I have been a huge Tarthang Tulku fan and reader since the 80s. One of the true masters who can skillfully deliver the dharma without falling back on it. Robin Caton from Dharma College channels her teacher just as skillfully in this excerpt from her new book 'The Undreamed Self'.
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A new volume on Meditation Sickness is out from University of Hawaii Press. Features a chapter by me on demonic states from Suramgama sutra. uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/medita...
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas was a world-renowned thinker on modernity and democracy who helped shape German post-war and post-reunification political discourse. n.pr/3Nptb1g
Bhikkhu Anālayo discusses the earliest layers of the Mahayana prajnaparamita and agama literature and sees more similarities than differences with the Mainstream traditions in a recent interview by Randy Rosenthal for Tricycle @tricyclemag.bsky.social
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Jin Park strips karma down to agency — and the argument cuts. Moral bookkeeping makes Buddhism an alibi for injustice. Korean nuns Iryŏp and Daehaeng knew better: the empty self owes no debt to fatalism. What remains is unhedged engagement, against whatever holds you inert.
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An interesting article on transgender Thai renunciant Ajarn Tritrinn and the community growing around her. Her selfless and compassionate devotion in the face of doubters is touching.
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Tricycle @tricyclemag.bsky.social is now on Substack. You can read original articles and selections from our archive. I wrote a personal reflection on a Linda Heuman article about the futility of looking for an 'original' Buddhism, since, as even the Buddha tought—everything changes.
Tibetan writer Bhuchung Sonam reviews Tsering Döndrup's 'The Red Wind Howels'— banned in China—and recently translated by Christopher Peacock on @columbiaup.bsky.social Sonam provides a moving review for a book that defied limitations and made it ways through the Tibetan diaspora.
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How does Buddhism grapple with Santa Claus?
Writer Wendy Biddlecombe Agsar explores the delicate balance between truthfulness and holiday magic—asking whether it’s okay to tell a well-intentioned lie in the spirit of Santa.
Tricycle's editors are reading books on Japanese poetry, transforming our emotions, and koan practice in everyday life.
Click the link below to see what books have caught their attention lately.
This recent article by Bikash Bhattacharya has become my last-minute favorite of 2025. Hajo is a sacred site once central to Bhutanese and Tibetan devotion that now survives mostly in memory as borders, routes, and generations change. Bhattacharya offers voices from this lived tradition.
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In 1950s New York, Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki’s lectures brought artists like John Cage and Erich Fromm into conversation about Buddhist thought.
Learn more about the talks that inspired a generation of Western thinkers in the link below.
Happy Thankgiving!
An excellent reminder during holiday times with family members you don't see eye-to-eye with, Emma Varvaloucas talks with John Wood and Monica Guzman about practicing meaningful dialogue. It's not easy when our fundamental moral positions are challenged by family.
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Tommy Tran offers a brief biography of the 7th-century Korean Buddhist monk Wonhyo and his method of harmonizing doctrinal disputes. "No single doctrine was complete, but each revealed a facet of truth," Tran says, "Wonhyo emphasized the merits and limits of every perspective."
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My latest interview with Australian Tendai priest Jikai Tyler Dehn. Jikai is dedicated to translating all the works of Tendai founder Saicho into English. Check him out on YouTube or his website. His dedication to the dharma is inspiring.
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At Tricycle, we really appreciate Nikki Mirghafori's sobering clarity on AI and what the future holds. She recently talked to James Shaheen for a premium subscriber special event. Here, she talks with Steve Omohundro for Tricycle on AI, karma, and our robot future.
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He’s one of the loudest voices of the AI haters—even as he does PR for AI companies. Either way, Ed Zitron has your attention.
A wonderful reflection by dharma teacher and pilgrimage leader Shantum Seth on his first time visiting India's historic Buddhist pilgrimage sites with Thich Nhat Hanh, adapted from the latest posthumous book by TNH called Touching Peace on Parallax Press.
Japan, ostensibly one of the least religious countries in the world, had its political order upended by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. That is THE story about Friday's epochal shift in Japanese politics (thread follows):
The Berenike Buddha—a 2nd-c CE marble statue in Egypt—is the earliest Buddha image found west of Afghanistan.
M. D. Usher suggests that early Buddhist communities may have been in Roman Egypt long before modern notions of “Western Buddhism.”
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Legal scholar Benjamin Schonthal explains the recent ruling in Sri Lanka on Bhikkhuni ordination and its implications. I must admit, I underestimated the importance of the ruling, since it didn't require the Nikayas to accept anything.
We will have to wait and see how this unfolds.
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A new book on #Shinto and famous #Kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤 (1776-1843) has just been published open access and free for download by the preeminent historian Dr. Ann Walthall! You can check it out here: www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...
America’s democratic system depends on the public’s understanding that law is bigger than politics, @davidfrum.bsky.social argues. But now, Trump is sending a clear message that he is willing to go after his enemies and undermine that system.
Randy Rosenthal reviews a new book of unpublished writings by Jack Kerouac, a powerful force in popularizing Buddhism in the West. Rosenthal says, "We see him as an earnest fellow seeker, trying to incorporate his newfound wisdom into his art."
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Feeling this
Stanford PhD Candidate Nancy Chu reviews a new book by Hong Kong Polytechnic University's Chengpang Lee. The book tells the story of Tzu Chi and the Buddhist nun behind one of the world’s most significant humanitarian movements.
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I saw these relics at the Met and thought, "How the hell is this traveling around in a private collection?" Cheong's research paper, linked in this article, helps a lot. It was very disturbing to see these holy relics at the Met. It felt highly inappropriate, sacrilegious, and just bad juju.
A timely article by SOAS PhD candidate Conan Cheong on the recent sale of the Piprahwa relics to an Indian conglomerate. The Sotheby's debacle, when they tried and failed to auction them to the highest bidder, raises important questions on custodianship of sacred objects.
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