Jean-Philippe Cyr, the Canadian blogger and cookbook author known as the Buddhist Chef, has heard it all when it comes to the reasons people don’t want to follow a vegan diet. It’s expensive, it doesn’t lead to instant weight loss, it angers family members. Recently, someone complained that vegan recipes create too many dishes to wash. Cyr accepted this with a laugh, as he is wont to do, knowing full well that people will always find excuses. “But when you have the why, the how becomes very easy,” the classically trained chef says of his decision to become vegan after returning from his first meditation retreat. Extending compassion to all beings was the logical next step for him when he decided to become Buddhist. 

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In French we say the tree that doesn’t bend breaks.”

Still, he knows his path isn’t for everyone, and he supports a middle way for those who aren’t fully sold on the vegan lifestyle. “The tree that doesn’t bend breaks,” he says. If everyone simply ate a little less meat, so many animals would be saved, he says, and he’s in favor of getting there however we can. As a food blogger and cookbook author, he works toward that goal by developing recipes that, as he says, seduce meat eaters—familiar dishes like shepherd’s pie, lobster rolls, and flaky apple tart. After the 2019 release of his first book, The Buddhist Chef: 100 Simple, Feel-Good Vegan Recipes: A Cookbook, he doubled down on the hearty, comforting recipes with his just-released The Buddhist Chef’s Homestyle Cooking: Simple, Satisfying Vegan Recipes for Sharing.

Tricycle caught up with Cyr to learn more about his new book, how his Buddhist practice informed his decision to change the way he cooks and eats, and how he navigates nonvegan family members.

When did you first learn about Buddhism? Seven years ago, I attended a Vipassana meditation retreat in Montebello, [Quebec]. It’s a nice center, and I’ve been back there a lot of times now to cook for people that are on retreat. When you go there for a retreat, you don’t get to know people because it’s silent. But when you go back there and cook and work with people, you realize that people are wounded. You don’t go to the doctor if you’re not sick, you know?

What compelled you to go to the meditation retreat? I was suffering. I was selfish. I’m a pretty narcissistic person. I like to be recognized. I have to be honest. But you have to separate the public figure from the person, otherwise you’ll think you’re perfect. If they say you’re the best or the worst, they’re both wrong.

When did you become vegan? I was on the verge of becoming vegan [when I attended the meditation retreat]. I had read a couple of books about veganism and the health implications of a plant-based diet, but I hadn’t made the connection between the animal and the plate yet. So I attended this retreat, and I was driving back with a woman, and we stopped at a fast-food chain. She said she was having the vegetarian burger, and I said, “I’m gonna have the regular burger.” She was shocked. She was like, “Aren’t you vegan? We just spent ten days meditating on compassion!” Her reaction made me think, maybe I should be. At this point, I was still working as a cook, because I’m a classically trained chef, and the irony is that I specialized in cooking meat. A few weeks later, I was asked to cook lamb for 400 people at a banquet that was taking place at a funeral home, and that’s when it clicked. When I saw all the meat for 400 people, and some people didn’t even touch their plates, I thought, those animals are dead for nothing. They gave their lives for nothing. At that point, I made the connection and became vegan, and I’ve been vegan ever since. 

What does your practice look like today? I practice Vipassana meditation in the morning. But my practice is more about following the principles. That’s the hardest thing, because Buddhism is not about becoming a better person for yourself. It’s about becoming a better person for everybody else. So I just try to create no harm. My wife is a doctor, and the first principle is always do no harm. That’s basic. If everybody would follow this principle, the world would be better. 

Do you follow a particular teacher? I follow the teachings of [Satya Narayan] Goenka, the founder of Vipassana here in the West. He passed away a few years ago, but his teachings are still very available for everybody. What I like about the teaching of Goenka is that it’s free. Anyone can go on Goenka retreats anywhere around the world. 

Let’s talk about your work as a blogger and cookbook author. When did you become “the Buddhist Chef”? I became vegan because of Buddhism. For the animals. Because Buddhism and veganism share a common value, which is compassion. It was after that first meditation retreat. So I called my blog The Buddhist Chef. And I’d do it again, even though I get a lot of hate. Just this morning someone in the US said, “I would prefer it if you were a Christian chef.” Some people say, “I’d love to buy your cookbook, but my family won’t let me because it’s Buddhist.” It’s strange. And you know, I have a sense of humor. Sometimes I publish a joke and people say, “That’s not very Buddhist!”

“When you have the why, the how becomes very easy.”

I wanted to ask you about your Instagram account, where you share memes and jokes. Why do you do it? I try to show people a vegan is not always a party pooper. It’s not always someone who is going to be radicalized and going to shame someone. You can have a sense of humor and be a normal person. You can be vegan and Buddhist and not take yourself too seriously.

People also think that being vegan is a restrictive lifestyle. How would you respond to that? It’s restrictive, but when you have the why, the how becomes very easy. When you shift your mindset from meat to animal, it’s easy. I don’t struggle. But people say things like, “I tried being vegan for a week and I didn’t lose weight.” Or, “My family got angry,” or, “I hate tofu.” “It’s complicated,” “It’s expensive.” The last one I heard is, “I don’t have time to wash so many dishes.” If you realize that an animal had to die for you to have a burger, you wouldn’t mind washing a few dishes. If you’re not eating vegan, it’s because you just don’t want to.

What would you say to someone who is interested in moderation? As in, not being fully vegan but being a little vegan? Do you think that’s a good thing, or do you think that’s stopping them from fully realizing compassion? I would always tell people, “Start where you are.” If you’re a hunter and you only eat meat, don’t try to quit meat altogether. Start with Meatless Monday, or one to two days a week. But, above all, start with recipes that are familiar. If you want your family to eat less meat, it has to be familiar and fun. It’s the same spaghetti sauce you like, but tonight, instead of meat, I swapped in tofu. Or if you like General Tso’s chicken, try General Tso’s tofu. One vegan meal a week is quite easy. Not everybody is going to be vegan. I’m not naive. But if everybody would cut their meat consumption just by half, it would be amazing.

Can you share a few ingredients that you use heavily in your vegan cooking that you didn’t use before? I use tofu a lot, a lot, a lot. It’s versatile, it’s rich in protein, nutrition, calcium, and it doesn’t contain any cholesterol. It’s cheap—half the price of ground beef. And it tastes like whatever you cook it in or season it with. I remember, when I was a kid, my mom would do tofu, and she would just marinate it in soy sauce. That was the recipe. But you can fry it in cornstarch, and change the texture. You can also marinate it or add spices and bake it in the oven. It’s pretty easy to cook.

Do you even grind it up and use it in place of ground meat? I use tempeh and seitan for that, but sometimes tofu too. I have tofu in my spaghetti sauce. 

I notice a lot of your recipes call for cashew cream. Can you tell me about that? I buy the cashews and then I blend them. Every cream or vegetable soup, I put a cup of cashews in and blend it, and it gives this sweet and creamy taste, because cashews are a little bit sweet. People don’t realize it, but cream is sweet. So if you want to replace cream, you need to replace it with something sweet. I also love soy milk because it’s rich in protein, but I always add a couple of cashews here and there. It’s a secret ingredient. [See below for a Tuscan Soup recipe featuring cashew cream.]

My family loved your healthy oatmeal cookies, which you say have become one of your signature recipes. What’s another go-to recipe of yours that you always tell people to try? The trouble is you’re always trying to seduce meat eaters. Buffalo cauliflower wings, for example, are a big hit. You do always get the same feedback, though, like, “Why do vegans always try to imitate meat?” But I always say I didn’t stop eating meat because I didn’t like meat. I stopped eating meat because I love animals.

And you do use plant-based meat, like Impossible beef? I prefer to use seitan, which is made with real ingredients, but once in a while, in addition to lentils, for example, I do. If I do a shepherd’s pie, I put in celery, carrots, onion, mushrooms, lentils, and a little bit of Impossible burger. 

How do you feel about cultivated meat, the meat they’re developing based on animal cells? I’m all for it, because if it means that it’s gonna save millions of animals, of course I’m for it. There are always those debates: Yesterday a girl wrote to me and said, “I thought you were vegan, but you use Impossible meat, which has been tested on animals.” Yeah, but how many animals are you going to save with those products? Some people want to be the only vegan. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In French we say the tree that doesn’t bend breaks.

You recently came out with your second cookbook, The Buddhist Chef’s Homestyle Cooking. Can you describe the vision for this cookbook and how it differs from the first? All of my cookbooks are inspired by my childhood favorites. In this cookbook, I have vegan lobster rolls, for example, which were inspired by camping trips to Gaspésie, [in eastern Quebec]. My bolognese sauce is inspired by my mom’s spaghetti sauce. We have a recipe in my family for pouding chômeur, or poor man’s pudding, which is a classic here. It’s a cake baked in a caramel sauce made of maple syrup and brown sugar. So it’s full of very hearty recipes. It’s not scary, it’s not salads and bowls. It’s desserts, vegan fried chicken, vegan fish and chips. It’s inspired by the time when people had a completely different vision of food. When people would just show up at your house. They don’t do it anymore—unfortunately or fortunately! But there were no cell phones, so you always had to be ready. My mom always had food, and people would just show up and stay for dinner. It’s another philosophy. Nowadays, it’s like, let’s order food. Let’s call in. Let’s meet somewhere.  

How do you navigate serving your family members who maybe aren’t following a vegan diet? Do they mind eating vegan? They like it. They’re not against it. But they’re always surprised because they expect nothing! They’re like, “Wow! That’s vegan. It’s amazing that it tastes good!” 

I notice you use a lot of maple in your recipes. I use maple, because when I traveled in Thailand and Cambodia, they always balanced the acidity with sugar. They don’t use maple syrup, of course, but this is where I learned to better balance the acidity, and I use it everywhere. Some people in France get mad at me because it’s like $20 an ounce, but we’re lucky here [in Canada]. I have a hard time using refined sugar. I prefer to use maple syrup. Every time I use refined sugar, I feel as if I just smoked a cigarette.

It seems like a big focus of yours is teaching people how to eat vegan. Do you ever teach people about Buddhism? I try to, but people are not very interested. They follow me for the food, and every time I try to talk about something else, they say, “Yeah, but we don’t follow you for that.” In the social media era, it’s very compartmentalized. But more and more people are getting interested, and they reach out and ask advice on where to start, or if they should attend a retreat. Some people come back from retreat very angry with me (laughs). But I like it because when you can have an influence on people, especially with something that’s going to change their life, it’s very rewarding, of course.

Buddhism has changed the way you eat and cook, but has it also impacted how you behave in the kitchen? I try to be more present. I try not to listen to podcasts. More and more, I try to live in silence. It’s tempting to walk the dog with your earbuds and your music, or to cook and have on the TV or a YouTube video, but I try not to do it. The first five minutes are the worst, but at some point, you get in the flow state, and you enjoy cooking and the silence.

And do you miss restaurant cooking? I miss the camaraderie. When you cook, it’s a very hard job, so usually you make a lot of jokes and talk with each other. When I cook at the meditation retreats, there are always some people, and we talk while we cook. You know, when you have guests over for dinner, they’re always in the kitchen. There’s a reason for that. Because when you prepare food, you talk, you share stories, and you share your state of mind.

◆

Vegan Tuscan Soup Recipe 

Serves 6 | Prep Time: 35 min | Cook Time: 40 min

Creamy, luxurious soups don’t always need to be pureed. This recipe still packs the same decadent punch, while also including nice hearty chunks of vegetables. The creamy texture from the cashew cream and the aroma from the fresh herbs make this soup an incredibly comforting dish.

Ingredients

Cashew Cream:

1 cup (140 g) cashews

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

Tuscan Soup:

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 vegan sausages

4 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, minced

1 tablespoon dried basil

1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon dried thyme

3 yellow-fleshed potatoes (about 15 oz/425 g), diced

6 cups (1.5 L) vegetable broth

4 cups (50 g) chopped kale 

croutons to garnish

Directions

For the Cashew Cream:

• Soak the cashews in boiling water for 15 minutes. Drain.
• Add the soaked cashews, 1 cup (250 mL) water, and the yeast to a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.

For the Tuscan Soup:

• In a large pot over medium heat, heat the oil, then add the sausages and break them up using a spatula. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.
• Add the garlic and onions, lower the heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently, for 4 minutes. Stir in the basil, oregano, thyme, and salt, then the potatoes and broth. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
• Stir in the cashew cream and kale, and cook for 10 minutes.
• Divide the soup among six bowls and garnish with croutons. Leftover soup can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Reheat in a saucepan over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until hot.

The post The Buddhist Chef Wants You to Start Where You Are appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Grand and utterly pristine, the opening sculpture in Asia Society’s current exhibit, “Buddha, Sage of the Shakya Clan: Masterworks from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection,” sets the tone for a stunning collection of Buddha images illuminated by a manuscript that depicts the “eight great events” in the Buddha’s life. The 2nd-century head of Shakyamuni Buddha, the oldest artwork in the exhibit, comes from Gandhara, an area that covers present-day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, during a period when the first human images of the Buddha were appearing. With its strong Hellenistic influence, a hallmark of Gandharan art, the Buddha head also displays many of the lakshana, or marks of perfection, belonging to the Buddha, including a perfectly symmetrical face, snail-shell curls, and the ushnisha, or cranial protuberance, atop his head. Unique for works of art this old, the head is perfectly intact—not even the earlobes or tip of the nose have been repaired. 

Impressively, the rest of the fifteen objects in the exhibit—thirteen of which come from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller collection—are similarly pristine. Curated by Laura Weinstein, the John H. Foster Associate Curator of Pre-Modern Art at Asia Society, and on view through August 27, the thoughtfully paced show allows viewers to spend ample time with and between each piece of art. As magnificent as each one is, not one of them overwhelms or distracts from the other. Together, they reveal how representations of the Buddha, as well as the way Buddhists practice, change over time and across cultures. 

An 11th-century sculpture is significant not just because a Tamil inscription at the base reveals that it was created by a metalworkers’ guild at the Buddhist site of Nagapattinam, an important place of worship in present-day Tamil Nadu. Two holes in the base also point to the rich but underappreciated processional tradition in South Indian Buddhism, wherein worshippers would carry the Buddha image around for everyone to see. The ushnisha on this sculpture is in the form of a flame, characteristic of Buddhas found throughout Southeast Asia, which were influenced by this work, or others very similar to it.

A beautiful 14th-15th-century gilded bronze sculpture from Myanmar that depicts the Buddha flanked by two disciples represents Burmese style. Here, the ushnisha takes the shape of a jewel, another common representation in Southeast Asia. Interestingly, the two attendants face the Buddha rather than the viewer, in a highly unusual orientation. The base of the statue is an anthropomorphized representation of the earth in female form, wringing water from her hair at the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment.  

Another small, elegant bronze figure—this one from the 9th century—is typical of Thailand. Given its green patina, the sculpture was likely found buried underground. It has a unique combination of posture and mudra, where his hands are in the dharmachakra mudra—the teaching gesture—but are separate, and the Buddha is standing, not sitting. 

Around the corner, a spectacular, repair-free, Gupta-era sculpture from the late 6th century in Sarnath, where the Buddha delivered his first teaching, demonstrates more lakshana, including heavy-lidded eyes, webbed fingers and toes, and upturned fingertips and toes. With pronounced drapery close to his body, the sculpture represents a more androgynous Buddha than the masculine one in earlier depictions.

On the wall nearby, an 18th-century Korean painting that was originally commissioned for a royal setting shows the Buddha, accompanied by a number of bodhisattvas and arhats, delivering the Lotus Sutra while faint rays of light emanate from his head. 

Like this intricate painting and many of smaller statues, a remarkably intact palm leaf manuscript toward the opening of the show invites viewers in for a close look at the so-called eight great events in the Buddha’s life, including scenes from the birth of the Buddha at Lumbini, the Buddha’s awakening at Bodhgaya, his first teachings at Sarnath, his display of miracles at Shravasti, his descent from heaven where he taught the gods and his mother, his taming of the mad elephant, his accepting honey from a monkey, and his death, or parinirvana, at Kushinagar. The manuscript was created at Nalanda, the great monastic center and university in northeast India, most likely in the 10th century, but the text tells us that it made its way to Nepal and then Tibet, where it landed in the hands of monastics, including Buton Rinchen Drub, who compiled the first Tibetan Kangyur. (Read more about the manuscript’s history here.) The eight great events depicted here are blown up on panels on the wall, providing narrative context for the artwork.

While the provenance of each piece is carefully detailed, viewers may be left wondering where the artwork was before the Rockefellers collected them—origin being an issue all museums and art institutions are grappling with today. Similarly, objects of worship like these, some of which are encased in glass, may feel sterile to some viewers. But the setting for each piece is carefully controlled, for humanity and light, to maintain its condition. As with all art exhibits, viewers’s responses will vary. 

What is unquestionable is the exceptional quality of each object in the exhibit, the evident care that went into selecting them, and the clear appreciation for them—an appreciation all viewers will experience themselves.

The post Inside Asia Society’s ‘Buddha, Sage of the Shakya Clan’ Exhibit appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

All I could see was darkness —the kind that’s completely devoid of any light—and five cloud-like figures forming a circle around me. The figures weren’t shaped like human bodies, but narrow tops progressing down to more rounded middles imparted the impression they were some sort of beings. A dimly pulsing light jutted out from where I, a cloud-like being, too, appeared to be floating, arms outstretched. The light dissolved into space. I brought my arms together. Breathing in, I opened them once more. The light reappeared and floated back into the void.

This space-like environment was virtual reality, and the smoky figures were other participants, each one of them behind their own headset. Someone was in London, another in Rye, New York, and none of us knew anything about the other. We breathed in unison as we sent our lights in and out, contemplating our own heart energies and our own dissolution.

The virtual environment was designed by aNUma, a company that creates therapeutic group experiences in virtual reality (VR). I was immersed in a demonstration of aNUma’s Clear Light program, which was specifically designed to help participants contemplate and find peace with their own mortality. Unlike most VR experiences, aNUma’s aren’t an onslaught of colors and visual stimuli representing something that is believably real. In fact, they’re just the opposite.

“It’s much more minimalistic, suggestive, and spacious,” says Lama Karma, a meditation teacher who designs contemplative practices for aNUma. “We’re already living in a representational virtual bubble. What we’re seeing—other people, objects, and so forth—is seen through the filter of our habitual concepts, rather than in the immediacy of what they are. So representing reality within that reality is like a double delusion.” The aNUma environment isn’t built to represent things. It’s built to dissolve representation and help people connect with what lies beyond.

“Until we can grieve properly and address our own mortality, we can’t actually address what’s going on globally.”

Lama Karma, the spiritual director of Milarepa Retreat Center in Happy Valley, Tennessee, started working with aNUma in 2021 at the invitation of cofounder David Glowacki, who created aNUma’s space-like virtual environment and the smoky energy bodies in it. Glowacki, an artist and computational molecular physicist, had recently suffered an almost-fatal fall while hiking and was inspired by a vision of his failing body. Lying on the ground, he saw himself as a mass of light that slowly began to dim as his physical body approached death. The light wasn’t disappearing, but seeping into the world around him—carrying on. He designed a VR environment based on this near-death experience, and asked Lama Karma to create a contemplative practice for it.

With the rapid expansion in the VR space, Lama Karma was motivated by the mission of using this technology for good, for deepening embodiment, and for overcoming dualism, the exact counter to so many VR experiences. Just like all representation—written, visual, verbal—virtual reality could be a skillful means, Lama Karma thought. So, given that it’s already taking off, how do we make it beneficial rather than destructive, he asked. How do we use it to uproot clinging? After designing an experience called Ripple for aNUma, which is currently being tested for a study in Valencia, Spain, and at Northwestern University, Lama Karma developed the Clear Light program

The Clear Light pro–gram is meant for individuals facing terminal illness, their families, and their loved ones. Lama Karma has led sessions with patients at St. Joseph Home Health–Greater Sonoma County and is working with doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Pancreatic Cancer Center and the University of California, San Francisco Pancreas Center with the aim of offering the Clear Light program there too. The goal is to relieve suffering on the part of the patients and their loved ones. Right now, anyone can join the Clear Light program for free as part of a trial with Imperial College in London, and aNUma is also hosting demos for potential investors and collaborators.

Aside from the void-like atmosphere and its focus on end-of-life care, the Clear Light program differs from the more common visually stimulating VR meditative experiences by following the three noble principles of a traditional dharma practice (dampa sum). That means it starts with the motivation of bodhicitta, or the compassion-driven commitment to follow the path to awakening and be a bodhisattva. Next comes a practice that helps familiarize the practitioner with the nature of mind, or emptiness. Finally, the practice concludes with a dedication. Most participants aren’t actually Buddhist, so they might not recognize this traditional framework, but Lama Karma designed it with this in mind.

What that looks like on the ground or, rather, in real and virtual space, is a series of six sessions: an introductory call, four sessions in VR, and a concluding video call. At the start of the VR sessions, participants set an intention. They then move through a guided series of gestures and breathwork. Karma designed the heart energy sequence—wherein participants open and close their arms as light floats out and back from the body—with inspiration from a physical movement Kalu Rinpoche developed to go along with tonglen meditation, the Tibetan practice of sending and receiving. It’s a fitting foundation for an experience that, by design, helps participants feel fluid and connected to one another. The final session concludes with an offering. A central light appears in the middle of the darkness, and one at a time, participants enter it and say out loud a burden they wish to let go of. Then, participants enter the light again and invoke a benefit they’d like to receive. At the very end, the guide pairs each participant with the one with the terminal illness, and they hold each other’s hearts. The loved one names something about the dying person that they wish to steward, and the dying person names a gift they want to leave.

Though aspects of the experience could be beneficial for people to practice individually, and solo practice may become a feature one day, the Clear Light program is currently meant to be done collectively and with a guide. Lama Karma, who leads the sessions himself and is training other guides, slightly tailors sessions to respect the terminally ill patient’s needs, desires, and stage of grief. And even though participants are represented by faceless energy bodies, the sense of connection is palpable—something that surprised me when I tried the demo. Undistracted by superficial stimuli, I was able to let go of habitual judgments and open up to the individuals around me.

Lama Karma doesn’t think VR practices like this one can replace meditation without the headset, but he sees them as a good complement for experienced practitioners, or a glimpse through a window for new ones, with the potential to significantly deepen someone’s practice in a short period of time. “What this offers is a liminal experience that can initiate a seed for a new perspective,” Lama Karma told me when we spoke after my first aNUma session. Especially potent for patients with terminal illnesses who must inevitably focus so much on their physical body, the experience can help participants transcend their physical limits and connect with themselves and their loved ones as emotional and spiritual bodies too.

This boundary-opening can also benefit people who are lucky enough not to be facing or grieving over terminal illnesses, Lama Karma added. “Until we can grieve properly and address our own mortality, we can’t actually address what’s going on globally. It’s such an important starting point.”

Given the rise of AI and VR, and social media before it, our notion of truth is even more relative now, Lama Karma continues. “We’re on this precipice. For the first time, we have the capacity to represent reality so thoroughly that the crisis of meaning that we already have is going to be exacerbated exponentially.” And that’s dangerous. “‘What is real?’ isn’t just a speculative question anymore. It’s actually potentially destructive.” A paradoxical proposition for VR as most people think about it, aNUma’s Clear Light program can help people find what is real, beyond representation. “Nonconceptional wisdom is the core of everything we’re doing.” 

♦

The post Facing a Virtual Reality appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Imagine a social media platform that had nothing to do with status or performance. One that you didn’t mindlessly check more than you check in with yourself, and one that didn’t leave you self-critical or angry at the world every time you signed off. A new app called Landed, currently in beta-testing, aims to achieve just that. 

Landed connects users one-on-one via a specific and limited course of action: sending audio messages back and forth. The first message is always a response to the prompt, “Name three things you were grateful for in the last week.” Users are also given the option to share a challenging experience. They log in on Sunday and have until Monday at 8 p.m. in their local time zone to submit their message. On Tuesday, they’ll receive an audio message from their randomly assigned match for the week. After that, the matched pair can act like digital penpals, sending voice messages back and forth for the rest of the week, if they choose. On Sunday, all records of the conversation disappear. 

“It’s a little bit Buddhist in the way that you’re not holding on to this person for any type of future relationship. Nor do you have a past with this person,” says Sagar Bhatt, the app’s creator. Bhatt likens the exchange to a conversation between two people on a plane—a temporary relationship that usually ends upon arrival. Many studies have concluded that talking to strangers can be good for one’s well-being; Landed taps into that but takes things one step further by removing as many distractions as possible.

Without any visuals such as buttons or the option to follow someone, the app is intended to foster attention and personal connection. Bhatt didn’t necessarily set out to launch a mindfulness app, but in its own way, Landed kind of is one. Landed is also, importantly, an app for practicing gratitude. 

“A true gratitude practice, when done skillfully, brings you closer to the truth, rather than further away from it, because we tend to have a negativity bias,” Bhatt explains. “Our view of our own well-being often dwells on envy, resentment, everything we don’t have, and everything that’s going wrong. We often overlook the very basic things that are nourishing us.”

Gratitude is also an effective way to connect.

“If left to our own devices, we don’t always know how to talk to each other,” Bhatt says. The hope is that Landed’s simple instructions to focus on gratitude, combined with the absence of other features, will cut through any pretense and give users a more direct path of contact with one another.

As Bhatt puts it, “You’re not getting someone’s opinion, you’re not getting someone’s take on the news, you’re not getting someone’s performance.” 

Bhatt, who isn’t a developer but a comedian by trade, happens to know something about performance. But when he started opening up to audiences on stage and exploring some of his own anxiety and self-defeating impulses, as he says, he became increasingly interested in moving away from performing and closer to deepening his internal exploration. A mindfulness practitioner for ten years at that point, he decided to do a teacher training program with the Interdependence Project in New York City. In January 2021, he launched a podcast called The Anxiety Lab about how mindfulness and Buddhist wisdom can help relieve anxiety, and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he started cooking up the idea for Landed. It’s his “latest exploration of ideas,” as he puts it.

A fan of audio messages as a medium, Bhatt prefers voice notes to text messages and is known to send the former back and forth with friends. “I always feel like there’s so much more of me that the person is receiving than if I’m just sending a text. It’s the pauses, the awkwardness, the subtleties, the stumbling around—that’s when you’re really contacting someone’s humaneness.”

When he conceived of an app that would send voice messages back and forth between individuals, he tried out his idea by sending anonymous messages from one friend to another. “The response was electric,” he recalls. Next, he thought about starting with a gratitude prompt, and he’s been Beta-testing his app ever since. 

I tried out Landed last week, and as someone who admittedly resists conversations with strangers, I wasn’t sure how I’d respond. On Sunday, when I answered the prompt, I was grateful, as it were, to be held accountable for a gratitude practice I’ve always aspired to maintain. When I listened to my match’s audio message on Tuesday, I was surprised to find so much value in hearing someone else’s list. It was an unexpected level I hadn’t really considered ahead of time, but it was an immediate mood booster and made me feel grateful all over again. When my match followed up with another message, I didn’t respond right away. I didn’t want to. But over the course of the day I felt more and more intrigued and gave it a go. I may not continue to converse with matches, but I’m already looking forward to sharing and receiving messages of gratitude next week. The continued conversation is a bonus option, and maybe I’ll feel more talkative next week. But the initial recitation and receival of gratitude is enough; it’s quite powerful on its own. 

It was liberating and even a little disorienting to try a social or messaging app that doesn’t measure anything or incentivize the construction of a self-image. “The Buddhist teaching that clinging to the self causes suffering is so apparent in most social media dynamics, where we get to present a false self to another person, then believe our false self,” Bhatt says. That Landed manages to avoid that reification of the self while simultaneously fostering personal connection is a feat. It’s one for which users, like my match for the week, who made a point of saying as much, will be grateful.

The post Landed, a New Social Media App Based on Gratitude, Fosters Personal Connection appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

At first glance, a collection of subdued, black and white photos of and by Allen Ginsberg might not make immediate sense next to colorful, pop-culture-packed collages from Tibetan-born British artist Gonkar Gyatso. Even viewers who are aware of the two artists’ Buddhist backgrounds may need a moment for the juxtaposition to fall into place. Luckily, the art on display from the Ginsberg estate and Gonkar at Beats and Buddhas, an exhibit at the Dash Gallery in Kingston, New York, invites viewers to spend time contemplating and connecting the dots. Political, spiritual, and attuned to the details of everyday life, the artists—and their work—complement each other perfectly, in fact, and it becomes only more fun to appreciate them in tandem the longer one explores the three-room show, up until August 27. 

Beat generation activist, writer, and poet Ginsberg, who became a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism later in life, was prolific at documenting his generation, capturing photos of daily interactions and specifically his friends. Gonkar, who was born in Lhasa, Tibet, in 1961 and currently lives in China and the UK, is known for combining Buddhist iconography with pop-culture references in the form of stickers or cutouts from magazines and newspapers. His work appeared at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial (2009-2010), and can also be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, and the Chinese National Art Gallery in Beijing. 

Beats and Buddhas opens with a rare collection of Ginsberg’s doodles, which sets the mood for the playful—but also serious—scenes that follow, whether it’s well-known photos of Jack Kerouac and Patti Smith, or a Buddha head composed of tiny stickers and provocative words. Though only scribbles and fine lines, the doodles are deeply expressive, also a harbinger of the show that is—quite literally—around the corner.

In his black and white photos that line the walls of the next two rooms, Ginsberg draws viewers into his world with intimate scenes that are often mundane (even if they feature his famous friends) but also often humorous. In one photo, Ginsberg had writer William S. Burroughs pose next to a sphinx at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City because he thought the two looked alike. 

In another, writer Jack Kerouac looks into a storefront or barroom doorway across from Tompkins Square Park in what is at first an everyday scene without much animation, but then becomes a scene of fascination as it implores the viewer to consider the object of Kerouac’s gaze. 

Other photos from the collection include Ginsberg on his apartment roof in New York’s East Village, Burroughs and Kerouac on a couch in Ginsberg’s apartment, and a highly focused Harry Smith pouring milk into a glass jar—a tongue-and-cheek depiction of the “anthropologist, entho-musicologist, bibliophile, innovative animator & film-maker, painter, designer, metaphysician & hermetic alchemist,” as Ginsberg writes in the photo’s caption. Above all, the reverence Ginsberg has for his friends and his community come through, the relationships seeming to trump whatever malaise or frustration lies in the cultural subtext.

Although Gonkar’s work feels less intimate, it is no less powerful. The images are arresting and mesmerizing and arouse a sense of disease and serenity at the same time. Like with Ginsberg’s photos, humor and irony are also immediately evident in Gonkar’s work, whether it’s the geometric designs made from Buddha stickers—some upside down—or collages posing symbols of consumerism, like bubble tea and a jet, next to cartoon characters and political images.

Darker undertones emerge upon close inspection, however. In one untitled geometric pattern, meditating monks have their faces scratched out. In another collage, a man in a coat and tie sticks his head in the sand. One of the centerpieces of Gonkar’s work in this exhibit is a sculpture of a meditating monk, in lotus position. The sculpture has no head, however, and is positioned in the middle of a wall so that viewers see the apparently floating meditator from behind, with his missing head appearing to be stuck in the wall. Is he also burying his head in the sand? Or has he been released from samsara? A frame of colorful stickers around the floating sculpture drives home the sense of irony. 

The other central piece is a Buddha head—a classically serene image—almost brutally packed with a storm of endearing pop-culture stickers alongside words with violent associations: “bomb strike,” “London car bomb,” and “Saddam’s execution.” 

Gonkar’s use of words to bring further dimension to his visual art reflects that of Ginsberg’s handwritten captions, which accompany most of his photos. Hard to read but full of personal context for the images at hand, Ginsberg’s captions—like Gonkar’s collaged words—aren’t ancillary, but rather urge viewers to look at the artwork with another part of their brain, focusing via a different lens. Wordsmiths and visual artists, beats and Buddhas. The artists buoy their unassuming cynical tenor, apparent only upon close inspection, with friendship, faith, and humor.

The post ‘Beats and Buddhas’: A New Exhibit Features Art from Allen Ginsberg and Gonkar Gyatso appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The American meditation teachers Tara Brach and Konda Mason follow a vegan diet because of their concern for animals, health, and the environment. But the underlying problem linking these concerns is what Mason calls the myth of separation—that is, the distance we’ve placed and the false hierarchies we’ve created between ourselves and the planet, other species, and communities within our own species. If we focus instead on our interconnectedness, however, “it becomes harder to create harm,” Mason says. Brach and Mason spoke with Tricycle about why they feel plant-based eating is so crucial to the spiritual path.

What does “ethical eating” mean to you?

Tara Brach (TB): Ethical eating is eating that causes as little harm as possible to other beings, to the earth, and to our own bodies.

Konda Mason (KM): Involved in that is also education. Our culture hasn’t necessarily educated itself in respect to food and the impact our eating has on the earth. So I think it begins with us in the home, with bringing about a conscious awareness of that impact.

What personal experience impacted the way you see and respond to the suffering of nonhuman animals?

KM: When I was growing up, my grandparents and parents had a small farm with animals that we raised. I loved being on the farm with animals, and I had a very hard time because I saw the link immediately that the meat on my plate was this animal I had been in touch with. It created a groove in my heart, and once I left my parents’ house I became a vegan as soon as I could.

TB: I did not put the dots together until I was in college and started doing yoga and meditation and getting more attuned. I joined an ashram when I was 21 years old and became a vegetarian, but it was over the years that my visceral sensitivity to the suffering of animals grew. I remember as a young mom teaching at a meditation retreat near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Every day during our morning meditation we would hear mother cows lowing from nearby fields, grieving for calves that had just been taken from them. Like all mammals, they have a deep mother-child attachment. I would listen to these heart-wrenching calls and imagine how excruciating it was for these mother cows to have their babies taken away. It opened me in a very direct way, and I stopped eating dairy after that. I went fully vegan eight years ago, but I was mostly vegan for decades before that.

How do we get closer to the suffering when we’re so far removed from the process?

KM: It’s awareness. It’s hearing about and being exposed to other ways of eating. There are many reasons that people become vegan—not just the rejection of animal cruelty, which is how I got there. The African American community is almost three times more likely to be vegan and vegetarian than other Americans, and many do so for health reasons. Or maybe climate change and the meat industry’s huge impact on the environment is the door you walk through.

This conversation is intersectional. As for animal suffering, we have been anesthetized by violence in this country, which was actually built on violence; violence is part of what we drink, watch, and eat every day. We have numbed ourselves to the violence that is inflicted on animals. But there are many beautiful organizations that are doing the good work to bring awareness, and we just have to keep educating.

TB: The diversity of life forms brings beauty and health to our living earth. Yet the more we humans perceive difference, the more our conditioning to devalue others kicks in. This shuts down our compassion because we don’t register the realness of others’ suffering. Waking up our caring involves deepening our attention to the reality of others’ subjective experiences. For example, in teaching, I might share what it must be like for, say, a pig to be imprisoned in a metal gestation crate. It can’t turn around; it has open wounds; it’s lying in its own excrement—all this after being forcibly impregnated and having its babies taken away. They’re supposed to be stunned unconscious before they’re killed, but many of them are still alive when their throats are slit and they’re submerged in boiling water. If we imagine our own beloved dog being treated like this, being herded to slaughter, how would we feel? Just try looking in the eyes of another creature and saying “We are friends.” You realize this being’s sentience and love for life and feel a natural connection. For me, this brings joy because I can never be alone if I know that I belong with other living beings.

“We have numbed ourselves to the violence that is inflicted on animals.”

KM: This speaks to what I think of as our primordial issue: this myth of separation, and in that separation, the hierarchy we’ve created. We’ve separated ourselves from the earth and from other living species, and then made divisions within our own species. That is the opposite of belonging and the truth of interconnectedness. When we focus on being interconnected, it becomes harder to create harm.

Looking at veganism from this perspective, it doesn’t feel like the challenge it’s often presented to be.

TB: When we’re aligned and feel a sense of belonging with the rest of life, and feel that our actions are on behalf of the collective, there is a sense of inner freedom and fearlessness. What is there to fear if you belong to the web of life? For myself, the reward of eating a plant-based diet has been that feeling of alignment.

What about moderation—or does compromise just relieve us from confronting the myth of separation?

TB: When I invite people into this inquiry, I’m talking about going in the direction of increasingly plant-based eating. Some people feel their health requires eating meat products. This is a difficult domain, because it so easily brings up defensiveness, guilt, and anger. So it’s crucial for authentic open dialogue to step beyond judgment. Judgment only creates more separation. This is about inviting all of us to look honestly at our own behavior and our own impact. What would feel best, and how would I feel more aligned? How can I move in that direction with compassion toward my own being, and with patience, good humor, and clarity?

KM: The meditation teacher Larry Yang, a good friend of ours, says, “May I be as loving and compassionate as I can be. If I cannot be loving in this moment, may I be kind. And if I cannot be kind, may I be nonjudgmental. And if I cannot be nonjudgmental, may I not cause harm. And if I cannot not cause harm, may I cause the least amount of harm.”

Can eating meat ever be an ethical choice?

KM: Animals have an important role to play in farming when it’s done correctly. Afro-Indigenous agriculture, also known as regenerative agriculture, engages with animals’ natural ability to heal the soil. Managed grazing, where animals roam the fields and are grass-fed, brings life back from the toxicity of industrial farming, doing wonders for the soil and plants. The animals are still slaughtered for meat, but usually more humanely than in industrial meat production. Although I believe we shouldn’t overproduce animals for meat eating, we can still benefit from the healthier soil and more nutrient- dense food that result from the natural relationship between animals and the earth.

TB: Of course there’s a lot less violence and suffering when meat is not sourced from a factory farm. But in the United States, about 99 percent of all meat and animal products come from factory farms, and the global figure is 90 percent. Given the economics and the amount of land that’s needed to raise animals, and the increasing domination of factory farms, it’s highly unlikely that there are enough small-scale farmers for people in most countries to go that route. I feel like it distracts us from the bigger inquiry: That is, what is best for our bodies, for nonhuman animals, and for the earth’s body? Where’s the least harm? What grows our sense of connection and non-separation?

What makes cruelty to nonhuman animals and the planet a crucial area for our attention and response on the spiritual path?

KM: I want to note that in many spiritual traditions a large part of how people practice involves sacrificing animals. We are not equating the cruelty of industrial meat production with these sacred rituals. Nor are we saying that people whose only available food source is animals should not feed themselves the way they do. However, these are exceptions, not the rule. Mostly, humans eat meat unconsciously, which supports the inhumanity we are speaking about. As we bring forward the spiritual dimension of our existence, we become aware of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the interrelated structure of reality.” That interconnection asks us to be kind, loving, and compassionate to all life on Earth. For me, it asks that I not eat, kill, or harm my fellow Earth mates.

TB: I don’t separate plant-based eating from any other compassionate action that we take to reduce the violence in our world. Human domination and cruelty toward animals is one of the most invisible domains in our consciousness when it comes to how we treat others. We need to wake up to our participation in all caste systems, whether it involves religion, race, class, or how we treat animals. Yet we really can’t wake up from any of them fully if we don’t wake up from all of them. You can’t just exclude some part of life from your heart. So part of my spiritual practice is to see past the apparent forms in order to see the light, the sacredness, that lives through us all.

The post The Myth of Separation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The subtitle of writer and lay Zen teacher Susan Moon’s latest book may be “Notes on the Home Stretch,” but the wisdom on aging, and more to the point, death, in Alive Until You’re Dead is important for readers of any age. Weaving in personal stories, many about confronting the deaths of close friends, Moon turns her lived experience into tributes and guidance for facing mortality. She also brings a lightness to the subject that so many people fear above all else, but that Moon says actually brings meaning to our lives. Tricycle caught up with Moon to hear more about the intention and writing process of the book, and for further advice on facing death at any stage of life.

Why did you want to write Alive Until You’re Dead: Notes on the Home Stretch? I wanted to write about my ongoing concern with what it means to be mortal and the idea that our condition of mortality and impermanence, which we are constantly fighting against, actually gives us life. Death is very hard and painful but it’s also what gives meaning to our lives. I really wanted to talk about how we actually can be grateful for our mortality, and that the fact that we’re going to die gives us the opportunity to make our life meaningful.

You wrote this book during the pandemic. How did that unique time impact your work? I think of it as my pandemic book, in a sense, because the pandemic provided me time and space and simplicity of life to write. I’ve been on writing retreats, I’ve been to writers’ residencies, and weirdly, this horrible tragedy was also kind of a perfect writer’s retreat for me. But at the same time, I think all the tragedy and fear added to the relevance of my subject in a way. I have to add that I’m grateful to my sister and brother-in-law who live with me and who supported and encouraged me as this was going on.

Early in the book, in a story about a friend of yours who died in the hospital after suffering a stroke, you say that “the Grim Reaper metaphor is all wrong.” Can you explain what you mean by that? Death is not one separate thing that’s coming after us. In Buddhism, birth and death are kind of conceived as a hyphenated thing. Life is the realm of birth and death, and there’s a sense that before we were born into this body, and after we leave this body, there’s this other realm of the absolute, which is a mystery to us. People often worry about what will happen to them after they die, but we never think about where we came from before we were born. We don’t even think about that as a parallel thing. 

Though you don’t shy away from the hard parts of aging, you also describe the upsides. Referencing a dharma brother who gave a memorable talk at Berkeley Zen Center, you write, “In his old age, it came naturally to him to put himself aside and not think about what he needed all the time.” How have you experienced this? It’s about letting go of self clinging. I’m not building a life anymore so there’s some freedom there to attend to the needs of others, like my own children and grandchildren. How can I just be present with loved ones? I love the example in that essay when the man said when he was playing with his grandson, and they would build a tower, his grandson would knock it over again and again, and they would just laugh and build it again. You don’t have to worry about building a tower that stays up.

But letting go of self-clinging is appropriate for anyone at any stage of life. If you’re grasping for your own happiness at the expense of others, that’s not going to bring you happiness. I really feel that the path to joy is to let go of self-clinging in whatever way you can, and I think Buddhist practice has been helpful for me in that. But there’s many other routes, like being in community and continually remembering that we’re all in this together, we’re all interconnected, and your happiness isn’t separate from anybody else’s happiness.

“The fact that we’re going to die gives us the opportunity to make our life meaningful.”

Throughout the book you reference beautiful moments with your grandchildren, who you connected with frequently over Zoom during the pandemic. These stories speak for themselves, but you also talk about the term “grandmother mind.” Can you explain what that means? It’s connected to letting go of clinging. Dogen uses the phrase when he tells a young male monk, who is different from a grandmother in every possible respect, that he won’t be able to have a mind of compassion and be a true Buddist practitioner unless he can develop “grandmother mind.” Dogen is speaking, I believe, about what he calls “the mind of great compassion.” So it’s that spirit, but I think as I’m using it, it’s also about a certain kind of love. If you’re not one of the grandparents who are raising your own grandchildren—an amazing thing that a lot of people are doing—and you’re able to just be a grandparent and not be responsible for all the hard parts, the kind of love that you can have for your grandchildren is unencumbered, unconditional. I see “grandmother mind” as an obligation to apply that feeling to all children. All of us need to have “grandmother mind” about children. 

On the subject of death, you say, “When I deliberately consider my own death, I feel more alive,” and you offer some contemplations on death. Could you describe one of them? One that pops into my head—it’s not harder or easier, or more important or anything—is walking in cemeteries. To walk in a cemetery, and to actually look at the gravestones, read the names and think of all these people who have died, to look at the dates and think about the generations, gives me a sense of how there’s a flow of time and generations. For some reason I’m comforted by the thought that I am a leaf in the generations of leaves that keep turning over. I’m part of the turning over. There are many people who were born and died before me and hopefully there will be many who are born and die after me. I’m just one person and I’m not all that important. It’s just amazingly fortunate that I should be walking there, alive and looking at some bird singing in a tree, and life is going on. It’s the same feeling I get from looking at the stars in the sky and thinking of the vastness of the universe, or by reading about physics or cosmology. It’s the idea that there’s this vastness of time and that my life is just a little blink, and I don’t even know what part of the great cosmic consciousness my life is, but it’s a miracle that I have this consciousness in this one little tiny person on the planet. Here I am, and what a great miracle.

Do you think it’s wise or essential to prepare for death? What about preparing for the death of loved ones? When I think about it as a practice myself I resist it because it feels unnecessarily harsh. But should we prepare for the greatest moments of suffering? What I realized when I was writing this book—and I realized it before when thinking about my own loved ones, and particularly my children—is that accepting my own death is a hard job, but accepting that the people I love will die is even harder. Having people leave you is terrible, and then the worst possible fear of all would be to have your children die. I can’t imagine anything worse. I remember when I first became a mother, all of a sudden when I read the newspaper and the war in Vietnam was going on, I would see these pictures of children in the war and the whole thing took on a different meaning. It was much more personal to me, and it became unbearable. It’s the same even now, when I think about the war in Ukraine and the children there.

I think preparing for the death of loved ones is something that one can do. You can prepare for the death of somebody who is old, where the death won’t be such a tragedy. You can just try to appreciate the person and have so much gratitude for this person being in your life. You can try to help them see that their life has been full and rich and help them find some peace. And for children, take as much joy as possible in what’s going on. Don’t let fear rob you of your joy.

I also think that we can trust that sometimes people who are dying find a way to accept what’s happening. Maybe they’re in pain, maybe they want to be released, but it’s important to know that while your pain and your loss is so real and acute, you don’t have to take on their suffering, because you don’t really know what they’re suffering is.

A friend of mine, who I loved very dearly, died of cancer in 2018. I miss her terribly. She was a Buddhist, and she knew she was dying for quite a long time. At first she was still functioning well and then she needed to care, and I was one of the people who took turns to help her at home, making meals for her and things like that. Then she was in some pain and I said, “How do you do this? How do you tolerate this?” She said, “I just say to myself, ‘This is how it is right now.’” This is how it is right now. That became a kind of mantra for me that I bring into a lot of other situations in my life. It’s about being present in the moment, accepting things as they are and then moving from there. It’s not resigning yourself, but being present with things before you go on to the next thing. It’s knowing, thanks to impermanence, that things won’t stay this way, for better or worse. I think that is very helpful.

The post How Death Gives Meaning to Our Lives  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On Friday, June 24 and Saturday, June 25, students and colleagues will gather at the University of California, Los Angeles to celebrate the career and contributions of Dr. Robert E. Buswell Jr., the Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, who is retiring after 36 years at the university. 

The conference consists of two full days of panel discussions and lectures, including a keynote address by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. There will also be a roundtable discussion on the last 50 years of Buddhist Studies with Lopez, Smith College professor Peter N. Gregory, and University of Notre Dame professor Robert Gimello. Princeton professor Dr. Jacqueline Stone will moderate the roundtable. Other panels will cover Korean Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism. 

Members of the general public are welcome to attend, but everyone must pre-register. 

“It’s a reunion more than anything,” says Jennifer Jung-Kim, PhD, Assistant Director and Senior Editor of UCLA Centers for Buddhist Studies, who is organizing the conference.

“Professor Buswell is a giant in the field of East Asian Buddhism,” Jung-Kim says. “Aside from his numerous publications (monographs, translations, and series), he has trained some of the top scholars in the field. And because of his years of experience as a monk and decades as a practitioner, his knowledge of Buddhism is comprehensive and unmatched. His contributions to developing the field of Korean Buddhist Studies have also elevated the place of Korean Buddhism in the world.”

Lopez agrees. “There are many things I could say about Robert Buswell, whom I have known for almost forty years, our names forever linked by the five-pound black book we published in 2013. His contributions to the field—as an author, editor, teacher, and administrator—are many. But to identify the most important, he did something that very few have done: he single-handedly transformed the field of Buddhist Studies. Through the books he wrote and the students he trained, the essential role of Korea and Koreans in the history of Buddhism is, at long last, understood and appreciated in the West.” 

Before joining UCLA, Buswell was an ordained Buddhist monk in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Korea. He founded UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies in 1993 and its Center for Buddhist Studies in 2000. In 2008, he became the first scholar of Buddhism and of Korea to serve as president of the Association for Asian Studies, and in 2016 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

He is well known for editing the two-volume Encyclopedia of Buddhism, and for co-authoring with Lopez The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.

“Every project I work on involves reaching for that dictionary, which I cherish with the same veneration as any sutra,” says former student Frederick Ranallo-Higgins, PhD, who also praises Buswell for bringing Korean Buddhism into the field of Buddhist studies. With The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, he “transformed textual translation, bringing over one hundred years of disparate translated terminology into one reference, creating a more standardized vocabulary, and increasing access across area studies.” 

Ranallo-Higgens also cites Buswell’s The Zen Monastic Experience as an important, accurate portrayal of the life of monastics, often romanticized in the West. 

In May, Buswell and his wife, Christina, made gift commitments to establish an endowed chair and a graduate research fellowship in Buddhist Studies at UCLA. The Chinul Endowed Chair in Korean Buddhist Studies is the first permanent endowed chair in Korean Buddhism outside of Korea

As Jung-Kim says, “Their generous gift commitment to create the Chinul Endowed Chair in Korean Buddhist Studies highlights the Buswells’ generosity and concern for UCLA and the field.”

The post “Currents and Countercurrents in Sinitic Buddhism” Conference Celebrates the Career of Dr. Robert E. Buswell Jr.  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

During the lockdown days of the pandemic, when so many people felt aimless at home, Tibetan artist Rabkar Wangchuk was painting every day. The result is a new show called Mystery of Life at New York City’s Here Now gallery, curated by Paola Vanzo and on view through June 21. The show is dedicated to Wangchuk’s mother, who died during the pandemic, and includes sculptures from guest artist Michela Martello.

Wangchuk, who was born in India and lived in a monastery from age seven to twenty, has always been an artist. After learning the traditional Tibetan art forms of thangka painting, wood carving, butter sculpture, and sand mandalas at the monastery, he started exploring contemporary art when he left to study at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. His teacher encouraged him to explore other styles and he found inspiration in the painting of Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and other artists whose work he felt represented a “freedom of spirit.”

“I can be hungry for two or three days, but I can’t stand one day without art,” Wangchuk told me when I visited the show. “Art nourishes my spirit.”

Eventually Wangchuk came to the United States to teach, first at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and then in New York City, where he currently lives. Though his art has appeared in numerous group shows, Mystery of Life is the artist’s first solo exhibit. Departing from much of his previous work, Wangchuk used mineral pigments as opposed to acrylics in this collection of paintings, which allows him to be more precise. As a result, the paintings are brimming with detail. But they also have an unmistakably serene quality to them. The contradiction is one Wangchuk attributes to his daily meditation practice—his morning prayers and mantras that he calls “breakfast for the spirit.” The practice keeps him calm and imbues his art with positivity, he says, even as the intricate details sweep viewers up in the complexity and struggle of daily life.  

The co-existing sense of calm and activity also reflect the artist’s internal state during the pandemic and after the death of his mother. “Before my mother died I was carefree, but then I became lonely… She left me in this busy world,” he says. 

Wangchuk was able to visit his mother in India before she died, but when he returned, he painted the story of his life in a dedication to her. Many of the paintings include female figures who represent his mother or the concept of motherly love, and almost every painting includes the image of a small monk, who represents the artist moving throughout his life. Most paintings also include images of familiar cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Dumbo—playful pop culture anchors that the artist, a self-proclaimed movie lover, uses to express himself and connect with diverse audiences. Various styles, including the more traditional Chinese painting style of the Ming dynasty, are intended to appeal to a wide audience, too. 

Throughout my visit to the Here Now gallery, Wangchuk repeated that he wanted his art to connect with viewers—a concern surely amplified by the disconnected time of lockdown. Driving that home, curator Paola Vanzo invited Italian multidisciplinary artist Michela Martello to contribute eight vases inspired by Tibetan culture and a series of hands and feet to add a feminine influence to the show in honor of Wangchuk’s mother. The result is a diverse collection of styles that feel fresh and positive, but also packed with personal history and emotion, often with undercurrents of struggle and longing.

Mystery of Life is on view at the Here Now gallery until June 21. See below for details on events, including an artist’s talk and a meditation session with David Nichtern. 

♦

Tuesday, June 7  
Opening reception at 6:30 p.m. EDT  
Here Now Space 
132 Perry Street 2B, New York NY 10014 

Saturday, June 11  
Artist’s Talk with Rabkar Wangchuk and Michela Martello 
The talk will be moderated by Daniel Aitken (CEO/Publisher, Wisdom Publications) 6:30–8:30 p.m. EDT at Here Now Space  
RSVP at info@herenowspace.com 

Wednesday, June 15  
Meditation session with David Nichtern, Emmy Award-winning composer and author of Awakening From the DayDream and Creativity, Spirituality, and Making A Buck,  published by Wisdom. 
6:30–8:30 p.m. EDT at Here Now Space 
Register here

Tuesday, June 21  
Closing reception at 6:30–8:30 p.m. EDT

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Bill Porter, the renowned translator of Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts who goes by the pen name Red Pine, is the subject of a new anthology and documentary, both titled Dancing with the Dead and set to come out in the spring of 2023. The projects come from nonprofit publisher Copper Canyon Press and production company Woody Creek Pictures respectively, two organizations that have teamed up on a Kickstarter campaign to ensure their work stays on schedule. The campaign aims to raise $80,000 by June 1 to fund costs associated with publishing the anthology, as well as research and post-production costs for the film. 

Porter is the author and translator of over twenty books and a beloved figure in the American Buddhist landscape. As Ward Serrill, director of Dancing with the Dead, points out, Porter’s biography also makes him a great subject for a documentary. His father was a bank robber, he flunked out of three different colleges, he lived in a Buddhist monastery for years, he was a popular radio host in Hong Kong, and he discovered hermits in the China’s Zhongnan Mountains after officials told him that there were no hermits to be found there. Using interviews, animation, archival footage of Beat poets, and footage from Chinese television productions on Porter, the film will tell the story of the translator’s life and contribution to his field. The anthology, meanwhile, will collect his poetry translations in the final volume of a series of books called “Essential Poems”—a series that includes writers like W.S. Merwin, June Jordan, Jim Harrison, and Ruth Stone.

Depending on the level of support, contributors to the campaign could receive an advance copy of the anthology,  a digital download of the documentary,  a collector’s edition movie poster, their name in the credits of the anthology and film, and even a dinner and private reading with Porter.

The whole endeavor is a real homegrown affair. Porter, the filmmakers, and Copper Canyon are all based in Port Townsend, Washington. Rocky Friedman, the producer of the Dancing in the Dead, ​​owns and operates the Rose Theatre, an independent cinema in Port Townsend that has become its own community landmark. And Porter is currently building a meditation center in the heart of town. Though the project is still getting off the ground, it will be a non-denominational community center meant to welcome Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. The focus on inclusivity starts with the structure itself. It’s in the center of town, easily accessible to all, and will be built in the Chinese style with a bench around the perimeter for anyone who has trouble sitting on the floor. Artist James Turrell will also contribute to the design, in part as a gesture to his late roommate, artist Tom Jay, who constructed a meditation bell for the center just before he died two years ago. The documentary will offer a sneak peak of the meditation center’s construction. 

“We’re very positive about this,” Porter told Tricycle about the meditation hall. “I don’t think there’s anything that can stop this from going forward.” With the Kickstarter campaign, Copper Canyon Press and Woody Creek Pictures hope for the same with Dancing in the Dark. 

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Read a 2000 Tricycle Magazine interview with Red Pine here.

The post Kickstarter Campaign Raises Funds for Anthology and Documentary Honoring Red Pine, the Translator of Chinese Poetry and Buddhist Texts appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.