Tricycle Talks

Unlike many contemporary American poets, Arthur Sze did not attend a traditional MFA program to learn to write poetry. Instead, he turned to translation to hone his craft. His latest collection, The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry, compiles fifty years of his translations, illustrating the vitality and versatility of the Chinese poetic tradition across nearly two millennia.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sze to discuss the ruptures and continuities between classical and contemporary Chinese poetry, the destruction and renewal inherent in the process of translation, and why Sze believes that we need translation now more than ever. Plus, he reads a few poems from his new collection.

Gaylon Ferguson is an acharya, or senior teacher, in the Shambhala International Buddhist community and a faculty member in Religious Studies at Naropa University. In his new book, Welcoming Beginner's Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature, he uses the classic Zen oxherding pictures as a way of illustrating the stages of the spiritual journey, exploring the paradox of how we can awaken to what we already are.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Ferguson to discuss how he as a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism came to write a book about Zen, why he believes dissatisfaction is actually a sign of awakened intelligence, what we can learn from welcoming and staying with our boredom, and the role of desire on the path to awakening.

Karma Lekshe Tsomo came to Buddhism because of a typo: years ago, her family name had been mistakenly changed from Zinn to Zenn. When her classmates started teasing her about being a Zen Buddhist, she took to the library to learn more about Buddhism and was instantly sold. After deciding to dedicate her life to Buddhist practice, she ordained as a nun and went on to found the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women and the Jamyang Foundation, which supports educational programs for Buddhist women and girls around the world.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Tsomo to discuss her unlikely path to Buddhism at a young age, her work advocating for women’s education internationally, how she integrates spiritual practice and political activism, and her hopes for the future of women’s ordination.

In March 2008, journalist Amy Yee was assigned to cover a press conference in Dharamsala following the Chinese government’s crackdown on protests throughout Tibet. After an unexpected personal encounter with the Dalai Lama at the conference, she set out to highlight the stories of Tibetans living in exile in Dharamsala and around the world. Her new book, Far from the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents, follows the stories of four Tibetans as they forge new lives in exile in India, the United States, Belgium, and Australia. 

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Yee to discuss how the Tibetan communities she encountered preserve their cultural heritage in exile, what happens when a religious tradition takes root in a new environment, and how she hopes the book will contribute to larger conversations around forced migration.

Haemin Sunim is a Korean Zen monk based in Seoul, where he founded the School of Broken Hearts and the Dharma Illumination Zen Center. In his new book, When Things Don't Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times, he offers a guide to transforming life’s unexpected challenges into opportunities for awakening.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Haemin to talk about the importance of learning to welcome unpleasant experiences, how giving up can actually open us to new possibilities, and how we can find happiness when we stop looking for it.

What does it mean to live an ethical life? And how can cultivating wisdom and virtue support us in navigating the crises of today’s world?

These questions are at the center of Zen priest and psychologist Seth Segall’s new book, The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism. Drawing from Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist ethical traditions, Segall outlines a vision of liberal pluralism grounded in human flourishing.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Segall to discuss what we can learn from comparing Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist understandings of virtue; how he understands the relationship between enlightenment and human flourishing; and how cultivating philosophical wisdom can impact our everyday lives.

Laura Burges is a lay-entrusted teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, and she has been leading retreats on recovery at the San Francisco Zen Center for over twenty years. In her new book, The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction, she brings together Buddhist wisdom and the teachings of recovery programs to lay out a sustainable path to sobriety and freedom.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burges to discuss her own story of overcoming addiction, the central role of surrender in both Zen and recovery, how atoning for past wrongs can free us to live more fully in the present, and why she believes humor is an essential component of Buddhist practice.

It can be so easy to feel like we’re not enough or that we’re somehow insufficient. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, this feeling of unworthiness is fundamentally a disease of separation, as it alienates us from ourselves and the people around us. For Brach, one way to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness is the practice of radical acceptance.

In the twentieth-anniversary edition of her classic book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, she uses a blend of psychology and Buddhist insights to lay out a path to freedom in the face of pervasive feelings of inadequacy and isolation.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Brach to discuss what she’s learning by revisiting the book now, why she believes we’re living in a collective spiritual crisis, and how we can learn to recognize our own basic goodness.

Sunita Puri is a writer, a palliative medicine physician, and an associate professor at the UMass Chan Medical School. In her memoir, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, she explores her journey of helping patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. In her article in Tricycle’s Winter 2023 issue, “A Gift,” she explores how she has learned to navigate love and loss through the lens of impermanence.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Puri to discuss the importance of unlearning our assumptions around death, how language can shape people’s experience of illness, her journey of learning to regard death with reverence instead of fear, and how working with dying patients influences how she lives her daily life.

After the Buddha’s enlightenment, his aunt and adoptive mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, asks him to ordain women and welcome them into his new monastic community. The Buddha declines to fulfill her request. But Mahapajapati Gotami doesn’t give up—accompanied by a large gathering of women, she sets out to ask him again.

In her new novel, The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women, scholar Vanessa R. Sasson offers an imaginative retelling of the women’s request for ordination, following the women as they travel through the forest together seeking full access to the Buddha’s teachings. Building on decades of research and drawing from the poems of the Therigatha, the novel explores how the women navigate the paradox of seeking ultimate liberation while still bound by social inequality.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sasson to discuss what we can learn from the first Buddhist women’s resilience, how contemporary women monastics understand this story, why she first started writing fiction, and the role of mythology and storytelling in the Buddhist world.