Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a seminal figure in twentieth-century Buddhism and founder of this magazine, died on April 4, 1987. Barry Boyce surveys his vast body of teachings and their lasting impact on how Buddhism is understood and practiced. 1. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism In the summer of 1968, a twenty-nine-year-old Tibetan monk traveled from Scotland to Bhutan to [...]
About Barry Boyce
Love Fights the Power
For bell hooks, fighting oppression doesn’t require anger or conflict—just opening our hearts and speaking the truth fearlessly. In his classic profile from 2006, Barry Boyce tells the story of this renowned feminist and social critic, and how she came to embrace activism without enemies and a visionary kind of love. Bell hooks is a woman of many call numbers. If you [...]
Huston Smith’s Fifty Years on the Razor’s Edge
In his 2009 profile, Barry Boyce visits Huston Smith, the renowned spiritual explorer who brought an insider’s knowledge of the world’s religions to a narrow-minded West and defined comparative religion as we know it today. There was nothing comparative about religion in 1950s America. Your religion was right. Others were wrong. The familiar religions were a [...]
The Many Faces of the Dalai Lama
The world’s most famous “simple monk” is far from simple and more than just a monk. Barry Boyce is there as the Dalai Lama displays the many faces that make him such a unique and important figure. It was autumn 1979. Tense times. President Jimmy Carter was reeling from stagflation, the energy crisis, and the Iranian revolution. After being rebuffed by the State Department for [...]
A King in Queens: Seeing the Karmapa
Five years ago, when I wrote “New Face of an Ancient Lineage,” a profile of His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, he was twenty-four years old. It had been ten years since his dramatic escape from Chinese-controlled Tibet. I had been taken with his predecessor, and wanted to see what the new one was like, what he had to say, so when he made his first visit to the United States in the [...]
The 17th Karmapa: New Face of an Ancient Lineage
He loves art, music, and computers and has written several songs. At age twenty-four (at the time of this writing), he is deeply concerned about people his age and the world they are inheriting. The Karmapa ensures the continuity of the Kagyu lineage and the transmission of the authentic Mahamudra teachings. As Barry Boyce tells us in this 2010 feature, this young man's views [...]
The Mindful Society: The Kindest Thing You Can Do
From the July 2012 issue of Lion's Roar, Barry Boyce's Mindful Society column profiles Susan Bauer-Wu, who uses mindful diagnosis in her medical practice. "I’ve been with patients all my life," says Susan Bauer-Wu, associate professor of nursing at Emory University in Atlanta. "Patients are not a special class of people. They’re us. When we become patients, we are [...]
Bon Voyage – Embrace Change
Embrace Change: ten leading Buddhist teachers and writers offer personal stories, teachings, and meditations to touch our hearts, open our minds, and help us embrace the change in our lives. As my mother lay quietly on her final day, we carried on the little rituals familiar in her life—afternoon tea, cocktail hour, acerbic wit, storytelling, chatting about family and [...]
A Real Education
In the May 2012 issue of Lion's Roar, Barry Boyce's Mindful Society column explores how mindfulness is being used in children's education. Here’s an exercise for parents: Imagine your child has excelled at school and college and is embarking on a career. When they go for the big interview they’re flummoxed to find that their education didn’t cover the essential skills for [...]
Inquiring Minds (March 2012 Editorial)
A woman I know, Judi, was pursuing her doctorate in pharmacology in the seventies. Since a doctorate in the hard sciences is not for the faint of heart, it was a very stressful time for her. Her thesis adviser, Dave, suggested she try meditation. She thought it was probably a passing fancy for Dave. Not one for fads and easy fixes, she demurred. He left her a brochure for the [...]
