Writing
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Scroll down to see a selection of articles, including those originally published in Tricycle Magazine, Buddhadharma, and Lion’s Roar.
Books by Zuisei
Find Zuisei’s dharma books, Still Running: the Art of Meditation in Motion & Weather Any Storm, at Shambhala Publications. Also available wherever you shop for your books.
Featured Article
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The Eight Worldly Winds
This article originally appeared as a series in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Winter 2024 – Fall 2025.
The Buddha identified eight “worldly winds”—also called the eight conditions, vicissitudes, obsessions, preoccupations,or worldly dharmas—as the tethers that keep us spinning within the wheel of samsara. They are four pairs of opposites: gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain.
The first pair, gain and loss, keeps us chasing what we want and holding tight to keep it. Whether we’re seeking health and wealth or love and longevity, our hope for gain and fear of loss blows us this way and that, like wind whipping saplings in a storm. But, as is also true of wind, the nature of all things is to flow and change. So to work with gain and loss we cultivate first acceptance of the fact that things don’t last, followed by gratitude and appreciation. Instead of focusing on what we lack, we can be thankful for all the many things we still have and are able to enjoy. Just as wind needs a motivating force—temperature, air, pressure—desire has no power on its own. When we feed (read the full article)
“Equanimity is a teaching not only of poise but of grace, a deep knowing that life will not stand still for any of us, and that to rely upon stability is a recipe for agitation and anxiety.”
— Christina Feldman
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*Banner photo by Johnny Briggs
It’s incredibly rare to have been born human, to have encountered the dharma, and to be able to practice it