Modern Mantras. It all started with the ancient Hindus, but the use of mantras for meditation has since spread — mostly through the Far East — among Buddhists, Taosts, Sikhs and others. Today, Western peeps on a spiritual path also create mantras. Many of them seem more like affirmations, but the ones that are short-n-sweet still work nicely.
Illustration by Yuko ShimizuThe first time I ever experienced the spiritual power of chanting was about a decade ago, at an all-night kundalini yoga summer solstice celebration in New Mexico. The celebration took place beneath an enormous awning in the desert north of Santa Fe. The chanting began at sunset and lasted until dawn. Rows of white-clad people stretched as far as the eye could see, chanting mantras in unison. At one point, we each turned to the person next to us and chanted for hours while staring into each other’s eyes. As the Sanskrit words reverberated within and around us, I felt a complete sense of interconnectedness and oneness.
It was one of the most powerful experiences of the divine I’ve ever had: I could feel the god-spirit in myself, my partner, and everyone around me. As we chanted together, our frequencies merging, it was like becoming part of a heartbeat.I attended that celebration the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college in Albuquerque: it was one of the experiences that ultimately led me to Buddhism. By the time I graduated, I had become a serious student of Zen Buddhism, attending silent meditation retreats in the Jemez Mountains at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center and at the Lama Foundation in the mountains north of Taos. Coming out of several days of total silence made me acutely aware of how sacred sound is and how little we value it. As I studied and practiced different Buddhist traditions, I felt simultaneously drawn to and alienated by Buddhist styles of chanting.
Not being able to keep up with the fast-paced, monotone Japanese chants made me anxious, even as I studied a book of the words to try to learn them. Conversely, I felt like the English-language chants of Kadampa Buddhism had lost their sacredness when spoken in everyday language.
I wanted to learn to chant, and to do it every day, but I lacked a communal structure to help me learn and commit to the practice. I found chanting, like meditation, to be awkward and less profound when I did it on my own. However, from my summer solstice practice and other experiences with a Hindu call-and-response form of chanting, called kirtan, I knew that sound could be a powerful way to connect with the divine. I continued to think about and study the power of sound in Buddhism, a study which ultimately led me to become a dedicated student and practitioner of Buddhist chanting.In Buddhist belief systems, sound is considered to be sacred. Moreover, sound as communicated through music and poetry is thought to have the ability to cleanse the emotional energies of the body. Finally, sound—by way of speech—is understood to be a doorway to the energetic dimensions (vibrations, or prana).
These three sacred acts come together to support the mantra, also known as a prayer or divine utterance. In chanting, sacred mantras are repeated rhythmically, in succession, out loud.
Karen Nelson Villanueva describes mantra recitation as an internal practice that need not have an audible sound, while chant is what we do when we practice aloud with others. She also conveys the Zen idea that chanting is not only for the benefit of oneself, but for the benefit of all beings. Mantras have the capacity to benefit those who are chanting them, as well as benefiting all living beings, since the energy of the sounds moves outward infinitely.Chanting mantras helps to heal the body, protect the mind, and manifest human desires by connecting the person who is chanting with the divine. The ability chanting has to take those engaged in it to the innermost places within themselves is a theme for Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Nhat Hanh has established a number of communities around the world in which monks, nuns, and laypeople practice Buddhism together. In his book Chanting from the Heart, he describes in detail the day-to-day lives and rituals associated with the spiritual pursuit of mindfulness as practiced in his communities. When practitioners chant, they chant from the heart and are not performing for a deity or anyone else.
He explains:These words and music have been composed to serve as Dharma instruments helping us come back to the deepest place in ourselves, the place where we are most awake and alive. Chanting is often the most direct and immediate way to reconnect us with these places.Nhat Hanh further states that practitioners are not just carrying out a ritual and going through the motions of chanting while the mind wanders elsewhere.American Hindu Priest Thomas Ashley-Farrand suggests that mantras have the power to replace unhealthy patterns with positive ones by promoting patience and giving one the ability to see a situation more clearly. As Tenzin Wangyal puts it:No form of speech is more virtuous than mantra, devotional prayer, and sacred seed syllables.
The words and syllables themselves may carry the divine. They can also be very effective in healing illness and emotions, strengthening your body’s vitality, or minimizing thoughts and confusion.Because the regular chanting of mantras can bring about all the benefits described here, it is thought to be a preventative measure against inappropriate thoughts lodging themselves in the mind.Moreover, the desire to connect with the divine, or to deities, lies at the heart of mantra chanting. Buddhist teacher Dagsay Tulku Rinpoche refers to mantra as an act of respectful address and a request for protection to the deities for whom the mantras are being chanted. While chanting without proper intention of heart and mind can make the action less effective and meaningful, the act of chanting can bring one back to a place of pure mind and contact with the divine. In Ritual and Devotion in Buddhism: An Introduction (Windhorse Publications, 1995), Bhikshu Urgyen Sangharakshita, the British founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community, elucidates this idea:The relationship between the gross, external, verbal repetition and the subtle, internal, mental repetition is not unlike that between a painted picture of a Buddha or Bodhisattva and that same figure visualized during meditation. In each case the gross experience leads towards the subtle experience.
(110)We see here that the recitation of the mantra—as a means to and a catalyst for the inner feeling of the mantra, an “inner sound and vibration”—does more than simply help the reciters get in touch with their deepest selves. “Etymologically,” Sangharakshita explains, “mantra can be defined as ‘that which protects the mind’ ” (111).He goes on to say that mantra is essentially a sound symbol of a particular divinity, such as a Buddha or Bodhisattva.If that divinity could become a sound, which according to Tantric Buddhism it can and does, then that sound is the mantra. The mantra can therefore be thought of as the true, inherent name of the divinity—regardless of whether it includes the divinity’s conventional name. Notes:.See Tenzin Wangyal on prana: Tibetan Yogas of Body, Speech, and Mind, ed.
. The chant may be all or part of a (also called a sutta). A sutra is a sermon of or one of.
However, a large body of sutras of were composed after the Buddha's lifetime. (See also ' for more explanation.). The chant can be a mantra—a short sequence of words or syllables, often chanted repetitively, thought to have transformative power. An example of a mantra is, which is associated with. Mindfully can be a form of meditation.
A dharani is something like a mantra, although usually longer. Dharanis are said to contain the essence of a teaching, and repetitive chanting of a dharani may evoke some beneficial power, such as protection or healing.
Chanting a dharani also subtly affects the mind of the chanter. Dharanis usually are chanted in Sanskrit (or some approximation of what Sanskrit sounds like). Sometimes the syllables have no definite meaning; it's the sound that matters.