2 posts tagged “chanting”

Began both this morning and yesterday with pre-service Sutra Chanting a wonderful way to start the day. Each time I chant something different stands out. Yesterday it was the spirit in which a group of us chanted - very much a community practice, a shared communion of faith in the same direction. Today, after a sleepless night, I struggled with the pace and the rhythm of the text, and what stood out in the narrative of the Sutra was that Dharmakara spent many-millions of years, many life times, practicing the Dharma, forging a path for us to follow. I'm sure that this wasn't easy, but eventually he became enlightened as Amida Buddha - and offered us a much easier path to follow.

Remembering the path that others have taken, and are still taking, gives me some ease with my own journey.

Yesterday we hosted the Faith in People with HIV group, which is run by an Anglican Chaplain - we simply offer a place of refuge, and a space to be with other people who have some sense of what each of the others struggles and journey's might be like.

One of the group mentioned how lucky a friend thought she was to be able to come to The Buddhist House, and be in such a peaceful space. Moments like this always remind me how fortunate I am to be here.

namo amida bu  

Sutra chanting is an old, old practice.

In the time of Shakyamuni Buddha society was an oral one, and so, like many oral societies, teachings and histories were memorised and passed down teacher to student, this being the only way of preserving and remembering them across more than one generation.

And this was the practice of many of Shakyamuni Buddha’s disciples - they would learn, by rote a sutra (or two) and literally be the container for this teaching. There were many teachings, of course, and each student would have their own speciality, and monks with similar specialities might get together…and this is how the different schools of Buddhism begin to appear. So much so that Buddha began to send young students to different parts of India, to learn aspects of the teaching.

This memorising of the sutras became even more urgent after Buddha’s death - one story goes that during the first council, Ananda, the Buddha’s closest disciple, who could remember all of the Buddhas words (perhaps without understanding them)was persuaded by the other monks to recite all the teachings so that they might be remembered.

And so, eventually they are passed down to us - but we have books and the internet and so on, and so perhaps less need of preserving the texts in this fashion.

But still we chant.

Why? In my experience, the moments in chanting when I’m not stumbling over the words, or reading the wrong line, are those in which there is no space between myself and the chanting. The moments in which the words bypass my brain and go straight from eye to mouth.

The words seem to take root somewhere deep inside my mind, and days later I find myself talking about jewelled trees, and plates of food which appear filled with 100 different types of food.

I don’t know the Sutra by heart, but the images and some of the poetry sinks in.

Today - I was talking to someone who had noticed that the cause of their depression was the time spent reading the news, and meditating on the state of society. It is true that many terrible things are happening - but this is not the whole picture, and dwelling on these images can send us into unwholesome states.

I find that sutra chanting, and many other Buddhist practices have the opposite effect, filling my mind with a wholesome image - like the Pureland - tends to give rise to a more wholesome state of mind.

The taste of the Pureland is bitter-sweet though, for we do not forget the bloodshed splashed across the headlines, but try to accept things just as they are - and this includes peace and bliss, as much as it includes war and sorrow.

Namo Amida Bu

The Sutra we chant is The Larger Pureland Sutra. This copy is not an exact rendition but “An aid to practice. The interpretation offered here follows the doctrinal position of the Amida-shu.”