Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Sorry to miss last Friday – Computer not working.

This week - quotes come from a purely fascinating Helen Tworkov, Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America, St. Martin’s, 2024.
     A reason this book is so meaningful to me is I’m a long time student of Taoism/Buddhism. AND Helen Tworkov writes of history I’ve lived through. She’s personal and never boring especially of those terrible times of the scandals of various schools of Buddhism. I had a friend who died during that time of misbehaving.

“No other magazine [Tricycle: The Buddhist Review founded 1991 by Helen Tworkov] suggested that our very own minds were the source of suffering and the key to liberation; or offered practices as well as classical and contemporary material to work with the mind; or suggested that our minds are the only dependable source of refuge and contentment. In a relentlessly capitalist economy dependent on the excitation of greed and desire, nothing was more heretical than the claim that the material world would never provide reliable and lasting happiness.”

“What sustained me throughout my years at Tricycle was the mission, which never, ever lost its appeal. I had no evangelical instincts and couldn’t care less if someone became a Buddhist or not. I definitely enjoyed the entertaining arguments about enlightenment, but for America’s first newsstand publication it was not necessary to double down on those experiences that both primed and affirmed what the Buddha called this unshakable deliverance of mind. Whatever doubts I had about myself, my abilities, my choices, my understanding, I never had any doubt about the benefits of introducing to a society gripped by materialism the radical idea that lasting happiness can never by attained by having more and more and more—money, cars, clothes, houses, stuff; that the mind is the source of suffering and the source of liberation; and that our daily lives can benefit from the Buddha’s three foundational building blocks: investigating the reality of the so-called self: the suffering generated by mistaking permanence for impermanence; and misperceiving independence where none can be found. To participate in this dissemination was deeply moving, very rewarding, and I had confidence in my own integrity. I made many mistakes but still trusted my own moral compass.”

• Helen Tworkov, “Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America”, St. Martin’s, 2024, pp 263-4

         Thank You for reading, JoAnnLordahl.com    
  

  [My apologies: Reading, Writing currently consumes most of my dwindling energy