Buddhist teacher Kunga Dawa, also known as Richard Arthure, died in Colorado on Monday at 78 years old. Dawa met the pioneering Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in England in 1966 and served as his private secretary for several years. In 1968, Dawa was with Trungpa Rinpoche when he composed the Sadhana of Mahamudra, an important contemporary Buddhist text. Dawa [...]
Interview Crushes
Each Friday, we share three topical longreads in our Weekend Reader newsletter. This week, Lion's Roar magazine associate editor Lindsay Kyte talks about her favorite profiles. Sign up here to receive the Weekend Reader in your inbox. Our editor-in-chief, Melvin McLeod, says I sometimes get “interview crushes.” He is right. I am really lucky — I have a job where I get to ask [...]
What About the Cost of Retreats?
Many Buddhist practitioners can’t afford to go on retreats. Pamela Ayo Yetunde says it’s time we start thinking about how to make the practice less exclusive. I first learned about meditation retreats when I was a volunteer with Zen Hospice Project. My co-volunteers—professional financially stable white men—often talked fondly about their meditation teachers and retreat [...]
Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche opens $17M wellbeing center in Upstate New York
The 22,000-square-foot center nests on ninety acres of hillside in the Hudson Valley. Dharmakaya, a non-profit Buddhist organization, recently opened the $17 million Dharmakaya Center for Wellbeing in rural Pine Bush, New York. Trungram Gyalwa Rinpoche — founder of Dharmakaya and head of the Trungram lineage in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism — established the [...]
Frank Ostaseski receives Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine
Buddhist teacher Frank Ostaseski, the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder and director of the Metta Institute, is the 2018 recipient of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) Humanities Award. Ostaseski has been one of the leading voices in contemplative end-of-life care since the 1980s. In 1987, he helped found the first Buddhist [...]
You Are Already Enlightened
Guo Gu, a longtime student of the late Master Sheng Yen, presents an experiential look at the Chan practice of silent illumination. Silent illumination is a Buddhist practice that can be traced back not only to Huineng (638–713), the sixth patriarch of Chan, and other Chinese masters but also to the early teachings of the Buddha. In the Chan tradition, silent illumination is [...]
The Radical Buddhism of Rev. angel Kyodo williams
"I just want people to be liberated." John DeMont on the radical Buddhism of Rev. angel Kyodo williams. She is a well-known author, activist, and one of American Buddhism’s most dynamic and provocative teachers. But once, Rev. angel Kyodo williams was a lonely, bruised little girl living in New York City who would hide her face in a comic book as she walked home from [...]
The Shifting Landscape of Buddhism in America
Ann Gleig takes a far-reaching look at how Buddhism and the conversations within it are changing in the twenty-first century. In 2011, more than 200 Buddhist teachers, mostly American, gathered at the Garrison Institute in upstate New York to discuss the state of Buddhism in the West. Organized by first-generation American baby boomer teachers such as Lama Surya Das and [...]
Karmapa gives longevity empowerment in New York
The Gyalwang Karmapa gave a longevity empowerment to more than 2,000 people from the Tibetan and Himalayan communities in New York and New Jersey, at Queens College in Flushing, New York. The Karmapa is the head of the Kagyu school, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The current Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is the 17th in the lineage. The empowerment was [...]
You Can’t Fail at Meditation
Dan Harris gets the inside story on mindfulness and compassion from Buddhist teachers Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Mark Epstein. It was a pretty sweet opportunity, really. The poobahs from Lion's Roar came to me and said: pick your favorite Buddhist teachers, and we’ll set up a public speaking event for you in New York City. Also, they promised to promote my new [...]
