Tricycle Talks

Benjamin Brose is Professor of Buddhist and Chinese Studies and chair of the department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. His new book, Buddhist Masters of Modern China: The Lives and Legacies of Eight Eminent Teachers, explores the histories and teachings of eight masters who brought about a Buddhist revival during the political turmoil of the 20th century. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Brose to discuss the persecution that Chinese Buddhists faced at the turn of the 20th century, the creativity and innovation with which many Buddhist monks and nuns responded to these challenges, the variety of approaches taken to revitalize the Buddhist tradition, and the remarkable life of the Chan master Laiguo.

The Questions of Milinda is one of the most renowned texts within Theravada Buddhism—and one of the most translated Buddhist texts around the world. The text follows a transformational philosophical dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Milinda and a Buddhist monk named Nagasena as they discuss the nature of the self, the meaning of renunciation, and the sources of knowledge. In her new translation of The Questions of Milinda, scholar Maria Heim devotes particular attention to the literary and aesthetic qualities of the text, presenting it as a literary classic as well as a philosophical one. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Heim to discuss the literary and aesthetic qualities of The Questions of Milinda, how treating Buddhist texts as literature can deepen our perception, what we can learn from the text’s famous chariot analogy, and the philosophical work that metaphors and analogies can perform.

As someone who has been living with cancer for nearly two decades, Sebene Selassie is no stranger to being with suffering. In her work as a writer and dharma teacher, Selassie focuses on how we can tap into a deeper sense of love and belonging in the face of pain, violence, and division. Her most recent book, You Belong: A Call for Connection, draws from Buddhist philosophy, multidisciplinary research, and her personal experience to lay out what she calls a “map back to belonging.” In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Selassie to discuss how loving-kindness can be an antidote to fear, what it looks like to center love right now, why we’re often divided from ourselves, and what we can learn from staying with paradoxes and contradictions.

For poet Ocean Vuong, the act of writing is inextricably linked to his Zen Buddhist practice. In a previous episode of Life As It Is, he told Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg that he believes the task of the writer is “to look long and hard at the most difficult part of the human condition—of samsara—and to make something out of it so that it can be shared and understood.” Now, in his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, Vuong turns his attention to our cultural avoidance of illness and death, as well as the small moments of care and kindness that are essential to survival. Tracing the unlikely friendship between a young writer and an elderly widow who’s succumbing to dementia, the novel reckons with themes of history and memory, loneliness and heartbreak, and failure and redemption. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Vuong to discuss how he incorporates Buddhist notions of emptiness and nothingness into his writing, the role of ghosts and the dead in his work, how writing can be a form of prayer, and what he’s learned from Buddhist understandings of redemption. Plus, Vuong reads an excerpt from his new novel.

Over the course of the last hundred years, breathing mindfulness has become the most popular method of meditation around the world. Yet its history remains largely unrecorded. In her new book, Breathing Mindfulness: Discovering the Riches at the Heart of the Buddhist Path, scholar Sarah Shaw provides a historical survey of some of the methods of breathing mindfulness and how they developed. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Shaw to discuss how breathing mindfulness is linked to the seven factors of awakening, the central role of joy in meditation, why the tradition of samatha, or calm, meditation has been marginalized and suppressed, and what we can learn from thinking about traditions of breathing mindfulness as part of a vast ecosystem.