Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

The great Tibetan carpet disaster. In the 80's there was so much demand for Tibetan carpets, every Tibetan who could afford it started a tiny carpet factory. In my just before life, I also invested in a start up carpet business. I sent two monks to Nepal to start carpet business, but it never made any money because it had already peaked. You would think I would have checked better, but that was the "gold rush fever" of that time... hee hee. Eventually, there were so many making carpet, good weavers were not available and many used younger workers to meet the demand. It is not uncommon anywhere in the Orient for children to work to help the family, but when the world export market knew this, the carpet business crashed. Purchasing a license as an adult only carpet making was prohibitively expensive and so many lost both investment and livelihood. Many small enterprises that invited relatives from Tibet to come make carpet and live in safety, could no longer do that. Also,...

Rinpoche: After meditating and sitting daily for some time, the body might begin to complain of new aches and pains from sitting. Beginning meditators often see meditation as a struggle with the body to hold a posture that seems more like a pretzel than a human should endure. Other meditators try one cushion after another to find comfort, while still others might look for sacred symbols on a Tibetan carpet to help them, perhaps magically, overcome the sense of having a body at all! Maybe the problem is poor posture, so it is good to review the traditional advice for meditation position, adapted to a Western body. Of course, there are flexible and athletic people everywhere, but in general, Western people are raised sitting in chairs with their legs hanging over rather that cross-legged as it is done in the Orient. That means that young bones are formed and feel comfortable in very different styles. Eastern meditation posture is based on what is most comfortable and is not conside...