Whether it was Buddhist or not as the boat pitched in the waves was irrelevant this was an essential healing sound, from the human heart that anybody could understand. Buddhist music in China had become an engine that kept sailors afloat through the countless autumns. The sound was as ageless as the sea and as eternal as the needs of the humans who crossed it. As I chanted, the sacred name and the keening melody calmed my heart and replaced my apprehension at the size of the pounding waves and the fragility of our craft. The song ignited my mindfulness I found myself reciting along with the chorus, _Namo dabei guanshi yin pusa,_ spontaneously, without having made a conscious decision to do so. How could it be so familiar? Their melody was as wild as the ocean, it went deep inside my inner ear or was it through my skin, like a vibration? The song was Guan Yin’s own voice, but put into the air by Guan Yin’s water clan people who relied on her compassionate vows to keep them alive amid the waves and wind. It was a strangely familiar tune, that may have awakened a distant memory I knew I hadn’t heard it before, not through my ears. I couldn’t tell the song from the wind but by the third chorus their keening, wailing chant rode atop the wind. I saw their mouths move but the wind and engine roar obscured the song. A older nun in a gray cap from Potala Mountain immediately joined in from the front of the boat. At that point an elderly woman in a raincoat, sitting on a overturned bucket began to sing out loud, seemingly to herself, with her eyes closed. The wind was howling and we were beginning to regret having come out. Our craft seemed at times to be making negative headway the crests threw us back farther than we were advancing through the troughs. Twenty passengers huddled in groups beneath the rail or braved the wind and spray on benches on the open deck. The boat was a small, sturdy diesel, and the winds picked up as we roared through the troughs. We were going to inspect the new temples for tourists that were rising once again from the foundations of the past. We were heading for the smaller of two islands dedicated to Guan Shi Yin Bodhisattva, (Avalokiteshvara) the Awakened Being of Great Compassion. I met them again at sunrise, they were the crew of the ferry boat we rode, lurching across the waves to the distant rock that was Loqie Mountain. In the predawn darkness of Puji Monastery’s Buddha hall that morning, I had seen local fisher folk, both woman and men, wearing yellow rubber boots and overalls, bowing to Guan Yin Bodhisattva before getting in their boats and heading out to sea. What will survive? Probably the essence of chanted sound, some experience beyond words and culturally bound melody.įor example, on board a ferry boat in the South China Sea, I witnessed the power of Buddhist music to heal the heart, beyond culture, beyond language. The Chinese adapted Indian Buddhist music the West will adapt Chinese Buddhist music to our tastes. I predict the same thing will happen in the West. The rest of the liturgy was eventually replaced or hybridized by Chinese forms as Buddhism became Chinese. What survived past the first century of Indian Buddhist music’s advent in China? Only a trace of Sanskrit gathas, some names and terms, and the basic practices of reciting precepts, chanting sutras, mantras and praises. But I have discovered riches in Chinese sacred music that I intend to carry across the bridge into the West. ![]() Having immersed myself in Chinese Buddhist sacred music for three decades I have learned that at heart, in terms of music appreciation, I’m deeply a product of my Western upbringing. My experience with Chinese Buddhist music exemplifies the hybrid principle. When a skillful vintner or horticulturist grafts a bud from an exotic and delicious, but fragile Manchurian variety onto the hardy California rootstock, in a year or two the result is a disease-free, bug resistant and tasty new hybrid. ![]() Native California rootstocks are disease and bug resistant, but maybe not too flavorful. They are mostly hybrids, the results of grafting. In Mendocino County, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is surrounded by orchards of walnuts, pears and grapevines. So you might say that we in the West are still in our bridge phase, or to borrow a Northern California tree crop metaphor, we are still grafting an Asian cultivar to our North American rootstock. ![]() If the Asian experience of Buddhist history is any judge, it may be another hundred years before a truly indigenous Western Buddhism flourishes here in the Americas and Europe. Buddhism in the West has reached its second century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |