Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)
Frederick Ranallo-Higgins
@fmr-h.bsky.social
UCLA-ALC PhD | Senior Editor, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review https://tricycle.org/author/franallohiggins/ buddhism, occult, philosophy, religion, science, language, art, music, and other nonsense 🇺🇸🇰🇷
"One of the beautiful reminders of Buddhism is that we are among a group of people coming together to practice the 2,500-year-old teachings of the Buddha." –Wendy Biddlecombe Agsar #DailyDharma tricycle.org/magazine/med...
Meditation Sickness
A new sourcebook makes the case for taking the dangers of meditation as seriously as its benefits.
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"Feeling and naming bodily sensations, and sustaining attention as they change, offer a direct experience of impermanence in real time." –Beth Robins Roth #DailyDharma tricycle.org/article/budd...
The Dharma of the Nervous System
The Buddha’s teachings and modern trauma healing find common ground in embodied awareness.
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Tibet is being systematically erased. The cause lost its bumper stickers and celebrity champions sometime in the 2000s. Pico Iyer reviews the new Dalai Lama documentary for Tricycle — a film that opens with His Holiness telling you to have no expectations. He's not wrong. Free Link
Pico Iyer: Calm in a World on Fire
In a new documentary, the Dalai Lama offers urgent tips for cultivating clear-sightedness and peace of mind.
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"How do we get beyond the serotonin mind, and beyond the war mind?" Anne Waldman has been asking this question for six decades. At 81, she's not softening it. Tricycle's profile of the poet, dharma artist, and outrider who refuses to look away. #Buddhism Free Link
A Profile of Anne Waldman
At 81, the poet Anne Waldman reflects on Buddhism, art, activism, and the urgent work of keeping the world awake to itself.
tricycle.org
A Sri Lankan court just ruled that a Buddhist monk violated Buddhist principles by leasing temple land to developers who harmed the environment. Great news for conservationists—unless you've seen the elephants at the Esala Perahera 🐘 By Benjamin Schonthal @benschonthalnz.bsky.social Free link
The Elephants in the Courtroom
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled that protecting Buddhism means protecting nature, so what happens when it doesn’t?
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"While everything is ultimately 'empty' of its own unchanging, essential nature, we still need conventional tools to alleviate the many kinds of afflictions plaguing us all." –William S. Waldron #DailyDharma tricycle.org/magazine/con...
William Waldron: The Case for the Conventional
Mahayana Buddhism insists that truth still works, even when it isn’t absolute.
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Summer 2026 is out! I had the privilege of working on several spectacular pieces. This one by Holly Gayley and Somstsobum Khyung on contemporary Tibetan literature draws on a previous study they did on narratives about 'fake lamas'. Read the attached short story by Tsering Dondrup! Free Link
The Shadow of Fake Lamas
How Tibetan writers use fiction to raise awareness about sexual abuse
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Meher McArthur wrote a review of this huge show at LACMA—Realm of the Dharma—and provided some little-known history on their Buddhist collection. The whole time I lived in LA, I had no idea. I knew the collection was good, but not this good. They should do this more often. FREE LINK
Realms of the Dharma
LACMA’s landmark exhibition reveals a collection of Buddhist art as wide-ranging and surprising as the city that holds it.
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One of my duties at Tricycle is a premium newsletter called From The Academy, which briefly looks at a topic through a scholarly lens, providing links and suggested readings. One of the highlights of my mostly non-academic job. After a year, we've started publishing them online. Free Link
From the Academy: Yogacara
Tricycle's premium newsletter explores one of Buddhism's most influential yet least understood schools.
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If you haven't read Sara Ann Swenson's recent book on Buddhist charity in urban Vietnam, you should. Tricycle will publish a review in the Fall issue, and here we present an except. Her book highlights LIVED Buddhism vs Buddhism as a practice, where giving and compassion are everything. Free Link
Have You Eaten Yet?
What a late-night meal distribution in Ho Chi Minh City reveals about Buddhist charity, karma, and the ethics of giving
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"In a rapidly developing and hyper-connected global culture, recognizing that the 'self' is just another mental construct can be transformative, helping cultivate an unbiased, bodhisattva-like compassion." – @fmr-h.bsky.social and Zim Pickens #DailyDharma tricycle.org/article/from...
From the Academy: Yogacara
Tricycle's premium newsletter explores one of Buddhism's most influential yet least understood schools.
tricycle.org
I have been a huge Tarthang Tulku fan and reader since the 80s. One of the true masters who can skillfully deliver the dharma without falling back on it. Robin Caton from Dharma College channels her teacher just as skillfully in this excerpt from her new book 'The Undreamed Self'. Free link
No Borders, No Boundaries
In Tarthang Tulku’s vision of mind, the boundaries we take to be real are conventions that can be seen through.
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A new volume on Meditation Sickness is out from University of Hawaii Press. Features a chapter by me on demonic states from Suramgama sutra. uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/medita...
Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice
Everyone knows that meditation is good for your health and well-being. However, a percentage of people practicing meditation experience psychotic breaks and related adverse mental and physical side…
uhpress.hawaii.edu
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas was a world-renowned thinker on modernity and democracy who helped shape German post-war and post-reunification political discourse. n.pr/3Nptb1g
Acclaimed 20th century philosopher Jürgen Habermas dies at 96
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas was a world-renowned thinker on modernity and democracy who helped shape German post-war and post-reunification political discourse.
n.pr
Bhikkhu Anālayo discusses the earliest layers of the Mahayana prajnaparamita and agama literature and sees more similarities than differences with the Mainstream traditions in a recent interview by Randy Rosenthal for Tricycle @tricyclemag.bsky.social Free Link
Birth of the Mahayana
Bhikkhu Anālayo discusses the continuities between the early mainstream teachings and the developments of Mahayana.
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Jin Park strips karma down to agency — and the argument cuts. Moral bookkeeping makes Buddhism an alibi for injustice. Korean nuns Iryŏp and Daehaeng knew better: the empty self owes no debt to fatalism. What remains is unhedged engagement, against whatever holds you inert. Free Link
Karma as Active Resistance
A philosopher argues that karma is an exercise of agency that fuels Buddhist social engagement.
tricycle.org
An interesting article on transgender Thai renunciant Ajarn Tritrinn and the community growing around her. Her selfless and compassionate devotion in the face of doubters is touching. Free Link
Renunciation Without a Category
Ajarn Tritrinn, a transgender Thai renunciant, is carving a new path for monasticism beyond gender norms.
tricycle.org
Tricycle @tricyclemag.bsky.social is now on Substack. You can read original articles and selections from our archive. I wrote a personal reflection on a Linda Heuman article about the futility of looking for an 'original' Buddhism, since, as even the Buddha tought—everything changes.
Searching for the Basis of Our Faith
A scholar reckons with her desire to find the Buddha’s original words, even as she realizes there's no such thing as the "real Buddhism."
open.substack.com
Tibetan writer Bhuchung Sonam reviews Tsering Döndrup's 'The Red Wind Howels'— banned in China—and recently translated by Christopher Peacock on @columbiaup.bsky.social Sonam provides a moving review for a book that defied limitations and made it ways through the Tibetan diaspora. Free Link
A Banned Tibetan Epic Returns
Suppressed in China, Tsering Döndrup’s novel reaches English readers with an unflinching account of imprisonment, famine, death, and generational trauma.
tricycle.org
How does Buddhism grapple with Santa Claus? Writer Wendy Biddlecombe Agsar explores the delicate balance between truthfulness and holiday magic—asking whether it’s okay to tell a well-intentioned lie in the spirit of Santa.
Right Speech and the Christmas Man
How the mother of a 4.5-year-old balances fantasy, reality, and telling the truth during the most wonderful time of the year.
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Tricycle's editors are reading books on Japanese poetry, transforming our emotions, and koan practice in everyday life. Click the link below to see what books have caught their attention lately.
What We’re Reading
The latest in Buddhist publishing
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This recent article by Bikash Bhattacharya has become my last-minute favorite of 2025. Hajo is a sacred site once central to Bhutanese and Tibetan devotion that now survives mostly in memory as borders, routes, and generations change. Bhattacharya offers voices from this lived tradition. Free Link
The Vanishing Buddhist Pilgrimage of Hajo
A sacred site once central to Bhutanese and Tibetan devotion now survives mostly in memory as borders, routes, and generations change.
tricycle.org
In 1950s New York, Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki’s lectures brought artists like John Cage and Erich Fromm into conversation about Buddhist thought. Learn more about the talks that inspired a generation of Western thinkers in the link below.
Midcentury Zen
Rediscovering D. T. Suzuki’s lectures at Columbia University
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An excellent reminder during holiday times with family members you don't see eye-to-eye with, Emma Varvaloucas talks with John Wood and Monica Guzman about practicing meaningful dialogue. It's not easy when our fundamental moral positions are challenged by family. Free Link
Right Speech, Left Speech
Practicing meaningful dialogue in a time of polarization
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Tommy Tran offers a brief biography of the 7th-century Korean Buddhist monk Wonhyo and his method of harmonizing doctrinal disputes. "No single doctrine was complete, but each revealed a facet of truth," Tran says, "Wonhyo emphasized the merits and limits of every perspective." Free Link
Wonhyo’s Middle Path
Harmonizing truths across Buddhist traditions
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My latest interview with Australian Tendai priest Jikai Tyler Dehn. Jikai is dedicated to translating all the works of Tendai founder Saicho into English. Check him out on YouTube or his website. His dedication to the dharma is inspiring. Free Link tricycle.org/magazine/ten...
At Tricycle, we really appreciate Nikki Mirghafori's sobering clarity on AI and what the future holds. She recently talked to James Shaheen for a premium subscriber special event. Here, she talks with Steve Omohundro for Tricycle on AI, karma, and our robot future. Accessible Link
AI, Karma & Our Robot Future
Two artificial intelligence scientists discuss what's to come.
tricycle.org