Tricycle’s Buddhist Gift Guide 2022

Ideally, the year-end holiday season is a time for reflection, gathering indoors, and spending quality time with our loved ones. But it can be hard to ignore the relentless slew of holiday marketing, assuring us that the best way to convey our affection is to buy, buy, buy. In most Buddhist traditions, the winter solstice is not a time for presents wrapped in paper with big bows on top. While there are Buddhist cultures with gift-giving conventions—such as in Japanese etiquette—the practice of donating alms or offerings is much more widespread. But for those of us living in the West, ’tis the season for trading tokens of gratitude. So how can we give gifts in a Buddhist way?

An article in Tricycle’s Winter 2007 issue, “Gifts That Keep Giving” by Joan Duncan Oliver, provides an answer: give compassionately. Oliver suggests that we purchase gifts that are ethically sourced, environmentally conscious, and help someone in need—in other words, they relieve suffering instead of creating it. 

One approach is to give to a charity in someone else’s name, and there are many excellent organizations to choose from (see below). But for those times when we’re expected to hand out gifts (at the annual office Secret Santa, for instance), here is a selection of ways to give in the Buddhist spirit.

Buy Nothing and Give More  

Do you have any household items collecting dust in a closet that could better serve someone else? Or, do you find yourself in need of something last minute, say an extra dining chair for guests or some mushy bananas for banana bread? Consider joining a Buy Nothing community, an international network of local gifting groups that offers people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude for their neighbors. With over four million members and nearly seven thousand regional Buy Nothing communities, the project has attracted many due to its simple but effective rule: everything must be given freely. This holiday season, the project encourages people to give and ask from others in their local communities instead of buying gifts. You can find your local Buy Nothing group on the new BuyNothing app or through the project’s list of Facebook groups. And you can read more about Buy Nothing here, in the Summer 2022 issue of Tricycle magazine.

Get Crafty!

For a variety of ethical shopping needs, visit the online store Ten Thousand Villages, which as its name implies, offers ethically sourced crafts from developing countries around the world. The Pennsylvania-based nonprofit’s mission is to provide their artisans with fair, living wages and safe work conditions as well as to promote energy-efficient practices and the use of local and recycled materials. The organization, one of the oldest and largest fair-trade groups, started in 1946 and was based on the Mennonite principles of its founder, Edna Ruth Byler, but its shop includes several goods from Buddhist traditions. Check out its selection of singing bowls from Nepalese artists or pick up a patchwork meditation cushion made by female artisans in Vietnam. Or for non-Buddhist recipients, browse their selection of jewelry, home goods, and other handicrafts.

The Tibetan Nuns Project (TNP) is a more Buddhist-oriented alternative for handmade crafts. Known for their Sponsor a Nun program, TNP was created to help refugee nuns coming to India from Tibet, but it has expanded to “provide food, shelter, education, and health care to over 700 nuns of all traditions,” the group says. Their online shop supports these efforts by selling bags, malas, prayer flags, and other crafts that are made and blessed by nuns. You can also purchase pujas [prayers and rituals], which can be dedicate to a loved one.

Words to the Wise

For book lovers, there are a lot of options to choose from. Three of the largest publishers of Buddhist literature, Wisdom Publications, Shambhala Publications, and Sounds True, all boast environmental initiatives, and Wisdom’s Books for Prisoners programs and Sounds True’s Prison Library Project make Buddhist resources available to incarcerated populations. Need a book suggestion? Check out what we’re reading and our list of recommended Buddhist books for beginners.

Here are three new books to get you started: 

If you’re looking for a book with a younger reader in mind, here is a selection of Buddhist children’s books to consider: 

Presents for Presence

One way to support the dharma with your gifts is to buy from shops that help fund meditation centers. Right livelihood is the guiding principle of the Monastery Store. The shop, which sells supplies for Buddhist practice, is staffed by residents and volunteers at the upstate New York-based Zen Mountain Monastery, where they are trained in “work practice” or “sacred labor” as part of the Mountains and Rivers Order founded by the late American Zen teacher John Daido Loori. The store also puts an emphasis on responsible environmental practices. Try the buckwheat zafu, or meditation seat, and their plush “bodhi seat” zabuton, which one former editor praised for helping him overcome the tendency for his left leg to fall asleep while sitting. They also have a wonderful selection of low-smoke incense for those who want to maintain an altar with a sensitive nose. But for gifts outside of the Zen tradition, shoppers will need to look elsewhere.

The Namse Bangdzo bookstore at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) in Woodstock, New York, also carries shrine and practice supplies, including meditation cushions, malas, and incense, as well as items that are specific to Tibetan Buddhism and might be harder to find, such as a bumpa ritual vase or a kapala, or skullcup, used in some Vajrayana practices.

Tea and Sympathy

Tea has been a symbol of enlightenment ever since 9th-century Zen master Joshu told his students, “Go drink tea!” But while there are a wide variety of fair-trade tea sellers to choose from, including some of the bigger distributors, many tea farmers around the world continue to be exploited and abused. A 2015 BBC report uncovered widespread abuses by British tea companies in India, although those companies claimed to have improved conditions. The group Ethical Consumer, which ranks UK-based tea suppliers, recommends that in addition to looking for fair trade and organic certification, buyers pick single-source teas over blends, which are harder to trace, and opt for loose tea over bags, which are rarely made from sustainable materials.

Mellow Monk only sells single estate tea from Japan’s Kumamoto region and places extra emphasis on being eco-friendly. Through the micro-lending site Kiva, they also support small farms in the area. For a broader range of tea options, the Oregon-based Strand Tea Company promises sustainable fair-trade practices and also donates proceeds to charities, including tiger conservation efforts in Tamil Nadu, India, and its local chapter of the League of Women’s Voters.

For some recipe ideas, you can check out Zen teacher Bo-Mi Choi’s guide to Korean tea remedies.

Wrapping Up

When wrapping your gift, consider alternatives to wasteful paper and scotch tape. One alternative is the Japanese method of wrapping gifts in reusable cloths called furoshiki (which literally translates to “bathmat” from its origins as a way to wrap up items at bathhouses). You can spend hours looking up different ways to tie the colorful wraps, which become part of the gift itself. If crafts aren’t your thing, reusable gift or tote bags are another great option.

Or you can wrap your gift in a scarf, adding another seasonable gift. You can purchase Tibetan yak-yarn scarves from the mYak for Social Good collection, which donates its proceeds to a mobile library project on the Tibetan Plateau that brings books to children in 50 villages.

Charitable Donations

Perhaps your loved ones have given up their attachment to material things—or have a hard enough time finding room for the stuff they already have—but you still want to let them know you are thinking of them. Donating to a charity in their name can be the perfect gift, and some people might even request it. While there are many worthy charities, here is a selection of some notable initiatives:

A Tricycle Built for Two (or More)

If you are willing to grant us some self-promotion, a Tricycle subscription makes a wonderful gift as well. We are a nonprofit working to make the dharma more accessible through insightful and timely articles as well as through our free initiatives such as Buddhism for Beginners and our annual Meditation Month. In addition to receiving our latest issue, our subscription grants unlimited access to our article archive, our vast collection of video Dharma Talks, and our Film Club, plus subscribers receive a discounted enrollment rate for all of Tricycle’s online courses. We also offer a new premium subscription option, which includes access to premium virtual events, a premium newsletter, and a free digital gift subscription. If you are already a subscriber, you know how much we have to offer, so share it with a friend (and throughout the rest of 2022, if you share it with more than one person, each additional gift is 50 percent off).

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This article was adapted from Tricycle’s 2018 gift guide.