Blog

Be Kind to Your Mind

When you treat your mind with kindfulness, your mind does not want to wander off anywhere. It likes your company. You hang out together, chilling out, for far longer than you ever expected.

Ajahn Brahm, “You Are a Control Freak”, Tricycle

Navigating Contexts

To navigate a multiplicity of contexts with a kind of multilingual fluency is consistent with a Buddhist outlook and with Buddhist values like compassion, sympathetic joy, dependent origination, and nonattachment to views.

Linda Heuman, “A New Way Forward”, Tricycle

The Interconnected Universe

Just as we can’t fully blame others, or even ourselves, we also can’t take full credit for our achievements. If we look deeply, we’ll see that they, too, are the result of the entire interconnected universe.

Santiago Santai Jiménez, “Interconnectedness and the Freedom of Not Blaming”, Tricycle

What Is Love?

Love is not always instant recognition. Sometimes love is rebuilding. Sometimes love is returning to each other after separation, beginning again.

Christopher Rivas, “I Was Born of Immense Strength and Fearlessness”, Tricycle

Expanding Our Being and Knowing

If we look more closely at our notions, we may find ourselves able to expand the space of our being and knowing.

Robin Caton, “No Borders, No Boundaries”, Tricycle

Gratitude for Earth

By acknowledging our dependence on dear Earth, and by connecting into gratitude for her amazing gifts, we will naturally move in the direction of living more lightly on her.

Satya Robyn, “A Fourth Refuge: Namo Bhumyai”, Tricycle

Not Helpless

Habits are not intrinsic entities, and we are not helpless.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Deconstructing Habits”, Tricycle

Speaking Wisely

When we find our voice, right speech leads to right action. We all have something useful to say, if only we have the wisdom to know how and when to say it.

David Ryushin Bodney, “Free Speech and Right Speech”, Tricycle

Stop Asking for Meaning

The pursuit of a watertight meaning for life tends to generate more anxiety than it resolves. And the moments that feel most like being alive—really alive, present, and unguarded—are usually the ones where we’ve stopped asking.

Josh Korda, “What’s the Point?”, Tricycle

Commit to Peacemaking

The global task of peacemaking, reconciliation, mutual recognition, and justice is an unending process that takes boundless patience, deep listening, and dropping preconceptions. But isn’t that what we commit to with our great bodhisattva vows?

Sensei Katherine Senshin Griffith, “Our Separated Soul”, Tricycle

Zen Is Culture

Zen is not content you can learn and then know; it’s a way of being together that must be transmitted like culture.

Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi, “The Living Form of Zen”, Tricycle

The Greatness of Our Influence

The Buddha taught that we are unable to calculate the impact of a small act of service with our constrained understanding of time. We do what we can, anticipating results we can observe immediately, without seeing how great our influence can be.

Jet Li, “In Search of Zero”, Tricycle

Life Is a Ritual

Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. When things are properly understood, one’s whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony.

Pema Chödrön, “Not Preferring Samsara or Nirvana”, Tricycle

Overcoming Separation

We all have the perception of separateness, which is natural. We also have the capacity to realize who we are beyond that separation.

Tara Brach, “Breaking the Trance”, Tricycle

Don’t Waste This Life

The chance to practice the dharma may not come again. This is why the preciousness of human birth is the first and most important point. We mustn’t waste this life and die with regrets.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “Turning Our Thoughts to the Dharma”, Tricycle

Let Go of Pain

The Buddhist teachings say that when we can actually feel pain directly, we spontaneously let go, just as feeling the hot handle of a cast-iron skillet makes us let go.

Judith Simmer-Brown, “Transforming the Green-Ey’d Monster”, Tricycle

Devotion to the Mundane

If we are willing to look deeper into the mundane activities of everyday life, what reveals itself is the spiritual nature inherent to all things.

Pelumi Sholagbade, “My Good Luck African Braiding Sangha”, Tricycle

Every Effort Counts

For those of us who are sincere and disciplined yet struggle to see our own buddha-nature due to samsaric illusions or who practice inconsistently or only during holidays, there remains the assurance that even small efforts will ultimately lead to buddhahood.

An Tran, “Dual Cultivation”, Tricycle

Find Your Own Way

What makes sense to some may not to others, but it may be what is most valuable for us as practitioners. You have to find your own way.

Robert E. Buswell, Jr., “The Monk Who Walked Away”, Tricycle

Befriend Who You Really Are