Tricycle Talks

Marisela B. Gomez is a dharma teacher, physician-scientist, and public health scholar. She recently cowrote a book with Valerie Brown called Love Is Liberation: Five Contemplations for Daily Ethical Living. Drawing from Thich Nhat Hanh’s five mindfulness trainings, the book presents ethical guidelines aimed to help us transform suffering in ourselves, our communities, and our world, particularly in the context of injustice and oppression.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Gomez to discuss how she was first introduced to the five mindfulness trainings, why the mindfulness trainings are like spiritual friends, and how contemplating the trainings can offer us a path back to our values. Plus, Gomez leads a guided meditation.

On October 14, 1956, B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit activist and chief architect of the Indian constitution, led nearly half a million followers in a mass conversion to Buddhism. The conversion set in motion the development of a religious movement known as Navayana, or New Buddhism, which positioned Buddhism as a fierce rejection of Hindu nationalism and caste politics. In Ambedkar’s reading, Buddhism was uniquely suited to support a revolutionary reconstruction of Indian society grounded in religious transformation. In the years since his death, many Dalits have followed his example and converted to Buddhism as a form of protest and resistance.

In honor of the seventieth anniversary of Ambedkar’s conversion, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with scholar William Edelglass, who has written extensively about Ambedkar’s life and legacy. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Edelglass discusses why Ambedkar believed reform was inadequate and true change required complete annihilation of caste, how Ambedkar viewed social conflict as the primary cause of suffering, Ambedkar’s reimagining of the Buddha’s life story, and how Ambedkar understood Buddhism as a path of collective freedom from violence and social inequality.

Steven Hall, aka Nirosta Steel, has been making ambitious experimental music for more than forty years, though most of it has gone unreleased. This summer, the Indiana label ULYSSA dug through decades of Hall’s archives to put together his first album in years, MY SKYSCRAPER, which quickly rose to critical acclaim. Drawing from his longtime collaboration with Arthur Russell and building on their notion of “Buddhist pop,” the album presents four decades of Hall’s work, spanning folk, disco, and experimental synth-pop.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Hall to talk about his winding path to music, what he learned from his time with Allen Ginsberg and Larry Fagin, his friendship with Arthur Russell and Russell’s notion of “Buddhist bubblegum,” and how Buddhism literally saved his life.

Maria Heim is a professor of religion at Amherst College. Her new book, How to Truly Love: An Ancient Guide to a Life of Kindness, presents a fresh and accessible translation of a chapter from the Path of Purification, a meditation manual by the great 5th-century sage Buddhaghosa. Through a careful exploration of the brahmaviharas, or sublime attitudes, Buddhaghosa offers practical strategies for releasing anger and hatred and finding freedom.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Heim to discuss why Buddhaghosa considers love a kind of attention, how love can help us see more clearly, why meditation requires a foundation in morality, and how attention to the particular can help us cultivate a universal sense of love for all beings.

Jonathan F. P. Rose is an urban planner and philanthropist whose work focuses on creating more environmentally, socially, and economically resilient cities. In 2003, he and his wife, Diana Rose, cofounded the Garrison Institute, a retreat center in the Hudson Valley dedicated to the intersection of contemplation and engaged action.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Rose to discuss how he first came to Buddhism, how the Garrison Institute supports activists to address social challenges through a contemplative lens, and what it means to harness contemplative practices to build resilience, both for individuals and for the planet as a whole.

A sixteenth-generation descendant of Bizen swordsmiths, Miya Ando is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the ephemerality of natural phenomena. Her new book, Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words, presents a visual compendium of terms for rain, featuring expressions from Buddhist rain sutras, Heian-era poetic anthologies, and regionally specific terms from throughout Japan.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Ando to discuss the concept of mono no aware and how she aims to capture impermanence and transience in visual form, what she’s learned from the radical 15th-century monk Ikkyu Sojun, and how attention to everyday phenomena like rain can invite wonder and awe.

Oneika Mays is a yoga and meditation teacher and former mindfulness coach at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, where she taught for more than a decade. In her new book, Sit with Me: A No-BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation, she draws from her experience at Rikers to lay out a clear and accessible guide to metta, or loving-kindness practice.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Mays to discuss how she came to be Rikers Island’s first mindfulness coach, how metta can be a practice of internal freedom even when external freedom is not a possibility, what she’s learned from bell hooks about love, and how we can remain whole in a world that breaks us apart. Plus, Mays leads a guided meditation.

When Viet Thanh Nguyen was growing up as a refugee in the United States, it was hard for him to find stories that represented his experience. Now, as a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, he is determined to center the narratives of Vietnamese writers and artists in the diaspora. His most recent book, The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora, which he coedited with Isabelle Thuy Pelaud and Lan Duong, is the first anthology to gather the voices and perspectives of Vietnamese diasporic authors from around the globe. Featuring dialogues among thirty-seven writers and artists, the book explores themes of history and memory, the ongoing legacies of colonialism and war, and the role of art in reckoning with the realities of diaspora and displacement.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Nguyen to talk about how writing can be a tool for fighting back against erasure and exploitation, why he rejects the trope of being a voice for the voiceless and believes instead that we should abolish the conditions of voicelessness, how contributors to the collection complicate notions of authenticity and authority, and how political imagination can be a resource for building a better future.

For the past forty years, Ken McLeod has worked as a teacher and translator of Tibetan texts, practices, and rituals. With his new book, This Unexpected Jewel: Reading the Diamond Sutra, he presents a fresh and accessible translation of the Diamond Sutra, one of the most revered texts in the Buddhist tradition.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with McLeod to discuss how his first encounter with the Diamond Sutra caused his mind to stop, why he frames his translation as a practitioner’s translation rather than an academic’s, how the Diamond Sutra cuts through our tendency to rely on conceptual understanding and points to a different way of experiencing life, and the transformative power of reading the sutra aloud. Plus, McLeod reads a few passages from his translation of the Diamond Sutra.

Sister Tue Nghiem is a dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition. She is currently based in Australia. In her new book, Caregiving and the Art of Presence: A Zen Nun's Journey of Love and Letting Go, she reflects on the challenges and unexpected gifts of caring for her mother in the final seven years of her life. 

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Nghiem to discuss how she came to be her mother’s caregiver, what caring for her mother taught her about the importance of letting go, how suffering can be a catalyst for compassion, and what it means to cultivate the gift of non-fear. Plus, she leads a guided meditation.