Tricycle Talks

Tricycle Talks

Tricycle Talks: Listen to Buddhist teachers, writers, and thinkers on life's big questions. Hosted by James Shaheen, editor in chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the leading Buddhist magazine in the West. Life As It Is: Join James Shaheen with co-host Sharon Salzberg and learn how to bring Buddhist practice into your everyday life. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review creates award-winning editorial, podcasts, events, and video courses. Unlock access to all this Buddhist knowledge by subscribing to the magazine at tricycle.org/join

Episodes

Demystifying Tantra with Richard Payne

February 25, 2026 • 67 mins
Tantric Buddhism is often mischaracterized or misunderstood, both in the academy and in the popular imagination. Scholar Richard Payne has dedicated much of the past twenty years to studying tantric teachings and practices—and to dispelling some of the common misconceptions associated with the tradition. Payne is the Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, as well as an o...
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The Practice of Refuge with Sunita Puri

February 18, 2026 • 59 mins
Sunita Puri is a writer, a palliative medicine physician, and an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. She is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour. She recently wrote an article for the Spring issue of Tricycle called “Seeking Refuge,” where she discusses how she has found refuge in nature in the face of burnout. In this episode of Life As It Is...
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Poet Li-Young Lee on Awe, Adoration, and Turning Toward the Unknown

February 11, 2026 • 59 mins
For poet Li-Young Lee, writing is a deeply spiritual practice. Taking inspiration from Daoist and Christian texts, his poems investigate the paradoxical relationships between silence and sound, stillness and motion, and form and formlessness. He recently published his sixth collection of poetry, The Invention of the Darling, as well as a translation of the Dao De Jing, which he completed with the poet and cosmologist Yun Wang. In ...
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‘To Live the Right Way’ with David Guterson

January 28, 2026 • 48 mins
David Guterson is a writer based in Washington State. His new novel, Evelyn in Transit, follows the interlocking stories of Evelyn and Tsering, a young woman from Indiana and a Buddhist monk from the mountains of Tibet. Their lives come together when Evelyn’s son is revealed to be the seventh reincarnation of a high lama, and Evelyn must decide whether to send her young child to Nepal. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s...
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Into the Long Dark with Francis Weller

January 21, 2026 • 67 mins
Francis Weller is a writer and soul activist who has worked as a psychotherapist for forty years, and he is currently on staff at Commonweal Cancer Help Program. In his most recent book, In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty, he lays out practices for embodying new ways of being so that we can meet the anxieties and unknowns of our time with presence and faith. Weller is also the author of The Wild Edge...
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The Afterlife of Japanese American Wartime Incarceration

January 14, 2026 • 56 mins
Brandon Shimoda is a poet and a professor at Colorado College. His new book, The Afterlife Is Letting Go, examines the ongoing legacies of the US government’s mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Drawing from years of archival research, visits to the ruins of incarceration sites, interviews with survivors and their descendants, and his own family history, the book explores the resonances between forms of op...
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Choosing Kindness with Sarah Ruhl and Sharon Salzberg

December 17, 2025 • 50 mins
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and professor based in New York. She recently published her first children’s book, as did meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. Sarah’s book, The Dreams I’ll Dream Tonight, is a whimsical bedtime story that illustrates the power of choosing where we place our attention, while Sharon’s book, Kind Karl: A Little Crocodile with Big Feelings, follows a young crocodile as he learns to control his temper. ...
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Being a 'Bad' Buddhist with Sharon A. Suh

December 10, 2025 • 54 mins
Sharon A. Suh is a professor of theology and religious studies at Seattle University, and she is currently the president of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women. Her new book, Emergent Dharma, brings together the voices of eleven Asian American feminist Buddhists to present a dynamic vision of Buddhist practice and identity. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down w...
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Sitting in the Fire with Ralph Steele

November 26, 2025 • 39 mins
Ralph Steele is the founder and guiding teacher of Life Transition Meditation Center in Santa Fe, where he teaches somatic meditation and other practices geared toward supporting people through major life changes. Steele grew up on Pawleys Island, where he was raised by his grandparents after his father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. As a teenager he moved with his mother to Japan, where his exposure to martial arts sparked a life...
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Coming Home to Ourselves with Brother Pháp Hữu

November 19, 2025 • 60 mins
Brother Pháp Hữu is a senior teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh’s international community and the abbot of Plum Village in southwest France. In his new book, Calm in the Storm: Zen Ways to Cultivate Stability in an Anxious World, which he co-wrote with Jo Confino, he lays out a compassionate guide for coming home to ourselves and meeting the challenges of our time with greater presence and resilience.     In this episode of Life As It Is,...
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Naturalistic Buddhism with Gil Fronsdal

November 12, 2025 • 44 mins
Gil Fronsdal is a dharma teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California,  and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. He has practiced extensively in the Soto Zen and Theravada Buddhist traditions, and he draws from both traditions in his framing of what he calls naturalistic Buddhism. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Fronsdal to discuss what h...
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Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions with Joseph Goldstein

October 22, 2025 • 70 mins
Joseph Goldstein is a cofounder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. He recently wrote an article called “Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions” that will be published on Tricycle’s website later this month. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Goldstein to discuss why he sees non-clinging as so central across Bud...
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Remembering Joanna Macy with Jess Serrante

October 15, 2025 • 63 mins
Jess Serrante is a climate activist, organizer, and longtime facilitator of the Work That Reconnects, a global movement and community created by the late environmental activist Joanna Macy, who passed away in July. Last year, Jess and Joanna produced a podcast together called We Are the Great Turning that explored Joanna’s teachings on cultivating courage and connection as we face the many crises of our time. In this episode of Li...
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US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze on Translating Loss and Renewal

October 8, 2025 • 58 mins
Arthur Sze is a poet and translator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he was recently named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. To celebrate his appointment, we’re visiting a 2024 Tricycle Talks episode with Sze. Unlike many contemporary American poets, Sze did not attend a traditional MFA program to learn to write poetry. Instead, the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist turned to translation to hone h...
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US Poet Laureate Ada Limón on the Practice of Startlement

September 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of seven books of poetry. Her latest book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, brings together two decades of her work. In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Limón to talk about how poetry can help us decenter ourselves, her daily practice of loving-kindness, ...
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Revisiting the Story of the Buddha’s Life with Donald S. Lopez Jr.

September 17, 2025 • 57 mins
Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan and a longtime Tricycle contributing editor. In his new book, The Buddha: Biography of a Myth, he draws from a variety of sources to trace a single narrative of the Buddha’s life, from his birth through his enlightenment to his passage into nirvana. While a number of scholars have attempted to “...
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Traveling in Bardo with Ann Tashi Slater

September 10, 2025 • 57 mins
In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is a between-state. While the term is usually associated with the passage from death to rebirth, it can also refer to the journey from birth to death—as well as the various transitional states we encounter along the way. According to writer and Tricycle contributing editor Ann Tashi Slater, Tibetan bardo teachings can transform the way we live—and help us find lasting happiness in a world defined by i...
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Ethical Living in Uncertain Times with Stephen Batchelor

August 27, 2025 • 64 mins
Stephen Batchelor is a writer and longtime Tricycle contributing editor based in southwest France. In his new book, Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times, he explores how the Buddha and Socrates can teach us to live a just and dignified life in an unstable, contingent world. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Batchelor to discuss how Socrates and the B...
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Learning to Live Fully with Serious Illness with Susan Bauer-Wu

August 20, 2025 • 55 mins
Living with a serious illness can be an isolating experience, and it can often provoke feelings of anger, anxiety, and fear. As a former oncology nurse, a mindfulness teacher, a clinical researcher, and a retreat facilitator for people living with serious illness, Susan Bauer-Wu has dedicated much of her life to developing practices to help people with serious illness live fully in the face of these challenges. In her book, Leaves ...
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Writing in Exile with Bhuchung D. Sonam

August 13, 2025 • 60 mins
Bhuchung D. Sonam is an exiled Tibetan writer, poet, translator, and publisher currently based in Dharamshala. His press, TibetWrites, has published more than fifty books by contemporary Tibetan writers. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sonam to discuss how writing has helped him navigate life in exile, the importance of centering the stories of ordinary Tibetans, why h...
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