What do monks do all day? They chant. Besides the basic operations of survival and hygiene (and the latter is not a given), they chant. Either in the temple all together or by themselves, spread out across the monastic campus.

They chant from as early as 4:30 am until as late as midnight.

They chant by my door and by my windows, which means I never have to set an alarm, which is good and bad but mostly bad.

They chant in the all-tile bathroom, I think because they like how the sound echoes.

Sometimes I just want some quiet time so I’ve tried to find a place to go. There is no place where the chanters will not find you.

There are Bose speakers and an amplifier in the temple for the master chanter, and a loudspeaker at the orphanage for the young monks to follow along.

The sound is so uniform that when a chanter is on my roof I occasionally mistake him for a large bug buzzing around the ceiling.

After every couple of hours of roof/hallway chanting I hear a monk rip a belch in the middle of chanting and pick up without missing (more than) a beat. No one laughs but me.

Dondup the guestmaster walks around pretending to chant but is actually just making jokes about guests or the other monks in a chant voice.

Having said all that, there’s no denying that they got skills. Listen for yourself.

Below is a dark video of chanters that otherwise conveys the sound and behavior. The protruding object on the left in the center of the camera is the skylight to my room. The time is approximately 9:45 pm.