Lion's Roar

In 1970 (and every year since!) Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind introduced thousands of Americans to the practice and teachings of Zen Buddhism. In celebration of this landmark anniversary, we've joined with San Francisco Zen Ce

I REMEMBER WHEN the pandemic was a novel event, the thing that was happening. My partner and I would urgently flutter around the house. We stocked up on Tylenol, checked our temperatures, traded rumors with the neighbors, and drove across town in sea

I AM A CRONE and was around the last time Black people were feared, and thus brought into white awareness. At times like these, white people, and white institutions, reach out to Black people they barely know or have forgotten about over time. As a c

WHEN HE WAS ASKED recently what will happen after he dies, the Dalai Lama shrugged and said he didn’t know. But he prayed he’d be reborn wherever there is the most suffering. As I sat with this remarkable statement, it occurred to me that this is the

THIS YEAR WE HAVE ALL learned the lesson of impermanence. The plans we thought we were making, the lives we thought we were living—2020 has taught us just how illusory they were. For many of us, jobs and careers have proven to be the most impermanent

AS AN ADOLESCENT MEDICINE pediatrician, one of the most rewarding parts of my job is the privilege of sharing the joy of mindfulness with adolescents. Adolescence is a wonderful time of life, filled with new growth and experiences, and the opportunit

WHAT DOES A TRULY representative American Buddhism look like? What can we learn from listening to Black voices, and other people of color, in the Buddhist community? What do Buddhist teachings have to offer those struggling with injustice and inequal

Franz Alt: Your Holiness, dear friend, fifteen years ago you said to me in an interview: “The twenty-first century could become the happiest and most peaceful one in human history. I hope so for the youth.” Do you still cherish that hope? His Holines

Buddha was born as his mother leaned against a tree for support. He attained enlightenment seated beneath a tree, and passed away as trees stood witness overhead. Therefore, were Buddha to return to our world, he would certainly be connected to the c

PETER COYOTE DOESN’T READ the scripts in advance. He has narrated eight of Ken Burns’ famously epic documentaries, including The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, The Vietnam War, and Country Music. This adds up to dozens of hours of words to impart.

As I hike in Berkeley’s Tilden Park with my friend Lucy, I am reciting a Buddhist verse to myself, its singsong melody following the crunch of our hiking boots and the tap-tap-tap-tap of our walking poles. All things are impermanent.They arise and th

YOU’RE DEAD! IS A BOLD, compositionally complex album that could be described as a personal reflection on the Bardo Thodol, known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This 2014 album by Flying Lotus (born Steven Ellison) serves as a musical g

WE cannot capture a living tradition in words and ideas. How could we? To know it you must enter it. Like life. But we humans are storytellers, artists in time and space. We create worlds with our words and then enter them, often forgetting the sharp

SHIKANTAZA is meditation practice without meditation techniques. Shikan means “just,” “simply,” “solely,” or “single-mindedly.” Taza means “sitting.” So shikantaza is often translated as “just sitting”—and nothing else. There is no contemplation, for

TO say that Zen is an “embodied practice“is to say that Zen can’t be found in words on the page, or in the mind that creates the ideas behind those words. But we have to start somewhere, and words are what we have. When I study the talks in Zen Mind,

THE abridged story of Zen in U.S. can be told in two chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on a handful of pioneers who built the foundations of Zen in the West today. In chapter 2, Zen enjoys a boom in growth and some serious stumbles. ZEN came to the West be

From Moments of Joy: The Poetry of Sister Jina, Chan Dieu Nghiem. © 2020, with permission from Parallax. ■