December 25, 2024 • 21 mins
Beside the best-known mantras used in popular Tibetan-style Buddhism – the famous “Mani”, Tara and Guru Rinpoche for example – there are a number of prayers which are also very widely known and used. The “Seven Line Prayer to Guru Rinpoche” is one of these.
Words or phrases you might want to look up:
- Guru Rinpoche
- Seven Line Prayer
- Mani mantra
- Tara
- Guru Chowang
The link to the prayer at Lotsawa House:
https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/guru-chowang/seven-line-prayer
Nangsid Zilnon - a form of Guru Rinpoche
#Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #SevenLines #GuruRinpoche
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Hello, hello dear listeners, good morning, good afternoon or good evening. This is the Double Dorje podcast as you hoped. I am Alex Wilding and in this episode we'll take a look at the famous 8 lines that constitute the seven line prayer. There is an explanation for that which we will get to.
(00:31):
To begin with, like every time, 1 call to action, or CTA as we know it in the trade, and one possibly helpful tip. The CTA is where I ask you if you would take a moment to like, subscribe or whatever you can to support this podcast. The possibly helpful tip is that
if your listening platform doesn't show you the extra material, like the regular list of words you might want to look up and any associated picture that I included in the description, you'll find that on Podbean, at least, as long as that is where this podcast is hosted.
(01:10):
We have to find joy in our practise somehow.
Let's be honest, we're all human and all capable of feeling bored or tired or irritated. It's one thing if you're a small child whose parents have sent you to a monastery. It's 5:00 in the morning and you have to be in the main hall, ready for the regular morning prayers, having washed your hands and face in freezing cold water.
(01:35):
You have no choice. In addition to having no choice, what you do have is the support from your friends, elders, teachers, the community, and indeed the whole of society.
That includes your parents, who are supporting you with donations, and so on and so forth.
But most of us in the West don't have either that pressure or that support. If we don't find the motivation within ourselves, the whole business will become a grind in due course. We'll resent it. We'll start to shorten it. We'll miss it out more and more often, and in time to come, of course, we'll realise that we've actually given it up altogether.
(02:17):
I too have been guilty of doing practises with resentment just because I made some sort of commitment.
Making a commitment to perform a certain number of recitations or performances is quite normal and very helpful, but it has to be kept in balance. The discovery you make if you go overboard is the very unsurprising discovery that it doesn't work in the long term.
(02:46):
In 1979, Thrangu Rinpoche, who sadly passed on earlier this year, gave empowerment and teachings in London on white Tara.
Now, often I find myself, how shall I put it, not entirely thrilled by question and answer sessions on these sorts of occasions.
(03:09):
All too often, at least so it seems to me, the questioners are asking the question mainly to get their own little bit of personal attention direct from the Lama. That's actually understandable, because access to such important teachers is rare and precious. So let's not be too hard on them.
If the truth be told, I'm sure many of us have done that at one time or another, but it does tend to mean that those sessions aren't so very rewarding.
(03:37):
But this time one question and response struck me very strongly, which is why I remember it to this day.
Somebody said that they were doing their practise, which I think I remember was Chenrezig, I not sure, but it doesn't really matter.
They were doing it regularly, but they didn't find any joy in reciting the mantra. How could they develop that?
(04:01):
Thrangu's response was short and direct. He laughed before replying, "You get no joy from it? Then why on Earth are you doing it at all?"
So yes, those of us who are essentially lone practitioners, or who only have a small contact with other Buddhist friends, have to find joy in our practise if it's going to stay with us at all in the long run.
(04:33):
The reason I mention this is because there is, I'm sure, a big place for some kind of simple, effortless practises, practises that we can do with relaxation and joy, even if not pleasure.
One example would be circumambulating a stupa, not that many of us will have a suitable stupa somewhere on the block.
(04:55):
More realistically, we can recite or sing mantras.
Some of us will be doing private practise based on more specialised deities, things that we would perhaps feel a bit diffident about doing in public.
But there are others that can be practised in that more "practise" way, but that are also quite suitable for reciting in public under the right circumstances, which you will, of course, be more likely to find in Kathmandu than in Basildon. It may not be weird to say these mantras out loud in public.
(05:28):
I have demonstrated some tunes for both the Guru Rinpoche mantra and the famous Mani in earlier episodes. To be precise, having looked it up, that's Episode 15 and Episode 8 respectively.
Tara's mantra also has a simple tune very suitable for group singing without any particular training.
(05:49):
I do have a fond memory of travelling with a couple of dozen other students in an unheated, rattling, blue and white bus across the plains of Amdo in east Tibet. Everyone was suffering from the altitude, some critically, some just with dreadful headaches. It was cold, dark, and uncomfortable, but somebody struck up the tune
(06:10):
of the Tara mantra, and by the time we'd sung it 108 times -
I think we felt better.
If the publishing of this episode follows the planned schedule, it will in fact be dropped on Christmas Day.
By that time, many of us might be sick and tired of the supposedly jolly so-called joyful singing of carols and the jingling of bells.
(06:39):
For some people, of course, the Christmas celebrations are truly joyful, but I am sure I'm not alone in finding that the fake commercial joy gets on my pip. So if I'm not indulging in revenge, perhaps we could counter that with our own joyful tunes. Which brings me,
after the simple mantras, to an extremely popular prayer known as the seven line prayer to Guru Rinpoche.
(07:06):
Realistically, of course, singing that in public as an act of revenge is a flight of rather foolish fantasy, and we'd risk simply being annoying to other people. But let's remember, it was no less a figure than the second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi, who popularised the communal singing of the Mani mantra.
So it does have a good precedent.
(07:31):
I mentioned at the outset that, in its usual format, this prayer has 8 lines, which may seem perverse, but it does have a sense to it.
The first seven lines are the prayer itself, hence the seven line prayer name, while the last line, as we will see in a minute, is more like an abbreviated mantra or a kind of coda, as musicians would say. A tail, in other words.
(07:57):
If you understand that at the outset, then you're not going to be thrown off as much as I was, and I've seen other people trip up in the same way, the first time you come across this prayer used as a starting point, but with something else different, and quite possibly considerably longer, appended instead of that eighth line.
(08:18):
I dare say that most of my listeners don't speak any Tibetan. So, with over 50 syllables, this prayer is going to take longer to learn than the six syllable Mani mantra or the 12 syllables of Guru Rinpoche's mantra.
At first, you'll almost certainly want it printed out, and most people find that it helps to learn, admittedly, and necessarily very slowly, the meanings of most of the individual syllables and words.
(08:47):
Give yourself time for this. It's a great thing to recite or sing when you wake up in the morning or when you're out for a walk, or before you fall asleep, or whatever your imagination can come up with. But that all requires you to know it off by heart and to be able to recite it without effort. Effort is such a problem, isn't it?
(09:15):
The prayer is said to have originated during a great debate at the scholastic centre of Nalanda in North India. Shock horror! The Buddhists were losing the debate! In a stroke of good fortune, a dakini appeared to the debaters in dreams. She told them that she had a brother, Dorje Thotreng Tsal,
who was living in a remote graveyard, who would be able to assist them in the debate.
(09:42):
But how could they find him?
She told them that they had no need to worry, and that if they recited this prayer - in fact, I remember hearing a story that they had to go up to the roof of the monastery to recite this prayer - and he would come.
Indeed, he did come, flying through the air, and, indeed again, they did win the debate. Oh, happy day!
(10:12):
After that event, he also taught this prayer in Tibet, and it's found in many termas or treasure texts. Which reminds me that some time I ought to do an episode about just that kind of text. Anyway, the first treasure finder to include this prayer in his treasure text, or one of them,
was the 13th century Guru Chowang.
(10:39):
Well, that was quite a lot of preamble, and it's time to answer the burning question of how does the prayer go?
Many profound, rich and beautiful commentaries have been written about it, and there is quite a lot available in English translation. So I think my place here now is just to run over a simple translation, which I will base largely on the one given at Lotsawa House.
(11:09):
The link to this is a bit too fiddly to try to give you in audio, but I'll include it in the episode description.
If you can't find that, you should manage all the same with your usual search engine. If you look for Lotsawa House and enter seven line prayer in your search.
Lotsawa simply means translator and Lotsawa House is a large and enormously valuable resource for people interested in studying these things a bit more seriously.
(11:41):
At this point it will be best if I don't try to give you my very poor attempt at imitating Tibetan pronunciation, as it will be easier to follow, to latch on to, so to speak, if I stick to a highly anglicised sound.
The very first syllable is HUM or HUNG,
(12:02):
which is a purely mantric syllable.
It's found in very, very many Buddhist mantras, and here it's the first place where the guru emerges. The line continues ORGYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM, which means in the North West of the country of Orgyen, the second line, PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA
(12:26):
means in the heart of a lotus flower.
YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY means endowed with the most marvellous attainments.
PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK means you are famous as the lotus-born.
I will just mention here that Pema Jungnay is one of the commonest ways of referring to Guru Rinpoche.
(12:50):
Line five, KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR, says, surrounded by many dakinis. KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI means following in your footsteps, and the seventh line, JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL, asks Guru Rinpoche to arrive and to grant blessing.
That's the actual seven lines, and for reasons of both melody and so to speak, roundness, completeness, it is finished off by an eighth line, GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG.
(13:23):
This is more in the style of a mantra, but the first 3 words can in fact be translated. Guru is no doubt familiar to most of you. Pema is lotus, and siddhi refers to attainments which may be worldly powers, at the highest level may mean enlightenment itself.
Technically you should get a reading transmission known as a lung for this, but the prayer is so widespread that, frankly, worrying about it would really be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. All the same, I would strongly recommend you receive one when you can.
(14:01):
Knowing that you have heard it as it was given to you, having been passed down from mouth to ear for centuries can really boost your confidence.
And how do we chant it?
We can do it with a steady tune
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(14:38):
We can use a simple, real tune.
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(15:08):
With a tune like that, you can see the advantage of the seven lines being rounded out to 8 lines.
We can also sing it with a very beautiful, slow tune. In past episodes, as well as just now I think I've imposed my voice on you quite enough. But luckily for this tune I have a recording of Ato
(15:29):
Rinpoche teaching the tune in Schleswig Holstein in 1993, when he taught a short guru yoga practise of Guru Rinpoche - a very popular one in fact - originating from the Great Mipham Rinpoche. I apologise in advance for the sound quality. I must have recorded it,
(15:51):
I know from the era, on a cheap cassette recorder with a super-cheap microphone.
Something fancy like Dolby would have definitely been outside my price band.
I decided not to try to doctor this audio to make improvements, which would be possible with modern software, but this is like a dirty old sacred relic. It is what it is. It comes to you now through the magic of digital replication.
(16:21):
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(17:57):
Unfortunately for us, the Tibetan melodic ear doesn't quite match the European melodic ear. So just in case it's easier for you to learn, I'm going to sing it now in the way that I sing it.
That will of course not be as authentic, whatever authentic means, but you might find it easier to cope with. You can skip forward a minute through the podcast if you don't want to hear that.
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(19:57):
As I sang that just now, I realised that one problem I had learning this tune was the fact that several of the written lines leave their last syllable for what, to my ears sound like the beginning of the next line. So if you're tripping up there, just remember that that's happening.
It is rather lovely, isn't it? At least the Ato Rinpoche version is.
(20:23):
So that's it. If anybody is sufficiently inspired to learn this and use it for themselves, it would be wonderful to hear back.
And finally, of course, do remember, please do like, subscribe, tell your friends and all that stuff. And whatever it is, remember to repeat your favourite mantra or prayer with devotion on every possible or conceivable occasion. What fun!
(20:49):
Bye.
Hello, hello dear listeners, good morning, good afternoon or good evening. This is the Double Dorje podcast as you hoped. I am Alex Wilding and in this episode we'll take a look at the famous 8 lines that constitute the seven line prayer. There is an explanation for that which we will get to.
(00:31):
To begin with, like every time, 1 call to action, or CTA as we know it in the trade, and one possibly helpful tip. The CTA is where I ask you if you would take a moment to like, subscribe or whatever you can to support this podcast. The possibly helpful tip is that
if your listening platform doesn't show you the extra material, like the regular list of words you might want to look up and any associated picture that I included in the description, you'll find that on Podbean, at least, as long as that is where this podcast is hosted.
(01:10):
We have to find joy in our practise somehow.
Let's be honest, we're all human and all capable of feeling bored or tired or irritated. It's one thing if you're a small child whose parents have sent you to a monastery. It's 5:00 in the morning and you have to be in the main hall, ready for the regular morning prayers, having washed your hands and face in freezing cold water.
(01:35):
You have no choice. In addition to having no choice, what you do have is the support from your friends, elders, teachers, the community, and indeed the whole of society.
That includes your parents, who are supporting you with donations, and so on and so forth.
But most of us in the West don't have either that pressure or that support. If we don't find the motivation within ourselves, the whole business will become a grind in due course. We'll resent it. We'll start to shorten it. We'll miss it out more and more often, and in time to come, of course, we'll realise that we've actually given it up altogether.
(02:17):
I too have been guilty of doing practises with resentment just because I made some sort of commitment.
Making a commitment to perform a certain number of recitations or performances is quite normal and very helpful, but it has to be kept in balance. The discovery you make if you go overboard is the very unsurprising discovery that it doesn't work in the long term.
(02:46):
In 1979, Thrangu Rinpoche, who sadly passed on earlier this year, gave empowerment and teachings in London on white Tara.
Now, often I find myself, how shall I put it, not entirely thrilled by question and answer sessions on these sorts of occasions.
(03:09):
All too often, at least so it seems to me, the questioners are asking the question mainly to get their own little bit of personal attention direct from the Lama. That's actually understandable, because access to such important teachers is rare and precious. So let's not be too hard on them.
If the truth be told, I'm sure many of us have done that at one time or another, but it does tend to mean that those sessions aren't so very rewarding.
(03:37):
But this time one question and response struck me very strongly, which is why I remember it to this day.
Somebody said that they were doing their practise, which I think I remember was Chenrezig, I not sure, but it doesn't really matter.
They were doing it regularly, but they didn't find any joy in reciting the mantra. How could they develop that?
(04:01):
Thrangu's response was short and direct. He laughed before replying, "You get no joy from it? Then why on Earth are you doing it at all?"
So yes, those of us who are essentially lone practitioners, or who only have a small contact with other Buddhist friends, have to find joy in our practise if it's going to stay with us at all in the long run.
(04:33):
The reason I mention this is because there is, I'm sure, a big place for some kind of simple, effortless practises, practises that we can do with relaxation and joy, even if not pleasure.
One example would be circumambulating a stupa, not that many of us will have a suitable stupa somewhere on the block.
(04:55):
More realistically, we can recite or sing mantras.
Some of us will be doing private practise based on more specialised deities, things that we would perhaps feel a bit diffident about doing in public.
But there are others that can be practised in that more "practise" way, but that are also quite suitable for reciting in public under the right circumstances, which you will, of course, be more likely to find in Kathmandu than in Basildon. It may not be weird to say these mantras out loud in public.
(05:28):
I have demonstrated some tunes for both the Guru Rinpoche mantra and the famous Mani in earlier episodes. To be precise, having looked it up, that's Episode 15 and Episode 8 respectively.
Tara's mantra also has a simple tune very suitable for group singing without any particular training.
(05:49):
I do have a fond memory of travelling with a couple of dozen other students in an unheated, rattling, blue and white bus across the plains of Amdo in east Tibet. Everyone was suffering from the altitude, some critically, some just with dreadful headaches. It was cold, dark, and uncomfortable, but somebody struck up the tune
(06:10):
of the Tara mantra, and by the time we'd sung it 108 times -
I think we felt better.
If the publishing of this episode follows the planned schedule, it will in fact be dropped on Christmas Day.
By that time, many of us might be sick and tired of the supposedly jolly so-called joyful singing of carols and the jingling of bells.
(06:39):
For some people, of course, the Christmas celebrations are truly joyful, but I am sure I'm not alone in finding that the fake commercial joy gets on my pip. So if I'm not indulging in revenge, perhaps we could counter that with our own joyful tunes. Which brings me,
after the simple mantras, to an extremely popular prayer known as the seven line prayer to Guru Rinpoche.
(07:06):
Realistically, of course, singing that in public as an act of revenge is a flight of rather foolish fantasy, and we'd risk simply being annoying to other people. But let's remember, it was no less a figure than the second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi, who popularised the communal singing of the Mani mantra.
So it does have a good precedent.
(07:31):
I mentioned at the outset that, in its usual format, this prayer has 8 lines, which may seem perverse, but it does have a sense to it.
The first seven lines are the prayer itself, hence the seven line prayer name, while the last line, as we will see in a minute, is more like an abbreviated mantra or a kind of coda, as musicians would say. A tail, in other words.
(07:57):
If you understand that at the outset, then you're not going to be thrown off as much as I was, and I've seen other people trip up in the same way, the first time you come across this prayer used as a starting point, but with something else different, and quite possibly considerably longer, appended instead of that eighth line.
(08:18):
I dare say that most of my listeners don't speak any Tibetan. So, with over 50 syllables, this prayer is going to take longer to learn than the six syllable Mani mantra or the 12 syllables of Guru Rinpoche's mantra.
At first, you'll almost certainly want it printed out, and most people find that it helps to learn, admittedly, and necessarily very slowly, the meanings of most of the individual syllables and words.
(08:47):
Give yourself time for this. It's a great thing to recite or sing when you wake up in the morning or when you're out for a walk, or before you fall asleep, or whatever your imagination can come up with. But that all requires you to know it off by heart and to be able to recite it without effort. Effort is such a problem, isn't it?
(09:15):
The prayer is said to have originated during a great debate at the scholastic centre of Nalanda in North India. Shock horror! The Buddhists were losing the debate! In a stroke of good fortune, a dakini appeared to the debaters in dreams. She told them that she had a brother, Dorje Thotreng Tsal,
who was living in a remote graveyard, who would be able to assist them in the debate.
(09:42):
But how could they find him?
She told them that they had no need to worry, and that if they recited this prayer - in fact, I remember hearing a story that they had to go up to the roof of the monastery to recite this prayer - and he would come.
Indeed, he did come, flying through the air, and, indeed again, they did win the debate. Oh, happy day!
(10:12):
After that event, he also taught this prayer in Tibet, and it's found in many termas or treasure texts. Which reminds me that some time I ought to do an episode about just that kind of text. Anyway, the first treasure finder to include this prayer in his treasure text, or one of them,
was the 13th century Guru Chowang.
(10:39):
Well, that was quite a lot of preamble, and it's time to answer the burning question of how does the prayer go?
Many profound, rich and beautiful commentaries have been written about it, and there is quite a lot available in English translation. So I think my place here now is just to run over a simple translation, which I will base largely on the one given at Lotsawa House.
(11:09):
The link to this is a bit too fiddly to try to give you in audio, but I'll include it in the episode description.
If you can't find that, you should manage all the same with your usual search engine. If you look for Lotsawa House and enter seven line prayer in your search.
Lotsawa simply means translator and Lotsawa House is a large and enormously valuable resource for people interested in studying these things a bit more seriously.
(11:41):
At this point it will be best if I don't try to give you my very poor attempt at imitating Tibetan pronunciation, as it will be easier to follow, to latch on to, so to speak, if I stick to a highly anglicised sound.
The very first syllable is HUM or HUNG,
(12:02):
which is a purely mantric syllable.
It's found in very, very many Buddhist mantras, and here it's the first place where the guru emerges. The line continues ORGYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM, which means in the North West of the country of Orgyen, the second line, PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA
(12:26):
means in the heart of a lotus flower.
YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY means endowed with the most marvellous attainments.
PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK means you are famous as the lotus-born.
I will just mention here that Pema Jungnay is one of the commonest ways of referring to Guru Rinpoche.
(12:50):
Line five, KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR, says, surrounded by many dakinis. KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI means following in your footsteps, and the seventh line, JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL, asks Guru Rinpoche to arrive and to grant blessing.
That's the actual seven lines, and for reasons of both melody and so to speak, roundness, completeness, it is finished off by an eighth line, GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG.
(13:23):
This is more in the style of a mantra, but the first 3 words can in fact be translated. Guru is no doubt familiar to most of you. Pema is lotus, and siddhi refers to attainments which may be worldly powers, at the highest level may mean enlightenment itself.
Technically you should get a reading transmission known as a lung for this, but the prayer is so widespread that, frankly, worrying about it would really be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. All the same, I would strongly recommend you receive one when you can.
(14:01):
Knowing that you have heard it as it was given to you, having been passed down from mouth to ear for centuries can really boost your confidence.
And how do we chant it?
We can do it with a steady tune
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(14:38):
We can use a simple, real tune.
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(15:08):
With a tune like that, you can see the advantage of the seven lines being rounded out to 8 lines.
We can also sing it with a very beautiful, slow tune. In past episodes, as well as just now I think I've imposed my voice on you quite enough. But luckily for this tune I have a recording of Ato
(15:29):
Rinpoche teaching the tune in Schleswig Holstein in 1993, when he taught a short guru yoga practise of Guru Rinpoche - a very popular one in fact - originating from the Great Mipham Rinpoche. I apologise in advance for the sound quality. I must have recorded it,
(15:51):
I know from the era, on a cheap cassette recorder with a super-cheap microphone.
Something fancy like Dolby would have definitely been outside my price band.
I decided not to try to doctor this audio to make improvements, which would be possible with modern software, but this is like a dirty old sacred relic. It is what it is. It comes to you now through the magic of digital replication.
(16:21):
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(17:57):
Unfortunately for us, the Tibetan melodic ear doesn't quite match the European melodic ear. So just in case it's easier for you to learn, I'm going to sing it now in the way that I sing it.
That will of course not be as authentic, whatever authentic means, but you might find it easier to cope with. You can skip forward a minute through the podcast if you don't want to hear that.
HUNG OR GYEN YUL GYI NUB JANG TSHAM - PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA - YA TSHEN CHHOK GI NGO DRUB NYEY - PEMA JUNG NAY ZHEY SU DRAK - KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PO KOR - KHYÉ KYI JEY SU DAK DRUB KYI - JIN GYIY LOB CHHIR SHEK SU SOL - GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG
(19:57):
As I sang that just now, I realised that one problem I had learning this tune was the fact that several of the written lines leave their last syllable for what, to my ears sound like the beginning of the next line. So if you're tripping up there, just remember that that's happening.
It is rather lovely, isn't it? At least the Ato Rinpoche version is.
(20:23):
So that's it. If anybody is sufficiently inspired to learn this and use it for themselves, it would be wonderful to hear back.
And finally, of course, do remember, please do like, subscribe, tell your friends and all that stuff. And whatever it is, remember to repeat your favourite mantra or prayer with devotion on every possible or conceivable occasion. What fun!
(20:49):
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.