These days, chant is the thing. "Chant," a collection of Gregorian chants by the reclusive Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo des Silos, went quintuple platinum. But there are other chanting monks in the music business--the Gyuto monks, Tibetan Buddhists whose American tours are sponsored by the Grateful Dead. Their first album came out 9 years ago, way before the upstarts from Spain. And though their albums haven't charted, the Gyuto monks continue to draw audiences with their less familiar style of ethereal chanting.

While in town for a concert recently, a contingent of maroon-robed Gyuto monks conducted a private religious ritual for members of the city's small Tibetan community and a few of their Western friends.

At the Tibetan community center, a room in the Edgewater apartment complex where almost all the Tibetans live, they received an initiation, a ritual empowerment, from Tenzin Sherab, vice-abbot of the Gyuto Tantric University/Monastery in India and a member of the choir. In this case it was a White Tara empowerment. Tara is an important female deity who occupies a position in Tibetan Buddhism vaguely analogous to that of the Virgin Mary in Christianity.

Afterwards, Sherab, through a translator, explained that it was a prayer for longevity--for oneself and all sentient beings. Those who choose to go deeper can chant special mantras many times daily to avoid a lower rebirth. "The form in which you are born in the next life is up to you," he said, adding that even being present at the empowerment was beneficial to non-Buddhists.

This was the fourth trip to the United States by the Gyuto monks, who were first dispatched in 1985 by the Dalai Lama to draw attention to the persecution of Tibetans by the Chinese. They returned in 1988, 1991 and for 6 months this year. (Chicago was the last stop.)

A land of snowy mountains and grasslands where yaks and sheep roamed free, Tibet was isolated for centuries. But Tibetan independence ended in 1949 following the establishment of the People's Republic of China. China insists that Tibet is an indivisible part of its territory, and Chinese troops have occupied Tibet since 1950.

When China began tightening its grip on Tibet in 1956, the uprisings that erupted were suppressed brutally. On March 10, 1959, the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and political leader, fled, with thousands of followers, over the Himalayas to northern India, where a government in exile was established in Dharamsala. There they have tried to preserve what was being destroyed in their homeland, especially Buddhist monasteries.

For 500 years the Gyuto Tantric University had prospered in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, with 900 monks in the period before the Chinese occupation. Only about 70 Gyuto monks managed to escape, according to Sherab. Now there are 370 in India, the vast majority being new recruits.

The original Gyuto monastery and its artifacts were destroyed. Many of the monks were jailed or killed in a systematic suppression of Buddhism, which is inseparable from Tibetan culture.

The monastery was re-established in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India, but the monks are trying to raise funds to build a larger monastery in Dharamsala.

The American tours are a means to that end. Through the efforts of Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead percussionist and ethnomusicologist, the Gyuto monks so far have recorded two albums of their chanting: "The Gyuto Monks: Tibetan Tantric Choir" (Windham Hill) and "Freedom Chants From the Roof of the World" (Rykodisc). The latter also includes a performance by musicians Philip Glass, Mickey Hart and Kitaro, recorded live when the monks appeared at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Dec. 3, 1988.

Hart donates his royalties as producer of the albums to cultural programs for Tibetan refugees.

"Our trips to America have been very beneficial to the Tibetan cause," Sherab said. "When we tour, people focus not just on religion but also on the Tibetan cause. It has generated a lot of awareness."

The Gyuto monks have perfected a multiphonic chant that produces an intensely spiritual, otherworldly, low, rhythmic sound. Each monk sings a chord containing two or three notes simultaneously.

The monks also play instruments, usually as interludes, including a small bell, cymbals, a small drum, large drums, a pair of long copper horns and a pair of short trumpets (often made from human bone).

The monks' chanting and playing before audiences are not really performance, despite the choir's theatrical appearances, recordings and associations with rock bands like the Dead and Van Halen. They are prayers, vehicles for enlightenment.

In the liner notes of "Freedom Chants From the Roof of the World," the Dalai Lama comments on the nature of the performances of the Gyuto monks: "Some people may ask, `Why are they performing publicly what should be esoteric rites?' Perhaps these people feel that secret teachings should not be turned into a theatrical spectacle. But they needn't be concerned. The secret interior path and its processes are things which the ordinary eye cannot perceive. What is seen outside is totally different."

Even though the chants are not designed as entertainment and are hardly commercial, Sherab noted that the recordings are selling "pretty well."

There is a certain irony in the fact that as the Chinese first began cracking down on Buddhists in Tibet, many Westerners began discovering the merits of Eastern thinking. Writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder helped spur interest in Zen Buddhism in the 1950s and 1960s. Well, times have changed. These days people like the Grateful Dead, Beastie Boys and Richard Gere are championing the Tibetan cause and popularizing Tibetan Buddhism.

It may not cause mass enlightenment, but the Gyuto monks believe that a larger monastery in India will help preserve the sacred Buddhist arts and sciences that are no longer permitted in their lost homeland.

For more information call the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago at 312-275-7454.