Green Your Spirit

When you meditate, you want your surroundings to quiet and peaceful. What better way to create a serene atmosphere than to make sure your meditation apparatus is recyclable and positive for the greater environment? We found four items to help you green your spiritual quest.

Shakuhachi Water Meditations
This soothing album isn’t meant to imitate nature’s waves, but incite the feeling that you are experiencing nature’s wondrous sights, smells, sounds, feel and even tastes. Riley Lee’s beautiful symphonies on a bamboo flute will help take you to a striking location by water, whether it is a lake or ocean. Who better than a Zen artist to help you delve into a deep meditative state and connect with nature at the same time?
Price: $14

DharmaCrafts: Organic Zabuton
If you’re going to sit in one place for a long time, then you'd better be comfortable. DharmaCrafts has extremely comfortable cushions for sitting, especially during meditation. This cushion is made entirely from U.S. grown organic cotton, low-impact dyes, and available in a variety of colors from lavender to sunshine. An important factor of sustainability is durability. For this reason, the zippered cover comes in handy because it is easy to wash.
Price: $139

Kora Meditation Trail
The Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana has a short, meditative walk that take you in circles past ravines and over little hills. Along the way, there are also beautiful shrines and brass prayer wheels to see. If you’re ever in this area, we suggest you take some time to do the trail in the manner that the ancient Buddhists did it: clockwise. In fact, Dalai Lama himself stopped by and went on the trail for the opening in 2009.
Price: Free

Sheer Soy
You know how sometimes you buy these exotic, scented candles that you can barely smell until you stick your nose too close to the flame? Well, one of the advantages of soy wax candles is that their smell is stronger and the candles last three times longer than paraffin wax candles. What confirms Sheer Soy Candles’s place on our list is that, unlike traditional petroleum-based candles, no toxins are released because they are made from 100% natural products. A big plus is that the wax is grown almost entirely in the Midwest, which not only reduces travel-induced carbon emissions but also supports the domestic economy.
Price: $15 for 8oz candle

Image via iStockphoto/BenGoode
Image courtesy of Dharmacrafts
Image courtesy of Sheer Soy

Ailsa Sachdev is an editorial intern at Sierra. She is a rising senior at Mount Holyoke College and spent the last semester reporting on witchcraft in Morocco. She is passionate about food and travel, and knows how to say "I'm hungry" in over 10 languages.

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August 15, 2013

Green Your Spirit