Tricycle Talks

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 later revealed that he had died from an opioid overdose. His death brought up many questions about the stigmas against mental illness, and the responsibility of teachers to reveal their personal challenges. Here, Michael’s wife Carina Stone sits down with Tricycle’s Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss Michael’s legacy. Last year, Carina finished working on "The World Comes to You: Notes on Practice, Love, and Social Action," a collection of Michael’s teachings. While editing the book, Carina grappled with difficult questions about Michael’s life, all while working through her own grief around his death.

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 constellation of claims that scholar Evan Thompson calls “Buddhist exceptionalism,” the idea that Buddhism stands apart from all other religions as uniquely rational. Evan is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia as well as a longtime fellow at the Mind and Life Institute, which examines the intersection of science and contemplative wisdom. However, in his new book—provocatively titled Why I’m Not a Buddhist—Evan argues that Buddhism and science are not uniquely compatible, despite what many have claimed, and challenges the popular modernist belief that science can validate Buddhism’s soteriological and ontological goals. Here, Evan talks with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss the problems with Buddhist modernism, his own spiritual and philosophical journey, and why he is, in fact, not a Buddhist.

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 the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C., a best-selling author, and a clinical psychologist who has been at the forefront of blending Buddhist meditation and therapeutic methods. She is perhaps best known for her teachings on RAIN, an acronym that stands for Recognize, Acceptance, Investigation, and Nurturing, and that describes a method for applying mindfulness to difficult emotions. In her new book, Radical Compassion, she focuses on using RAIN to cultivate compassion—beginning with compassion for ourselves.

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 of loss, or career failure is an integral part of his monastic duties, and a way to spread the dharma in his home country of South Korea, where Buddhism has been on the decline. Dubbed the “Twitter monk” after his account garnered more than 1 million followers, Haemin Sunim in 2015 founded the School of Broken Hearts in Seoul, where he offers both traditional Buddhist instruction and classes designed to help people with the painful parts of life—such as bullying, bereavement, anger management, and dating violence. His latest book, Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection, is an international best-seller. Here, Haemin Sunim sits down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his journey from US college professor to Korean household name, and how he teaches people to let go of their ideas about perfection.

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 says that the habits that keep us locked in our mental stories—and glued to our devices—are rooted in a deep-seated fear of awkwardness and discomfort. Koshin is a Zen chaplain and teacher and co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, a non-profit that offers training programs in clinical chaplaincy meditation and spiritual counseling. His recent book Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up, is a reflection on how the 16 Zen precepts can apply to life today and help us enter into compassionate relationships with ourselves and others. Here, Koshin sits down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss his journey from “lone wolf” to Zen chaplain and how being with people who are dying has taught him to live a more meaningful life.

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 Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, and Jacqueline Stone, who recently retired from her position as Professor of Japanese Religions at Princeton University. They have written a chapter-by-chapter guide to the Lotus Sutra called Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sutra (October 2019, Princeton University Press). The book is a highly readable commentary and introduction to the sutra that flips between ancient India, when the sutra was written, and medieval Japan, when it took on a new meaning for the Buddhist priest and reformationist Nichiren. Here, Stone and Lopez sit down with Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss the issues, such as religious meaning, reinvention, and adaptation, that this book brings to the surface.

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 she teaches about racial justice and uses mindfulness to help students surface their own prejudices. She has written about her work in a new book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness.

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 as a practitioner and an author and how he brings them together in his new memoir, which recounts his conversations with his literary heroes, Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, along with his teacher, Roshi Kyudo Nakagawa. You can read an excerpt from Four Men Shaking in our Fall 2019 issue.

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 has been commercialized, and reduced to a mere “self-help technique.” His new book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, offers an argument against the mindfulness movement, claiming that corporations have embraced the practice in order to advance a neoliberal agenda. Here, Purser strikes a more balanced tone and discusses the good and bad of the mindfulness movement, explains what he means by the catch-all term McMindfulness, and presents his view that mindfulness has an untapped potential to bring about real social change.

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 left behind his privileged lifestyle for a four-year wandering retreat is told in the new book, In Love With the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, which he co-wrote with his student and Tricycle’s founding editor, Helen Tworkov. Tworkov sits down with James Shaheen, Tricycle’s publisher and editor, to discuss how she helped Mingyur Rinpoche tell his story, the near-death experience that transformed his life and teachings, and how seeing the small deaths we experience each day can help us alleviate our fears of dying. They also discuss the origins of the magazine and how the Western Buddhist landscape has changed over time.