Count Your Blessings: Prayer Beads in Asian Cultures
Please join us for a deep dive into the history and spiritual significance of prayer beads in Asian cultures. Annie Dorsey, a member of the SAA since 1986, began studying and collecting prayer beads from all over Asia in the early 1990s. Her focus was originally Buddhism, but it quickly expanded to include Hinduism, Islam, lesser-known religions such as Jainism, Sikhism, and Bahá'i, and later, also Chrisitanity. She built the first ever comprehensive collection of Buddhist prayer beads, which she donated to the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) in New York City in 2013. RMA showcased the collection in a 10-month exhibition called Count Your Blessings: The Art of Prayer Beads in Asia.
Annie will share with us a selection of beads still in her collection; insights about early religious history gleaned from her research; and vivid examples of the ways different cultures developed unique and consciousness-altering forms of practice around prayer beads. She wil also discuss with us about the collecting bug and hot it bit her, always an interesting subject!
Annie Dorsey
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