely ambitious—on fire to get a Ph.D. and a good job—but now I thought the old cliché “publish or perish” should really be “publish and perish.” More »
  • Tricycle Community 23 comments

    The Politics of Enlightenment: Interview with Robert Thurman Paid Member

    THE POINT OF DISCUSSING a Buddhist platform is not to generate something altogether new and exotic, but to reinforce enlightenment-oriented tendencies and to mobilize active Buddhist participation in American politics. It is a misunderstanding to think that enlightenment is some sort of final escape from life and that the doctrine of the unsatisfactory nature of samsara obviates any need for involvement with other beings or social responsibility. Because nirvana is selfless, there is no self that enjoys a state of being beyond the world. Selfish habits that dominate unenlightened living may be dissolved, but that leaves the aggregates of body and mind just as present in the world as they ever were. Buddha himself remained deeply engaged throughout his life after his enlightenment. Wisdom and compassion are ultimately inseparable, wisdom being the complete knowledge of ultimate selflessness and compassion being the selfless commitment to the happiness of others. More »
  • Tricycle Community 28 comments

    Reincarnation: A Debate Paid Member

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  • Tricycle Community 1 comment

    Even Dewdrops Fall Paid Member

    Taitetsu Unno was born in Japan in the 1935 and moved to the United States at the age of six. During World War II he spent three and a half years behind barbed wire fences at a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas. He was later educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and reeicieved advanced degrees in Buddhist studies at Tokyo University. Currently, he is the Jill Ker Conway Professor of Religion at Smith College and an ordained priest of Shin Buddhism. More »
  • Tricycle Community 1 comment

    A New Place, A New Time Paid Member

    Tricycle: When your father died in 1987 there were two wings of his community: the Vajradhatu—or Buddhist path, and the Shambhala Training path. What is the difference between Shambhala Training and Buddhism, and why did you bring them together? More »