Q: What inspired you to create Mercy Songs? Describe the process of how this music came to be.
Mercedes Bahleda: My guru was in three-year silent retreat from 2000-2003. I left New York City to move to the desert to serve him, and I spent some months in solitary retreat myself in the Arizona Mountains during this time. I had no electricity, cell phone coverage or running water there and was usually in a constant battle with the elements. During this period I was alone in silence most of the time, carrying water and assisting the Buddhist nuns who were the main caretakers.
I left my job, house, friends, and career as an artist in order to do it. It was a very challenging and lonely time for me; my family thought I was crazy. A lot of the identification of who I thought I was was stripped away from me during this time; I became dead to the world as I had known it. Yet my mind got very quiet and still in the process, and I began to love the silence I found in the wilderness.
Sometime after the retreat ended my teacher and a small group of us went on a tour of the entire country teaching meditation and yoga. When we hit New York City a man came up to me at a Buddhist temple and asked if he could do my astrological chart, and I thought, “Why not?” Afterwards, he got very excited and said we had to make music together. He was a very talented musician and composer, but I had decided to give up music and try to focus on meditation.
He kept asking, though, so finally I went into the studio with him just to try something out. The first thing I sang was "Do Mi Ne Fili Unigenite". We didn’t talk about it or know what either of us was going to do. The recording that’s on the album is the first and only take. When we played it back we both realized we had to make a record, something I had never done before. I realized then how talented he was and that we had a unique connection.
I also saw to my surprise that something inside me was desperate to be born. It was as if something had been growing within me during my time in the desert, and it finally had an outlet. As soon as I opened my mouth the music poured out of me. I knew something was coming, yet I never thought it would be a musical creation. Mercy Songs ended up being the vehicle that tells the story of a time of personal transformation.
Q: The CD includes devotional music from diverse traditions: Roman Catholic, Buddhist and Sanskrit mantra. Why did you choose these songs? What do they have in common?
MB: I grew up Roman Catholic, and I was very serious about my faith even as a child. When to my disappointment at seven my family stopped going to church, I began arranging rides for myself with the neighbors. I had decided by the time I was in second grade that I was going to be a Catholic nun.
When I was fifteen I joined the Canicius High School choir. We sang all classical pieces. Our director, Mr. Frank Scinta, was in a way my first guru. I worked really hard to please him by trying to learn the music well and sing for him. When he taught us the Vivaldi “Gloria,” I fell in love and this is the basis for the first and last songs on the record.
I moved to NYC at age eighteen to study dance, theater and music at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing. Around that time I also started to study meditation at different Buddhist centers; it was there that I met my teachers Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who sang the mantras from the Tibetan lineages. I was also a big fan of the Jivamukti Yoga School when it was on Second Ave. Jivamukti introduced me to the world of kirtan, which I had previously known nothing about.
I was so happy to hear the yoga teachers there discuss Buddhist ideals, the chanting of ancient Sanskrit mantras to which I felt such a connection, and see the statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar. Sharon Gannon and David Life were the first ones who showed me you could bring it all together.
I carried a mala of devotional music from all the lineages that had raised me into Mercy Songs. They were the songs that I heard in temples and churches that crawled into my heart and wouldn’t let go. Mercy Songs allowed me to sing back to all my gurus the sacred prayers that they had so kindly taught me.
Q: Your music is growing in grassroots popularity among yoga centers. Why do you feel yoga teachers, in particular, are requesting it?
MB: People who practice yoga were probably yogis in their past life. You are attracted to yoga because there is a seed in you from before. I think the fact that so many people are practicing yoga on this planet right now is a reflection that the consciousness is shifting; more and more advanced minds are being born in this realm.
In the Tibetan tradition yoga is considered a tantric or secret practice reserved for a very advanced practitioner who is working to change the body in an ultimate way. I think whether they know it or not most yoginis and yogis are deeply spiritual and devotional. I think the prayers and chants on Mercy Songs call to this side of them—to remember their practices from lives before and pick up where they left off on the path to enlightenment.
Q: How might one include the music on Mercy Songs in a class experience?
MB: Oh, it’s personal, right? I think what ever calls to you. I know teachers who play the whole album or loop one song for an hour. I think the “Om Mani Padme Hum” and Tara chants are nice foundation pieces for opening a class. They also are great to help people learn to sing a simple Tibetan chant that they can remember and take home with them.
Q: As a Buddhist, how does your passion for devotional expression through music support your practice?
MB: Like yoga, singing is a practice that works with the inner winds and channels. Due to the vibrations created, singing actually helps loosen the tie-up point at the heart chakra. When the knots at the heart loosen, all your prana runs into the central channel and you see ultimate reality. Music in this way has become part of my path.
On another level, they say that the inner winds are vibrating on a very subtle level, creating sound that a yogi in a state of deep meditation can hear. So—literally—your chakras are singing. The chakras also have a unique shape, which is where the sounds and symbols of the Sanskrit alphabet came from. Some of the ancient mantras when sung have a special blessing on the inner body harmonizing within us, literally opening our hearts with song.
Q: How did your Roman Catholic upbringing influence your evolution as a music artist? As a meditation teacher?
MB: My mother was a very devoted Christian folk singer from West Virginia who played the guitar and banjo. She organized a lot of the music in our church. Music was the way I learned to express my love of God and the world around me. Specifically, the Roman Catholic Church gave me all the beautiful May crowning and devotional ceremonies to Mary.
We would dress up in white and do endless little dances and sing lines of praise to Her. It all made me so happy. One lucky little girl was chosen each May to climb a ladder and place a crown of flowers on the head of an eight foot statue of Mary that we had at our school while we all sang “Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above.” Mary was the first deity I worshipped, and I earnestly loved and prayed to her for guidance and help. I spent my high school years at Mount Saint Mary Academy for Girls.
Our high school was a convent and there we had a weekly meditation group that I joined when I was fifteen. When I started to study Buddhist philosophy and meditation, I realized I already had a very powerful foundation of bhakti or devotion, which is very necessary on the path. I then used Buddhism to learn the science of what was happening to me and my body as I moved into deeper states of concentration and prayer.
Q: You’ve traveled extensively to research both Eastern and Western forms of meditation, classical music, and philosophy at the great monasteries and schools of Ladakh and India. How is that experience evident when you teach yoga and meditation classes?
MB: My yoga is heavily influenced by the Tibetan tradition. The unique thing about Tibetan yoga is that it works from the inside and the outside. Some yoga only focuses on your outer body. Tibetan yoga focuses on the inner body as well as the outer body.
We incorporate meditations before and during the physical practice of asana that help the winds and channels align, moving us closer towards our goal of enlightenment.
This is the purpose of yoga: to reach enlightenment. Every yogi or yogini on the path needs to learn how to meditate correctly. It is only within a deep state of meditation that you can move up the ladder so to speak to higher levels of realization. So it is crucial to have a good meditation teacher who knows how to guide you. Your spiritual real estate is very valuable and should not be trusted to just anyone.
I studied seriously for 12 years with different masters from different traditions and personally tested the things they were teaching me to make sure I was on a path that would take me to the final goal. I try to stress to my students that they should do the same. You must find a teacher—a living master to take you through the steps in person. A living, qualified guru is the most precious thing you could ever come across and the only door to liberation.
Q: What is the Star in the East meditation group? Why did you create it?
MB: Star in the East is an organization I created with my teacher, Geshe Michael Roach, to invigorate the Wisdom branch of Christianity. Christ taught two schools. The Love branch, or teachings on compassion, is evident to our culture, and us: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Wisdom branch teaches karma and emptiness: the how and why the teachings of Christ work to bring us ultimate happiness and how we can apply His words to our everyday life.
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is among you and yet you cannot see it.” Buddhism helped me understand why I couldn’t see it and how I could. It’s fascinating. It’s like there were some pages missing in the Bible and I found them in a Tibetan scripture to help me understand how it all worked.
I think that the Christian path is a valid path and Jesus was a Buddha; I’m just not sure all the instructions made it. Buddhism was for me the missing link in my world, and I created Star in the East to share what I had found with other Christians like me who wanted to go a little deeper into prayer and the workings of ultimate reality.
Q: Can we look forward to additional albums?
MB: Yes! I have a full kirtan album coming out later this year [on White Swan Records] called Path to Bliss that I’m really excited about. It features Buddhist mantras from some of the secret teachings of Tibet, as well as some traditional praises of guru devotion. Michael Hewett and some other extraordinary artists collaborated with me to create a modern sadhana, or spiritual method, that captures the depth of the ancient prayers with a new energy and vibration.
