Fri, 27 Jun 2008

Between mantram and microphone: the remarkable work of the Buddhist nun Ani Choying

By NNA correspondent Cornelie Unger-Leistner

MAINZ (NNA) - Almost simultaneously with the start of the European Football Championships, around 200 people witnessed a quite different kind of premiere at Mainz University of Applied Sciences: the film “One more concert, one more child” was shown there for the first time in Germany.

Film-maker Karin Guse has created a portrait of the Buddhist nun Ani Choying Drolma, who tours Europe and the USA with spiritual songs to raise funds for a girls’ school in Nepal. The artist was present at the film-showing in Mainz and gave a concert afterwards. The event was organised by the department for women’s affairs at Mainz University of Applied Sciences.

Whereas Buddhism is most often publicly represented by men, primarily the Dalai Lama, the film by Karin Guse documents thriving female involvement in this religion.

Born in Nepal in 1971 as the daughter of Tibetan refugees, Moktan Lama - as Ani Choying was originally called - decided at the age of eleven to become a Buddhist nun. Tulku Urygen Rinproche, the head of Nagi Gompa monastery, became her teacher.

Singing and melody, as Ani Choying explains, play a major part in the rituals of Buddhism. The novice, who already had great vocal power, gradually became a formidable singer over the years. Ani Choying says in the film, “I don’t sing, I pray”, thus accentuating the spiritual background without which her performances are inconceivable.

In 1988 she was discovered by the American guitarist Steve Tibbetts, who recorded a CD of her singing and suggested she go on tour with him. There followed invitations to give concerts in the USA, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and she also became well-known in her own country of Nepal.

“Suddenly I had money, a whole lot of it, but what was I to do with it?” she relates. She conceived the plan of founding an educational institute for nuns, for while the monks in Nepal all receive education, there are many older nuns who pray and sing with great perfection but cannot even write their own names.

They are not alone in this in Nepal. As we hear in the film, in the Himalayas 40 percent of men and 80 percent of women are illiterate. Ani Choying therefore started the Nuns Welfare Foundation, whose chief project is the Arya Tara School, situated 18 kilometres from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. The nun was strengthened in her resolve to launch this project by a visit to the spiritual leader of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama. “Are the nuns also learning to read and write?” his Holiness asked her, as she relates in the film, and Ani Choying was able to confirm this.

Today over 50 girls and women aged eight to 24 attend the school, and every concert enables Ani Choying to fund one more school place. Six hundred euros is sufficient for one year’s school attendance.

Most of the girls come from poor families and this is their only chance to receive an education. As part of a state-recognised school curriculum, the young nuns are taught Nepali, English, maths, social studies and science for six years. In the film Ani Choyang proudly tells us that three girls who went to her school are now attending a Buddhist university in India – a dream which she always had herself but was never able to realise.

Instruction in Buddhist rituals takes place in the Tibetan language. Ani Choying’s aim is for the girls to return to their villages and become teachers there.

In the film she explains how important it is to start with the women. “If you send a man to school you’re just educating one person. When a women goes to school, you’re educating a whole family, for it’s the mother who brings up her children.”

Film-maker Karin Guse, who met the nun at a concert in 2003, tells Ani Choying’s story in striking images. Unlike most others who film in the Himalayas, she does not dwell endlessly on breathtaking pictures of the landscape. The landscape is there of course, but it only provides the backdrop. Guse’s camerawork focuses primarily on the people, and their deep involvement with religious and spiritual life. Apart from details about illiteracy and the situation of women in Nepal, we do not hear much about the country itself.

Karin Guse worked on the film for four years, but in 2005, due to the difficult political situation in Nepal, things ground to a halt. Now at last the film has been completed – precisely at the moment that the world public is focusing greater attention on the South Asia region because of the Olympic games and natural catastrophes.

The concert which Ani Choying gave after the film, ended with a memorial to the victims of the natural catastrophes in Burma and China in the form of a mantram sung together.

In the concert itself, the audience could experience the effect and fascination of Ani Choying’s ritual songs. It almost seemed as if the plain concrete block of Mainz University of Applied Sciences faded away to allow through another world that is invisible to the eye but can become audible in song.

And it also became clearer, perhaps, why people who consistently live by the rules and traditions of Buddhism are currently exerting a great power of attraction on us in Europe. With great naturalness and elegance, Ani Choying – who is a nun after all - moved between mantram and microphone, between deep concentration and humorous engagement with those around her.

And so, quite effortlessly, without any hint of missionary zeal or presumption, she communicated her authentic spiritual conviction to the audience that it is human thoughts which form the world.

Her song “Flower Eye”, whose refrain she also sang in German at the end, encapsulates this. The eye of the flower sees the world as flower world, says the song; and the eye of a thorn sees only undergrowth.

Just beforehand, Ani Choying declared laughingly that this song in particular had brought her pop-star popularity in Nepal. “Flower eye, flower eye” the people in Karin Guse’s film call out to her, thronging cheerfully around her as she hurries from appointment to appointment in Kathmandu, and visits a school. She never has a spare moment, we hear, for too many tasks await her whenever she returns from her concert tours. So she’s happy to have a driving licence and a car – even though it is by no means common for a nun to drive a car in Nepal.

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Links: www.choying.de, choying@karin-guse.de, wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal

Item: 080627-03EN Date: 27 June 2008

Copyright 2008 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/

Esotericism as source of musical inspiration: gathering of international academics in Rome

ROME (NNA) - Music and esotericism was the theme of an international academic colloquium that took place in April at the Academia Belgica in Rome. The conference was prepared by an academic committee consisting of representatives from universities in Europe and beyond, including Professor Wouter Hanegraff from Amsterdam University, who is one of Europe’s leading researchers on esotericism.

Around 25 speakers presented their research findings over three days, and each lecture was followed by discussion. Drawing on particular compositions and music theory texts, the relationship to music of various esoteric disciplines such as magic, astrology, alchemy, demonology, soothsaying and the Cabbala was examined. Only the western esoteric tradition was included, originating from Platonism, and Jewish and Christian roots.

According to the advance publicity, the conference aimed to help remedy the habitual isolation of disciplines such as history, history of art, music history and the history of philosophy. Interdisciplinary discussions sought to show musical approaches and methods in the light of an historical and specialist context, so that, in the language of academic discourse and belief, our knowledge acquired from the cultural background of the world of music could be enriched and shared.

The various lectures focused either on approaches to music within cultural and hermetic traditions, or the presence of such traditions within music. Here, two questions mutually complemented each other: how have philosophers integrated music into their theories, and how have musicians, composers and music theorists tried to introduce occult knowledge into their theories or their scores?

It became clear during the conference that the search for cosmic patterns in music may be as old as humanity itself. This was demonstrated by examples ranging from the theoretical sketches of the neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus through Jesuit and polymath Athanius Kircher or alchemist Heinrich Khunrath to Johannes Kepler. One lecture was devoted to the mysteries of musical sound in H. P. Blavatsky’s esoteric teachings. It was interesting to see that twentieth century composers were also included. Wouter Hanegraff spoke on the subject of “Ineffability and lawfulness: music as esoteric language in Anton Webern”.

It is increasingly apparent that, in the twentieth century, innovations not just in the pictorial arts but also in music were closely interwoven with theosophy and anthroposophy. In particular the development of Arnold Schönberg - who is rightly seen as the father of modern music – would have taken a different course had he not gained stimulus from the esoteric tradition at work in his time.

Academic studies of esotericism are discovering the affinity between anthroposophy and our contemporary zeitgeist. The example of modern music in the twentieth century, and specifically the school of Schönberg, can show anthroposophy’s influence in particular. Initial signs of this could already be detected in Rome.

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Item: 080627-02EN Date: 27 June 2008

Copyright 2008 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/

In defence of Rudolf Steiner

By NNA correspondent Wolfgang G. Voegele

DORNACH (NNA) - In response to recent campaigns against Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf schools, Walter Kugler, director of the Steiner Archive in Dornach, Switzerland, has revised, retitled and republished his book “Demonising Steiner” (Feindbild Steiner) which first appeared seven years ago.

“Rudolf Steiner as some see him and others perceive him” is the new title of the 128-page volume, which is set to correct a range of false judgements and also offers insiders some new information.

The chapter “Steiner versus anti-semitism” is one section that has been revised and enlarged. Here Kugler shows how much Steiner’s comments – which cause such offence to modern critics – were wholly in line with debates common at the time about the assimilation of the Jews.

For example, reflecting on the nineteenth century the Jewish historian Michæl A. Meyer wrote in 1994: “Judaism had lost its justification because it had no intrinsic content enabling it to survive over time […] According to Hegel, Judaism had ceased to possess any world-historical importance.” This is precisely the same perspective from which Steiner assessed the situation of liberal Judaism. The reader learns that similar ideas had governed the work of the “Association for Jewish Culture and Science” which was founded in Berlin as long ago as 1819.

According to Kugler, critics have also entirely overlooked Steiner’s articles in the “Journal Against Anti-Semitism” (“Zeitschrift zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus”).

A completely new chapter in the book is entitled “Occultism: Source of the Sciences” which, in line with academic studies on esotericism, shows that western esotericism and modern science have a common origin. A sentence by the well-known American scientist and journalist Russell W. Davenport – “Steiner is no more a mystic than Einstein; he was first and foremost a scientist, but one who dared penetrate the secrets of life” – is still as topical as ever.

Another new addition to the book is a section citing commentators who see Steiner as one of the twentieth century’s greatest lateral thinkers. These quotations come from renowned writers, art academics and museum directors.

The core of the book remains largely the same however. It points to important facts in Steiner’s biography that critics have overlooked or intentionally ignored. A new arrangement and better print quality of illustrations also enhance the volume’s attractiveness.

The cover depicts a wave rolling on the shore, as symbol for the rhythmically recurring attacks on Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy which, at regular intervals over the past hundred years, have been launched by opponents in an effort to defame Steiner and render him the object of public disapproval. The fact that public interest in objective accounts is increasing has not hindered them in their undertaking.

In his foreword to the expanded edition, Kugler writes that his hope for the original edition published in 2000 was that public perception of Steiner would gradually become more factual. There had been no lack information from among the ranks of the anthroposophical movement.

But a certain type of critic, says Kugler, is not really interested in clarification and objectivity. This was thoroughly clear from occurrences such as false media reports, for instance in the Frankfurter Sonntagßeitung newspaper in July 2007, or the application to have some works by Steiner put on a list of proscribed publications that pose a risk to young people. What is really going on is still shrouded in darkness, writes Kugler, but he suspects that the aim of such activities is to cast the Waldorf schools in a bad light.

The Frankfurter Sonntagßeitung printed an entirely false report which implied that tendencies to violence in Waldorf schools were greater than at state schools. The paper never published a correction.

Kugler does not specifically name one of the fiercest opponents, Michæl Grandt – who lodged a formal complaint against the authority which had dismissed the application to blacklist Steiner.

Ten years ago, already, the brothers Guido and Michæl Grandt published their “Black Book of Anthroposophy” in the attempt to conflate Rudolf Steiner with satanism in the public’s perception. Fortunately this did not succeed, thanks to pro-active publicity work by the anthroposophical movement. Michæl Grandt has now announced publication of a new book in the autumn, issued by a well-known publisher with links to the Evangelical Church in Germany. This is said to be a companion volume, a “Black Book” to attack the Waldorf schools.

Thus the next round of anthro- and Waldorf bashing is imminent. Kugler’s revised book has therefore appeared with perfect timing.

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Walter Kugler: “Rudolf Steiner. Wie manche ihn sehen und andere wahrnehmen”. Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben 2008. 128 pages, EUR 9.90, CHF 18.90

Item: 080627-01DE Date: 27 June 2008

Copyright 2008 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/