In this blog post, Tara Mandala Communications Coordinator Clinton Spence reflects on 2020’s virtual retreats – through the musical lens.
Greetings travelers and magicians of the Dharma. I hope this finds you well. For many years now I have had the immense fortune of sharing the world of Tara Mandala with you. And as a musician, I am always trying to communicate everything through music. At some stage in 2020, like a vajra flash of insight, I thought: why not combine the two worlds? And so Mandala Tone was born. The word “tone” first really captured me when Lama Tsultrim was once appreciating how an umdze’s (chant-leader) “tone” is what carries a group of practitioners toward the blessings of practice.
And so, in honoring how the magic of music serves all beings, I share with you five of my best music pieces that helped shape the “tone” of Tara Mandala in 2020. Feel free to download these tracks, and offer a donation. 50% of all download purchases will be donated to Tara Mandala. Thank you muchly, and enjoy the music! ~ Clinton
Track One: Meeting The Ally
This is the music piece that began it all. During a recent Feeding Your Demons (FYD) retreat, practitioners had shared their aspirations for practice. As Tara Mandala teacher Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen was reading a list of these aspirations, I felt the warmth of a soft and intimate piano. As the video progresses, Dorje Lopön Charlotte and Lopön Pieter offer the core transformative aspects of FYD, and as I was playing the piano in accompaniment, it just opened up it’s melody to me.
Listen:
Music used in the 2020 video for the “Feeding Your Demons® Online Course” (June). Watch video below.
Track Two: Open Awareness
Mindfulness has been adopted by mainstream Western culture, because it honors the grace and beauty in every day, otherwise mundane, gestures. In this short guided meditation with Dorje Lopön Charlotte, her calming voice and clear depictions of the meditator’s experience of spaciousness made it very easy for me to create this piece that mimics the Tibetan singing bowl. Tibetan singing bowls create a minimal, spacious atmosphere. They hold all the eccentric overtones that colors the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but they have this simplicity to them that allows us to rest our minds in deep relaxation.
Listen:
Music used in the 2020 video for the “Sky Mind Online Course” (October). Watch video below.
Track Three: Sacred View
There is something in this teaching from Dorje Lopön Charlotte, about the mirror, that feels like a poem or the telling of a magical fairy tale. The journey of discovering a “mirror looking at a mirror” – or “mind looking at mind” – in some ways, is like a fairy tale. And the beauty that it reveals is beyond comprehension. That is why I chose the harp to shape the music for this video. In the final music piece, I added a colorful swirling mix of tones, that emphasizes this feeling of the infinite world within the mirror. Just like in movies and storybooks, the great masters of the past expressed the sacred view in poems and songs that are full of profound concepts. It is my hope that this music piece is in keeping with this tradition.
Listen:
Music used in the 2020 video for the “Sky Mind Online Course” (October). Watch video below.
Track Four: Creative Nature
When I first heard Victress Hitchcock read this poem, I felt a deep sense of love and longing. To me it expresses such a sweet sorrow at how we must part with everything that arises, but in that we celebrate the here and now, and the intrigue of who is witnessing the passing of it all. I immediately translated this longing into a piano piece that accompanies the video. When I looked further into the music and the poem, my second interpretation was one of great reverence for nature, and how creativity has a process to it that is exactly like nature. So the final music piece was adapted to weave together the pulse of nature (the acoustic guitar) and the reverence (the violin). Victress has such an incredible gift. To listen to her words IS the experience of the deepest teachings!
Listen:
Music used in the 2020 video for the “Writing and Contemplation Virtual Retreat” (October). Watch video below.
Track Five: Joyful Presence
Lama Tsultrim once discussed meditating on Green Tara as not to fixate on getting the details perfect, but to relax and simply feel what it is like to be her. In this teaching Dorje Lopön Charlotte talks about the presence of Green Tara as joyous, because we experience the joy of feeling. Green Tara is of the Karma family, which is the element of air, or wind. In this music piece, I wanted resonating tones to hover around the listener, imbued with warmth, joy, and alleviation. Midway through the track there is a light tinkling melody, which represents the unknotting of the lung, or the internal winds within our body. Deity yoga is a simple and powerful way to embody wisdom. Green Tara offers an added quality of responding swiftly to our needs, something that makes her a great inspiration for offerings of devotion, such as music. May this song serve that purpose.
Listen:
Music used in the 2020 video for the “Green Tara Online Course” (July). Watch video below.
Stay tuned for part two in a few weeks, with the other five of the best!
