Have we ruined our world?

Manufactured Landscapes by Edward Burtynsky
I wanted to add this you tube link to a river in Kathmandu.

This morning my 10 year old accused me and the last few generations before me of ruining our world.

"Have we?" I asked.

"Mom, you and your generation and the generations before you are responsible for all of the garbage and global warming... "  He had more to say, but this was the essence.

What have we done?

I asked him to look around him and said, "If I have contributed to the decay of the world then so have you. Look around you.  Everything that you have is made by machines with plastic parts and consumes fossil fuels."  We went hunting around our home for an object completely untouched by modern technology.  I found pottery made by my friend, but the wheel it was turned on was electric and the clay arrived boxed in plastic.  There are few places in the world where everything is entirely industry free.  Perhaps somewhere in the Amazon or high in the mountains of Nepal.  Even though the jewelry we buy is entirely hand built, torches are used to solder the pieces together.

He is right, we are no longer able to live in this modern world without touching objects made by machines and it is ruining the air we breath and the environment that we live in.

Please rent Manufactured Landscapes on Netflix, photo above, It is an astounding film!  It shows the monumental physical damage we have done to our landscape.

Right now in Nepal, Global Warming is causing the glaciers to recede leaving longer dry seasons.  A friend in Nepal just wrote me that they have had no rain for 3 months.  People will die of starvation this year because their crops will not have enough water.  How unfair that people who have barely had access to modern technology will suffer so much for the excesses of the rest of us.

We can not turn back the clock but we can make an effort to change our future.  Technology may have gotten us into this mess, but I think that responsible technology is also our only way out.  Reduce, reuse, recycle, buy natural handmade products, and advocate for the development of clean energy alternatives.  It's not easy in our modern society and it will take a daily commitment make a change.

Buddha in front of the Christmas Tree

Buddha in Meditation in front of the Christmas Tree

So many of my good friends from around the world have sent me Christmas Greetings.   I am grateful to be remembered at this time of year by people who do not share my ethnic heritage and am deeply impressed by their thoughtfulness.

Our global greetings, blessings, prayers and well wishes are the same no matter where we are from.

Peace, Health and Prosperity!

May we be the conduit by which these prayers are made manifest throughout our world for the benefit and well being of us all!

Wishing you all a happy Christmas, Losar, Lunar New Year, Eid-al-Adha and Kwanzaa!  (I'm a little late for Chanuka and Diwali but I hope that it was spectacular!)

And Happy Holidays to all of you who's traditions I have yet to discover!

Gun Control and Mental Health Care

When I am at home in the US people always ask me if I am afraid to travel by myself in Nepal.  When I am abroad foreign friends say to me, Aren't you afraid to live in the US.

On December 14, 2012 two schools that were attacked by insane people.  One was in Sandy Brook Connecticut  and the other in Chengpin Henan, China.  In the US the man carried a gun.  In China the man wielded a knife.  The 22 children in China survived but 20 children in the US did not!

This following statistic is from the CDC and includes the number of all deaths in the US attributable to firearms whether accidental suicide or gun violence in 2011: 31,347 people.

This is from the Wall Stree Journal, 8 December 2012 -

"The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half."

We need access to affordable mental health care for the health and well being of our entire community, and we need effective gun control in the US now!

Turkey Disasters

Every year Thanksgiving is a bit of a nail biter.  It is not the emotional dramas that play out between family members and guests, but more a question of the special dietary concerns of each person plus the timing!  It is not that I try to please everyone at once, but I do like to have at least something on the table that each person can eat so sometimes I have to be able to put a last minute item on the menu.  Some years the problem has been teenagers who are vegetarian but don't really like vegetables and some years it is allergies and gluten free diets or people who can't chew or digest seeds or just need everything pureed.  But usually, the culprit is the turkey.  MSG, salt or other solutions, hormones, antibiotics, inappropriate feed mixtures or just the simple cruelty of how the turkeys are raised creates a toxic disaster that some of my friends and family will not tolerate.

For the cook however, organic free range turkeys have a few issues beyond how dry they are.  First of all the price!  I could get an average 13 pound grocery store turkey for $13 or I can get someone's free range pet for $70.  One year we bought an organic turkey that seemed reasonably priced but when we got it home we found that had no legs. ???   Another year I received and organic turkey frozen solid the evening before Thanksgiving.  A very nice and expensive gift, however, if you are gifting a frozen turkey, think 3 days in advance at least.  My hands got freezer burn trying to get the giblets out of the neck.  Lots of running water was involved.  Two years ago I got a fresh free range turkey from a local farm.  It was not just covered with pin feathers!  It had full feathers good enough for a quill pen protruding from the wing tips.  I worked on the turkey for two hours with a pair of pliers before I could cook it.

This year I have solved the problem.  Only omnivores are coming for dinner.  I don't even have to buy Himalayan sea salt to brine the turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sudenly Singing Bowls!

Singing Bowls

I have sold singing bowls for years.  I encountered them on my first trip to Nepal in Patan Durbar Square.  Pradeep, the singing bowl man, sat in front of a thousand bowls where the Patan Museum is now.  Usually, we would not negotiate in public.  Instead he would take me to his warehouse and I would sit on the floor with a cup of tea and play every bowl one at a time and choose the most harmonious bowls.  It took hours.  Most of the bowls that I found were Nepalese singing bowls.  They were large and dark, the color of tarnished brass.  Some of them were even painted dark around the bottom with a kind of tar like substance.  I have also seen the same substance on metal water vases when they have cracks in them.  Another style that I often saw were the thin golden colored bowls from Bhutan.  They had a lighter vibration, a thin but soothing sound.  Then I discovered the Manipur singing bowl and fell in love.  These were usually short golden bowls with multiple harmonies.  They were clearly well used bowls!

Over time one supply after the other of these old bowls has dried up.  Now it is extremely expensive for me to get the older bowls.  I do find some really fantastic bowls that have been formed in the original way out of the old broken bowls. Don't worry, I have saved one special old bowl for myself, the rest have gone to people who will cherish them.

Recently in the US bowls have been used for healing.  It has been interesting to watch the mythology of these bowls explode in the last 20 years.  I can't tell you about all of the present uses of the bowls because the stories vary from person to person.  What I find very interesting is that in the last month I have had more demand for these bowls than at any other time during my past 20 years of doing business.  What's going on?

Below is an explanation of singing bowls for those who are not familiar:


At the forefront of this picture is an old Tibetan singing bowl with two reconstituted bowls behind it.  Old bowls like this one are not being produced anymore.  There are new shinny bowls with interesting decorations but the metal composition is different, so is the tone.

‘Old’ means that no one really knows when it was made but perhaps between 1800 and 1950.  When you find old bowls the edges are smooth from use.  There are usually identifying marks on the bowl.  These ,marks are like putting your name on your lunch box.  Usually it is a couple of hash marks or a simple design.  I sometimes see names carved on the outside of a bowl instead of patterns. 

Other than clothing, a prayer wheel, and a prayer mala, the singing bowl might have been a monk’s only possession.  Everything that the monk needed he could obtain with his bowl because it was his begging bowl and the bowl out of which every meal was consumed.  It very vividly represents both the physical life of the owner in providing for his physical requirements as well as the spiritual life of the owner as a meditation tool.  Bowls were also used to present offerings and anything that is given as an offering should be given in a harmonious vessel.
When a high ranking teacher passed away, his bowl may have been used to help find his reincarnation.  They might take a few bowls to a potential candidate and ask which of the bowls belonged to him.

This antique bowl and similar bowls were created in the monasteries of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and northern India.
Each bowl was individually spun and hammered from a combination of 7 metals called "bell metal."  These metals are gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead.

Each bowl produces a unique set of harmonies when it is played.  To play the bowl hold the bowl in an open palm.  Do not clasp the bowl with your fingers because it will dampen the sound.  With your dominant hand, hold the stick straight up and down and drag the stick around the outside of the bowl firmly, in a clockwise rotation.  If your bowl doesn’t play rotate the stick faster and more firmly, if it rattles, slow down.  You may strike your bowl gently to fix a focal point in meditation or to end a meditation but you should not hit your bowl every time you play it.  Larger bowls are often played by simply striking the bowl with the heel of one's hand or using a felted dowel. It is believed that the many harmonic sounds from the bowl are the vibrations of the prayers which are chanted as the bowls are created and that it's resonance should magnify and carry your prayers and intentions while you are meditating with the bowl.

The Inevitability of Change

We are unhappy because we seek happiness!

One who encounters all situations with equanimity,

shall find happiness inevitably. - Param Pujya Ma

This has been a fast paced summer of great changes.  My apologies for abandoning my blog for several months.  

My summer went like this:

May 19, 20  - Atlanta, GA
May 26, 27- Brookline, MA

June 9,10 - Nashville, TN
June 16,17 - Cleveland, OH
July 2,3 - Takoma Park, MD

July 7,8 - Cincinnati, OH

July 13,14,15  - Virginia Beach, VA
July 28,29 - York, PA
August 4,5 - Hyannis, MA
August 18,19 - Atlanta, GA

  

(My car has achieved 200,000 miles in 7 years and I am travel weary.)

Change is the very nature of existence.  Fear of change is our obstacle rather than the change itself.  We can be slow to accept changes but they will come even to the unwilling and we will learn to walk a new path.  I am currently making transitions from the stone age to the information age and I am finding the transition more painful than I would like to admit.  It is true that I need to let technology do my driving for me, but I will miss the long visits to artsy gift stores around the country.  Many of the places that I used to visit have not weathered the economic storm.  What remains are shops with a strong presence online who access customers around the globe.  The transition to globalization is very old news but for those of us who relish trips to places where there is rarely electricity and entertainment is a front porch chat, there has been a very deliberate foot dragging.

Here's what is happening.  My postcard show announcements will completely disappear by the end of this year.  They will be replaced by an email list serve.  If you want to know when I am coming to a show near you you will have to subscribe.  I will still be traveling for the near future.
Sign up here, http://eepurl.com/oWRpL.

As a bonus, you will be notified when we receive new shipments or if we are having a spectacular sale.  That's it!  I won't send you junk mail every day or even every week, I promise.

Unsubscribing is also easy if you would prefer not to receive more email.  A simple click on "opt out" in any mailing will opt you out.

The big changes to the web site will take several weeks but soon anyone who wants to make a purchase, either wholesale or retail, should be able to click on the item and get it in about 4 business days.  I will certainly make a big announcement when the changes are complete.

Learning can only happen in concert with change.  May you experience peaceful transitions as you encounter the flowering of enlightenment!

 

Up a Creek without a ...

I have just finished cleaning myself up after our Earth Day contribution.  Our family participated in a local creek clean-up.  After a few years and several volunteer groups, I am happy to report that our section of Doan Brook was looking pretty good.  I did run into a small problem however when my 9 year old son urgently needed a toilet.  We popped up out of the creek gorge in our bright yellow worker's vests carrying bags of filthy garbage on a major road in Cleveland with not a clue where we should look for a public facility.  Luckily, I saw two men leaving their house and so we ran across the boulevard and asked to use their toilet.  They looked more than a little surprised but did not hesitate to let us in.  It made me wonder: if two strangers showed up at our door and asked to use the bathroom under what conditions would I be willing to return the favor?

On the way back I started thinking about public toilets in urban areas.  They used to be more common but now they are very rare.  I know that I always see signs in the city saying "You can't use our toilet unless you are a paying customer."  It makes me wonder where are homeless people supposed to use the bathroom.  People always complain about the smell in parking garages and so forth, but really, what are the options?

My son and I hurried back down into the ravine to catch up with our group.  Unfortunately, I missed a step while crossing the stream and got a full bath.  It was at that moment it occurred to me where the homeless might be going to relieve themselves.

I found this lovely synchronicity in my inbox when we got home.  It is from someone who knows that I have written about the lack of sanitation in third world countries before.   They asked if I would post it.



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Happy Earth day Everyone!  I hope you found and excellent way to celebrate.