During my time in Nepal, I spent a few days staying in a Buddhist monastery in the Kathmandu Valley. It was a very peaceful place, where I could enjoy quiet, solitude, beautiful gardens and views, and three wholesome meals a day.  I attended dharma talks, watched the monks debate, and even visited a nearby leprosy rehabilitation centre. I learned a bit about Buddhism, chatted to some of the monks and nuns, and learned about circumambulation (that’s a topic for another post!). On my first night, I was privileged enough to witness a remarkable ceremony that was both surprising and delightful.

It was after dinner and I was heading out to the monastery gardens, thinking I would enjoy a quiet stroll while the evening was still light. Suddenly a very loud gong sounded, and monks started streaming in toward the centre of the grounds from all directions. I was with one of the girls who was sharing my dorm, Laura from Argentina, and as we watched she exclaimed, “Ah, it’s like a movie!” and I had to agree that it was. We followed along behind them, and saw that they were all proceeding into the main Gompa (temple) kicking off their shoes as they went in. We waited with a group of other guests who had also come to see what was happening, and finally, when they were all inside, one last monk gestured us towards him and said we could go in to watch, so we flicked off our own shoes and he showed us in to some cushions along the back wall where we could sit and watch.

All the monks had seated themselves in rows down the middle of the room, facing each other across a central aisle. From what I could discern, the most important monks were seated closest to the Buddha statue, with the younger monks and novices seated in the rows behind and towards the back of the room near the doors. On the far wall was a table piled high with small boxes. The helpful monk who had shown us in had a little table near the door which he sat at, but first he brought us over some copies of a small spiral bound book with Lama Chopa written on the front. He told us to start on page 10, so we opened to that page and attempted to follow along as the monks began chanting.

The book contained a copy of the chants with an English translation, and when they chanted slowly it was easy enough to follow, although the sounds we heard sometimes bore no resemblance to the characters on the page. When it was slow we tried to join in, but sometimes they sped up and we lost our place completely and would sit there flicking back and forth trying to catch up. At those moments the helpful monk at the back would wander over and point us to the right page. Most often, when they started speed-chanting, the book had small notes like (x3), (x7) or even in one case (x21)! It was when this happened that we invariably got lost.

I found the whole thing quite mesmerising – even though I had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t help feeling that I was witnessing something special (when I asked about it later, I was informed that it was a special ritual which only occurs on certain days: “once a month, we do it twice”. Many of the chants had translations like ‘let me bring happiness to all sentient beings’, or ‘let me let go of attachments’, and there were many references to flowing in rivers. They evoked calm, peace and a gentle love for all things.

I was impressed that they all managed to keep up, especially when they sped up, and the effect of the deep, tantric chanting of the older monks mixed with the higher voices of the novices gave it a gentle musical quality that echoed in the large room. Sometimes on the slower chants they would all sway from side to side, and the effect was quite hypnotic – there were several times when I felt my eyelids drooping, although I was far from bored.

The lead monk had a microphone and every so often he would turn it on and drown out all the others. There was a large gong at one end, and along the aisle were several sets of bells, cymbals, and horns, and in some places the monks would clap in unison once, twice or three times. So at any time the chanting could be interrupted by a clap or a bell or a blast on a horn, and once or twice the whole ensemble would play so the room would fill with claps, gongs, jingles, clashes and horn blasts all at once.

It was really quite mesmerising, but after about half an hour or so I began to feel very uncomfortable. I started fidgeting, sitting on one leg then the other, then on both, then stretching them out in front of me, then leaning on my arm because my back was hurting. I checked the book to see how many pages there were – 108 – and felt a moment of dismay when I saw we were only on page 24. I longed to get up and stretch but I felt that would be rude, and I didn’t want to leave and miss any, so I stayed put, amazed at the older monks who sat rigid and unmoving, and the American woman next to me who sat wide-eyed and staring through the whole thing. I can’t say the same for the young monks at the back, at least, they were twitching as much as me by the end and had started to pinch and tease each other as only young boys do, which made me feel slightly better.

Towards the end, a couple of the novices disappeared out of the main doors and came back in with enormous teapots. They then went around the room pouring tea for everyone, starting at the front, climbing back and forth over each other and around the pillars to make sure they poured for everyone in the right order. Finally they came over and offered tea to us and a nun who was sitting on her own further along the wall. There was more chanting and a procession of offerings, and then an instruction in the book which said ‘taste the tsog’, so we did. Then came the ‘distribution of offerings’, in which the boxes piled up on the back table were handed out to all the monks. The young ones of course opened theirs straight away, and out of them came things like packets of crisps, noodles and fruit drinks, which we were given too. There was five or so more minutes of chanting, then in the same breath they all stood up and filed out of the room. After this abrupt end, the helpful monk came over to collect our books and tell us it was all over. The whole thing had lasted about two hours, and it was full dark by the time we came out of the temple. I wondered if I had the same expression as the others – a mixture of wonder, confusion and tiredness. Laura and I made our way back to our room through the garden, illuminated by bright pink and blue plastic trees, and I got into bed wondering if the ceremony I had just watched was a regular thing or if I had just been lucky. I didn’t see anything else like that while I was there, and I never really found out what it was all about, but I was glass to have witnessed it all the same.