Another Friday night at this tiny neighborhood watering hole in Tokyo: By 7:30, the bar stools and tables in this cozy joint are filling up; office workers settle in with their cocktails and Kirin beers. And by a little after 8, it’s time for the main act.

Vow’s Bar in the Yotsuya neighborhood has no house band, no widescreen TV, no jukebox. But it does have a chanting Buddhist monk so tipplers can get a side of sutras with their Singapore Slings or something even more exotic.

A pair of younger monks — conspicuous with their shaved heads, bare feet and religious garb — man …

Read the original article »

Purchases from our store help us run this site and to bring you the articles you value so much. These fair trade products also help support artisans in traditional cultures, and to keep traditional crafts alive.

Garnet Mandala Pendant

The mandala is a sacred circle, used as a subject for visualization. This exquisitely hand-carved and chased mandala is a representation of enlightened awareness. Each of the four tiny clouds are actually gates leading to the supreme perfection at the center of the mandala, represented by the gemstone.

• Sterling silver with garnet.
• Handmade in Nepal by gifted artisans from Newari, Shakya and Bajracharya clans.
• Made using a range of traditional crafting

…

The sale of Buddhist-related items in our online store helps us to maintain our website and to keep bringing you articles, news stories, and reviews. Many of our products are also fair trade, and directly benefit craft workers in India and Nepal. Please consider making a purchase.

A sterling silver ring with 10 karat gold-plated letters with the Sanskrit “Om Mani Padme Hum.” Adjustable size.

Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra of Avalokitesvara, is the ancient Tibetan mantra or prayer for realizing perfect wisdom and compassion. Travelers to Tibet find it everywhere — printed on prayer flags, inside and outside prayer wheels, carved onto prayer stones and …

It could have been the usual Type A gathering of lawyers at UC Berkeley School of Law except for the subject matter — yoga in Room 110, Qi Gong in Room 105 followed by guided meditation with well-known Zen Buddhist priest Norman Fischer.
Almost 200 lawyers, law students, judges and law professors from around the country, as well as from Canada and Australia, descended on the Berkeley campus last fall for the first-ever national conference on the legal profession and meditation.

Called “The Mindful Lawyer: Practices & Prospects for Law School, Bench and Bar,” the conference was chaired by Berkeley Law Scholar-in-Residence Charles Halpern, who teaches a seminar on meditation.

Meditation, says Halpern, can hone such traits as focus, creativity, empathy and listening, …

One of the most frustrating things in my life is that for the last few months, because of a change in my wife’s work schedule, I haven’t been able to get up to the prison I’ve been teaching in for the last seven years. I miss the guys there. I regard them as part of my “sangha” (spiritual community). I have great respect for them as spiritual practitioners because of the sheer effort they have to make in order to remain sane and balanced in a very challenging environment. Not only do they stay sane and balanced, but some of them bring about huge changes in their lives. …

We’ve recently added some new items to our online meditation supplies store. Much of what we sell would make great Christmas presents, and if you’d like to support the work we do in promoting meditation, please consider making a purchase.

For those of a devotional bent, we have a selection of Buddha pendants in our jewelry section. The one illustrated is the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who is a symbol of compassion.

The University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law recently hosted the first national conference on the legal profession and meditation. Yes, I really do mean “meditation,” not “mediation.” Called “The Mindful Lawyer: Practices & Prospects for Law School, Bench, and Bar,” the three-day event brought together lawyers, judges, law faculty, students, and neuroscientists, according to The National Law Journal.

Conference organizer Charles Halpern, who teaches a seminar at Berkeley Law called “Effective and Sustainable Law Practice: The Meditative Perspective,” said that the legal profession is becoming more open to the benefits of meditation.

“At one time it seemed very exotic, but interest in law and meditation has been growing for a decade,” said Halpern, founding dean of the …

We’ve recently added some new items to our store that you might want to check out. Many of these are fair trade products. Purchasing these items helps us with our work of promoting the practice of meditation and helps to support traditional crafts and the Tibetan Buddhist way of life.

This set of five classic Tibetan prayer flags is hand-printed on cotton by the Tibetan Nuns Project in Dharamsala, India. The proceeds from these sales help to support nuns who have fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Tara flags are also available in a larger size.

In the days of the Buddha, people generously supported monks and nuns. They gave them food, clothing, medicine, land, and buildings. And the monks and nuns taught — freely. Many people nowadays, thinking back to that arrangement, say “meditation should be free” or “it’s wrong to charge for Dharma (Buddhism) classes.”

Of course the Dharma was never free! It was free at the point of delivery, in that monks didn’t charge for classes. But enough people supported the monastics for them to be able to do that. It’s that half of the equation that gets forgotten when people are saying, in effect, “give me meditation — and don’t charge …

Inspired Entrepreneur Nick Williams talks with Srimati, a former member of the Western Buddhist Order, about non-attachment. Srimati explains that non-attachment isn’t life-denying, but simply says that we should relate to things as they really are, without trying to get something out of them that they can’t supply.

Srimati is a freelance spiritual teacher, writer and co-founder of Thrivecraft Coaching, and a former member of the Western Buddhist Order.

She is currently engaged in publishing her whole body of work via books, articles, CDs, films, and the internet. Her aim is to contribute accessible and relevant spiritual intelligence to mainstream modern life and …

In this short video, Inspired Entrepreneur Nick Williams talks with Srimati, a former member of the Western Buddhist Order, about the relationship between spirituality and business, and how love and fear are opposed tendencies in both worlds as judgment and rejection of parts of ourselves..

Srimati is a freelance spiritual teacher, writer and co-founder of Thrivecraft Coaching, and a former member of the Western Buddhist Order.

She is currently engaged in publishing her whole body of work via books, articles, CDs, films, and the internet. Her aim is to contribute accessible and relevant spiritual intelligence to mainstream modern life and business. Srimati’s CD, …

In this short video, Inspired Entrepreneur Nick Williams talks with Srimati, a former member of the Western Buddhist Order, about the relationship between spirituality and business, and how “inspiration” bridges the two worlds.

Srimati is a freelance spiritual teacher, writer and co-founder of Thrivecraft Coaching, and a former member of the Western Buddhist Order.

She is currently engaged in publishing her whole body of work via books, articles, CDs, films, and the internet. Her aim is to contribute accessible and relevant spiritual intelligence to mainstream modern life and business. Srimati’s CD, Answers: Finding Wisdom from Within, is now available from her …

Is it possible to combine spiritual practice with professional poker, to remain detached and equanimous in the midst of a game full of bluffing, where the aim is to take away other people’s money? In 2005 Vishvapani talked this over with Andrew Black, one of the world’s finest poker players — and a devout Buddhist.

The World Series of Poker at Binions Casino in Las Vegas is down to its last five players. After eleven days at the table, little sleep, and ferocious competition, they are the last survivors of the five thousand people who each paid $10,000 to enter this no-limit hold ‘em tournament. The winner will walk away with $7.5 million.

Behind designer …