Christian Bernert - Praise to Mañjuśrī (piano)

Khyentse Vision Project translator, Christian Bernert, created this piano piece for our metered version of the famous Praise to Mañjuśrī in collaboration with Nguyễn Thanh Hùng. Christian shares his background and process here:
“Though I have no formal background in music, I play a bit of self-taught guitar. Recently, I was inspired to create simple tunes for Dharma prayers. I wrote a simple melody for a seven limb practice I translated, and then I worked on this Mañjuśrī prayer translated by Dolma. To get a good quality recording, I went with my guitar to Spice Records, a recording studio in Hoi An, Vietnam where I live. After the first take, the sound engineer and owner of the studio, Nguyễn Thanh Hùng, took out his piano and started improvising on my vocals. It was so good that I immediately asked him to ditch my guitar track and only have his piano with my voice. We later produced an elaborate, orchestra version of the song as well.
There is so much potential in this kind of work. Not only does it provide a different medium for the Dharma to reach new audiences, but it also opens up a dimension of sensibility in us that is not accessed through textual means alone. Music, and the arts in general, address important aspects of our being in very immediate ways. It would be a great loss not to make use of this resource for the practice of Dharma.”

[@MariaDor-i2w]

Thank you so much🙏

[@PeterOlin]

Wow! Very very nice!