Tibetan Monks Fill Sanders With Spirit

On Saturday night in Sanders Theatre, the soloist sang harmony—with himself. For just a few hours, the Harvard crest was covered by thungkas, or Tibetan wall hangings, as the audience welcomed monks from the esoteric and venerable Tibetan Tantric Choir.

Clad in traditional ochre robes, the group was comprised of thirteen singing monks and accompanied by one attendant monk who acted as a shrine master and a silent performer of offerings, serving the vice abbot of their own Gyuto Tantric University. The monks came to Harvard under the aegis of WorldMusic/CRASHarts, an organization for the advancement of international arts funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Gyuto monks, who went into exile with the Dalai Lama in 1959 upon China’s annexation of Tibet, currently reside in India. Although their numbers have dwindled from the standard 900 who had originally resided in Tibet’s capital city, Lhasa, the comparatively large group of young monks who have joined in exile have helped their membership to increase. They are among the most elite of all Tibetan monks, and their liturgical traditions some of the most esoteric. The monks’ multiphonic technique, in which individuals have the ability to produce up to three notes simultaneously, is incredibly rare and thought to be a sign of extremely high spiritual advancement—a feeling which was palpable in the auditorium. As the monks adjusted their cone-shaped hats and large tassels before beginning to chant, an announcer encouraged audience members to meditate if they wished.

Sitting in a “V” formation so that they faced each other rather than the audience, the monks began their performance by silently unwrapping the unassuming white bundles already laid out in front of them, revealing brilliant blue embroidered silks. The silks displayed the crown of the five Buddha families and the other accoutrements of the deity in preparation for The Vajra Master Initiation from the Yamantaka Tantra, the first piece of the evening. They quietly donned the silks and hats, each flank of the “V” formation waiting until all its members were ready to flip the petalled capes over their shoulders.

The sound produced by the Gyuto monks’ throat singing technique was guttural as well as sonorous beyond belief. The impossibly low-pitched reverberations swelled up from deep within the monks’ throats, creating an enveloping resonant hum louder and stronger than many in the audience had ever heard–or may ever hear again.

In a brief question-and-answer session following the performance, the vice abbot of the monks explained that the practice of throat singing was actually developed to intentionally and necessarily obfuscate the words of the liturgical texts performed.

The stage, adorned with relatively few decorations and objects, was ultimately quite successful in evoking richly ornate Tibetan monasteries. A white table upstage bore the image of the Dalai Lama and a three-dimensional mandala and torma, ritual offerings usually made of yak butter or ground barley. One graduate student in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism, speculated that the table served as a throne, with the Dalai Lama’s image acting as a manifestation of His presence.

After intermission, the monks, who had previously been accompanied by nothing more than a small hand bell, brought out several native instruments. Especially noteworthy were two types of trumpets. One was several feet long and reminiscent of an elephant’s bray in sound, while the other was a far smaller, higher-pitched thighbone horn.

The monks also played large drums held vertically by red handles, their mallets curved in the manner of bows. The use of instruments, beautiful in its own right, served to highlight the monks’ richly developed vocal ability, while the occasional chanting of mantras quickened the pace from that of the dominant seven-beat liturgical texts.

The monks’ attire was noteworthy for its many changes during the performance: A variety of shawls were put on and taken off, and the crested yellow hats of the special Galug-pa sect were donned, then doffed with the changing of the chants. These transitions were an expression of the deeply ritualistic nature of the rites, and a constant reminder of the fact that the performance was not a concert so much as the active practice of an extremely sacred and increasingly esoteric religious tradition.

Closing with a wish for peace that elicited repeated applause from the audience, the charismatic vice abbot emphasized compassion in his remarks. He said that he had never before seen such kindness and love between animals and humans as he had witnessed here in the U.S. between doting pet owners and the creatures with whom they share their homes.

“So you love animals,” said his translator. “I would like you to love human beings, each other, as well. As sentient beings we all want happiness.”

--Staff writer Anna K. Barnet can be reached at abarnet@fas.harvard.edu.