Have you ever repeated a word or phrase until it loses meaning? I imagine you have and, perhaps like most, discovered this as a child, marveling, sharing, and testing the phenomenon with your peers. It’s been studied and is called semantic satiation. Today, for me, I am experiencing this with the word kindness.

I had been in Phurpa Lama’s shop a number of times before and on my last visit, agreed with the owner to return to do a story with photos and a short video interview. Last night, I walked to the shop with camera in tow. As I arrived and examined his window display, I noticed a sign for the first time which said, “My Religion is Kindness.” I was sunk. I became fixated on the word kindness, which began running through my head as I entered the shop, spoke with Phurpa, videotaped him, walked home, contemplated this story, and drifted off to sleep, recalling Jamie Adkins’s use of the phrase Kind Words…

This morning, kindness was still on my mind. The power of words reminded me of a television segment I saw with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, calling someone at random on the phone to tell them “I love you” and encouraging the listener to do the same, eventually creating a chain of love. This, they averred, would spread love and peace throughout the world. Perhaps a bit of youthful naiveté, particularly if one allows for how much callers may indulge John and Yoko, as opposed to you or I.

Phurpa Lama’s aspirations are much less ambitious, or at least not fueled by celebrity. I learned that Phurpa was born in the small village of Ganggyul in the Hyolmo region of Nepal. At age 7, he became a Buddhist monk. It is as a monk that he emigrated to the United States and New York City. He now owns the small shop Padma Tibetan Handicrafts at 234 Thompson Street in the Village for the last two years.

To enter the shop is to feel an extraordinary wave of peacefulness and calm in the eye of the storm called New York City. He told that many visitors to his shop also spoke of the incredible soothing ambiance. The merchandise is a riot of color – beautiful fabrics, jewelry, and other Himalayan artifacts. I was fascinated by the brass singing bowls, something I am compelled to listen to on each visit. These bowls are hand hammered bronze. They are played by rubbing a wood mallet around the rim of the bowl to produce a continuous ‘singing.’ The unique sound, accompanied by harmonic overtones and vibrations, is remarkable to experience first hand. Phurpa is always happy to demonstrate. He told me that the singing can be used as a meditation, a practice he does daily with the frequent lulls in business in his small shop.

Phurpa is is occasionally assisted by his wife, Pema Yeba, who I have yet to meet. Her presence there is now more infrequent, owing to her care for their newborn child. Phurpa works 7 days, 11AM to 11PM.
Our conversation turned to kindness and its value in a world of hostility, anger, and conflict. He affirmed the importance in his life of the words I had seen in the window, made famous by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso: My Religion is Kindness…