Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Ann Slater
Losing My Dog Broke Me. Japanese Wisdom Helped Me See the Beauty in the Cracks
6 min read On a fall afternoon in Tokyo, I decided to take my 15-year-old Westie, Mac, for a checkup. He had started losing his balance, didn’t hear me calling, was constantly thirsty. If he barked at all, it was in his sleep; I liked to think he was dreaming of chasing foxes in the Scottish Highlands, his ancestral home. I put Mac in my bike basket and rode to the veterinary clinic.
The Bardo of Illness
On a September day when I was in my forties, I lay in a Tokyo hospital, my joints aching and my skin burning hot. The routine of temperature-taking, breakfast, and doctors’ rounds hadn’t started yet, so the room was silent except for the beeping of monitors and an occasional rattling snore from the elderly woman in the next bed. Only a faint glow of daylight penetrated the privacy curtain.
On Self-Belief and Risking Everything
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
On Uncertainty, Midlife, and the Beauty of Boredom
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
On Grace, Melancholy, and Taking Over Our Narratives
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
How to Find Hope, No Matter What Transpires
Sometime during the 1920s, my grandmother was attending a funeral high up on the Tibetan Plateau when, she told me, the dead person attempted to reenter his old body. “We couldn’t see him,” she recalled, “but the high lama there saw that he was trying to bring his body again to life.” The lama urged the deceased to accept that the existence he’d known was over and to move forward, yet still he struggled.
Taking Stock of Who We Are and What It Means to Be Human
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Walking Ourselves Back to Attention
When my Tibetan grandmother died on a winter night in Darjeeling, India, the lamas came to the house and began reading aloud from The Tibetan Book of the Deadto guide her through the bardo, the liminal state between her death and her rebirth. Seated in the altar room next to her body, they chanted from that ancient text, urging her to pay attention to reality: Let not thy mind be distracted.
‘Tis the Season to Open Yourself to New Ways of Seeing
Liminality refers to in-between states that mark transformation. Liminality is all around us — we see it in a flower between bud and blossom, the dawn before the sun breaks over the horizon. We feel it when we travel on a flight from somewhere to somewhere as we journey in a transitional space that offers a chance for unaccustomed vistas, literally and figuratively.
On Attention, Appreciation, and Being Where You Are
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
On the Rituals of My Grandmother‘s Tibetan Buddhist Funeral
Ann Tashi Slater Considers a Window Into Life, Through Death On a winter afternoon in 2004, I landed at a tiny airport north of Calcutta and began the sad journey into the Himalayas for my grandmother’s funeral. Article continues after advertisement The taxi driver sped up the winding road that I’d first traveled over forty years earlier on my mother’s lap, when I was a small girl and visiting Darjeeling with my parents.
On the Rituals of My Grandmother’s Tibetan Buddhist Funeral
How the Firebombing of His Home Changed Josh Shapiro Six months after an arsonist firebombed the Pennsylvania governor’s residence on Passover, Gov. Josh Shapiro was preparing to welcome guests back for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. As staff members assembled the buffet — roasted salmon, pumpkin cheesecake, elaborate squash dishes — in the state …
The Day My Dog Died, I Discovered a New Kind of Heartbreak. Japan’s Shitsuren Kyuuka Helped Me Heal.
On a fall afternoon in Tokyo, I decided to take my 15-year-old Westie, Mac, for a checkup. He had started losing his balance, didn’t hear me calling, was constantly thirsty. If he barked at all, it was in his sleep; I liked to think he was dreaming of chasing foxes in the Scottish Highlands, his ancestral home. I put Mac in my bike basket and rode to the veterinary clinic.
Ancient Tibetan Wisdom for Life’s Constant Changes
Below, Ann Tashi Slater shares five key insights from her new book, Traveling in Bardo: The Art of Living in an Impermanent World. Ann has published fiction, essays, and interviews in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Guernica, and Granta, among others, as well as in The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays and American Dragons (HarperCollins).
Finding Freedom in the Flow of Life
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Practicing Death to Live More Fully
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 impermanence.
Practicing Death to Live More Fully
If You Want to Be Emotionally Intelligent, You Need to Start Thinking Differently About This 1 Word Having a strategy helps you balance emotions with rational thought, and long-term thinking with short term actions. I have a very good and wise friend named Alex. He’s a man of integrity, a shrewd businessman, and an excellent father—three things that I think are hard to come by on their own, let …
Traveling in Bardo
Tricycle is pleased to offer the Tricycle Talks podcast for free. If you would like to support this offering, please consider donating. Thank you! 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.
On Not-Knowing and Making This Place Beautiful
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Anderson Cooper on Grief and Learning to Feel Again
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Leaning into Change and Trusting the World
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Appreciating Life and Creating a Life Worth Appreciating
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Moving Toward Peace, Truth, and Beauty
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Why Change Shouldn’t Surprise Us
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
The Painful Beauty of Being Alive
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Sylvia Boorstein On the Bardos of Old Age
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Sylvia Boorstein
What does it mean to see the world as illusory? One could argue the trajectory of the path is to bring appearance in harmony with reality.
Living Between the Known and the Unknown
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Finding a House of Your Own
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Amitava Kumar On Bearing Witness
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
On Love, Loss, and Feeling at Home in the World
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Spring 2024 Archives
The Wisdom of Equanimity in Global Crisis In this talk, Lama Karma presents equanimity as a facet of primordial wisdom, and the basis for an authentic response to the challenges we face both personally and as a global community.
On Grief, Willpower, and Finding Happiness
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
David James Duncan on Searching for Meaning and Solving a Koan of Loss
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Saying Yes to Life
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Author Andrew Sean Greer on Creating Joy
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Dani Shapiro: Impermanence and The Present Moment
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Storytelling, Death, and Putting Flesh Back on Bones
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
The Funny Thing About Death
In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Melissa Febos On Living Authentically
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Finding Your Own Narrative
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Finding Your Own Narrative
1 hour ago The RESTRICT Act would empower the secretary of commerce to ban apps that pose a risk to US national security. A TikTok ban is closer than it’s ever been following the Tuesday introduction of a bill that would make it easier for the Biden administration to restrict access to the popular video …
David Sedaris on Embracing What You Have
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Coffee, with a Side of Deadline Hectoring
Kawai is an affable man in his fifties who used to work in advertising. He wore Birkenstocks, jeans, a shirt patterned with goldfish, and a blue mask. He handed the college student a “terms of use” intake form. The café has a lot of rules, posted on the windows and on laminated cards at each of its nine seats: you must state your target upon arrival; the manager will check your progress every hour; you can’t leave until you’ve met your goal; alcohol should be consumed only after you’re done.
On Writing Practice and The Bardo
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Every Ending Is a Beginning
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Writer Maud Newton on Ancestors, Bardo, and Connecting to the Past
Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death.
Leaving the Palace
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Prince Siddhartha Gautama slipped out of his father’s palace in the ancient Indian capital of Kapilavastu. Twenty-nine years old and dissatisfied with his pleasure-seeking existence, he wanted to find the deeper meaning of life. He traveled the roads of India, living as an ascetic and studying with renowned spiritual teachers. After six years, he experienced an awakening and became the Buddha.
International Women’s Day: Break the Bias
Women grow much of the world’s food, often on small scale farms and often to feed our own local communities, but too often the word farmer is associated with men. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is Break the Bias. Under this theme we are all asked to imagine and work towards a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination. We are asked to come together to create a diverse, equitable and inclusive world where difference is valued and celebrated.
Journée internationale de la femme : brisez les préjugés
Les femmes produisent la plupart de la nourriture au monde, souvent sur de petites fermes et souvent pour nourrir nos propres communautés locales, mais trop souvent le mot fermier est associé aux hommes. Le thème de la Journée internationale de la femme est Éliminer le préjugé. Sous l’égide de ce thème, on nous demande à tous et toutes d’imaginer et de travailler pour un monde libre de préjugés, de stéréotypes et de discriminations.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Ann
Contact Ann, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack