Namo Avalokiteshvara

June 27, 2009; 9:55 P.M. - Brother Lai, a Zen Buddhist monk at a monastery in upstate New York, demonstrates the sangha's Avalokiteshvara chant. A lay member of the sangha wrote the song and it was adopted by the monastics. It's pretty impressive when a large group of monks and nuns and laypeople chant it for 10 minutes in the cavernous meditation halls. Here, he just sings 2 cycles of it and it's not a performance. He let me video him playing it under the pretext that I wanted to learn it since it's in a funky 6 meter and hard to figure out just by knowing the chords and words. The chant is just an homage to the Buddha Avalokiteshvara.