Arts & Letters – Spirituality

Oscar Wilde once quipped that the two greatest tragedies in life were not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. F. Scott Fitzgerald admired Wilde, recommended his plays, and shared in his idolizing of the brilliant, doomed poet John Keats. In Bright Star, Green Light Oxford scholar Jonathan Bate appreciatively explores the similarities in the life and work of Fitzgerald and Keats. It’s easy to link the...

When novelist Marie Myung-Ok Lee began writing her latest book, The Evening Hero, she didn’t expect the research process to take her to North Korea. The novel follows the story of a middle-aged Korean American, Yungman Kwak, grappling with memories of war in a rapidly changing world, and Lee has been working on it for 18 years. “I’m the kind of writer where once I get an idea, I have to...

Dhondup T. Rekjong tells the story of Ngakpa Kalzang, an exile of Tibet and experienced tantric Buddhist practitioner working as a landscaper on Canada’s Vancouver Island, bridging a life of traditional knowledge and the modern world. Ngakpa Kalzang at Thupten Choling center in Duncan, Canada, 2022. Last summer, I visited Ngakpa Kalzang, an exile of Tibet and experienced practitioner of the Tibetan tantric Buddhism, at his home in Duncan, British...

Artist David Orr’s new exhibition, Radiance + Reflection: Mandalas and Moon marks the first in-person art opening at New York City’s Tibet House since the beginning of the pandemic. The New York-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s exhibit explores “symmetry, themes of interconnection, impermanence, and the way we apply order.”  “Tibetan Buddhism already revels in the visual, which is appealing to any artist,” Orr writes in the exhibit’s catalog, “but the connection for me goes far deeper.” He draws artistic inspiration from Thich Nhat Hahn’s...