We told you last year about Planting Seeds, a documentary produced by Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community and the group at Peace is the Way films to teach children about mindfulness. The film uses animation, songs, stories and engaging activities that children, parents and teachers can use. The film is currently in post-production, and the [...]
Zen teacher John Tarrant, along with Polly Young-Eisendrath and Anyen Rinpoche, will be leading”Getting Off the Emotional Rollercoaster,” this summer’s weekend program co-presented by the Shambhala Sun Foundation at Omega Institute. These are wonderful teachers and so we’re sharing pieces from each of them here on SunSpace. For example, here’s a helpful article by John [...]
Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma readers are likely familiar with Ruth Ozeki — for example, a look at her writing process, and its interactions with her Zen practice, can be seen in “Confessions of a Zen Novelist,” in the current, Spring Buddhadharma magazine. The acclaimed Ozeki has a new novel out, too: A Tale for the [...]
If you’ve read our publisher Jim Gimian’s editorial in our May magazine, you might have noticed something a little odd about it. (That Jim calls himself an “Achiever” in the very first sentence may well have tipped you off.) The editorial is loaded with references to The Big Lebowski, and it’s not just because Jim’s [...]
There are many reasons to drink tea — to relax, to wake up, and, as an increasing body of research suggests, for its many health benefits. Drinking tea can burn calories and prevent heart disease and some types of cancer, according to this recent Washington Post article, and that’s helping increase its popularity. But tea [...]
Thich Nhat Hanh is best known as a Buddhist teacher, but his skills as an artist were on display this weekend in Bangkok. An exhibit of his calligraphy is on display there this month, and he gave a demonstration of his artistic process, mixing tea with Chinese ink and using a brush to create circles [...]
What a good idea: SPIN magazine has created an in-depth list of the The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960′s. It’s quite smart, and in one fell swoop dismantles the idea (one that a surprising amount of people seem to subscribe to) that all music of that decade was made of samey-same flower-power kind [...]
Zen priests who want to be stylish (and stylish people who want to look like Zen priests) need look no further than Bon, a Hiroshima-based fashion house. According to their website, Bon’s goal is to “create a casual style based on the priest aesthetic.” Using input from priests about the clothes they’d like to wear, [...]
Is Wolverine a Buddhist? Well, that may be pushing things, but as Jeffrey Kripal’s book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal says, “Wolverine spent some time in Japan as a boy, speaks fluent Japanese, and practices Zazen.” (He also, as Kripal adds, has practiced tai chi.) And now that he’s got [...]
March 20, 2013 – 10:50 am
Happy Spring, everyone! As a way to welcome the season, we re-present “The Spring Prayer,” the debut Shambhala SunSpace post by Shozan Jack Haubner — who has contributed some various pieces to our magazine, including his uproarious “The Shitty Monk” in our September 2009 issue. Shozan is also the author of a new book called [...]
March 17, 2013 – 12:10 pm
Featured on the ShambhalaSun.com homepage today is “Annie Mirror Heart,” a chapter from an unfinished novel by Maura O’Halloran. O’Halloran was a young Irish-American woman who took to Zen practice (and how!), as famously recounted in her journals, posthumously published as the book Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Life and Letters of an Irish Zen [...]
If you guessed California, you guessed right. You may recall our recent reporting on San Francisco Zen Center, one of American Buddhism’s most important communities, as it celebrates its fiftieth year. (Click here to read that article, “Always Beginner’s Mind,” by Colleen Morton Busch.) Likewise, the San Francisco Chronicle has now taken a look at [...]
Every year since 1994, Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers have traveled to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a Bearing Witness Retreat, where they spend a week sitting by the train tracks in the death camp, meditating and reciting the names of people who died there. Since other teachers help run the program, Glassman says, he doesn’t have [...]
An ancient set of Buddhist slogans offers us six powerful techniques to transform life’s difficulties into awakening and benefit, and in the March 2013 Shambhala Sun magazine, Zen teacher Norman Fischer guides us through them. Don’t have the magazine yet? Click here to read the introduction to Fischer’s article and his teaching on the first [...]
Natalie Goldberg’s new book is called The True Secret of Writing, but we’re not going to like the secret, she warns in this new Huffington Post interview. “Basically, the most raw, deep truth is shut up and write,” she says. “There’s no such thing as a writer’s block. If you’re having trouble writing, well, pick [...]
