We actually know extremely little regarding the Singing Bowls of Tibet. We find nothing concerning these specific instruments in books dealing with the ritual music of Tibet. Although 'Begging Bowls' are mentioned as being part of the practitioner's belongings, these are said to be made of iron or steel. Sacrificial Bowls adorning the Buddhist altars, whilst often possessing a pleasing sound, are likewise of a different shape to the 'singing bowls.' From the scores of recordings which have become increasingly available featuring Tibetan Buddhist Ritual Music, we find no recorded appearances or mention of the 'singing bowls.' Furthermore, travellers in the Himalayas find few or no answers to their questions concerning the origin, history or the traditional uses of the bowls within the context of spiritual discipline. The questioning of visiting lamas or peoples of Tibet very seldom improves upon this situation.
According to Groves: "The study of Tibetan music is important for several reasons: it establishes Tibetan ritual music as having a major independent Asian musical style; it shows that various genres perpetuate archaic Central Asian features; it enables us to recognise modes of the traditional music of many classes before these become further hybridised or disappear." First-hand material has become increasingly available since 1959 enabling one to form a reasonable picture of Tibetan music.
As we begin our exploration of this subject let us consider the background of Tibet:
Isolated by high altitudes, a severe climate and formidable mountain ranges, Tibet has developed a very original civilisation and music culture. Its population of about 1.7 million represents a blend of archaic whites and fully evolved mongoloids and goes back to the Central Asian Ch'iang tribes who were herders in the 1st millennium BC. Hence the ancient way of life is one of nomadic pastoralism. Economically Tibet belongs to a belt of cattle-raising cultures, stretching from Central Asia through Arabia into Africa. Agriculture is also found in the valleys of the south and southeast.
In the prehistoric age the religion of Tibet was Shamanism of the northern and Central Asian type. From this, in primitive times, developed Bon (the native religion), forms of which survive today. Tibet became a dominant military power in Central Asia in the 8th century during the first historical period, which was that of the early kings (7th - 10th century). From northern India it gradually adopted Mahayana Buddhism intermixed with Tantrism. During the rule of king Srong-btsan-sgam-po (c627-49 - Srongtsen Gampo ) the Indian Gupta alphabet was adapted to Tibetan (a Tibeto-Burman language). This made possible the Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, primarily through translation from Indian sources during the 7th to 13th centuries. The indigenous religion, however, remained strong. The Middle Ages saw a reworking of Indian Tantric Buddhism, which, blended with Bon , created highly syncretistic forms. An essentially independent Tibetan culture was created, based on a feudal theocracy, and its arts acquired distinctive forms and styles.
Tibet is not confined culturally and musically to modern political Tibet. The broader area of ethnic Tibet also includes to the east, parts of the Chinese provinces of Szechwuan, Kansu and Yunnan; to the west, the now Indian regions of Ladakh, Lahul and Spiti; to the south, Bhutan, Sikkim, parts of northern Nepal, the Sherpa and Tamang regions of eastern Nepal and the extreme north-west of Assam.
Music is very important in the lives of all Tibetan peoples and has been stressed alike in religion, education and entertainment as well as in everyday life. The monks make music for the Buddha and their divinities; the minstrels delight and instruct their patrons; the people sing to lighten their work and enrich their leisure. Such different contexts have created different musical forms. In most of them dance is a close partner of music, as is also drama in ritual and in education.
There are still many Bon-po (adherents of Bon ), especially in the east of Tibet . Bon is usually considered as the ensemble of pre-Buddhist beliefs of the Tibetans and it embodies a vast mass of ritual practices bearing on exorcism, divination and the appeasement of wrathful divinities as well as elaborate teachings guiding the individual to full spiritual realisation. That places Bon among the great mystico-philosophical systems of the world, despite the relatively small number of its adherents.
The Bonpos do not recognise the authority of the Buddha Sakyamuni, the historical figure who lived two and a half thousand years ago and to whom we owe the teachings of Buddhism. They trace the source of their doctrine to Lord Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, who for them is the real "Buddha", the enlightened one.
Shenrab visited Tibet at a time when the Tibetans practised ritual sacrifices. Shenrab quelled the local demons and imparted instructions on the performance of rituals using offering cakes in the shapes of the sacrificial animals that led to Tibetans abandoning animal sacrifices. On the whole, he found the land unprepared to receive the five Ways 'of the fruit' of the higher Bon teachings, so he taught the four Ways 'of cause.' In these practices the emphasis is on reinforcing relationships with the guardian spirits and the natural environment, exorcising demons, and eliminating negativities. He also taught practices of purification by fumigation and lustral sprinkling and introduced prayer flags as a way of reinforcing fortune and positive energy.
He came from a country to the west of Tibet called Tazig (sTag-gzig) - a place identified with the ancient Persian Empire - and brought Bon to Zhang - zhung , a region which comprised the north-west of Tibet and the area of Mount Kailas. From there the doctrine of Bon was introduced to Tibet and the sacred texts were translated from the language of Zhang-zhung into Tibetan.
The oldest Bonpo historical documents date from the X and X1 centuries and the oral tradition goes back to an earlier age but in the X1V century a reformation took place that brought Bon closer to the general lines of Tibetan Buddhism so that its monastic forms have been largely assimilated by Tantric Buddhism, though there are also many practices suggestive of the Shamanism of Central and northern Asia and of the music of their hunting societies.
Bon share with Buddhism some fundamental doctrinal tenets such as the concepts of "impermanence" and of the "empty nature" of the phenomenal world as well as the idea of the existence of a transcendental state, "enlightenment", to be attained through meditational experience, ritual practices and scholastic study. Bon has also borrowed many features from Buddhism, for example, of its 'nine ways' of realisation, the seventh is 'the way of pure sound.'
Nevertheless, they conserve a strong sense of independence and it may be their insistence in maintaining a clearly separate identity while accepting new influences without rejecting old traditions that has allowed them to build a syncretic religion.
A very important category of ritual comprises the propitiation of various divinities, protectors of the Bon doctrine. These divinities were usually old mountain gods or forces of nature that have been symbolically subdued and put to the service of religion. Often the origin of such a type of chant is rooted in legend and refers to visitations had by a venerated figure of the lineage of transmissions of the religious teachings. Kailas rises in the Ngari region of Western Tibet, one of the highest, loneliest and most desolate places on the planet. Except for a few small bands of nomadic herders the empty plains are crossed only by the wind. Ordinary standards would judge it a bleak, barren wasteland, but, like much of Tibet, the region seems to rise above common judgement. What is barren elsewhere becomes luminous here.
Confronted with such space and silence man feels superfluous, out of place. The land dominates him, he does not control it, and in its immensity he senses the presence of larger, unseen forces. Ancient Tibetans knew their country was inhabited by invisible legions of gods, demons and spirits. They ruled earth, air and water, guarded mountain passes and river fords, dwelt in the hearth of every home and the ridgepole of every tent.
Towering above all these were the mountain gods, the centres of Tibet's ancient folk religion. A holy peak was a mighty lord: it embodied a region's 'soul' and protected those dwelling in its shadow. Tibet's first king was said to have descended from heaven onto a mountaintop in response to the prayers of the people; and when their reign was over it was from a mountaintop that the early kings returned into the sky, following a silver cord linking earth and heaven.
From these beliefs the Shamanistic religion known as Bon developed in the remote Shang-Shung kingdom of Western Tibet. The soul-mountain of Shang-Shung was an ice-capped pyramid called Kang Tise - later known in the West by its Hindi name, Kailas . Another title was Yungdruk Gu Tseg , the 'Nine-Storey Swastika Mountain.' To Bonpo , as to Hindus, the swastika was an ancient symbol of power.
Dzogchen is common to both Bon and Nyingmapa Buddhism and these two spiritual traditions also have in common a ninefold division of their Ways or modes of religious observance. Dzogchen literally means 'perfection,' 'accomplishment,' or 'fulfilment' (rdzogs) that is 'complete' or 'great' (chen). Although Dzogchen is the 'single great sphere,' for convenience it is described as having the three aspects of base, path and fruit: 'base' because the ground of Dzogchen is the primordial state of the individual; 'path' because Dzogchen is the supreme direct and immediate path to realisation; 'fruit' because Dzogchen is the consummation of enlightenment, liberation from the cycle of illusory samsaric transmigration in one single lifetime.
Whereas, as well as practises of Buddhist origin, the nine Ways of the Bonpos comprehend the entire compass of indigenous Tibetan customs and religious beliefs and practices, including medical science, astrology and cosmology, sortilege and prediction, appeasement and exorcism of powerful evil spirits and ghosts, rites for prosperity and tantric rites of destruction of enemies, ransom and guidance of the dead, moral discipline for lay and monastic practitioners, Tantric practices and rites, hagiography, and the highest spiritual path of Dzogchen. In this respect Bon may be said to be the true religion of Tibet, embracing both autochthonous and imported religious observances.
Nowadays the Bon seek to restore ceremonial practices almost forgotten in their country. They intend to make better known the musical aspects of a ritual tradition that has remained largely unknown to the western world and ignored by the Tibetans themselves. A tradition, which nevertheless is representative of the native elements of Tibetan religion.
In ritual music, both instrumental music and chanting are employed. In the course of its long history Bon appears to have used flutes and trumpets made of human thighbones. However, the phyed-rnga (single-headed drum) and the gshang ( 'flat bell' - with rim turned inwards; separate beater (horn); used in both Bon and Buddhist religions)); both traditionally of Tibetan origin, have become chief instruments. When the Bon priest plays his drum he is thought of, according to the old legends, as mounted upon a flying steed, especially a horse or deer, the domesticated animals of earth (which are considered the middle level of the Bon universe). The steed carries the priest into the heavens or highest level (i.e. brings him religious ecstasy), where he may communicate with the heavenly spirits (eagle or sun-bird, and dragon or thunder-bird).
The Buddhist liturgy . Buddhism in Tibet is a form of Mahayana , syncretised through an early blend with Tantrism in India and with Bon in Tibet. Its monastic system, with Tibetan everywhere the liturgical language, has existed not only throughout the whole region of ethnic Tibet, but also in Mongolia, Buryat Siberia, the Caucasus, Manchuria, and parts of China and Turkistan (Sinkiang). In this religion , music, both vocal and instrumental, has always been an important way to spiritual enlightenment; it prepares the mind to receive truth, which alone can take man beyond wrong knowledge and the consequent sufferings of life, and, ultimately, beyond the inevitable circle of death and rebirth which these are said to entail. The music at once reflects the formless transcendent truth and the transitory world of forms considered indivisible from it. It exists on many levels, helpful alike to meditation, devotional communication, and the cultivation of special insights and powers.
The music of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery alternates between the loud orchestra with its complex texture and the soft, restrained, unison chanting, creating the sense of passing from time to the timeless, from melody to sounds-in-one, from sound to silence. It is the tonal expression for going beyond the world of names and forms to the Formless, which Buddhists hold to be the nature of the ultimate reality.
Tibetan Buddhism condenses all the modes of human experience into its ceremonials and meditative imagery. The visual arts embrace the visual realm, music and sonic implements the sound realm. The medium of sound is the air, which we know most intimately as our personal breath by which we live and utter, and through which we intuit frequencies of vibration. Chanting, trumpet and flute-like playing, drumming and bells all focus sound; and the shapes of musical performance focus varied patterns of sound. The aim is to experience the Whole via sonic unity, identified in Kashmiri doctrines transmitted to Tibet as Nadabindu , sound-seed, or Spandu , primal vibration.
Ornate trumpets are formed from conch shells commonly used in ceremonies the world over, and ancient Indian emblems for the Primal Sound. Tibetan vocal chanting and the sound of massive metal trumpets match their deep resonant roar. Tibetans experience the power of the wind directly and harness its energy as sound in a variety of ways. Trumpets are one. The smaller have a strident sound. The huge copper and brass conical ones give a deep, shuddering roar audible for miles. Trumpets are used to call on and warn the spirits of ceremonials. Monastic chanting is done in a deep vocal register to reach the spiritual foundations of the world. The double - skull drum, another old Indian emblem of cosmic vibration, is played by a rotary flipping movement that makes its tethered bead strike alternately each of the skins. Its two sides symbolise the dual nature of reality: the conventional reality and the ultimate. The Bell with a vajra handle, yet another symbol of the Primal Sound, can also be used as a sonic focus for meditation by rubbing its rim gently and continuously with a stick, so producing a sustained, small ringing hum. The bell represents both the doctrine beyond hearing, and emptiness, the vajra the compassionate means to benefit others.
From their lofty and magical homeland Tibetan Singing Bowls have travelled across the Himalayas, through valleys, and along ancient trade routes. Brought back to the West by jet-age travellers these mysterious objects have aroused interest and curiosity about their origin, and their traditional usage. Their story, however, like the mysterious Himalayas, has lain hidden, obscured by clouds.
The Tibetan hand bell, or Drilbu, is basically of one design and is recognised anywhere, whereas the Singing Bowls have a greater diversity of shapes and forms. Variations in their design produce different sounds and combinations of these various designs produce yet further variances. Yet other Bowls may bear similar appearances in form and yet produce different acoustical phenomena. It is possible to identify 45 such basic differences in Bowl designs with a further 23 varieties of Bowls possessing other significant psycho-acoustical features. That's at least 68 types of Singing Bowl compared to one type of Tibetan (Hand) Bell.
Due to the Communist Chinese military occupation of Tibet in the 1950's, and the subsequent, almost total, destruction of its monasteries, the esoteric knowledge of the Tibetan singing bowls has all but disappeared. And although it has been more than 25 years since Tibetan singing bowls and their incredible sounds were first introduced to the Western world, little has been written about them.
Many people have deliberately travelled through the Himalayas in an endeavour to discover something about the bowls only to return no wiser than when they left. Randall "Rain" Gray travelled and lived in the Himalayan region for 10 years spending over 8 years before finding any single individual, either monk or lay-person, who could tell him anything at all concerning these instruments. He then turned to his Tibetan brother-in-law, Lama Lobsang Molam, and asked him for his help.
Lama Lobsang Molam a Tibetan monk born in Lhassa, Tibet, was at that time living at a small monastery in Swyambunath, Kathmandu, Nepal. He assured "Rain" Gray that he would try his best to find someone who could provide him with some information. After several months of enquiries he arrived at Gray's door one morning with exciting news. He had found an old monk who had the information which Gray had been searching for. That monk was Lama Thupten Lobsang Leche who was around 70 years old at the time of Gray's interview in October 1986. Lama Thupten Lobsang Leche came from Drepung Losel Ling Monastery , the largest Gompa (Monastery) in Tibet having moved from Nepal to Tibet before 1959. Drepung is one of the four great monasteries of the Gelugpa Sect of Tibetan Buddhism and was said to have housed over 40,000 monks. |
