Mindfulness Meditation · Self-Discovery
This week’s meditation session is led by Kimberly Brown and the theme is Self-Discovery. The guided meditation begins at 7:37.
Tibetan Sheep Bone Prayer Beads; Tibet; date unknown; Sheep bone and thread; 17 3/4 × 1 3/8 × 1/2 in.; Rubin Museum of Art; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, Gift of Anne Breckenridge Dorsey; C2012.6.28
In Tibetan Buddhism prayer beads are used to count the recitations of prayers and devotional invocations (mantras), a process that allows the practitioner to accumulate merit—the more recitations, the more merit accrued. This strand has a standard 108 beads, an auspicious number rooted in early Buddhist literature on prayer beads and pre-Buddhist Indian beliefs and also symbolic of purifying the 108 causes of negative karma.
Prayer beads are ritual objects of a particularly personal nature, and so the materials often reflect both the status and taste of the beads’ owner. These prayer beads are made out of sheep bone. Beads made out of carved bone are most suitable for practices related to wrathful deities.
Kimberly Brown is a meditation teacher and author. She leads classes and retreats that emphasize the power of compassion and kindness meditation to reconnect us to ourselves and others. Her teachings provide an approachable pathway to personal and collective well-being through effective and modern techniques based on traditional practices. She studies in both the Tibetan and Insight schools of Buddhism and is a certified mindfulness instructor. Her book Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others was published in 2022, and an updated edition of Steady, Calm, and Brave was released in 2023. Both are published by Prometheus Books.
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