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Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 3:41PM 
The Treasury of Knowledge
By Jamgön Kongtrul
10 volumes
Snow Lion Publications, 2003–2012
Reviewed by Roger R. Jackson
Addressing a dinner for Nobel Prize laureates in 1962, President John F. Kennedy quipped that never before had so much genius been present in the White House—“with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 3:36PM 
Dixie Dharma
By Jeff Wilson
University of North Carolina Press, 2012
296 pages; $36.95
Reviewed by Jan Willis
The world is places,” Gary Snyder famously said. This quote from his essay “The Place, the Region, and the Commons” graces the introduction of Jeff Wilson’s new book, Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South.
Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 2:47PM by Michael Sheehy
Sky Above, Great Wind (Shambhala 2012)
Insight into Emptiness (Wisdom 2012)
One Monk, Many Masters (Parami 2012)
Ties that Bind (Oxford 2012)
The Essential Journey of Life and Death (Dharma Samudra 2012)
The Ceasing of Notions (Wisdom 2013)
Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 12:00PM 
As Honolulu’s nearby skyscrapers gleamed pink in the late afternoon light, forty thousand people gathered in Ala Moana Beach Park on Memorial Day 2012. The festivities unfolded with taiko drumming, hula dancing, and traditional Hawaiian chanting. Then at twilight, Shinso Ito, the leader of the Japanese Buddhist organization Shinnyo-en, took the podium, her bright orange robes contrasting with the purpling sky. The huge assembly filling the beach before her had come to participate in a toro nagashi, a Japanese lantern-floating ceremony to honor and commemorate the dead.
Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 11:52AM 
By Bonnie Ryan-Fisher
My family and I were having lunch one Saturday, years ago, when my youngest son, having made friends with born-again Christians in his first-grade class, solemnly asked what “the Rapture” was.
I began a halting explanation, describing an event that, according to the beliefs of some schools of Christianity, would see Christians taken bodily to heaven, leaving the rest of us behind. I hoped that I was conveying this accurately as I drew only on vague memories of a bible-study group I’d been part of more than half a lifetime ago. My son never took his eyes off my face, but I could see this was as far over his six-year-old head as those heavens could ever be. He frowned.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 3:12PM by Danny Fisher
One of the most valuable parts of my education as an engaged Buddhist practitioner has been my study of Pali—the Middle Indo-Aryan language in which the earliest Buddhist texts are preserved. Not being a particularly adept linguist, I resisted the study of any Buddhist language for a very long time. It was not until my first day as a student in the Master of Divinity program at Naropa University that I realized the incredible importance of language study and knew that I had to get over my difficulty with it.
Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 8:50PM 
Photo by Gina KellyThe Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever
Penetrate the true meaning of the Heart Sutra, says Karl Brunnhölzl, and nothing will be the same again. The secret is making it personal.
Fall 2012 Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 8:37PM Emptiness is not something to be afraid of, says Thich Nhat Hanh. The Heart Sutra teaches us that form may be empty of self but it’s full of everything else.
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. We can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.”
Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 8:31PM 
Photo by Aris VrakasIn 1952 composer John Cage shook the music world with his most radical composition to date: 4'33", known unofficially as “the silent piece.” Kay Larson explores its Zen-inspired lessons in her new book, Where the Heart Beats.
Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 8:03PM He was a masterful teacher and calligrapher who touched the hearts and minds of those he met. We mark the tenth anniversary of Kobun Chino Roshi’s tragic death with a selection of his teachings.
The name Kobun means “to extend the way,” to extend culture, language, the word, to extend the dharma—fitting for someone bringing Zen to America. His dharma name was Ho-un Kobun. “Ho” means phoenix, firebird, and “un” is mystery, mystical, cloud. We could imagine the image: a bird flying in the clouds, just a wing-tip, a bit of the tail, fleetingly visible for a moment and then not—it’s so fitting from a student’s perspective. He traveled extensively, teaching in many places, always coming and going. He carried the forms elegantly and formlessly. He was often more than inscrutable, certainly not to be captured or contained by any preconception of what a Zen teacher was. Yet in his presence you felt you encountered someone complete. The teachings below are some traces of his flight. —Shoho Michael Newhall
