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Do Secular Buddhists Practice With Mantras or Chants?
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
Pardon my ignorance, but I have recently began using a Mantra while meditating and I find it surprising. I just wondered if Secular Buddhists practice with them too.
1
Comments
I don't. Some might. Being "secular" doesn't say much, if anything, about an individual's practice!
I guess I'm as secular as you can get and I do often use a chant, but it's not because I think it has supernatural power. Only natural power. And that's the best kind.
I'm mostly a believer but I have my doubts. A lot of chanting is to do something specific. For example 'arouse bodhicitta' or 'take refuge'. I can't imagine a mahayana Buddhist who doesn't believe in bodhicitta. So yeah I think mantras can have use for Buddhists who do not believe in the mystical beliefs.
I've found mantras or imagery helpful, even though it makes little sense to me how repeating Tibetan words over and over again 'does' anything for me. I don't give myself any pressure about it, I trust what I'll need to do will be obvious or seem like a good idea. Also, experiences are unpredictable and your response to it unpredictable as well. I was fooling around on YouTube and found chanting videos and . . was enchanted! I'd have never gone looking on purpose. Go figure. Time to open the ego and let in the mind
I have to put things in my own words and it can take a while for that to happen. Something I think I understand hits me in a deeper way, even though I didn't expect it to.
Singing and chanting is something we've always done, probably, once a minimum of language developed. Certainly it was the vehicle for wisdom and history until written language made the scene. Perhaps singing and chanting 'reaches' a deeper or subtle part of us below everyday awareness, and the effects are similarly beyond our awareness except perhaps for feeling calmer, interested, inspired or peaceful.
I do.
Not exclusively. I may do it when not meditating, as a separate practice, when I need to focus, as part of a puja/sadhana and so on. I find it useful
http://yinyana.tumblr.com/day/2013/08/03
I have tried them before but for me it's the sound that helps. Not the meaning of the word. Ohm is good because of how long you can maintain it and the vocal range it takes.
I'm very non religious but I would still use a mantra for these benefits
Sometimes I do sometimes I don't, however they for me are as @Earthninja mentioned to still the monkey chatter in the mind...Nothing more nothing less....
I am a Buddhist. That much I know.
A bit secular, a bit Theravada, a bit Zen, but always intermingling in different Tibetan schools in actual practice.
I have been in a Dzogchen sangha for several months now, and they do a lot of chanting, though not for the same reasons I do.
Like @Shoshin and @Earthninja mentioned above, to me it is more about stilling the monkey mind, doing some sound healing and focusing. Another meditation technique, that is.
In my sangha the devotional chanting part reminds me of the Catholic rituals.
Not much my cup of tea, but I'm always eager to try and learn new things.
Do what works.
He adds that mantras "jam the broadcasts of our negativity, doubt, and fear, so as to protect us from the patterns which keep us limited."
"They are coded sounds, each with a unique vibratory effect, which can help you find and keep your center. In addition, the meaning of each mantra implants a positive affirmation deep in your psyche."
I attended a mass with singing monks and the bible read in Latin many years ago. Didn't understand a single word BUT was tremendously moved. I wonder if chanting mantra in a semi-unfamiliar language, like Tibetan, bypasses the monkey mind, gives it nothing to swing from per se, and allows . . . whatever it is . . . to deeply interface beneath the chattering monkey mind?
Sorry what are secular Buddhists ? If your a Buddhist you follow the practice the whichever tradition you belong to.
Yes, and don't dismiss things out of hand without having tried them!
Are they doing Ngondro, mantra accumulations? I got about 1/4 way through with Rigpa and then gave up, I calculated I'd die before completing them at the rate I was going.
Don't even mention to me mantra accumulation, Spiny!!!
At present we are doing mantra accumulation for Dzogchen Rinpoche on his upcoming 50th birthday and the mantra is ever so long....
And I'm supposed to recite it in Tibetan and keep note of how many I recite each day....
The Rigpa people use to gabble mantras at break-neck speed so they could build up the number of repetitions. It just seemed odd in the end.
Tee hee.
Mantra racing . . .
When I was doing the 21 Tara chanting, I broke the words down into single syllables and found a program that double speeded the fastest recording I could find (without changing the pitch into gerbil speak). It meant a method of breathing in whilst chanting. So that is how I practiced on my own.
When it came to this sadhana our local sangha included a chanter who was determined to be faster than everyone else. They too breathed in whilst chanting.
Challenge accepted!
I raced them. Finished usually a verse or two ahead and waited for them to catch up. Before the next repetition.
I luvs a good game . . . Happy daze.
It's not only Rigpa members who do that. Tibetans do that, too. I'm not sure if practitioners in other parts of Asia do. But it has to do with a belief that the number of prayers you say in your lifetime bringing you closer to Enlightenment.
OP, use of mantras or not isn't what defines Secular Buddhism. Mantras are just one way to focus the mind in meditation, so they don't relate to secular vs. religious. Unless one believes in some kind of inherent magical power of mantras. Secular Buddhism is about eschewing faith. For example, faith in rebirth, faith in more realms of existence than we're able to experience directly, that sort of thing.
Mantras are just one way to focus the mind in meditation, so they don't relate to secular vs. religious.
That's true. They can also be a way of making an emotional connection.
What method was this? I find it really hard to find keep my breathing and mantra in rhythm.
I don't recommend it . . . basically certain sounds are like a mouth in breath. 'O' for example will allow a very short in breath. I also believe wind instrument players can breath in through the nose whilst breathing out through their instruments. I did not use that incidentally, it may be too specialised.
If you are not going for the Tara speed record, then I suggest only chanting on the out breath and lengthening the verses or repetitions you do on the out breath. This is far healthier and more akin to the benefits of pranayama. Focus on nasal in breath. Chant on the mouth out breath.
Hope that is beneficial
I played clarinet in high school
Thanks. I'll give it a go _ /|\ _
They are "Tara Devi" and "Jewel."
When one goes to the following link, clicking on the different albums by Dechen Shak-Dagsay, we can hear excerpts of her interpretations of the mantras.
I don't have the pluggins on the laptop, so I don't know if the music can actually be heard, but so it should be:
http://dechen-shak.com/index.php/music_e.html
Just wondering .... why use a mantra?
Speed chanting, special breathing techniques to chant mantras faster, and i've seen solar powered prayer wheels on car dashboards, all to allegedly enable one to achieve faster enlightenment, all of this doesn't seem right to me...but i guess that's just me, i must be missing something but it seems to be that human need to want a faster way (like a quick fix to lose weight by just taking a pill) instead of doing things the way they're meant to. I'm not sure of the right way but i don't think shortcuts are the way...
Actually, that's probably not the case in this sort of situation.
Prayer wheels usually contain a number Avalokiteshvara mantras in Tibetan - OM MANI PEME HUNG and is meant, first and formost, for the benefit of beings and not the person "chanting".
Next time you see someone using one, you should ask them why before jumping to what may be an entirely inappropriate conclusion regarding their motivation.
It's a sacred utterance. A form of meditation. It's a means of identification with and the enlightened qalities of the diety whose mantra is recited.
Why? Because the practitioner has a connection to/with the practice. That and a wish to be a benefit to beings.
In some cases, such a Ngondro practice mantra, recitations of the 100-syllable Vajrasattva mantra is part of a karmic purification process aimed at eventual higher trantra practice.
Some people do recitations be they want to or think they should.
I sometimes wonder ......
I've recieved specific instruction foor the mantras I recite. How many others here have recieved similar instruction?
Errrrr ....... Rigpa, I believe, is a Tibetan organiation.
Tibetans in India Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan do a lot om "OM MANIs" tho.
Usually it's for the benefit of beings and not one's self.
Right and I'd expect that a SB probably wouldn't be too inclined to engage in such a practice. Too "superstituous".
They'd probably use them to develop concentration, if at all.
Yes, Rigpa and Dzogchen are Tibetan.
Why do reading sutras help? Of course there is the mental part of understanding Buddhism in the sutras. But the mantras are 'dharmic'. They set the mind up as do the sutras. This is easy to see for all of us who read something inspirational before meditation. It makes a difference. I notice that reading a Buddhist teaching makes me more alive or aware during the meditation. I like it. I don't know about others.
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Thanks for the heads up regarding the prayer wheel Chaz, i have a small one at home and turn it (by hand) every morning, my motivation is for others to benefit, but i think having the sun do it loses some of the intention, it's like the motivation is there but the effort involved is negligible.
But the mantras are 'dharmic'. They set the mind up as do the sutras.
Yes, that's true, and "May I be well, may I be happy" is also a mantra ( it's a phrase that some use as part of metta bhavana practice ).