Dharma Trading Co. Store & Showroom - San Rafael, CA

Dharma Trading Co. Store & Showroom
1604 Fourth St. in
San Rafael, CA 94901
Phone:(415) 456-1211
Tel: (800) 542-5227 Toll-free from anywhere in the USA & Canada
Tel: (415) 456-7657 Everywhere else
Fax: (415) 456-8747

Store Hours:
10am - 6pm Mon-Sat
12pm - 5pm Sunday

The Dharma Trading Co. Store & Showroom is, first of all, the premier knitting yarn source for the San Francisco North Bay. Since 1975 the store has been serving bay area knitters, crocheters and weavers. In addition, nearly all the dyes, paints, tools, and clothing blanks in our catalog are also available at the store.

It all began with an acid trip!

That's LSD for those who didn't grow up in the 60's. My own acid experiences led me to see that there were planes of existence beyond the one on which I normally spent my days. I also came to see that drugs could offer a glimpse into, but could not open those worlds to me permanently. Drugs were like an elevator - they took me up, let me look around, then brought me back down. I realized I needed a spiritual path - a staircase that would allow me to climb steadily up and into those levels.

Understand that this is not about advocating the use of drugs, just the telling of the story of my own life experiences.

After some years of poking about and false starts, I discovered Subud.

Here was a spiritual path that fit my personality and could lead to an inner guided life. Now, it's more than 42 years later and I have to say, it's worked for me, more or less.

But I mention the above only because it led to an epiphany that gave birth to Dharma Trading Co.

It was 1968 in Los Angeles during a visit by Bapak, the spiritual leader of Subud. In a moment of revelation, I came to see that each of us is born with certain talents - strengths given to us by God. They come to us through no effort of our own - gifts. In my case, it was a feel for business and a knack for organization. I understood that these gifts came with an obligation to use them, and use them for the betterment of my own life as well as that of mankind. In that moment I saw visually that if I used these talents my life would work - it would be like the "iron filings" demonstration we all saw in school where the magnet causes the iron filings to align themselves in one direction. I saw that in the same way, using my God given talents would cause all aspects of my life to align themselves and allow the power of God to pass through with the strength of a thousand camels (or something).

So I gave up the idea of turning on, tuning in and dropping out (to New Mexico as a craftsperson). It was clear that business was my future and so, returning to Berkeley, I immediately began helping a Subud lady friend with her business. It was Dharma Pillow Works - she made zafu and zabatan meditation cushions for zen meditators. Mostly I stuffed pillows with kapok. She was also a weaver and had contacted a Peace Corp project in Ecuador and imported some hand-spun yarns. After a few months she and her husband got pregnant and she sold the business to some folks from the San Francisco Zen center. By agreement, I took the correspondence files on the yarn.

During 1968 I tried importing the handspun yarns from Ecuador and selling it mail-order to weavers, but it was a mess - ads ran, yarn didn't arrive on time; wasn't working. So I decided to open a store in Berkeley from which I could sell the yarn while doing the mail-order yarn. I needed a name and chose Dharma Trading Co. because the word "Dharma" in the Subud context kind of means to me, "Acting in a way that is in accordance with God's Guidance".

I had $2000 saved from a trip to New York where I taught in Jr. H.S. as a substitute and drove a taxi at night.

I borrowed another $2000 from my Aunt Rose and in early 1969 I went down to Mexico in my van with my dog Baba (named after Maher Baba, a spiritual leader with a following in Berkeley at that time). I looked for yarn ("lana" in Spanish - which also turns out to be slang for "money"). So I was driving around rural Mexico asking people if they knew where I could find money - this led to some very weird experiences.

I did find sources of hand-spun and natural yarns and with the van full, I returned to Berkeley and in July of 1969, I opened Dharma Trading Co. on University Ave. just down from the U.C. Berkeley campus. I allocated that $4,000 to rent, deposits, shelves, inventory, etc. as shown in the original piece of paper I planned it on (and saved all these years and now can't find!)

I borrowed another $2000 from my Aunt Rose and in early 1969 I went down to Mexico in my van with my dog Baba (named after Maher Baba, a spiritual leader with a following in Berkeley at that time). I looked for yarn ("lana" in Spanish - which also turns out to be slang for "money"). So I was driving around rural Mexico asking people if they knew where I could find money - this led to some very weird experiences.

I did find sources of hand-spun and natural yarns and with the van full, I returned to Berkeley and in July of 1969, I opened Dharma Trading Co. on University Ave. just down from the U.C. Berkeley campus. I allocated that $4,000 to rent, deposits, shelves, inventory, etc. as shown in the original piece of paper I planned it on (and saved all these years and now can't find!)

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