The monks chant in deep tones with the cymbals sounding and the drums beating and the horns intoning both high and low notes, and if you are not experienced in Tibetan temple music it sounds like a cacophony, but once you are used to it, then it sounds like the voice of the earth from deep in the heart of the being we share with the earth, with the sun, the moon, the planets, the cosmos. It is a sound you feel deep in your body. A sound that shakes you to your essence and grounds you, a sound that wipes the slate clean in your mind and returns you to your essential being, freed of mundane thoughts and emotions, purified from all the modifications of the mind, returned to the vastness of the ground of your being. It is the yoga of sound.
–a short excerpt from J.M. White,
PRISTINE AWARENESS AND TOTAL PRESENCE: The wonderful life and teaching of Tibetan master Longchenpa,
PARABOLA, Fall 2012
