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Hello and welcome to the first issue of Reverberations – the occasional newsletter from the Malletheads at Gongs Unlimited.
Reverberations will strive to provide valuable and unique info about:
1)Gongs and related percussion instruments
2)Sound Healing and Music Therapy
3)Provide special deals for items at our store
One of the regular things we will do is profile musicians and healers who work with gongs. Our very first interview is with Richard Rudis, a Buddhist and teacher who leads Sacred Sound workshops and offers group healing sessions that are known as Gong Baths. We have experienced one of his Gong Baths, and we can recommend it without equivocation, it was a marvelous healing event.
But before we do that, we received many requests from visitors to our site regarding how Thomas Jefferson was involved with gongs. And so to honor this democratic process, we shall elucidate now:
While Richard Nixon’s diplomatic visit to China may have created a minor thaw in Sino-US relations, he was not the first President to try to get in sync with the Chinese. Thomas Jefferson preceded him by close to two centuries.
Yep. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, happened to be (in contrast to the current US President) an intelligent man, amazing inventor and, as DNA tests have shown, most likely a randy advocate of miscegenation. We now know on when the Continental Congress celebrated Thanksgiving together which type of meat – light or dark – a voracious Jefferson put on his plate.
But back to the topic at hand: If you look at the tails side of a nickel, you see a picture of TJ’s Monticello home. But what the nickel doesn’t show us is the unique interior of his Virginia manse. The inside of the classical Monticello is much more eclectic: animal skins, Native American artifacts, painted floors the color of green grass. I’m certain that the “design team” of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition would appreciate it.
But the specific objet d’Jefferson that is of interest to the Gong Aficionado is “The Great Clock.”
Jefferson designed it originally for a home in Philadelphia, but the ropes on the large weights that drive the clock were much too long for his client’s home. So TJ brought the giant timepiece back to Monticello and made it work so that it could mark time across a lot of his plantation.
How did he do it? Well first, to fit this Great Clock and its lengthy ropes into his home, TJ did what any man would do who wasn’t worried about selling his home in two years when interest rates went up, he cut a big hole in the floor, so the ropes could hang down into the basement.
And then, he got to the part of interest to the Malletheads out there, he made the chimes of this clock from a large Chinese Gong! And according to his slaves (a.k.a. ‘employees of enforced servitude’), the chimes could be heard over three miles away!!!
That's right. A gong that could be heard three miles away. Without amplification. I am certain many a slave work song was sung to coincide with the hourly gonging. “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land…Tell Ol’ Pharoah, to let my people Gong. Let my people Gong!”
The Great Clock still tells time, and the Chinese Gong still rings. Thankfully, there are no slaves using it to tell time anymore. The Civil War ended that heinous dynamic. But it took a little longer to finish off the vast pantheon of Jim Crow laws that replaced slavery. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings would have had to wait until 1967 to tie the knot legally, as that was the year when the Supreme Court ruled on Loving vs. Virginia and forced all states to allow interracial marriage.
Too little, too late for our Third President and his Nubian Princess. But hey, look on thr bright side, thanks to the Supreme Court those of us alive now got to view the interracial eye candy of Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet, and Mariah Carey. And listen to the pop rock of Lenny Kravitz.
That was fun, wasn't it?
Now, let's move on to our very first interview!
Richard Rudis not only uses a large Earth Gong for vibrational healing, he also teaches Sacred Sound Workshops. In these classes, he helps students learn how to use real Tibetan singing bowls to do their own vibrational work.
Having traveled to Tibet many times to study, Richard is also blessed with being able to offer incredible Tibetan artifacts for sale. His deep connections to the Tibetan people allow him to lead pilgrimages there that are like no other.
We hope you enjoy his interview and will click on the link at the end to see all that he has to offer.
The Richard Rudis Interview
Reverb:
Was there a particular experience that brought you to the Gong and Tibetan Bowls? What was the path that led you to this path?
Richard:
My early interest was to be an engineer. I was interested in physics and the study of matter and structure. However, my studies were interrupted when I was nineteen and drafted into the Army.
I went to Vietnam and it was a major wake-up call, a dramatic experience for me. Besides trying to survive the experience physically, the ultimate challenge was really to survive it mentally and spiritually.
I remember being in a helicopter, flying over an area that had been devastated. But there was a hilltop that was in pristine condition – manicured with trees and grass -- and I thought, “Here’s a diamond in a dung heap. How could this be?” It was truly an anomaly. The pilot told me it was a temple. That really clicked in a layer of my subconscious. So when I came back from Vietnam, that experience led me to Eastern Philosophy and then after years of research, to Tibetan Buddhism.
But even with all my study of Eastern traditions, I never lost my Western mindset. I was always interested in the tools, with matter. The gong is one of my tools.
When someone tells me something happened that was “magical,” that a magical reality happened, if it is just words, I’m not interested. I need some sort of matter to be involved in the transformation.
Reverb: Why is that? What makes you want something physical involved in what is a spiritual event?
Richard: I see it as a reflection of the Buddhist universe – to take dualistic reality as a launching pad to an understanding of transcendent reality that is non-dualistic in nature. One paradoxically launches you into the other.
That’s what brought me to the Himalayan instruments like tingshas and singing bowls. They have specific energy signatures that have to do with awakening, stimulating consciousness, and balancing.
I put a lot of my focus on the Dharma teachings. The instruments have a way of going beyond just words. The dharmic model of the universe is very analytical, very empirical. Buddha taught based on observation. He only resorted to parlor tricks when he needed to get people’s attention.
And after working with these other instruments and their vibrational aspects, I eventually found the gong. I worked with various gongs in Tibet. They were all really remarkable, but I never saw them used outside a context of certain rituals or ceremonies.
So that is how I ended up working with the Gong.
It was unique in some ways, and in other ways, quite natural. Sometimes, without trying, without focusing on your goals, you naturally emerge in a certain realm. Just as the way to approach enlightenment is not to decide you are going to be enlightened, because your self gets in the way.
Reverb:
You have a strong connection to the people in Tibet. Do you do gong work with any monasteries or spiritual groups there?
I do the gong work myself, as a sole practitioner. I’m not aligned with a monastic group or a sangha, other than loose sangha of dharma teachings.
However, I have spent a lot of time studying with various Tibetan teachers and in different regions of Tibet and have always been very interested in pilgrimage. To me pilgrimage is a very dynamic way of feeling the energy.
Yes, on one level, dirt in your backyard is the same as dirt in the Himalayas, but the energy there is different. It is truly remarkable to sit on a stone that a Tantric master of tremendous power sat on, a man who lived 1600 years, and your head is in a hole in a rock that was hollowed out by his energy alone. It is hard not be altered or affected by that in some way, if you’re in that mind set, if you’re drawn to be there.
A pilgrimage is one remarkable experience after another. Having spent much time there, many pilgrimages, I have created associations that consequently have put me in a position to represent the energies of these items I sell.
Reverb:
Are these events you do, the Gong Baths, traditional Tibetan rituals?
Richard:
Oh no. The name Gong Bath came about sort of as a kitschy thing. The term doesn’t truly reflect what is going on. One of my sponsors of these events said it sounded “sexy” and so it has stuck. And in a sense, you are “bathed” in sound during it.
The Gong Bath is very much a Western culture thing. Nothing needs to be learned, the participants lie on their backs, head towards the gong in the center of the room, and basically say, “Do it to me.” They allow it to be experiential.
That’s not to say they don’t experience healing results from a Gong Bath. I recall once, a woman came to a Gong Bath with her husband, a doctor, merely because they wanted something odd to talk about at their next cocktail party. There was no intent there, other than have something to chat about. But she called me the next morning, and said she wasn’t feeling well. She was dizzy and nauseous and wanted to know what I did to her. I explained that it was a detox process, toxins were leaving her cells and to flush them out. She did and the next day, she called again. She said for the first time in 20 years she was without pain in any of her joints without taking pain medicine. Now she comes to all the Gong Baths she can.
I do workshops around the country where I teach people how to work with the bowls and gongs. A workshop requires more participation and understanding of the participants.
Reverb: Perhaps you can explain simply, why the woman had such a healing and detox reaction.
Please don’t hear this as ego talking, but you see, I don’t play the gong like a musical instrument. I play it as an instrument of transcendence.
Her reactions and others like it are an affirmation of what sound healing is in the Buddhist tradition. What I mean by that is, it’s based on the premise that Enlightenment or Buddha Mind cannot be found, because you can’t find that which you have never lost.
Buddhists see this essence of you, this self, as a virtual diamond. You can take a diamond, throw it in a bunch of manure, and then take it out a million years later, and the diamond will still be bright. It doesn’t change. It is the same thing with our inner self, although I want to be clear the self I am speaking of doesn’t really equate with the “soul.” It is the self that is beyond dualistic nature.
So we are physical beings incarnate, and if we are physically mirroring that clear state, we are in healthy state. There is a sound signature of that blissful state of being, even at a cellular level. The cell is in a state of bliss naturally, but as other things alter it, it changes. However, the ground state of the cell, the diamond state, is always the same.
For example, a healthy heart cell is singing in a blissful way, but alter it, it is no longer singing blissfully, it is now uneasy or diseased, however there is still a cellular signature, a diamond self within it. So what I do with the instruments is not actually heal the individual, but remind the individual of that whole, blissful state, or the cell, or the molecules. The instruments nudge them, and bring the natural ability for the body to heal into activation, and because it deals on a full level, not that just one cell of the body, it deals with a full spectrum and a healing event occurs.
The Eastern healing model is holistic. What a lot of people do, they ask me, “What note fixes heart or the spleen? I want a singing bowl for just that.” And I tell them that level is the basis of the crystal bowls. The crystal bowls are made of pure silicon, and there is a lot of silicon in our bodies and so there is a sympathetic vibration to begin with, and because they are manufacturing these things in a very two dimensional way, they can tune it right to that organ… which is a very useful tool, but it reflects the Western model.
Reverb:
In the Gong Bath I attended, I noticed you used one of the Planetary Gongs made by Paiste. The Earth Gong, correct?
Richard:
More specifically, I use the Platonic Year Earth Gong. You see, the Planet Earth has three vibrational signatures. One is the signature as it wobbles through the vast Zodiac, which is very, very slow. A second one is as it spins on its axis, which is relatively fast. And the third vibrational signature is as it makes it transit around the sun. Three unique orbits.
The one that transits around the sun, the Platonic Year, is the orbit that is most interesting to me. In my work, I’m interested in marrying the male and female energy signatures. I found that the Platonic Year Gong is more than just the Earth’s signature, it’s also the signature of the Earth in union with the Sun. The Sun being male and the Earth being female, their combination is reflected in the Platonic Year Gong and its sound.
Of course, if you pause to think about it, that vibrational signature must be identified not only acoustically, but also “radiationally.”
And what’s fascinating is that this vibrational signature, when translated into a medium we can hear, becomes the key syllable AUM. And Aum, according to Vedic traditions, is the union of male and female. Aum matches the sound frequency of the platonic year, or planetary year.
Reverb:
Some of your recorded work is about the union of sound to other vibrations, correct?
Rudis:
I offer a CD of music that I initially created just for myself. I was exploring something that proved to be so interesting that I felt compelled to offer it. The title of the CD is Terma-Yana - Sound Mandala.
I was always interested in Buddhist Tankas and pictorial means of altering consciousness. That brought me to sacred geometry, and that brought me to studying the mathematics of Phi and Pi, particularly Phi, the Golden Ratio, which is mimicked over and over again in nature.
I wanted to explore that and other sacred geometries that were in a musical realm.
After an engineer and I made the initial recording, we worked for about three months breaking the various sounds into different strata and regions with all the sound engineering tools.
Now, the music I wrote was pictorially based to begin with, to express the geometry, but after it was done, when the sound was reduced to diagram on the Macintosh, which shows the music over timr, much like a tonoscope, that sacred geometry appeared in the form! It was unexpected and amazing.
And when people listen to the music, they respond to it very immediately.
Reverb:
A brief side question here: It seems like everyone and their brother is offering Tibetan Singing Bowls for sale. As you have been to Tibet and worked for many years with the bowls, can you discuss a little bit about this phenomenon?
Richard:
In regard to this, we should start in India. Now, India is a wonderful country and it is full of wonderful opportunists. If there is a way of financially gaining from anything within their realm of understanding, they are on it in a moment.
So in India there are warehouses full of what are referred to as “singing bowls or Tibetan bowls. They have been machined. They are not handmade. The alloy that real Tibetan bowls are made from is sacred in origin; I have no idea if these bowls are made from same alloy, but probably not. The iron in ancient bowls is meteorite iron. These Indian bowls are not true Tibetan bowls.
That’s not to say that some of these Indian bowls can’t be useful. It is just that they are being marketed in a way that is not completely honest.
There are only three sources in the US that I can recommend, where someone can go and say I want a Tibetan Bowl, and get a real one. There were two groups in Tibet that made them, and the groups have not existed for over a hundred years, so if the bowl was truly made by them, then the bowls are at least 100 years old.
The research I’ve done shows that the fourth Dalai Lama, separated these special bowls from drinking bowls, so we can date true bowls back from at least 100 to over 1000 years ago.
The older bowls coming from that spiritual path, intrinsically they are spectacular. But there is a finite number of them, so when you see all these bowls out there, the sources have to be questioned. You need to use a lot of discernment and knowledge.
I do workshops over the country and people will bring me a bowl they have and to them, it’s a wonderful bowl in their mind. But once they experience a true quality bowl that I bring to the workshop, the bowl that they thought was great now becomes mediocre. It can still work for them in many ways, but it is not the same bowl they once thought it was.
Reverb:
Related to that, you have a website www.buddhistartifacts.com where you sell carefully chosen Tibetan objects. Many of them are truly spectacular.
Rudis:
I sell articles that are sent to me by people all over the Himalayas. They are very precious pieces and they send them to me purely on trust. I have received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of antiquities, and they tell me, “Do what you can do, this is what we need to get for it.”
I normally don’t express this, but I have mixed emotions about it all. It sounds very altruistic but it’s not purely; I make a very good living selling these items. However 75% of any sale goes back to the community. One thousand US dollars can build a hospital in Himalayas.
Reverb:
Thank you Richard for your time and the great information that you shared with us here.
Mr. Rudis travels around the US teaching Sacred Sound Workshops. He also leads pilgrimages to Tibet. If you are interested in seeing his upcoming schedule, see his incredible Tibetan artifacts, or just contact him, click here www.buddhistartifacts.com
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