Philip Ryan
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Articles by Philip Ryan
The Buddha’s Enduring Audience
The path to Vulture’s Peak is broad and the slope is gentle, but the way is not easy. It winds along the hill of Gijjhakuta, one of a series of ridges that enclosed the ancient city of Rajagriha (now Rajgir) like the ramparts of a fortress. Fringed by dry brush and broken rocks, the path is paved and even, but is largely unshaded and heats up rapidly as the sun rises.
Dementia and the Sense of Self
Tricycle is pleased to offer the Tricycle Talks podcast for free. If you would like to support this offering, please consider donating. Thank you! Philip Ryan is Tricycle’s executive editor, and he has worked at Tricycle on and off for the past thirty years. In the Spring issue of Tricycle, he wrote an article, “Old Friend,” about his father’s dementia diagnosis and the questions it has raised about memory, impermanence, and identity.
Meet a Teacher: Rev. Eko Noble
While attending an art history class at a Japanese university during her senior year abroad in 1980, Rev. Eko Noble—then Susan Noble—was very taken with mandala images of Shingon Buddhism, a Japanese Vajrayana school founded by Kukai, posthumously known as Kobo Daishi (774–835 CE). She asked her professor how to study Shingon more closely. He told her, “They’ll never let you in. You have to go study Zen.” She went to a Soto Zen temple and learned to sit zazen but didn’t give up on Shingon.
Old Friend
“Just yesterday while walking alone, I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves, and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate, suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.” -Thich Nhat Hanh Every time I saw my father he was a different person. He lived just three hours away in a small house near the beach, but I hadn’t seen him since May, so at the end of the summer I took my two sons to visit him.
Awakening with an Algorithm
Jundo Cohen founded Treeleaf Zendo, an inclusive all-digital practice space in the Soto Zen tradition, in 2006. His impetus was meeting older practitioners who were not able to travel to a Zen center and parents with small children or elders to care for who still wanted to practice in the company of others.
Meet a Teacher: Ayya Soma
For many Westerners, grappling with the concept of rebirth is an obstacle to Buddhist practice, but for the Italian-born monastic Ayya Soma, it had the opposite effect.
The Practice of Council
Jared Seide is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Beyond Us & Them, which aims to use mindfulness practices, compassion-based communication exercises, and training in self-awareness, resilience, and self-regulation to help heal divisions between disparate communities. Tricycle’s executive editor, Phil Ryan, recently spoke with Seide about the group’s mission and the manifold benefits of council. What does Beyond Us & Them do, and how did it come about?
Breathing Light
When American artist Joe Ramirez visited the Tricycle offices in May 2024, he came slinging a messenger bag across his shoulder bearing several items related to his most recent project, a sort of magnum opus of his life as an artist thus far. The contents of the bag included an assortment of prints, a few booklets, a MacBook Air, and a carefully protected golden disc, delicately wrapped in black felt cloth.
On Meditation and Voice Acting
Few voice actors have as decorated a résumé as Edoardo Ballerini. With early live roles on The Sopranos and Law & Order, the Italian-American actor eventually made his way into the world of audiobook publishing in 2007, when he recorded his first book, Machiavelli’s The Prince, as a favor for a friend who was starting a new studio. Since then, Ballerini has won multiple awards for his silky narration skills, including the Audio Publishers Association’s Best Male Narrator Audie Award in 2013.
Meet a Teacher: Ginny Jiko Whitelaw
When she was 13, Ginny Whitelaw wrote a letter to NASA asking how she could become an astronaut. What should she study? Which courses should she take? NASA wrote back with detailed instructions that Whitelaw followed to a T. She received degrees in physics and biophysics and ended up working at NASA, but not going into space. While she was studying physics, she began practicing dharma. “I started taking night classes,” Whitelaw said.
Enso Village Zen Retirement Community
Zesho Susan O’Connell is a senior Zen teacher with San Francisco Zen Center and is currently president of Zen-Inspired Senior Living, a division of the San Francisco Zen Center. She has served as director of development, vice president, and president of San Francisco Zen Center, among other senior positions. She began Zen practice in 1987, became a resident of Zen Center in 1995, and received priest ordination from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1999 and dharma transmission in 2016.
“Our System Isn’t Restorative”
Dan Troyak is Australia’s first full-time Buddhist prison chaplain. He recently opened a retreat center called Yulo Kopa in New South Wales, north of Sydney. He recently spoke with Tricycle about his prison chaplaincy and his own dharma practice. Dan last spoke with Tricycle in 2022. He can be found online at BuddhistCounselling.net Tell me about Australia’s prison system. We have a very similar structure to that of the United States.
The Presbyterian Church Calendar
We do not celebrate church “seasons” is they often ask us to think of the Christian life as something we “do” instead of what Christ has done. Further, they cause us to think as if Christ has not already done anything.
The Tree and the Tooth
We can’t drink the water, but we can breathe the air. Breathing in short, we know we are breathing in short. Breathing out short, we feel like we’re hyperventilating, because we’re wearing masks. We are purifying, sanitizing, and sterilizing. We drink bottled water, and even brush our teeth with it, but here in Sri Lanka, we are the foreign body, the invasive species threatening to throw the ecosystem out of balance.
Review: Wheel of Time
Prime Video recently released the second season of Wheel of Time, a television series based on the vast fantasy world of Robert Jordan. The first season covers the first book in the series but also pulls in aspects from later books. Rebirth is an important component of the show. Characters make frequent, even cynical references to the cycle of death and rebirth, while the book mentions the topic distantly and reverently.
Review: 'Lord of Light'
The action of Roger Zelazny’sHugo Award-winning 1967 novel Lord of Light may be familiar to Buddhist readers—the rise of Buddhism in a Vedic or Hindu context—but the setting certainly is not. The book depicts the newly awakened Buddha on an alien world fighting against gods named Vishnu, Mara, Brahma, and Kali. The fight is not metaphorical, it’s a real battle in which the Buddha leads an army of zombies and demons in an effort to destroy “Heaven,” the Olympus-like home of the gods.
Himalayan Art Resources Launches New Art Book Reviews Series
Jeff Watt, director of the website and virtual museum Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) and founding curator of the Rubin Museum of Art, is better known for explaining paintings and sculptures rather than books. But in a new video series launched in October, Watt is starting to review books on art of the Himalayas and Tibet from a library that numbers in the hundreds (if not thousands).
Behind the Scenes of "Precious Guru"
Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche (“Precious Guru”), has been revered for centuries in the Himalayan regions as the second Buddha. Based on research into ancient Buddhist manuscripts, the documentary film Precious Guru: Journey into the Wild Heart of the Second Buddha traces the spiritual life and legacy of this eighth-century tantric master—and relates some of the wild adventures he is said to have gone on.
C# Function to Calculate the Australian State from a Postcode
Many web forms and other systems ask for the postcode as well as the State. In Australia, it is a simple relationship and does not currently require a complex lookup table, since each State or Territory has a fixed numeric range of postcodes. By executing an IF-ELSE-ELSE-ELSE... one can easily determine the State. It also deals with the fact that most web forms will have data entered as strings, and attempts to parse it, or defaults to one of the States.
Remembering Buddhist Translator Thomas Cleary
Trike Daily NewsObituaries The prolific translator of Buddhist and Asian texts died on June 20, 2021. By Philip Ryan Jun 29, 2021 Thomas Cleary | Image courtesy Shambhala Publications Thomas Cleary, the prolific translator of Buddhist and Asian texts, died on June 20, 2021. His translations from Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Japanese, and more have contributed greatly to the understanding of Asian classics by English readers.
How to get business travelers back on the road
There are two sides to the business travel incentive coin: incentives and rewards. On the incentive side, people need a reason to travel. That has taken several forms, such as conferences and events, sales calls, on-site consulting and internal team meetings. Those factors were enough to fuel the lucrative business travel market, which helped support the entire economic model for hotels, airlines and rental cars. Download the full What the Future: Vacation issue.
| Earth Optimism Summit
Home / Schedule / Climate Change and Coastal Cities Climate Change and Coastal Cities April 23, 2020 | 2:55 p.m. - 3:35 p.m. Political and business leaders join scientists in a discussion of how we are restoring and building resiliency and sustainability into our port cities, where most of our people live and the majority of our economy is based.
Innovation Must Be Measurable to Be Valuable [VIDEO]
Innovation Must Be Measurable to Be Valuable [VIDEO] The word “innovation” get thrown around a lot in banking these days (ah-hem!), but Lara Druyan, managing director, head of innovation, west coast, for the Royal Bank of Canada warned that without metrics, it is easy for innovation efforts to get “squishy.” Druyan described the metrics that helped give structure to innovation efforts.
Bank (Finally) Offers a Better Way to Pay Down Student Debt
Bank (Finally) Offers a Better Way to Pay Down Student Debt It’s hard to get millennials to open bank accounts. What do they need bank accounts for with all the great prepaid cards and other options out there? Boston-based First Trade Union Bank, already known for working with LevelUp on its payments app, annunced today that it is partnering with SmarterBucks to produce a debit card that helps pay down student loans. That’s a rewards program millennials can get behind.
Big banks line up against small institutions in war for faster payments
Consumers increasingly demand faster, easier ways of paying bills and each other. While many other countries' banking systems have accommodated this demand, the U.S. lags. A Federal Reserve effort may be ripe in a couple of years and be cheaper for smaller banks and credit unions. A rival system run by large bank owners is already operating, but could cost these institutions more to provide.
Big Banks Line Up Against Small Institutions in War for Faster Payments
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE! Both consumers and businesses want payments to be faster and simpler — witness on the consumer side the boom in the use of Zelle, Venmo and other services. The Federal Reserve has announced plans for its own faster payments initiative. The nation’s largest banks, hard at work on a faster payments scheme of their own, aren’t happy about the proposed FedNow.
Consolidation Continues Among Legacy Tech Vendors
2019 has already seen many legacy players swallow smaller rivals Earlier this year the core vendors completed major acquisitions of payments platforms, with Fiserv buying First Data and FIS following that with the acquisition of Worldpay. At the time, CCG Catalyst and other industry experts predicted more of the same, and soon.
Amazon Reboots Its Lending Efforts
The common perception of Amazon is the company can do no wrong and moves from victory to victory, but the e-commerce giant has several notable failures in its recent history. Amazon Restaurants, the company’s food delivery service, was launched in Seattle in 2015 and shut down this Monday, June 24. According to analysts, Amazon simply came to the market too late and could not scale up quickly enough. But Uber Eats was also late to the market.
Facebook Announces Cryptocurrency Libra and Ambitions to Get into Lending
An early look at the Libra experience, courtesy of Facebook Facebook today unveiled its long-awaited cryptocurrency, named Libra, and announced its network of partners. The list includes important names from the payments space, such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe; the rideshare companies Uber and Lyft; several important venture capital groups, including Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Thrive Capital and Ribbit Capital; and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase – but no banks.
What Does Finn's Closure Mean for the Future of Digital Banks?
JPMorgan Chase announced yesterday in communications to account holders that it was closing its digital-only account Finn, launched about a year ago, with its testing phase taking place in the St. Louis market. Finn, first announced in October 2017, launched to great fanfare and widespread media coverage, but over its short lifetime the bank never disclosed user numbers and the service apparently failed to gain traction.
Fintech Is Crucial to the Future of Banking, Regulators Agree
The nation’s top regulators agree that fintech startups will play a major role in the future of banking, according the heads of the FDIC, OCC, and Treasury Department. Speaking separately, Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury; Jelena McWilliams, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; and Joseph Otting, Comptroller of the Currency, all spoke of a commitment to helping fintech startups work in banks in order to elevate the industry and better serve customers.
Fintech Funding Reached New Heights in 2018, But Where Are the Partnerships with Banks?
Fintech startups soared to new heights of venture capital funding in 2018, and 2019 looks to be a strong year for fundraising as well. The money largely went to established startups rather than untested players, and several unicorns were created, including the data aggregation platform Plaid and the U.K. challenger bank Monzo.
Catch the Early Bird Rate for Bank Innovation Ignite Before It Flies Away!
Catch the Early Bird Rate for Bank Innovation Ignite Before It Flies Away! Interested in joining us for Bank Innovation Ignite 2019 on March 11-12 at the Hyatt Olive 8, Seattle? You’d better hurry! Early registration ends this Friday, February 1 at 11:59 PM.
Fintech Unfiltered: Pagaya's CEO Looks at the State of Asset Management in 2019
Fintech Unfiltered: Pagaya’s CEO Looks at the State of Asset Management in 2019 The tide is turning, says Pagaya CEO Gal Krubiner. The idea that investors need to look their asset managers in the eye is going away, just as visits to the bank branch are on the decline. This will happen in asset management, Krubiner says, because the proof will be in the returns. Pagaya uses data science ...Read More
What 2019 Holds for Bank-Fintech Partnerships
What 2019 Holds for Bank-Fintech Partnerships © Can Stock Photo / mikdam There are startups that want to destroy banks, and startups that want banks to buy their software. Luckily for the banks, there are many more of the latter than the former. Ben Savage, partner at the Los Angeles-based Clocktower Technology Ventures, told Bank Innovation that the flourishing fintech ecosystem holds both risks and opportunities for banks, ...Read More
How Does Ally Handle Trolls on Its Social Media Posts?
Ally Financial Inc. has a specific strategy for dealing with inappropriate comments on its social media channels -- do nothing. This may seem unusual for a financial institution that must maintain a high standard of trust and not have its image sullied by associations with unsavory viewpoints. But Chief Marketing Officer Andrea Brimmer said that Ally's ...Read More
JPMorgan Chase's Finn Ads Are Online Because Its Target Customers Are Online
JPMorgan Chase released a new online ad for its digital bank Finn on Wednesday. The spot focuses on Finn's auto-saving feature, showing an aspiring photographer who is saving for a new camera. Finn is a digital bank account offered by JPMorgan as part of a strategy to attract new customers without the expense of supporting branches ...Read More
Wells Fargo Plans to Update Customers' In-App Payment Experience in 2019
Wells Fargo Plans to Update Customers’ In-App Payment Experience in 2019 © Can Stock Photo / bloomua Wells Fargo & Company plans to reconfigure its mobile and payments experience in 2019. Originally announced in May 2018, "Pay with Wells Fargo" will bring together the bank's various payments points in its mobile app and gather them in one spot. It was teased again this week at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services conference in ...Read More
Urjanet Uses Utility Data to Expand Access to Credit
Urjanet is using utility data to help underwrite loans and widen access to financial services — and it has more utility data than anyone else. The company started in the energy and sustainability space in 2010. (“Urja” means energy.) It now has an increased focus on data analysis tools and digital transformation and has close ties with the National Science Foundation and Georgia Tech.
Standard Bank's Ian Putter to Discuss Blockchain at Bank Innovation Ignite
Ian Putter, head of unified finance development & innovation at Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, will join Bank Innovation Ignite 2019 in Seattle in March 2019 to discuss the bank’s work in blockchain. The event will take place March 11-12 at Seattle’s Hyatt Olive 8 Hotel. You can join the event by registering here. Standard Bank is a partner of Bank Innovation’s sister accelerator, INV Fintech.
Q2's Acquisition of Gro Came Through an Investor Introduction
Q2’s Acquisition of Gro Came Through an Investor Introduction The digital banking software provider Q2 Holdings announced yesterday it had acquired Atlanta-based digital sales platform Gro Solutions. This acquisition, the second of the year for Austin, Texas-based Q2, came about through a shared investor, Gro CEO David Eads told Bank Innovation. Q2 announced it was buying Cloud Lending, a cloud-based lending platform, in August. In 2017, ...Read More
OneSpan Webinar to Discuss Latest Cybersecurity Trends in Financial Services
Cybersecurity is on the rise, and financial services companies are its primary targets. The adoption of new digital channels such as mobile and online banking have given financial organizations a competitive edge. The result, however, of an increasing number of consumers using online and banking is more and faster fraud. That’s why it is imperative for financial institutions to proactively move toward more innovative authentication technologies that improve user experience and reduce fraud.
INV Fintech Announces Class 6 Associate Companies
INV Fintech, Bank Innovation’s sister accelerator, announced today the three associate members of its sixth cohort of startups. INV associates undergo a less intensive program than full class members. They do not have regularly scheduled meetings with the INV team and Fiserv, the accelerator’s technology partner. They have access to INV’s mentor network and the wider ecosystem connected to the program.
4 Regulatory Approaches to Encourage the Growth of Open Banking
4 Regulatory Approaches to Encourage the Growth of Open Banking Open banking is on the march around the world, with or without the input of regulators. The promise of open banking is that customers will gain more control of their data in order to share it with third parties, and banks will gain new revenue streams as their services proliferate to more endpoints. Driven largely by ...Read More
Heading into 2019, Venmo Faces Increase in Fraud and Competition
2018 has been a challenging year for the peer-to-peer payment service Venmo, owned and operated by PayPal Holdings. While the year saw continued growth in transaction volume, and the launch of new services such as instant cashout (January) and a debit card (June), the year has also seen a significant uptick in fraud, from 0.25% ...Read More
Amazon Pushes Further into Retail with Payments at the Point of Sale
Amazon is pushing retailers to accept yet another digital wallet at the point of sale — its own Amazon Pay, which until now has been used almost entirely in the e-commerce world, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Brick-and-mortar retailers view the Seattle-based commerce giant Amazon as a direct competitor, so this move may not be welcome. Amazon seems to recognize that, and is going to focus its initial efforts on restaurants and gas pumps, according to the report.
Bank Innovation Announces Demo Opportunity for Fintech Startups
It’s opportunity time for fintech startups. On March 12, 2019, Bank Innovation will host its ninth DEMOvation Challenge, in which fintech startups demo before a crowd of conference attendees in the hopes of earning their vote and walking away with fabulous prizes. The competiton is part of the wider Bank Innovation Ignite conference, which returns to Seattle after a two-year sojourn in the Bay Area.
Alexa Collects Huge Amounts of Data. Does That Include Financial Information?
Alexa is listening. Capital One was famously the first major bank to integrate with Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant that lives in Echo smart speakers as well as a growing array of other devices. Voice banking -- operating your bank account by voice -- is a hot topic in the industry today, but many questions remain. One problem is ...Read More
Apple's P2P Service Could Be a Play to Win Banks Over to TouchID
Apple is doubling down on payments, but it may actually be about authentication. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant is expected to launch a peer-to-peer money transfer service sometime in 2016, according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal. Apple is no stranger to P2P — it filed a patent application in January 2013 for a P2P service based on iTunes accounts.
INV Fintech Announces Sixth Class of Startups
INV Fintech, Bank Innovation’s sister accelerator, has announced its sixth accelerator class, which begins this week with six unique startups seeking to revolutionize financial services. The six startups were selected for participation after a rigorous review process by INV Fintech and its partners, which include Fiserv, TIAA, BB&T, Standard Bank of Africa, and Texas Capital Bank. The accelerator includes dozens of mentors and VCs, as well.
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