Turning the three wheels

We wrap up our week of Buddhist sites with a fun vehicle:

Tricycle

Founded in 1990, Tricycle magazine sports a brisk style for western readers, with snappy writing and a sharp eye on social trends. Much of the content is for subscribers only, but there's also plenty of free Web articles.

One article examines sports spirituality. Another analyzes the recent Religious Landscape Study -- finding, among other things, that most American Buddhists are native born and college educated.

Another writer shudders at politics: "Traditional Buddhist images of hell seem all too familiar in a campaign year. Realms of ice and fire? Sounds like the New Hampshire and Arizona primaries. Demons, hungry ghosts, cursed spirits who hack at one another with iron claws? They're all on Meet the Press."

Nor does Tricycle gloss over Buddhist problems. One writer talks frankly about sexual misconduct even among sangha leaders. Another looks into a clash between Vietnamese Buddhists on how to deal with religious repression there.

Unfortunately, the articles have no print-friendly option. And many of the links to sound and video files don't work.

Navigation can be tricky. There's a mouseover menu, but when the menu options drop down, they often vanish before you can click them. Better to use the site map at the bottom of the homepage.

Tricycle has nice archives on Buddhist beliefs and practices. Especially readable is a short history of the faith. It even tells how Buddhism spread to places like Mongolia, and how it influenced western philosophers.

Woodsy Buddhists

For tonight's Buddhist Web site, we go old school with . . .

Forest Meditation

Tibetan Buddhists may get more media, with their dancing monks and their multicolored sand mandalas -- and, of course, the humble yet flamboyant Dalai Lama. But forest monks, from the ancient Thai Theravada tradition, have their own deep spirituality and supple thought.

Forest Meditation follows a familiar track in telling the story of the Buddha, though it leans heavily on direct quotes from the Pali Canon. But the emphasis seems to be practical teaching rather than tradition. There's lots of help on meditation: chants, breath control, historical background, suggested positions.

The articles can be long -- "Buddhism in a Nutshell" alone is nearly 17,000 words -- but internal hyperlinks mark the 11 chapters. That allows you to read a unit, take time to digest it, then return to where you left off.

Included are various chants and blessings in Pali, stored as mp3 sound files and sometimes text. But don't hop around the site, as you can do with some others. If, for instance, you skip the "Basics" unit, you'll miss definitions of oft-used terms like Dhamma and Vinaya.

Fortunately, footnotes in "Buddhism in a Nutshell" explain those and other concepts. A link to another Theravada site, Access to Insight, is another big help.

Oddly, though, an explanation of Forest Meditation itself -- history, development, its very reason -- is missing. That would have been easy to add, as shown on the Web site of the Abhayagiri Monastery, another Forest Meditation retreat.

Monkish advice

Welcome to the second night of our look at Buddhist Web sites. Fold yourself into your best lotus blossom position and prepare to . . .

Ask a Monk

What puzzles you about Buddhism? The Cloudwater Zendo community in Cleveland, Ohio, wants to answer it.

Practicing both the Ch'an (Zen) and Pure Land varieties, Cloudwater posts some breezy-sounding answers to common issues. The questions cover things like "Buddhism is just an offshoot of Hinduism, isn't it?" and the chuckle-inducing "Buddhism is the tradition that worships the jolly-looking fellow with the big belly, right?"

Even better: You can write your own question in an online form -- and specify how soon you need the answer. The site also has longer discussions based on reader feedback.

Those chains of questions bring out more nuanced teachings, like whether believers should worship Buddha, or whether human relationships help or hurt the road to enlightenment. Also explained are the differences between Pure Land Buddhism, and its Buddha Amitabha, from Jesus and heaven.

The Cloudwater folks explain concepts like Buddha-fields, transferring merit, and the relationship of a Buddha to a bodhisattva. A chart compares and contrasts Ch'an and Pure Land, but it has so many in-house terms, only a disciple would grasp it fully.

One glitch: Ask a Monk says Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and other religions basically teach the same things. Those who read my last column know my opinions on that. When a faith claims special insights, it necessarily creates differences. Choose any religion you want, but choose you must.

Lotus pray

Whoops, a bit late on the promised weeklong series on Buddhist sites. Without further delay, let's look at:

BuddhaNet

Here's a perfect example of what be accomplished with the Internet and one determined person -- in this case, Venerable Pannyavaro of Sydney, Australia. The Theravada monk started in 1993 with an old-school Bulletin Board Service. Now, BuddhaNet is a world-class publisher of text and music.

The site includes chants, hymns, mantras -- even whole albums of Buddhist pop music, both for adults and for children. It has scriptures of several traditions, including Pali, Chinese and Tibetan. A map-linked directory locates Buddhist centers almost anywhere, from Bolivia to Bahrain to Botswana.

A multi-level course deals with the life of the Buddha, as well as karma, reincarnation and meditation. Some content takes pdf, ebook or RealAudio form.

One refreshing article names 27 distinctiveness of Buddhism; for instance, that it acknowledges no supreme being. So many leaders these days pretend that all religions are basically the same.

And don't miss the site's BuddhaZine. It's full of mind-tickling content: computer art, crossword puzzles, cartoons, articles on psychotherapy and Buddhist architecture, photos from Bhutan, and those hand gestures known as mudras. It also has more traditional art, like the thangka of Buddha Shakyamuni above.

This otherwise lavish site does have a hole: an apparent lack of a FAQ file for western readers (yeah, like me). Such a file might deal, for example, with the clash between the western ideal of self-fulfillment and the Buddhist ideal of self-annihilation.

Some sites do address such issues. We'll look at one tomorrow night.