AtDTDA: [38] Pgs. 156, 1079, 1080 Prayer Wheels and Throat Singing

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          "Popular fellow, this Rinehart," Kit remarked. 

          "A Harvard pleasantry from a few years back," explained 
          Scarsdale Vibe, "which shows no sign of abating. Uttered in 
          repetition, like this, it's exhausting enough, but chorused by a 
          hundred male voices on a summer's evening, with Harvard Yard 
          for an echo chamber? well ... on the Tibetan prayer-wheel principle, 
          repeat it enough and at some point something unspecified but 
          miraculous will come to pass. Harvard in a nutshell, if you really 
          want to know."  
          AtD p. 156

          Tibetan prayer wheels (called Mani wheels by the Tibetans) 
          are devices for spreading spiritual blessings and well being. 
          Rolls of thin paper, imprinted with many, many copies of the 
          mantra (prayer) Om Mani Padme Hum, printed in an ancient 
          Indian script or in Tibetan script, are wound around an axle 
          in a protective container, and spun around and around. 
          Typically, larger decorative versions of the syllables of the 
          mantra are also carved on the outside cover of the wheel.
          Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying this mantra, out loud 
          or silently to oneself, invokes the powerful benevolent attention 
          and blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion.  

http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/prayer-wheel.htm

Chenrezig:

          In the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon of enlightened beings, 
          Chenrezig is renowned as the embodiment of the 
          compassion of all the Buddhas, the Bodhisattva of 
          Compassion.

          Avalokiteshvara is the earthly manifestation of the self 
          born, eternal Buddha, Amitabha. He guards this world 
          in the interval between the historical Sakyamuni Buddha, 
          and the next Buddha of the Future Maitreya. 

          According to legend, Chenrezig made a a vow that he 
          would not rest until he had liberated all the beings in all 
          the realms of suffering. After working diligently at this task 
          for a very long time, he looked out and  realized the 
          immense number of miserable beings yet to be saved. 
          Seeing this, he became despondent and his head split into 
          thousands of pieces. Amitabha Buddha put the pieces back 
          together as a body with very many arms and many heads, 
          so that Chenrezig could work with myriad beings all at the 
          same time. Sometimes Chenrezig is visualized with eleven 
          heads, and a thousand arms fanned out around him. 

http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/chen-re-zig.htm

Chenrezig in her female aspect is Quan Yin:

          In China, where Avalokitesvara was very popular, he 
          underwent a change and became Kwan Yin, a female 
          Bodhisattva. Kwan Yin actually translates an earlier 
          version of the name of this bodhisattva: Avalokitasvara. 
          Svara means sounds and the name Avalokitasvara means 
          "regarder of sounds or cries" which is how the name often 
          appears in English translations of the Chinese Lotus Sutra 
          for instance. 

http://visiblemantra.org/avalokitesvara.html

Overtone chant, such as what Kit is doing right now:

          Since Tuva, where he had heard such unaccountably 
          double-jointed singing. . . .
          AtD, p. 1079

Is one way of making those cries:

          The best-known of the traditional forms comes from Tuva, 
          a small autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. 
          The history of Tuvan throat singing reaches very far back.  . . .
          . . . .The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry 
          a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in 
          these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient 
          pastoral animism that is still practiced today.

          The animistic world view of this region identifies the spirituality 
          of objects in nature, not just in their shape or location, but in 
          their sound as well. Thus, human mimicry of nature's sounds 
          is seen as the root of throat singing. (An example is the Mongolian 
          story of the waterfall above the Buyan Gol (Deer River), where 
          mysterious harmonic sounds are said to have attracted deer to 
          bask in the waters, and where it is said harmonic sounds were 
          first revealed to people.) Indeed, the cultures in this part of Asia 
          have developed many instruments and techniques to mimic the 
          sounds of animals, wind, and water. . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_singing

http://www.harmonicworld.com/

          "The One Voice Chord" 

          Tibetan and Mongolian chanting

          "One night in 1433 AD, the Tibetan lama Je Tzong Sherab Senge, 
          awoke from a startling dream. He had head a voice in the dream 
          unlike any voice he knew. It was a low voice, unbelievably deep, 
          sounding more like the growl of a wild bull than anything human. 
          Combined with the first voice, there was a second. This voice 
          was high and pure, like the sound of a child singing. These two 
          voices, so totally different, had come from the same source and 
          that source was himself.

          In this dream,  Je Tzong Sherab Senge had been instructed to 
          take this special voice and use it for a new chanting style that 
          would embody both the masculine and the feminine aspects of 
          the divine energy. It was a tantric voice, a sound that could unite 
          those chanting it in a web of universal consciousness.

          The next morning, Je Tzong Sherab Senge began to chant his 
          daily prayers. The sound that came out of him were the sounds 
          he had heard in his dream – unearthly sounds, tantric sounds – 
          and he gathered his fellow monks together to tell them of his dream."  
          (Jonathan Goldman, Healing sound)

http://home3.inet.tele.dk/hitower/voice.html

http://www.greatdreams.com/chanting.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbA8Z33NcLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuGTpNRXMgE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAzNkJGXu1Q

          . . . . Kit had found himself making down in his throat a 
          single low guttural tone, as deep as he could reach, as 
          long as breath would allow. Sometimes he believed that 
          if he got this exactly right it would transport him to 
          "where he should really be," though he had no clear 
          picture of where that was. After he had done this for 
          long enough he began to feel himself enter a distinctly 
          different state of affairs. 

          One day Professor Vanderjuice vanished. Some claimed 
          to have seen him taken into the sky. Kit went down to the 
          Glowny Dworzec and got on a train headed west, though 
          soon he got off and went across the tracks onto another 
          platform and waited for a train going east, till after a while 
          he was getting on and off trains bound for destinations he 
          was less and less sure of. It was like the convergence of 
          a complex function.
          AtD 1079.1080

http://tinyurl.com/6bts7l

Where Kit should really be, apparently, is in the informal Paris office 
of Lord Overlunch.