Tricycle Talks

By Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Religion & Spirituality

What's Tricycle Talks about?

Conversations with contemporary Buddhist leaders and thinkers

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What Reality TV Can Teach U...

10.20.2021

Sallie Tisdale is a Zen teacher, writer, and Tricycle contributing editor—and she has seen nearly every season of the award-winning reality TV show Survivor. In her latest book, "The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze" ...

Tricycle Talks episodes:

10.20.2021 What Reality TV Can Teach Us About Surviving Ourselves Sallie Tisdale is a Zen teacher, writer, and Tricycle contributing editor—and she has seen nearly every season of the award-winning reality TV show Survivor. In her latest book, "The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze" ...
09.22.2021 Accepting Death to Live More Fully When her closest childhood friend was diagnosed with cancer, writer and interfaith minister Barbara Becker set out on a quest to live a year of her life as if it were her last. Drawing from a variety of wisdom traditions, ...
09.08.2021 'Music or Madness, It's Up to You' “A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there, a ...
08.25.2021 Every Moment Is a Bardo For many of us, this past year has felt like an in-between state, as our usual routines and realities have been upended. Tricycle contributing editor and writer Ann Tashi Slater likens this suspension to the bardo journey, the transitional path ...
08.11.2021 The Anxiety of Return After months of isolation, many of us are in a moment of transition, whether we’re attending larger social gatherings again, seeing relatives, or preparing to head back to the office for the first time in months. While there’s a lot ...
08.04.2021 Inside Tricycle's Fall 2021 Issue In this special episode of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen is joined by three contributors to Tricycle’s 30th anniversary issue, out this August. First, Jordan Quaglia, a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who runs the Cognitive and Affective Science Lab at ...
07.28.2021 Diseases of the Heart Welcome to Tricycle’s new podcast series, Life As It Is. Each month, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg will speak with Buddhist practitioners about their work, practice, and everyday life—and, perhaps most importantly, how they're navigating these uncertain ...
07.14.2021 The Hungry Ghosts Among Us We often look to buddhas and bodhisattvas as the heroic protagonists of the Buddhist cosmos. But even the most wretched creatures can teach us a thing or two about the dharma. Andy Rotman, a scholar of South Asian religions at ...
06.30.2021 How a Buddhist Mom and Activist Took on the National Rifle Association The day after the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Shannon Watts, a former communications executive and stay-at-home mom of five, founded Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Since then, the grassroots initiative has matured into a nationwide movement ...
06.09.2021 Tired of Pretending to Be Me Not too long ago I attended an online retreat with Joseph Goldstein, cofounder and guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. I've sat with Joseph on retreats before, but what really struck me this time were the ...
05.18.2021 Inside Tricycle's Summer 2021 Issue In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, editor-in-chief James Shaheen sits down to talk with four contributors to Tricycle’s Summer issue out this May. First up are psychotherapist Mindy Newman and translator and musician Kaia Fischer. Together over the past ...
05.12.2021 The Middle Way Through the Long Haul Many years before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Toni Bernhard was thinking and writing about the isolating experiences of illness—and what it really means to be “well” in our society. After an acute viral infection led to a chronic condition, Bernhard ...
04.14.2021 Grieving Mindfully We have end-of-life rituals for a reason—to help us accept loss and fully grieve. Of all the rituals disrupted by the pandemic, the loss of funerals and other communal spaces that allow us to support those dealing with the death ...
03.10.2021 Dekila Chungyalpa: Becoming a Buddhist Climate Scientist For the last 12 years, Dekila Chungyalpa has worked with religious and indigenous leaders, scientists, and policymakers to design community-based environmental and climate programs. But having grown up in the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim, surrounded by strong women who ...
03.02.2021 Inside Tricycle’s Spring 2021 Issue In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Editor and Publisher James Shaheen is joined by three contributors to take a closer look at our Spring 2021 issue. First, James speaks with Zen priest and psychologist Seth Zuiho Segall, whose feature article, ...
02.10.2021 Black and Buddhist: Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles, the editors of Black & Buddhist, reflect on what the dharma can teach us about race-based suffering, freedom, and resilience—and what being Black has taught them about Buddhism.
01.13.2021 Sam van Schaik: Buddhist Magic and Why We Shouldn’t Cast It Aside When we think about Buddhism, we don’t often think about monks and nuns conjuring spells or curses to break up lovers, exorcise demons, prevent unwanted pregnancies, or kill enemies. But for over two and a half millennia, magic and healing ...
12.22.2020 Barbara Bonner: Is Forgiveness Buddhist? In a year of intense suffering, forgiveness may be the last thing on our minds. Some of us may be harboring resentment for family members, government leaders, or maybe the grocery store cashier who didn’t look like they were smiling ...
11.24.2020 Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche: Patience to Make It Through In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen sits down with Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche to discuss turning inward to steady oneself for the world, using humor to combat hurt feelings, and how patience is not passivity. ...
10.28.2020 Jack Miles: Religion As We Know It What is religion? Is Buddhism a religion? How about democracy? And how religious (or not) do you have to be to ask? In the latest episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen speaks to Jack Miles, the ...
09.29.2020 Real Change: A Succession Star on the Power of Empathy Arian Moayed is perhaps best known for his role as Stewy in the HBO series Succession. So for fans of the show, it may seem strange that for almost two decades, he’s been working to build a more empathic world ...
09.23.2020 Real Change: Finding Our Refuge in Ourselves “Equanimity” might seem like just another Buddhist buzzword, but Daisy Hernández doesn’t think so. The author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed and the co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, ...
09.15.2020 Real Change: Economic Justice for All Buddhism’s four noble truths start with the truth—and the inevitability—of suffering. So what does that mean for an activist? For Michael Kink, suffering became the fuel to power action for justice. The executive director of the Strong Economy for All ...
09.08.2020 Real Change: Pandemic of Love Since the pandemic began earlier this year, mutual aid funds have become a major resource for people suffering from the burden of job loss and financial strain. One mutual aid fund, Pandemic of Love, has helped thousands of people access ...
09.02.2020 Real Change: Meditation and Action Some Buddhists would say that the proper response to the current suffering of the world is to turn inward—to use the tools of meditation to develop skillful states of mind. Others might say this isn't enough, that we should be ...
08.25.2020 Sebene Selassie: You Belong What does it mean to belong? Many of us come to Buddhist practice because we feel we don't. But Sebene Selassie, a meditation teacher in the Insight meditation tradition, uses Buddhist teachings to explain how we can be—wherever we are—truly ...
07.15.2020 Wisdom for My Grandson with Charles Johnson For many of us, the past several months have been a time to get reacquainted with one of the Buddhist truths that has always guided our lives: impermanence. But while this may provide a philosophical compass to help us weather ...
05.09.2020 Stephen Batchelor: The Art of Solitude As this episode goes live on May 9, 2020, many of us have been sheltering in place for the past few months, and some of us are experiencing the myriad effects of solitude on the human psyche. Stephen Batchelor’s new ...
04.14.2020 Joanna Macy: The Work of Our Time In recent weeks, reporters, activists, and others have drawn parallels between the global pandemic and the climate crisis. It seems early to say, but we can sense that the two problems are more related than we think, as they are ...
03.18.2020 Carina Stone: The Legacy of Michael Stone Many in the Buddhist world were shocked at the death of Insight Meditation and yoga teacher Michael Stone in 2017. He was only 42 years old, and few were aware that he had been struggling with bipolar disorder. It was ...
01.28.2020 Evan Thompson: Why I'm Not a Buddhist Buddhism is not a religion at all––at the same time, it’s the true essence of all religions. And yet it is also compatible with science, or even a “mind science” itself. Do these ideas sound familiar? They’re part of a ...
12.28.2019 Tara Brach: Radical Compassion Many of us struggle to silence our inner critic on a daily basis. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, that’s because we are living in a “trance of unworthiness,” and are addicted to self-judgment. Tara is the the founder of ...
12.12.2019 Haemin Sunim: Letting Go of the Perfect Self When we begin a Buddhist practice, we often set our sights on lofty spiritual goals. Yet the day-to-day problems we face can be stepping stones to deeper understanding. For Zen monk Haemin Sunim, helping regular people with low self-esteem, feelings ...
11.19.2019 Koshin Paley Ellison: Waking Up from Zombieland So often we succumb to our narratives about the people in our lives without taking a moment to examine what’s really going on, and this mindset leaves us feeling isolated. Koshin Paley Ellison calls this state of existence “zombieland,” and ...
10.21.2019 Donald Lopez & Jacqueline Stone: How to Read the Lotus Sutra The Lotus Sutra is one of the most important Buddhist texts, but for the uninitiated reader, it can make little to no sense. Our guests are two of the foremost scholars in Buddhist studies, Donald Lopez, Jr., Arthur E. Link ...
09.26.2019 Rhonda Magee: Learning to See Our Racial Biases Law professor and mindfulness instructor Rhonda Magee says the recent resurgence of overt racism shows that we failed to address its root cause—our own racial biases. Magee is a professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law, where ...
08.21.2019 Lawrence Shainberg: Staring at the Wall with Samuel Beckett & Norman Mailer Writer and longtime Zen student Lawrence Shainberg joins Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his new book, "Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher." They talk about Shainberg’s struggles ...
07.30.2019 Ronald Purser: McMindfulness Ronald Purser is a professor of management at San Francisco State University and a longtime Buddhist practitioner who popularized the term McMindfulness in a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post in 2013. In it, he argued that mindfulness practice ...
06.29.2019 Helen Tworkov: Dying Every Day At the age of 36, the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche sneaked out of his monastery in Bodhgaya, India, in the middle of the night to live as a beggar and traveling yogi. The story of how he ...
05.30.2019 Candy Gunther Brown: Is School Mindfulness Bringing Religion into the Classroom? In recent years, school mindfulness programs have sprung up across the country, setting off a debate about whether the nominally secular programs derived from religious practices violate laws about the separation of church and state. In her new book, Debating ...
04.29.2019 Pico Iyer: Inside Japan as an Outsider Acclaimed travel and spirituality writer Pico Iyer has written two new books about his life in Japan, Autumn Light (Penguin, April 2019), and the forthcoming A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations (Penguin, September 2019). Iyer views the books ...
02.15.2019 Duncan Ryuken Williams: When Buddhists Were a “National Security Threat” On February 19th, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order designating military zones along the West Coast and laying the groundwork for US authorities to remove citizens of Japanese descent from their homes and imprison them in camps. ...
01.24.2019 Elaine Pagels: Why Do We Still Have Religion? Acclaimed scholar of religion Elaine Pagels discusses the role of faith today, the practical consequences of religious ideas, and what led her to ask, "Why Religion?" with Tricycle's editor and publisher, James Shaheen. Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation ...
09.28.2018 Lawrence Levy: Beating Burnout by Just Being Feeling burnt out does not make you a failure. That’s the first thing Buddhist teacher and former tech executive Lawrence Levy would want you to know. Burnout, Levy says, is a healthy response when our human needs aren’t being met. ...
07.12.2018 Lama Tsultrim Allione: Transforming Negativity Through Fierce Feminine Wisdom Women have a lot to be angry about. A history of inequality and violence in the Buddhist world and beyond persists to this day. The question remains: what can we do with that anger? Lama Tsultrim Allione says that we ...
06.08.2018 Arno Michaelis & Pardeep Singh: How to Fight Hate (Without Your Fists) In recent years, ethno-nationalist movements have had an apparent resurgence. What can we do to counter the hateful ideologies that have led to so much harm? Arno Michaelis, an ex-neo-Nazi, and Pardeep Singh Kaleka, whose father was murdered by a ...
05.03.2018 Roshi Joan Halifax: Empathy's Double-Edge Altruism. Empathy. Integrity. Respect. Engagement. These five psychological states are keys to living a compassionate, courageous life, according to Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, and social activist Roshi Joan Halifax. However, each has the potential to become counter-productive: altruism can become pathological, ...
04.13.2018 Judson Brewer: The Mindful Way to Kick a Craving The second of the four noble truths teaches that craving leads to suffering. But that would be obvious to anyone struggling with addiction. Psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who is the director of research at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health ...
02.27.2018 Johan Elverskog: How Buddhist & Muslim Stereotypes Conceal the Real History In the 13th century, Muslim soldiers attacked the Buddhist monastery Nalanda in India. This event is held up as an example of how Muslim invaders were responsible for the eventual destruction of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent. But it is ...
01.17.2018 Mark Epstein: The Task Is Being You The Buddha had a prescription to end suffering—the eightfold path. But can the Western tradition of psychotherapy build upon these essential steps? Here, Buddhist psychotherapist and bestselling author Epstein talks with Tricycle contributing editor Amy Gross about how the two ...

Older episodes

Tricycle Talks

What's Tricycle Talks about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Tricycle Talks episodes:

What Reality TV Can Teach Us About Surviving Ourselves

Accepting Death to Live More Fully

'Music or Madness, It's Up to You'

Every Moment Is a Bardo

The Anxiety of Return

Inside Tricycle's Fall 2021 Issue

Diseases of the Heart

The Hungry Ghosts Among Us

How a Buddhist Mom and Activist Took on the National Rifle Association

Tired of Pretending to Be Me

Inside Tricycle's Summer 2021 Issue

The Middle Way Through the Long Haul

Grieving Mindfully

Dekila Chungyalpa: Becoming a Buddhist Climate Scientist

Inside Tricycle’s Spring 2021 Issue

Black and Buddhist: Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles

Sam van Schaik: Buddhist Magic and Why We Shouldn’t Cast It Aside

Barbara Bonner: Is Forgiveness Buddhist?

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche: Patience to Make It Through

Jack Miles: Religion As We Know It

Real Change: A Succession Star on the Power of Empathy

Real Change: Finding Our Refuge in Ourselves

Real Change: Economic Justice for All

Real Change: Pandemic of Love

Real Change: Meditation and Action

Sebene Selassie: You Belong

Wisdom for My Grandson with Charles Johnson

Stephen Batchelor: The Art of Solitude

Joanna Macy: The Work of Our Time

Carina Stone: The Legacy of Michael Stone

Evan Thompson: Why I'm Not a Buddhist

Tara Brach: Radical Compassion

Haemin Sunim: Letting Go of the Perfect Self

Koshin Paley Ellison: Waking Up from Zombieland

Donald Lopez & Jacqueline Stone: How to Read the Lotus Sutra

Rhonda Magee: Learning to See Our Racial Biases

Lawrence Shainberg: Staring at the Wall with Samuel Beckett & Norman Mailer

Ronald Purser: McMindfulness

Helen Tworkov: Dying Every Day

Candy Gunther Brown: Is School Mindfulness Bringing Religion into the Classroom?

Pico Iyer: Inside Japan as an Outsider

Duncan Ryuken Williams: When Buddhists Were a “National Security Threat”

Elaine Pagels: Why Do We Still Have Religion?

Lawrence Levy: Beating Burnout by Just Being

Lama Tsultrim Allione: Transforming Negativity Through Fierce Feminine Wisdom

Arno Michaelis & Pardeep Singh: How to Fight Hate (Without Your Fists)

Roshi Joan Halifax: Empathy's Double-Edge

Judson Brewer: The Mindful Way to Kick a Craving

Johan Elverskog: How Buddhist & Muslim Stereotypes Conceal the Real History

Mark Epstein: The Task Is Being You

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