Stephen T. Butterfield | The Sun Magazine #2

Stephen T. Butterfield

Stephen T. Butterfield, author of The Double Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra (North Atlantic Books), is “sustained moment to moment by infinite compassion and beauty, often expressed as the kindness of friends.” He lives in Shrewsbury, Vermont.

— From May 1996
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

On Being Unable To Breathe

Something was drastically wrong with my lungs: every night, they made sounds like a basketful of squealing kittens. I was always coughing, had pains under the sternum, and could not push a car or even run up a flight of stairs without gasping like an old melodeon full of holes.

March 1988
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Turquoise Dragon

Remembering Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1940-1987)

He was a short man with glasses and a penetrating smile, and a high, almost falsetto voice. He was enamored of Oxford English and taught elocution, after his own comical fashion. (Elocution lessons were given at one o’clock in the morning, before an audience of 400 laughing spectators.)

September 1987
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Light From Different Windows

As a Westerner turning Buddhist in 1982, I was concerned about abandoning my “Christian heritage” for a foreign culture. I had never felt completely at home with that heritage: church seemed like a sterile routine, and any form of dogma affected me like one more arrogant know-it-all telling me how I should live.

March 1987
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