This week’s meditation session is led by Lavina Shamdasani and the theme is Serenity. The guided meditation begins at ​18:23​.

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 but 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 turquoise, bone, and silver. Turquoise is highly regarded in Tibetan culture. Prayer beads made of turquoise are considered beneficial for accruing merit. Beads made out of carved bone are most suitable for practices related to wrathful deities. This resplendent set of prayer beads once belonged to a princess of Derge in southeastern Tibet.