CHRIS JAY is a Senior Instructor with Siddhartha’s Intent, a worldwide network of Buddhist practitioners studying and practicing under the guidance of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
CHRIS JAY: Well, I can certainly understand the experience that leads to your question. Once, Orgyen Topgyal Rinpoche commented to Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche that if Westerners continue chanting in Tibetan, the dharma will be dead in fifty years. If you want to chant in Tibetan, he said, then learn Tibetan well enough so you can read and converse in the language.
There is something mind-numbing, isn’t there, about hours of chanting in a language that we don’t know. How many of us, myself included, have developed the ability to chant along while thinking about something else entirely?
The purpose of chanting in a group is to fully engage our three doors—body, speech, and mind—and orient them towards enlightened expression. Certainly monasteries and nunneries, with their chanting,
