Not my music taste, but someone can find this helpful. Ways to spread Dharma and Buddhism...
When death metal becomes one of 84,000 ways to practise Buddhism
Taiwan’s Dharma takes the raw energy of the genre that emerged in the US in the mid-80s on a new, more blissful turn.
Taipei, Taiwan – In the past few years, many of Taiwan’s largest music festivals have seen the unlikely ensemble of a shaven Buddhist nun introducing a band of five black-clad musicians whose faces are smeared blood red.
When the first riffs break through the sound system, their hard yet atmospheric music immediately sounds like death metal – an extreme sub-genre of heavy metal that emerged in the United States in the mid-1980s and is characterised by guttural vocals, abrupt tempo and relentless, discording guitar riffs.
Taiwan’s Dharma are probably the first band in the world to combine ancient Buddhist sutras in Sanskrit or Mandarin Chinese with the contemporary sound of death metal. Since their beginnings in 2018, they have stood out from thousands of other heavy metal bands around the world with their distinctive style, and have even had two Buddhist nuns, Master Song and Master Miao-ben join them on stage.
Founding member Tung had his spiritual awakening back in 2000, when he was greatly surprised to hear the Lion’s Roar of Buddhism “as it was completely different from the Buddhist scriptures I had heard since childhood”, he told Al Jazeera. In the Mahayana school of Buddhism prevalent in East Asia, the “Lion’s Roar” is a metaphorical principle signifying the awe-inspiring power of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas when expounding the Dharma (which means, in a nutshell, the Buddha’s teachings and practice), bringing peace and auspiciousness.
At the time, Tung was already a metalhead and a drummer and sensed a connection between the chanting style of the Lion’s Roar and the driving rhythms of a metal band. For him, death metal’s stereotypical imagery and lyrics were just an outlet to release emotions and a form of representation not dissimilar to the way Buddhism spread from India to China and other places using Buddha statues with angry features.
“From my understanding, this angry appearance was used mainly to protect monks and believers, and we think that it is somewhat similar to how death metal musicians propose their messages,” said Tung. “We hope to use the tremendous energy of death metal music to increase the power of the spells and use music and costumes to manifest the anger or protection of Buddha and Bodhisattva. […] We have not changed the essence of Buddhist scripture mantras, but rather hope to strengthen them [with death metal].”
“Through music, we hope to influence the younger generation, especially those who like different music genres, as we are born equal, and no one should be abandoned because of their preferences for any specific music style,” Master Song told Al Jazeera. “We believe that faith does not necessarily have to be Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism or Islam, as it can also be the sheer belief in goodness and love for the world.”
Henley explains that what we imagine to be the “self” is nothing more than an often flawed projection of our own thoughts. “Buddhist practice is, in a nutshell, letting go of the concept of ‘you’ as you know it, in relation to those thoughts, and the answers to this lie in the sutras that we transform into the type of music that we, as lifelong fans and devotees of metal music, as well as followers of the Noble Eightfold Path, can relate to in both the theistic and musical sense,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Let go of the self, let go of the ego. Embrace your being as part of a larger collective consciousness. If this can be achieved, I believe we would have a much more peaceful world.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZNEYa2AQFM
Taiwanese Band Dharma Combines Metal Music and Buddhism
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