Tricycle: How do you account for Buddhist monasticism, at least as you experienced it, as having evolved in such a uninspiring way? Sangharakshita: Initially, the Buddha’s teachings had to be preserved through memorization and oral repetition. That was more easily accomplished by full-timers. So the monks inevitably gained a sort of monopoly. The original Buddhism was a… Read More Sangharakshita: Anti-establishment Buddhism
Clark Strand is a Tricycle contributing editor. His latest book is Waking the Buddha. With headlines like “Gentrifying the dharma: How the 1% is hijacking mindfulness” and “Rebel posturing and ‘mindfulness training’ can’t cover up tech world’s awful labor standards” on Facebook courtesy of Salon.com, suddenly American Buddhists find themselves pushed to one side or the other of an age-old… Read More A Clockwork Mindfulness: Challenging Corporate Buddhism
For the most social of creatures, the mammalian bee, there’s no such thing now as society. This will be our downfall. George Monbiot The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2014 19.49 BST ‘Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity.’ Photograph: Feri… Read More Monbiot: The age of loneliness is killing us
Western Buddhists are very suspicious of attachment. They feel they need to be detached . . . so dont get upset about racism, or injustice, or the poison in the rivers, because that means youre too attached. I think one of the problems with Westernized Buddhists is premature equanimity. When the Buddha said dont be… Read More Don’t Just Sit There, Do Something
Posted on Nov 9, 2014 By Chris Hedge Numbered footnotes, with hyperlinks, appear at the end of this article. My attitude toward becoming a vegan was similar to Augustine’s attitude toward becoming celibate—“God grant me abstinence, but not yet.” But with animal agriculture as the leading cause of species extinction, water pollution, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction2, and with… Read More Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time
[Developing story: I will be expanding on this article over the next little while, eventually to become part of a book on tantric Buddhism as engaged practice.] Danielle Levitt, photographer, shot the photos of the Radical Faeries of NYC. Go to Daniell’s website below to see a video of the faeries he photographed. http://www.daniellelevitt.com/galleries/27-radical_faeries_nyc Definitively… Read More Radical Faeries: Modern Day Siddhas
