Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method
by Rebecca Li
Shambhala Publications, October 2023, 280 pp., $21.95, paper

There’s method in the no-method approach, or the Buddhist practice of “silent illumination” as taught by Chan Master Sheng Yen (1931–2009). Rebecca Li, a Chan Buddhist teacher, writes that this method completely changed her understanding of silence. Silence does not mean to “push away or avoid all noise,” but instead to “refrain from succumbing to our habitual reactivity that gets in the way of fully experiencing the present moment as it is.” After introducing readers to the essential components of silent illumination, chapters on the “modes of operation,” including craving and trance, help us halt reactivity and see contentment as our natural state of being.  

Three Minutes a Day: A Fourteen-Week Course to Learn Meditation and Transform Your Life
by Richard Dixey
New World Library, August 2023, 144 pp., $18.95, paper

No matter how busy we are, we can probably find three free minutes per day. This guide by Richard Dixey, a senior faculty member at Berkeley’s Dharma College, makes the bold claim that just a few minutes of daily meditation can “generate a real insight into personal experience that no amount of reading can replicate.” Exercises include watching a candle to develop concentration and listening to the sound of a fading gong to develop flexible concentration. This guide is suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators looking for a shift in perspective. A free mobile app is also available to keep you on track.

Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption
edited by Trine Brox & Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg
Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 194 pp., $35.95, paper

Buddhism is green. At least more than other religions, right? Although many like to valorize Buddhism as inherently antimaterialist and mindful of its worldly interconnectedness, the lived reality is quite different. From the garbage, sewage, and excrement produced daily by both monastics and lay Buddhists to the desacralized ritual objects and decaying mummified bodies left behind by the dead, this timely and poignant text examines the Buddhist contribution to the seemingly endless wave of “zombie rubbish” that sits poised to overwhelm and consume our very existence. 

---

Scholar’s Corner

Living Treasure: Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in Honor of Janet Gyatso
edited by Holly Gayley and Andrew Quintman
Wisdom Publications, June 2023, 544 pp., $59.95, hardcover

Janet Gyatso, the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, is “one of the most creative and influential thinkers of her generation,” as the editors of this anthology by her peers write. Living Treasure celebrates two areas of her greatest expertise—terma (hidden texts) and Tibetan autobiographical writing—and features essays from many of her former students. Gyatso’s multidisciplinary approach and “interrogation of what it means to be human” are found in her pieces on supine demonesses, a third gender, and Tibetan nuns’ advocacy for full ordination. What results is a scholarly work that need not be limited to an academic audience.

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West
by Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Cultural misunderstandings often fuel the divisive debates across our fractious and fractured online forums. In this overheated milieu, examining the roots of our ideas about Buddhism is crucial. Donald Lopez’s groundbreaking challenge to Western cultural assumptions about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, Prisoners of Shangri-La (published in 1998 and revised in 2018), still resonates. Lopez’s detailed catalog of countless tropes that still shape popular discourse adds needed context to the endless stream of misinformed posts and drive-by comments. Cutting through complexity with meticulous yet down-to-earth prose and a bodhisattva’s compassion, Lopez delivers a trenchant critique of Western fantasies about Tibet.

–Frederick M. Ranallo-Higgins

Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom
by Sharon Salzberg
Flatiron Books, April 2023, 240 pp., $14.99, paper

Real Life is insight meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg’s latest installment in her “real” series (previous titles are on happiness, happiness at work, love, and change). Real Life weaves together Buddhist psychology, Salzberg’s own experiences, and insights from other thinkers to help us embrace our daily lives wholeheartedly. In Salzberg’s view, no matter our particular season or struggle, taking steps to ensure an expansive worldview can help free us from habitual patterns and behaviors and put us on the path to living with joy, ease, and, ultimately, liberation.

See “Expansion and Contraction” for an excerpt.

Living Nembutsu: Applying Shinran’s Radically Engaged Buddhism in Life and Society
by Jeff Wilson
Sumeru Press, Spring 2023, 158 pp., $27.00, paper

In Living Nembutsu, Jeff Wilson, an ordained Jodo Shinshu minister, professor of religious and East Asian studies, and Tricycle contributing editor, connects the insights of Shinran Shonin (1173–1263), the founder of Jodo Shinshu (Shin) Buddhism, to the particular tumults we find ourselves in today. “Radical Shinran,” as Wilson refers to the monk, lived during a time of social and political upheaval, and “understood that the way forward could only be through reliance on dharma and solidarity with other suffering people.” With chapters like “Queer Shinran” and “Refugee Shinran,” Wilson inspires a fresh look at today’s most pressing issues. 

Read an interview with Jeff Wilson about the book here. 

Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition
by Brooke Schedneck
Shambhala Publications, April 2023, 272 pp., $24.95, paper

Lived religion, writes religion professor Brooke Schedneck, examines not authoritative texts or leaders of a tradition but how religion is expressed in the daily lives of ordinary folks. In Living Theravada, Schedneck explores contemporary Theravada traditions through sacred places and objects, people, and practices in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Schedneck, who has lived and conducted research in Thailand for many years, has also compiled helpful appendices on proper etiquette for visiting temples and attending meditation retreats in Southeast Asia. 

See “Bringing Life to Statues” for an excerpt.

---

Scholar’s Corner

New Perspectives in Modern Korean Buddhism: Institution, Gender, and Secular Society
edited by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim and Jin Y. Park
SUNY Press, June 2023, 348 pp., $33.95, paper

The importance and influence of Korean Buddhism, particularly its attempts to harmonize doctrinal inconsistencies, remain mostly unknown outside East Asia. This edited volume sheds more light on one of the world’s oldest surviving Mahayana traditions. Hwansoo Kim’s account of late Joseon Dynasty Court’s Lady Chon brings laywomen to the fore. And Su Jung Kim leads monks’ secret wives out of the closet. Despite not offering new perspectives from outside the dominant Jogye Order, this monograph is a must-read for contemporary Korean Buddhist studies.

–Frederick M. Ranallo-Higgins

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

The Buddha in the Robot: A Robot Engineer’s Thoughts on Science and Religion
by Masahiro Mori

Do robots have buddhanature? Masahiro Mori (b. 1927), a leading pioneer in the research and development of robotics and president of the Mukta Research Institute in Tokyo, was asking that question decades before ChatGPT could offer an answer. Originally published in 1974, Mori’s book explores the relationship between religion, Buddhism, and science. It quickly became a classic in robotics and artificial intelligence and continues to be cited in scholarship on the ethical implications emerging with the proliferation of robots in our everyday lives. Imbuing his text with relatable, real-life examples, this towering scientific thinker delivers an accessible exploration of many of Buddhism’s most important concepts and teachings.

–FMR-H

The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

by Thenmozhi Soundararajan.
North Atlantic Books, November 2022, $18.95, 296 pp., paper

While Buddhists in the West may be aware of the mid-20th-century mass conversion of so-called “untouchables” to Buddhism, fewer are likely aware of the traumatic implications and violence that caste continues to inflict on individuals and communities. Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s thorough exploration of the sources and results of caste—and the possibility of ending caste—includes embodiment exercises, reflections, and meditations. As Soundararajan writes, caste when left “untreated” will “ultimately destroy us.

Turning Words: Transformative Encounters with Buddhist Teachers 

by Hozan Alan Senauke.
Shambhala Publications, March 2023, $18.95, 152 pp., paper

Turning Words is a collection of vignettes describing transformative moments with Buddhist teachers, leaders, and spiritual inspirations that Hozan Alan Senauke, a Soto Zen priest and abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, has experienced in his decades on the path. Some of these encounters are unexpected; others are with people he has known for years; in some cases, the encounter has been with a book. “Turning words,” Senauke writes, refers to a Zen koan and are “words that cause you to pivot so that you see the universe from a different angle.” The book includes turning words from over thirty teachers that can be revisited when you’re in need of a breakthrough.

Living Kindness: Metta Practice for the Whole of Our Lives

by Kevin Griffin.
Shambhala Publications, December 2022, $21.95, 176 pp., paper

For Kevin Griffin, a Buddhist teacher and one of the founders of the Buddhist Recovery Network, the idea of metta, often translated as “lovingkindness,” has not been fully grasped by Western Buddhists in terms of definition and practice. Griffin prefers “living kindness” to the traditional definition, and this book, which combines stories from the Pali canon and anecdotes from his own experience, aims to movemetta from the feel-good realm to a lived experience off the cushion that he argues is more in line with what the Buddha taught. Read an excerpt from Living Kindness on practicing fearless metta here.

---

Scholar’s Corner

Buddhism under Capitalism

edited by Richard K. Payne and Fabio Rambelli.
Bloomsbury Academic, October 2022, $29.95, 280 pp., paper

Building on the work of scholars such as Gregory Schopen, Johan Elverskog, and Tansen Sen, this edited volume confronts capitalism’s impact on Buddhism and on Buddhist scholars themselves. The editors and contributors successfully infuse this dense academic read with personal and social narratives that reveal the often-overlooked human agency in capitalism, while also challenging the popular understanding of capitalism as only an economic and not a social system. Buddhism under Capitalism offers a solid introduction to the economics of Buddhism and redirects the discourse to a more fruitful path.

–Frederick M. Ranallo-Higgins, Associate Editor

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

The Life of Milarepa

by Tsangnyön Heruka, translated by Andrew Quintman, August 2010

Journey to 11th-century Tibet in this biography of the “Madman of Tsang.” Written several centuries after Milarepa’s death by fellow Kagyu madman Tsangnyön Heruka, The Life of Milarepa injects prophecy as a literary tactic to “project present importance into the past,” as Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr. writes in the introduction. Over the 250-plus pages, we follow Milarepa’s life, from his beginnings in a wealthy family to his study of black magic in order to avenge his family’s wrongful impoverishment; from killing his enemies through sorcery to humbly embracing the dharma, surviving on nettles and dwelling in caves as a fully realized yogin While there are many ways to read this hagiography, common themes include faith, devotion, and dedication.

Buddhist Stories for Kids: Jataka Tales of Kindness, Friendship, and Forgiveness
by Laura Burges, illustrated by Sonali Zohra
Bala Kids, December 2022, $18.95, 76 pp., hardcover

The Jataka tales are ancient stories of the Buddha’s lives before his birth as Prince Siddhartha. This modern retelling of ten tales by Soto Zen teacher and retired educator Laura Burges is written with readers aged 4-8 in mind. These rich morality tales and vibrant illustrations feature a wise gardener, a mischievous monkey, a discerning gazelle, and other characters relaying lessons that can be easily understood and incorporated into a child’s daily life right away: opening our hearts to others, the value of a true friend, and that everything changes.

Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown
by Deborah Eden Tull
Shambhala Publications, September 2022, $18.95, 240 pp., paper

“Physical darkness,” writes Buddhist teacher and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull “is considered more of an inconvenience than an ally.” Historically, darkness has been a nefarious force to turn away from, whether literal or figurative. In Luminous Darkness, Tull makes a case for the importance of “endarkment.” Turning toward, not away from, the uncomfortable things we’ve been avoiding can help us develop insight. The book offers embodied meditations, teachings, and mindful inquiry exercises to support us as we reconsider our relationship with darkness in its many forms.

Red Tara: The Female Buddha of Power and Magnetism
by Rachael Stevens
Snow Lion, November 2022, $29.95, 264 pp., paper

Tibetan practitioners around the world often turn to Tara, a motherly bodhisattva who offers protection on the journey to escape from samsara, and her green and white forms are especially popular. But who is Red Tara? After picking up a pamphlet in Bodhgaya about this lesser-known manifestation, Rachael Stevens, a longtime practitioner, sought out the answer. Red Tara is the thorough and fascinating culmination of a decade of research into Tara’s red form, an emanation who can help transform “desire into enlightened activity” and whom practitioners have called upon during times of plague and societal upheaval (sound familiar?).

---

Scholar’s Corner

Early Buddhist Oral Tradition: Textual Formation and Transmission
by Bhikkhu Anālayo
Wisdom Publications, 2022, $34.95, 312 pp., hardcover   

What words did the Buddha actually speak, and which early Buddhist scriptures reflect that? The answer doesn’t exist, writes Bhikkhu Anālayo, a Buddhist monk, scholar, and meditation teacher. This comprehensive comparison of early Buddhist texts explains how the oral tradition (the way the Buddha’s teachings were transmitted for centuries) accounts for textual differences between traditions and  geographical locations, and how early discourses and monastic rules were affected by errors of memory. The book is dense but suitable for nonscholar practitioners interested in learning more about the transmission of the canonical texts.

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

Call Me by My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

First published in 1993 and reissued this year with a foreword by Buddhist poet Ocean Vuong, Call Me by My True Names is a collection of over a hundred poems by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022). In the titular poem, he asks us to see ourselves in both the frog swimming happily in a pond and the snake that feasts on it; the malnourished child in Uganda and the arms dealer providing weapons; the 12-year-old girl who drowned herself after being raped and the pirate who is “not yet capable of seeing and loving.” It’s easy to see ourselves as the innocent child, he writes in a commentary on the poem; the challenge is to see ourselves in others: “Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.”   

The Sakya Jetsunmas: The Hidden World of Tibetan Female Lamas
by Elisabeth A. Benard
Snow Lion, March 2022, $29.95, 320 pp., paper

Buddhist texts in translation are often lacking in women Buddhist exemplars, which makes Elisabeth A. Benard’s The Sakya Jetsunmas an especially powerful addition to the conversation. For more than a thousand years, the Sakya Khon family has supported its daughters’ educational and spiritual progress, giving each the title Jetsunma (“venerable woman”) at birth and offering equal access to all training to their sons and daughters. This extensive multigenerational collection of biographies, which includes oral histories and archival research, will enlighten practitioners about this rich tradition and the Sakya Khon lamas.

A Year of Buddha’s Wisdom: Daily Meditations and Mantras to Stay Calm and Self-Aware
by Bodhipaksa
Rockridge Press, January 2022, $19.99, 264 pp., paper

Spend a year exploring the Buddha’s teachings with Bodhipaksa, a Scottish Buddhist author, teacher, and member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, as your guide. A Year of Buddha’s Wisdom includes an entry for each day of the year, and on each day, Bodhipaksa offers a meditation, mantra, and phrase to reflect on. These meditations and other exercises are designed to provide a minimum of 10 minutes of practice a day and to get straight to the point of the Buddha’s simple, powerful, and accessible wisdom.

The Path to Peace: A Buddhist Guide to Cultivating Loving-Kindness
by Ayya Khema
Shambhala Publications, July 2022, $18.95, 176 pp., paper

The late Buddhist nun Ayya Khema (1923–1997) dedicated her life to the practice of metta, usually translated as “lovingkindness.” Ayya Khema believed that “unconditional love” was a better way to describe this practice, which not only helps cultivate love for oneself and others but also helps to calm and brighten the mind. This book is based on a series of talks she gave in the 1990s, and was edited by her student Leigh Brasington. The second part of the book includes further discussion about metta practice, as well as ten visualizations that offer an alternative to the traditional metta phrases.

---

Scholar’s Corner

A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine
by C. Pierce Salguero
Columbia University Press, February 2022, $35.00, 272 pp., paper

Buddhism has offered the world of medicine much more than meditation to heal the mind, and this relationship has, throughout the last two and a half millennia, taken on many forms. C. Pierce Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Abington College, provides the first comprehensive scholarly resource in English on the global history of Buddhist medicine and healing practices. From the Buddha’s care for a sick monk to worldwide chanting and prayer to address the COVID-19 pandemic, Salguero shows how the dharma has been a “source of healing knowledge” throughout history.

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality
by Judith L. Lief

An unimaginable number of people have died from COVID-19. Death, however, remains a subject we usually don’t feel comfortable thinking or talking about until the very end—if at all. But death, writes Buddhist teacher Judith L. Lief, is our “constant companion,” and if we can get more comfortable contemplating our eventual demise, we can also “break free from the extremes of avoidance and fascination” surrounding it. Lief offers short exercises, including meditations and slogans, aimed at preparing us for our own deaths and supporting others at the end of life. No one is expecting you to become BFFs with death, but with practice, we can begin to see all the ways change is present in our daily lives, and continue letting go and letting go until we’re gone.

Into the Haunted Ground: A Guide to Cutting the Root of Suffering
by Anam Thubten
Shambhala Publications, April 2022, $19.95, 256 pp., paper

Chöd—it’s not just for charnel grounds anymore. This book by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Anam Thubten provides a clear and modern guide to the practice of “cutting through” the ego. Established by the 11th-century yogini Machik Labdrön, chöd was traditionally practiced by wandering yogis seeking to sever their attachment, sometimes at charnel grounds, where impermanence is on display. Thubten adds to the literature of this tantric teaching through personal stories, instructions, and historical notes that invite the reader to challenge the comfortable and seek out the “haunted grounds” in our daily lives.

Basho’s Haiku Journeys
by Freeman Ng and Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem
Stone Bridge Press, October 2021, $16.95, 40 pp., paper

Read more from the March winner of the Tricycle Haiku Challenge in this illustrated children’s book about the 17th-century Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho. Using the style of poetry Basho is credited with popularizing, Ng recounts Basho’s travels from leaving city life behind to becoming a wanderer who embarked on five epic journeys across Japan. The book is recommended for readers aged 7–10, who will likely be inspired to write their own haiku; fortunately, there is a short explanation at the end of the book on how to compose one.

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East: A Novel
by Quan Barry
Pantheon, February 2022, $26.00, 320 pp., hardcover

Travel across the Mongolian steppes and the capital of Ulaanbaatar in this novel about telepathic, 20-something twins—one a Tibetan Buddhist monk, the other lapsed—in search of the reincarnation of a Buddhist master. Quan Barry, the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is an award-winning author and poet who has traveled to Southeast Asia under US State Department auspices. Her new tale is both thematically and stylistically adventurous, exploring the tensions between secular and religious life while maintaining a commitment to the present tense that thrusts even flashbacks into the here and now.

---

Scholar’s Corner

Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation
edited by Yigal Bronner and Charles Hallisey, with translations by David Shulman
University of California Press, January 2022, $34.95, 284 pp., paper

We often hear about what gets lost in translation, but Yigal Bronner and Charles Hallisey are more interested in what gets revealed. They consider reading a translated text to be a “heightened” act—and a pleasurable one. To demonstrate their point they asked Indologist David Shulman to translate some of his favorite works of South Asian literature; they then collected responses from contemporary poets, Sanskritists, Buddhist scholars, and musicians, whose joy is palpable, if not infectious. (Read it for free at luminosoa.org.)

–Sarah Fleming, Audio Editor

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

How the Swans Came to the Lake
by Rick Fields

Buddhism is not a static history lesson but a religion consisting of numerous traditions. How the Swans Came to the Lake, first published in 1981 and revised several times before Fields’s death in 1999, provides a family tree of American Buddhism, chronicling the roots of dharma in the West, from Japanese and Chinese immigrants to the Beats and subsequent countercultures and concluding with the Dalai Lama’s visit to the States in 1991. A new fortieth anniversary edition from Shambhala Publications addresses later developments that Fields, who was editor of the Vajradhatu Sun and later editor-at-large at Tricycle, would undoubtedly have covered.

Read scholar Benjamin Bogin’s essay about the book and its author here.

Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World
by Kate Johnson
Shambhala Publications, August 2021, $17.95, 232 pp., paper

“Radical friendship might not save the world, but it can save our lives.” And according to Insight Meditation teacher Kate Johnson, it can “bolster our spirits long enough for us to do the world-saving, world-building, and world-making work we need to do in order to pass on something of value to future generations.” Radical Friendship is based on the seven qualities of spiritual friendship that the Buddha outlined in the Mitta (“friend”) Sutta. This type of friendship isn’t about simply being kind or being quiet. Instead, Johnson writes, it’s a way to reach beyond our differences and unite against suffering.

The Guide to Enlightenment: Why the Teacher Still Matters in Buddhism Today
by Allison Choying Zangmo and Carolyn Kanjuro
Shambhala Publications, October 2021, $17.95, 168 pp., paper

Painful revelations in many sanghas, especially over the past few years, have left some wondering what a guru is good for these days. The Buddhist teacher and Tibetan translator Allison Choying Zangmo and the late author and practitioner Carolyn Kanjuro co-wrote this book to provide “a source of support and encouragement” for practitioners who are uninspired or feeling doubtful. The authors highlight the essential role that student-teacher relationships have held throughout history and provide personal stories to help readers find the right teacher and navigate this complex connection.

The Glass Globe: Poems
by Margaret Gibson
Louisiana State University Press, August 2021, $19.95, 132 pp., paper

Award-winning poet Margaret Gibson’s latest poetry collection chronicles her husband’s death from Alzheimer’s disease and reveals the elusive chronology of grief. From watching her husband lose his senses one by one, to his death, to the long months that follow, she reveals that it’s one thing to meditate on emptiness and impermanence and a whole other thing to actually experience it. Gibson incorporates her Zen practice into her poems, using koans and mantras to reflect upon the mysteries of mourning and the beliefs that helped her piece her life back together. She writes: “I divide the sum of my life so far / by your death / And I keep going.”

—Emily DeMaioNewton

---

Scholar’s Corner

Milarepa’s Kungfu: Mahamudra in His Songs of Realization
by Karl Brunnhölzl
Wisdom Publications, October 2021, $21.95, 128 pp., cloth

Milarepa famously transformed his murderous past to become one of Tibet’s most revered yogis. In Milarepa’s Kungfu, Karl Brunnhölzl, a translator and senior teacher in Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s Nalanda-bodhi community, expands on Milarepa’s pith instructions. Kung (pinyin, gong) means “skillful work,” Brunnhölzl tells us, and fu is “time spent.” He deftly guides us through Milarepa’s understanding of Mahamudra (“great seal”), a practice for realizing Buddha- mind. The author’s accessible commentary mirrors the clarity of Milarepa’s directions for progressing through the stages of practice: view, meditation, conduct, and fruition.

—Joan Duncan Oliver

---

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki
By Shunryu Suzuki, edited by David Chadwick

This 2021 reissue of a 2007 collection accompanies a new follow-up volume, Zen Is Right Now. Both collections from Shambhala Publications offer brief accounts of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who told the hippies and beatniks wandering into his San Francisco center to “just sit,” from his arrival from Japan in 1959 until his death in 1971.

Suzuki’s familiar warmth and humor shine through in this slim volume, which can be consumed in a single sitting—or taken in more slowly.

Some stories are dialogues, resembling koans, while others are recollections of Suzuki’s behavior, conventional or not. Don’t expect analysis or criticism—what you’ll find here are mostly sunny memories from many decades ago.

—Philip Ryan