Namo Avalokiteshvara

June 27, 2009; 9:55 P.M. - Brother Lai, a Zen Buddhist monk at a monastery in upstate New York, demonstrates the sangha's Avalokiteshvara chant. A lay member of the sangha wrote the song and it was adopted by the monastics. It's pretty impressive when a large group of monks and nuns and laypeople chant it for 10 minutes in the cavernous meditation halls. Here, he just sings 2 cycles of it and it's not a performance. He let me video him playing it under the pretext that I wanted to learn it since it's in a funky 6 meter and hard to figure out just by knowing the chords and words. The chant is just an homage to the Buddha Avalokiteshvara.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• monk
• Blue
• Cliff
• monastery
• Avalokiteshvara
• chant

[silencespeaksloudly]

I love this chant , I was at Blue Cliff this summer and was blessed with the opportunity to hear the monks and nuns chant this .....breath taking to say the least.

Please, if you know the words please share and translate to English also.

Thank you

[keauxgeigh]

the chant is: namo (a)valokiteshvara, and just means "homage to the Buddha Avalokiteshvara". The chords he's using are Cmaj, Gmaj, Emaj, Am, and Fmaj7 in a 6/4 time.

Thank you, it's always supportive to me to hear about people who have visited the sangha ^^

[DdianePhuong]

Namaste! Thank you for this :) Can you please email me the mp3 version? PLEASE! Thanks :)

[WeyMama]

Thank you for this. :) I just brought out my guitar to play again after *years* and hope to teach myself this...

[kongtrieuak]

hj.have you sing vietnamese? you sing very good

[mhh218]

I had tears coming down unstoppable when I heard this chant by the monastics at Blue Cliff. A very healing chant.

[mhh218]

I had tears coming down unstoppable when I heard this chant by the monastics at Blue Cliff. A very healing song.

[Layus302]

Merci Phap Lai ! That's great th hear that song on Youtube!

[lprince18]

Wonderful brother Phap Lai. Thank you. I was at Blue Cliff when you made this =)

[yukiko1982]

Well done Ben!.  Lots of hugs from Scotland. ^_^

[07wkeller]

How beautiful and uplifting. Thank you to the monks and nuns from Plum Village who introduced me to this lovely chant.