January 2023

Lion's Roar

BUDDHISM CULTURE MEDITATION LIFE

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Lion’s Roar
MELVIN MCLEOD Editor-in-Chief ANDREA MILLER Editor ROSS NERVIG Assistant Editor NOEL ALUMIT Associate Editor MARIANA RESTREPO Associate Editor MIHIRI TILLAKARATNE Associate Editor PAMELA AYO YETUNDE Associate Editor MEGUMI YOSHIDA Art Director ANDREW
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More From Lion’s Roar
For sixteen years, Andrea Miller has been my valued friend and colleague. I admire her talent, hard work, dedication to the dharma, and good heart. So I am very pleased to announce that as of this issue, Andrea is the new editor of Lion’s Roar magazi
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You’re With Us On This Journey
WE DON’T HAVE TO look very far to see hurt in the world. As if the underlying uncertainty, anxiety, and trauma in our own lives were not enough, we’re surrounded by countless examples of suffering in the world—climate change, pandemic, war, economic
Lion's Roar5 min read
The Way Of Flowers
SAICHO, THE FOUNDER of Tendai Buddhism in Japan, once said, “True riches are not material things but that which shines light into a dark corner.” As I interpret it, lighting up a corner means using one’s own unique talents and passions to brighten a
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Dharma For A Traumatized World
THIS IS A TIME of global trauma. Collectively, we’re facing a warming planet, pandemics, racial and social injustice, growing authoritarianism, the horror of war, and global instability unlike anything we’ve seen since the end of the Second World War
Lion's Roar4 min read
Cooked With Love
MY FAMILY DOESN’T have any heirloom recipes passed down from generation to generation. I did not learn how to cook from my parents; I learned to cook on my own, mostly out of necessity. I was a young teen when my family immigrated to the United State
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The How Of Happiness
IN OUR HEARTS ARE RESTLESS: The Art of Spiritual Memoir (Oxford University Press), Richard Lischer, Christian pastor and professor emeritus at Duke Divinity School, celebrates individuals who’ve made a profound impact in the genre of spiritual memoir
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Qalvy Grainzvolt
IN 1977, I WAS BORN in an old Manhattan apartment… literally. I was not born in a hospital. My father, a Bronx native, was a public-school teacher. My mother, originally from Japan, worked tirelessly at home raising my brother and me. In a spirituall
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A Sacred Place
Enveloped by darkness, it took me a while to see the light within the void. At first, it was a faint blue line searing the desert horizon. Then it spread across the night sky. Slowly, as the first colors of sunrise cut the sky, another Sahara Desert
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Psychedelic INSIGHT
You enter a beige brick building like all the others on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center’s sprawling campus. Here, in an unremarkable maze of offices, something remarkable is happening. When you reach a third-floor office, there are hints of
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Just A Little
In Zen, we try to understand the spirit of the five precepts rather than just the words. The precepts are guides toward the cessation of suffering, not strict or prescriptive admonitions. They are there to open our eyes, to help us see clearly what c
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Yes, Never, Sometimes?
Intoxication can cause heedlessness, negligence, and danger. JUSTIN LEE surveys the Buddhist traditions that abstain from all intoxicants. Certain Buddhist traditions, chief amongst them the Theravadin school centered in Southeast Asia, have long hel
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Drink In Wisdom
From ancient times alcohol has been used as a component of religious rituals. In some Hindu and Buddhist traditions alcohol is called amrita, “no-death,” the elixir of immortality. In the West, alcohol is sometimes called “the water of life.” Sacred
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What Is Your Phone Doing To You?
Thich Nhat Hanh often discussed a practice he called “mindful consumption” when teaching about “the four nutriments.” These are four ways we consume the outer world to inform, influence, and sustain ourselves: edible food, the food of sense impressio
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The End Of Suffering
I WAS IN THE HELL REALM. I’d been diagnosed with extreme bulimia and my only respite from the struggle was using drugs. I thought the only way out was to take my life, and I had tried three times before the age of eighteen. In my twenties, I was slow
Lion's Roar4 min read
Something Came Undone
ONE DAY I WOKE UP and realized I was vermin. Unlike Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s story, it didn’t happen overnight. My metamorphosis was long, perhaps as long as my life. But one way or another, one day in midlife, I awoke, had a vision, and realized some
Lion's Roar3 min read
The Undefended Heart
ALTHOUGH I HAD BEEN IN RECOVERY from alcohol and other substances for more than seventeen years, I felt I was at a dead end and could not see a way out. I had worked a twelve-step program faithfully for years, but something was missing. I was in a lo
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The Dharma of Fiction
CHARLES JOHNSON on “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” A TRULY GREAT STORY like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” can be compared to an old, old coin. It has traversed continents and civilizations, picking up slight changes along the way, yet still bearing the pa
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One Path
BUDDHISM DIDN’T GET ME SOBER. I’m not even sure if it helped. I needed the twelve steps to make that change. What Buddhism did do was give me a path that then sustained and deepened my recovery over almost four decades. I was practicing Vipassana for
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There She Was
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S NOVEL Mrs. Dalloway follows a single day in the life of a British socialite in 1923. The plot is simple. Mrs. Dalloway buys flowers in a London shop, has a visit from a former suitor, and hosts a party. But the novel isn’t about all
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Safe Haven
I’VE BEEN LOOKING for examples in fiction, whether Buddhist or not, of the three poisons. It’s easy to find great examples of greed/craving and anger/hatred, which are pretty much the staple of fiction. But the poison of delusion, moha—the erroneous
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When Did The War Begin?
THERE’S A MOMENT in reading War and Peace when I say, “Tolstoy! You Buddhist you!” At this point, I’m almost a thousand pages in. Tolstoy’s love of humanity is clear. He understands their frailties and failings, their quotidian concerns. He scorns th
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Not Me, Not Mine
IF THERE’S A WORD that resounds throughout King Lear—one of Shakespeare’s most devastating plays—it’s the “nothing” that Lear’s youngest daughter says to him in the play’s first scene. Lear, King of Britain, is proclaiming his decision to renounce th
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You Are Already A Buddha
My first experiences learning to meditate were with my late father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. He was a revered meditation teacher, but he lived a very simple life, spending most of his time in a small hermitage on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley.
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Just So
Because the World Is Clutteredlike the back of my car, a graveyardof water bottles and wet socks, like my tornado-edthoughts, debris whirling and whirling, splintersand nails and ruined homes—we need that moment Buddha speaks of, the abilityto see th

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