I recently got to return to a favorite retreat place, the Tibetan-Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, outside of Bloomington IN, some 18 months after my last visit.
The theme of this visit was Light, Light and More Light, as determined by the wonderfully sunny and cloudless weather that prevailed (after the rain- and hail-filled driving day to get there). I walked the grounds as always, spun the prayer wheels, got some wonderfully light-saturated photos, and burned incense nonstop.
I also had the pleasure of witnessing a Buddhist puja ceremony, nearly two hours of monks chanting prayers in classic Tibetan. May the Tibetan language and culture live long and thrive.
The Center’s four sand mandalas, which had been around ten years old, have all been replaced by new ones since my last visit. Gorgeous work…
My Yurt Music was, as usual, suitable to the location: Buddhist chanting; Alash Ensemble‘s Buura; Kongar-ool Ondar‘s Echoes of Tuva; Robert Gass’ Heart of Perfect Wisdom; Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings’ Tibetan Bells II and III, and Yamantaka (with Mickey Hart); Steve Roach’s Prayers to the Protector and To the Threshold of Silence; Robert Rich’s wonderful new Long Tail of the Quiet Gong; and Steve’s Quiet Music (which, along with Structures From Silence, was my Driving Music to be Transported By).
(I finally got tired of missing the first and last Tibetan Bells albums and, when I got home, paid a visit to iTunes to complete the set. The last one, The Bells of Sh’ang Sh’ung, is pretty weird…)
My reading was sort of bipolar, as I continued through large swaths of Hermann Hesse and Sam Shepard. Hesse’s protagonist is always striving for knowledge – or at least sanity, so his work is always entirely apropos for the location. Shepard’s characters, on the other hand, are all simply crazy. So that jarred a bit, but sometimes you just can’t put the guy down. In any event, this will be my last tour through his twisted world, compelling though it can be in its way.
This was, in part, a working trip: I took along my recording rig and spent two days recording voice parts for a surprise album (not an eyes cast down project) to be announced soon and released Dec. 1st.
My other project was recording a bunch of singing bowl and tingsha samples, for a new eyes cast down piece inspired by a classic Greek tragedy. I’m hopeful that these parts, with some processing, will be all I need for this piece, but we’ll see. This one will conclude a new album, also to be announced soon and to be released on New Year’s Eve.
The final day, I just chilled, which normally I’d be doing the entire time. The weather warmed up during my stay, so that I could finally sit on the yurt’s back porch, surrounded by forest. Tea time!
The Light theme was a pleasant, much more upbeat contrast to the Melancholia of my last visit. More bright and less sadness, though I’d never want to lose sight of the First Noble Truth (or any of them!). Still, more Hesse and less Shepard is definitely the direction to go, I reckon…