Gyuto Monks

See The Gyuto Monks for description. "The Gyuto Monks are masters of Tibetan Buddhist tantric ritual and their lives are dedicated to practicing tantric ideals. To be with them, to observe and be touched by their humanity, is to see kindness in action." One of the two great monasteries of the Gelug-pa lineage in Tibetan tantric Buddhism, Gyuto Tantric University was established by Jetsun Kunga Dhondup in 1475 and flourished in Lhasa, Tibet, until 1959 when their famous Ramoche temple was desecrated and the population of 900 monks decimated.

About 60 monks escaped to India with the Dalai Lama and throughout the past 30 years, enduring serious privation as refugees, they have nurtured and preserved the ancient rituals and traditions and carefully rebuilt the monastic community to today's population of over 500.
The unique sound of their chanting occasioned an invitation to the monks to visit the West for the first time in 1967, and since then they have regularly conducted tantric arts programs around the world, showing the colour, beauty, complexity and magic of this ancient endangered culture.

When I was living and playing in Heidelberg a few years ago, I used to go down to the Hauptstrasse on a Saturday or Sunday morning in the hopes of seeing some of the Mongolian throat singers, or so they were called there at the time. Three or four monkish characters with instruments I didn't recognize, and who would sing two notes simultaneously, one usually very low, like subsonic. I would sit down right in front of them a couple of feet away and marvel at the things I was hearing. It was easy after a while to forget where and when one was.