The monks had spent the day in central New York blessing a home and performing individual healings for people that had requested them. According to one of the monks, Jangchup Chophel, the blessing of a home is a ceremony that purifies the negativities in the space.

“Then,” he began, “we invoke a Buddha to come and bless the space to give it protection. Personal healing is a ritual where a Buddha purifies the negative karma a person has accumulated and seals it up with rays of light. We have a physical body and a light body. Some people call it a soul. Removing the negativity from the light body has a positive effect on the physical body.”

Chophel is an American from Long Beach, Calif. He shared the story of how he became a Buddhist monk.

“It has been a long, slow process,” he said. “I read a book on Buddhism, and a lot of it made sense to me. I started to meditate, and a friend recommended I learn how to do it properly. … I studied under Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen, a great man and teacher. I knew I wanted to become a monk, so I asked his permission. He turns most people down, but he accepted me.”

In 2005, Chophel traveled to the Gaden Shartse Monastery in India with Gyeltsen to be ordained as a monk.

When the monks entered the sanctuary of Willard Chapel, they sang a chant, with some of the monks intoning both a high note and a low note at the same time in a guttural, yet melodic hum before breaking into a more musical phrase of song.