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Chanting for freedom
Chanting for freedom
By CP
http://toronto.24hrs.ca/Lifestyle/2006/11/28/2530161-sun.html
A murmur moves through the quiet, like the fading song of a church bell. Echoes of the metal gong dissolve and incense smoke floats over a golden Buddha. Voices slowly rise, drifting as one into haunting hymns of an otherworldly air.
The monks and nuns of Gampo Abbey chant in perfect unison -- for happiness, for freedom from suffering, for the spiritual leaders who paved the way to this isolated Buddhist monastery on the edge of Cape Breton's craggy coast.
The voices fall away, and silence softly cloaks the meditating monastics sitting crossed-legged on large red pillows, on a hardwood floor inside their haven on this jagged island cliff.
Thirty minutes slip by in breaths. Then, men and women with bald heads, in bare feet or socks, file out into what will be a morning of muteness, accompanied by coughs, clinking breakfast dishes or the sounds of footsteps.
The chanting, the meditating and the silence have been morning rituals for the past 22 years among those who come past rainbow trees, up rugged roads to this place of higher calling.
A Tibetan lama -- a former monk who later gave up his monastic vows -- travelled along the winding Cabot Trail in the early 1980s, searching for the perfect place for a full-time Buddhist monastery in the West.
As the story goes, the late Chogyam Trunga Rinpoche, widely credited with bringing Tibetan Buddhism to North America after leading followers out of Communist-occupied Tibet in 1959, saw a double rainbow on the way.
And rainbows, says Jerry Chapman, the monastery's lay meditation instructor and sometime interim director, are "a good sign."
"Something is here that draws people," says Chapman, head of practice and study for the monastery, which includes the main monastic residence, a school and solitary or group retreat cabins on more than 80 hectares just past Pleasant Bay.
By CP
http://toronto.24hrs.ca/Lifestyle/2006/11/28/2530161-sun.html
A murmur moves through the quiet, like the fading song of a church bell. Echoes of the metal gong dissolve and incense smoke floats over a golden Buddha. Voices slowly rise, drifting as one into haunting hymns of an otherworldly air.
The monks and nuns of Gampo Abbey chant in perfect unison -- for happiness, for freedom from suffering, for the spiritual leaders who paved the way to this isolated Buddhist monastery on the edge of Cape Breton's craggy coast.
The voices fall away, and silence softly cloaks the meditating monastics sitting crossed-legged on large red pillows, on a hardwood floor inside their haven on this jagged island cliff.
Thirty minutes slip by in breaths. Then, men and women with bald heads, in bare feet or socks, file out into what will be a morning of muteness, accompanied by coughs, clinking breakfast dishes or the sounds of footsteps.
The chanting, the meditating and the silence have been morning rituals for the past 22 years among those who come past rainbow trees, up rugged roads to this place of higher calling.
A Tibetan lama -- a former monk who later gave up his monastic vows -- travelled along the winding Cabot Trail in the early 1980s, searching for the perfect place for a full-time Buddhist monastery in the West.
As the story goes, the late Chogyam Trunga Rinpoche, widely credited with bringing Tibetan Buddhism to North America after leading followers out of Communist-occupied Tibet in 1959, saw a double rainbow on the way.
And rainbows, says Jerry Chapman, the monastery's lay meditation instructor and sometime interim director, are "a good sign."
"Something is here that draws people," says Chapman, head of practice and study for the monastery, which includes the main monastic residence, a school and solitary or group retreat cabins on more than 80 hectares just past Pleasant Bay.
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Comments
The minute my back gets better I'll be on the train to Truro, Nova Scotia. Then I'll have to find my way to the Abbey from there. I want to stay for a few weeks at least. Maybe my dream of becoming a nun will come true. Who knows? Chogyam Trungpa sure had good sense to choose that part of Canada. And not just for it's stark beauty and magical ambiance. Maritimers are just about the kindest people on this earth, next to maybe Newfoundlanders. lol!
But aren't you already a nun?;)
Pretty much...
All the while, Welsh speakers are increasing in numbers.