Thursday night the The National Folk Festival was opened in an auspicious fashion this year with chanting by Buddhist Monks fresh from Tibet and unsullied by western decadence. Each morning of the festival a session was held of chanting and meditation at the luxurious time of 9:30am. (Perhaps they had become a fraction sullied afterall, in Tibet these sort of things usually happen at 5:30am)

On the first morning The Green Man showed up at 9:30 only to find that there was an exceptionally large number of festival goers wishing to subject themselves to the lower body pain that invariably accompanies a westerner sitting cross-legged on the floor for half an hour. Never mind it was time to squash up with the other attendees and focus. (There were some chairs but these were long gone)

Pick an object and focus. When your mind wanders bring it back to the object and your mind will wander because you have weak western minds.

These were our instructions however I am not sure everyone entirely grasped the concept because the woman sitting next to me was focusing on her program deciding what she wanted to go to next.

There are, of course, a select group of people who seem to be almost exclusively women, some middle aged but mostly in their early 20's who are completely awed by the experience. It is mildly amusing since most seem not to have a clue what it all means but are confident it must be deeply spiritual, which indeed it is.

Click here for a sample of the chanting, it is from the gelug chanting tradition.

All that aside and, apart from being a bit naughty and spending some time observing the other participants, The Green Man found it a refreshing way to start the day even if it did take an hour or so for the legs to start working normally again. It did however clash with the Poets breakfast which meant that GMs usual sport of presenting poems that take the piss out of the bush poets had to be abandoned this year.

After the chanting it was off to the mandala for the monks. The mandala is constructed from coloured sands which the monks apply using finely tapered bronze funnels. It takes about 240 monk hours to construct and at the end it is swept away. It symbolises the impermanence of things.