Most Recent. In Arts & Letters – Spirituality.

Arts & Letters – Spirituality

Music, Meditation, Painting—and Dreaming

Phillip Glass  is a composer and performer who lives in New York City. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary classical composers, particularly because of his innovative minimalist style. A member of Tricycle’s Board of Advisors since its first issue, he was chair of its Board of Trustees from 2006 on and is now a chair emeritus.Fredericka Foster is an American painter, cultural activist, and educator, born and...

Buddha Buzz: Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan Stokes Fear for Ancient Buddhist Artifacts and Sites

As the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan this week, chaotic scenes of protests and Afghanis trying to flee the country filled the news amidst questions over the U.S.’s role, what could have been done differently, and what to do now. In a newsletter from Upaya Institute and Zen Center on Tuesday, Roshi Joan Halifax wrote, “Today, as we connect to the suffering of the people in Afghanistan, we are asked to examine our views...

Daniel Burke-The Private Side of Thomas Cleary

The translator saw himself as a spy sneaking ideas across the mind’s borders Thomas Cleary found the professor’s answer unsatisfactory, so he provided his own.  The tall, dignified student cut an interesting figure at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where he earned a juris doctor in 2005. By then in his fifties, Cleary was already an accomplished scholar, having graduated with a doctorate from Harvard in 1975...

Claire Cock-Starkey – A Star Is Born: The history of the asterisk

umerian pictographic writing includes a sign for “star” that looks like a modern asterisk. These early writings from five thousand years ago are the first known depiction of an asterisk; however, it seems unlikely that these pictograms are the forerunner of the symbol we use today. Palaeographers know that Aristarchus of Samothrace (220–143 bc) used an asterisk symbol when editing Homer in the second century bc, because later scholars wrote about him doing so....