No one escapes suffering in Rikers Island. Not prisoners, not staff. Jennifer Keishin Armstrong profiles Justin von Bujdoss, the first-ever Buddhist chaplain in America’s most notorious jail. In a small, cinder-block room lit by shards of afternoon sun sneaking in through windows in the ceiling, thirteen jail guards in dark blue uniforms sit quietly on gray plastic chairs. [...]
Who is B. R. Ambedkar?
A profile of B. R. Ambedkar, a vital figure in Indian history and an activist for the Dalit ("untouchables") class. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) was a statesman, social reformer, and independence leader who led a Buddhist revival in India known as the Dalit Buddhist movement. He inspired millions of Indians to convert to Buddhism to escape the oppression of the Hindu caste [...]
The Zen of Joan Didion
Her masterpiece The Year of Magical Thinking is a meditation on the human mind both pointed and profound. In that year, following her husband’s death, and explored in the new documentary on Didion, she learned in her bones the basic truths we so often deny — death, impermanence, and aloneness. David Swick profiles Joan Didion, a great American journalist observing her own mind [...]
Becoming Pema
Andrea Miller on the life and spiritual journey of one Deirdre Blomfield-Brown. Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City in 1936. She has said that she had a pleasant childhood with her Catholic family, but that her spiritual life didn’t begin until she attended boarding school, where her intellectual curiosity was cultivated. At age twenty-one, [...]
Ocean of Dharma
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 [...]
Tenzin Palmo: “There is nothing” a woman can’t accomplish
Dominique Butet and Olivier Adam profile Tibetan nun Tenzin Palmo, who is changing the role of women in Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Translated from French by Susan Maneville. A few days after Losar, the Tibetan New Year, spring seemed to be dawning on the Kangra plain, situated in Northern India in the province of Himachal Pradesh. Bougainvillea and magnolias were in full [...]
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 [...]
Peace in Every Step
Thich Nhat Hanh's life of courage and compassion, by Andrea Miller. In seven boats filled to the brim with food, Thich Nhat Hanh and a small team of volunteers rowed up the Thu Bon River, going high into the mountains, where soldiers were shooting at each other and the air reeked of dead bodies. The team was without mosquito netting or potable water, and, despite the icy [...]
How Sharon Salzberg Found Real Happiness
Facing her suffering head-on has made Sharon Salzberg one of today’s most relatable Buddhist teachers. Lindsay Kyte talks to Salzberg about her difficult life’s journey, establishing loving-kindness as a key practice in American Buddhism, and how we can all find real happiness. Sharon Salzberg knows suffering. At age nine, she was dressed in her Halloween ballerina [...]
