While studying for his master’s degree in music performance, Nathan Sheppard’s goal was “to be the next principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic.” But with plans to marry soon after graduation, Sheppard decided that paying off his student loans should be his top priority. He auditioned for the Army band, was accepted, and took a job with full-time pay and benefits. “That’s how I ended up in the Army,” Sheppard says. “My wife and I got married on September 6, 2014, and I shipped to basic training—boot camp—on September 16.” Raised in small-town Tennessee, Sheppard grew up Christian. “The ..read more

Dr. A. T. (Ahangamage Tudor) Ariyaratne, founder of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka—the oldest and arguably the largest Engaged Buddhist organization in the world—died on April 17, 2024, at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. He was 92. Though a devout Buddhist, Dr. Ariyaratne was widely hailed as “the Gandhi of Sri Lanka” for his pioneering peace and humanitarian work. Respected by political, cultural and religious leaders alike, he was accorded a full state funeral on April 20.  According to its website, Sarvodaya (Sanskrit for “the awakening of all”) Shramadana ..read more

Katie Arnold loves to move. Whether she is running, biking, rafting, or hiking, Arnold always feels most tranquil in transit. Her first book, Running Home, explores how ultrarunning (covering distances longer than a marathon) provided solace after the passing of her father. “I was really close to him. He was the creative inspiration in my life,” Arnold explains. “When I was spiritually broken and lost in grief, my body carried me through that healing.” But in 2016, Arnold became physically broken. While navigating the remote Middle Fork of Idaho’s Salmon River, Arnold’s raft got caught on a r ..read more

Línjì Yìxuán (b. ? – d . 866, also romanized as Lin-chi) was a Tang dynasty Mahayana Buddhist who founded the Linji (Rinzai) school of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. His teachings are preserved in the Línjì yǔlù (record of Linji). In this excerpt, famed translator Burton Watson (1925 – 2017) provides a basic explanation of the Mahayana Buddhist notion of karma and a classic example of Linji’s apparent rejection of such ideas. –Frederick M. Ranallo-Higgins Although Chan often characterizes itself as a teaching that is not dependent on the written word but represents a separate transmission outside the ..read more

Tea bowl, Otagaki Rengetsu (aged 85). The poem: “In this world / things that mature well / produce happy thoughts / ripe eggplants are a matter of celebration.” When I moved to Japan, I became enamored of the life and work of the fascinating  Buddhist nun Otagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875). She was a martial artist, go player, poet, calligrapher, painter, and potter. Her life was marred by one tragedy after the other.  By the time she was 42, Rengetsu had suffered the loss of two husbands, all her children (at least four), her five brothers, and her parents. After the death of her second h ..read more

Faith, along with effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, are collectively known as the five spiritual faculties, or the five powers. This framework gives you a sense of where faith is found in the teachings so you can understand its relationship to other things, and also to show that the dharma is alive with all of these lists illuminating the interdependence and the interconnectedness of this path. I like the word “power” to describe these five. When we hear the word “power,” we often think of a great force, possession, control, authority, or power over other people. But there’s ano ..read more

Jack Kerouac’s two most popular books—On the Road and The Dharma Bums—showed people they could live a completely different way of life: a bohemian existence at odds with postwar American consumerism. Both books are about freedom. Both depict a life free from thirty-year mortgages, nine-to-five jobs, conventional relationships, and family responsibilities. They present the liberating idea that you could do whatever you want with your life—what you want to do, not just what you were supposed to do. For many readers, this idea was profound. Yet despite their similarities, the books are quite dif ..read more

Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death. The conversations in “Between-States” explore bardo concepts like acceptance, interconnectedness, and impermanence in relation to children and parents, marriage and friendship, and work and creativity, illuminating the possibilities for discovering new ways of seeing and finding lasting happiness as we travel through life. *** “I hope my last word is a big, loud laugh!” says Sandra Cisneros. “We worry ab ..read more

In 2013, Richard Bryan McDaniel grew bored while recovering from a series of surgeries and decided to start writing about Zen. After having jotted down stories about Zen ancestors in a little bound book, he decided to arrange them in chronological order. “I was doing this solely to entertain myself, because I had nothing else to do,” McDaniel says. His daughter, Madeline Elayne McDaniel—an established author who has published books under the pen name Madeline Elayne—helped McDaniel write a pitch letter, and before long, he had a publisher for his first book, Zen Masters of China: The First St ..read more

Hồ Xuân Hương—her given name means “Spring Essence” or “Spring Perfume”—was born around 1780 at the end of the second Lê dynasty, a period of calamity and social disintegration. Her fame in Vietnam as a poet and cultural figure continues to this day. A concubine, although a high-ranking one, she followed Chinese classical forms in her poetry but preferred to write not in Chinese but in chữ Nôm, “the Southern Characters” that represented Vietnamese speech. And while her prosody followed traditional Chinese classical forms, her poems were anything but conventional. Whether mountain landscap ..read more