Blog

A daily quote, and the occasional longer thought.

  • Keep the Mystery

    When you add an analysis to something, you remove the mystery of it. And it is in the mystery that we can best figure things out, rather than having things figured out at the onset.

    Norma Wong, “Reevaluating the Job of Our Generation”, Tricycle

  • Give Attention to Grief

    Grief will return you to your most authentic life if you let it, if you give it your full attention.

    Roy Remer, “Approaching Grief”, Tricycle

  • Take a Break

    Rest awhile and everything will be fine. We simply need to take a short break. Being buddha means taking a short break from being a human. Being buddha doesn’t mean working your way up as a human.

    Kodo Sawaki Roshi, “To You”, Tricycle

  • Nothing Is Wasted

    Nothing is wasted because nothing remains unchanged.

    Frank Yau, “Five Days with the Mandala at Oxo”, Tricycle

  • A Perfectly Realized Moment

    Buddhism teaches us to be present in the present world. And in this world, the experience of one perfectly realized moment makes an entire life preciously worth living.

    Dick Allen, “A Buddhist’s Call for a Middle Way in Politics”, Tricycle

  • Be Kind to Your Mind

    When you treat your mind with kindfulness, your mind does not want to wander off anywhere. It likes your company. You hang out together, chilling out, for far longer than you ever expected.

    Ajahn Brahm, “You Are a Control Freak”, Tricycle

  • Navigating Contexts

    To navigate a multiplicity of contexts with a kind of multilingual fluency is consistent with a Buddhist outlook and with Buddhist values like compassion, sympathetic joy, dependent origination, and nonattachment to views.

    Linda Heuman, “A New Way Forward”, Tricycle

  • The Interconnected Universe

    Just as we can’t fully blame others, or even ourselves, we also can’t take full credit for our achievements. If we look deeply, we’ll see that they, too, are the result of the entire interconnected universe.

    Santiago Santai Jiménez, “Interconnectedness and the Freedom of Not Blaming”, Tricycle

  • What Is Love?

    Love is not always instant recognition. Sometimes love is rebuilding. Sometimes love is returning to each other after separation, beginning again.

    Christopher Rivas, “I Was Born of Immense Strength and Fearlessness”, Tricycle

  • Expanding Our Being and Knowing

    If we look more closely at our notions, we may find ourselves able to expand the space of our being and knowing.

    Robin Caton, “No Borders, No Boundaries”, Tricycle

  • Gratitude for Earth

    By acknowledging our dependence on dear Earth, and by connecting into gratitude for her amazing gifts, we will naturally move in the direction of living more lightly on her.

    Satya Robyn, “A Fourth Refuge: Namo Bhumyai”, Tricycle

  • Not Helpless

    Habits are not intrinsic entities, and we are not helpless.

    Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, “Deconstructing Habits”, Tricycle

  • Speaking Wisely

    When we find our voice, right speech leads to right action. We all have something useful to say, if only we have the wisdom to know how and when to say it.

    David Ryushin Bodney, “Free Speech and Right Speech”, Tricycle

  • Stop Asking for Meaning

    The pursuit of a watertight meaning for life tends to generate more anxiety than it resolves. And the moments that feel most like being alive—really alive, present, and unguarded—are usually the ones where we’ve stopped asking.

    Josh Korda, “What’s the Point?”, Tricycle

  • Commit to Peacemaking

    The global task of peacemaking, reconciliation, mutual recognition, and justice is an unending process that takes boundless patience, deep listening, and dropping preconceptions. But isn’t that what we commit to with our great bodhisattva vows?

    Sensei Katherine Senshin Griffith, “Our Separated Soul”, Tricycle

  • Zen Is Culture

    Zen is not content you can learn and then know; it’s a way of being together that must be transmitted like culture.

    Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi, “The Living Form of Zen”, Tricycle

  • The Greatness of Our Influence

    The Buddha taught that we are unable to calculate the impact of a small act of service with our constrained understanding of time. We do what we can, anticipating results we can observe immediately, without seeing how great our influence can be.

    Jet Li, “In Search of Zero”, Tricycle

  • Life Is a Ritual

    Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. When things are properly understood, one’s whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony.

    Pema Chödrön, “Not Preferring Samsara or Nirvana”, Tricycle

  • Overcoming Separation

    We all have the perception of separateness, which is natural. We also have the capacity to realize who we are beyond that separation.

    Tara Brach, “Breaking the Trance”, Tricycle

  • Don’t Waste This Life

    The chance to practice the dharma may not come again. This is why the preciousness of human birth is the first and most important point. We mustn’t waste this life and die with regrets.

    Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, “Turning Our Thoughts to the Dharma”, Tricycle