I recently received an e-mail from my Uncle Fred which simply asked “do you know what shippei means?” Knowing that he must be familiar with our web address www.shippei.com I thought I would humor him by searching shippei on Wikipedia and was surprised by what I found. A shippei is actually a curved bamboo staff which is used as a symbol of a master’s authority in Zen Buddhism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippei. I just found this to be extremely interesting. I have always been fascinated by Buddhism and the other eastern “religions” so I was excited to learn something new regarding the subject. Anyway this article triggered my interest so I surfed a bit more and ended up spending an hour or so reading about Zen and Buddhism. The article stated that the aspects of Zen training include: “a life of humility; a life of labor; a life of service; a life of prayer and gratitude; and a life of meditation.” Wow! It was truly inspiring to me how these attributes aligned with what we value here at PEI. It was like a sign that no matter what, we need to stay humble, to serve well, to work hard, to be grateful, and to be still and experience this moment…