James Shaheen

In April 2026, New York City’s High Line unveiled its newest installation: a twenty-seven-foot-tall sandstone Buddha by the Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Titled The Light That Shines Through the Universe, the sculpture takes inspiration from the colossal 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001; in fact, the brass hands suspended in front of the sandstone body were cast from ballistic shell casings sourced from Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan.

In a recent podcast episode of Tricycle Talks, I spoke with the scholar Maria Heim about her latest book, How to Feel: An Ancient Guide to Minding Our Emotions. It’s a collection of her translations of and commentary on the Pali teachings on vedana, or “feeling tone”—pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensation.

Toward the end of his life, my dad struggled with dementia. One of the last times I spoke with him was by phone. I asked how he was doing, and he said he was pressed for time: “I can’t talk right now, we have a lot of guests here.” In the background, I heard his wife admonish him: “No, Al, you’re hallucinating.” Embarrassed, he said, in an expression of his own internal logic, “Oh, they aren’t people.