Typing instead of Hand writing Sutras

Omar067

Can you get benefit from typing a sutra but not writing it by hand. Can you get benefit even if you don't understand the sutra. I plan on typing every chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

federica

Intention is all....

Omar067

Okay. Thanks.

how

Is this a practice for merit? Is this typing a meditation practice?

Is the benefit you ask about concerning merit or memorization or understanding or ???

Do you know how you best retain and process information?

Is it auditory by hearing you speak of it?
Is it tactile by some accompanying physicality?
Is it visual through the seeing of the ideas?
If it's a combination, does one avenue still dominate?

Knowing and utilizing the avenue of learning that works best for you for this job, might be a way to proceed beyond a mere mimicry of read words.

As a new student to my first monastery, I was asked upon arriving to commit to memory in any free time that I had outside of scheduled events, 4 of their main sutras and a teacher's ancestral lineage going back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

While I initially saw this as a daunting and somewhat onerous task, the work of that memorization served to provide an unexpected overlay of Dharmic momentum to my practice, where those sutra's and life up to this day, still offer some illumination for one and other.

I am not suggesting you memorize anything.
Just that you can expect out of it, what you put into it.

Lionduck

It is always the heart that matters.

Omar067

@how said:
Is this a practice for merit? Is this typing a meditation practice?

Is the benefit you ask about concerning merit or memorization or understanding or ???

Do you know how you best retain and process information?

Is it auditory by hearing you speak of it?
Is it tactile by some accompanying physicality?
Is it visual through the seeing of the ideas?
If it's a combination, does one avenue still dominate?

Knowing and utilizing the avenue of learning that works best for you for this job, might be a way to proceed beyond a mere mimicry of read words.

As a new student to my first monastery, I was asked upon arriving to commit to memory in any free time that I had outside of scheduled events, 4 of their main sutras and a teacher's ancestral lineage going back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

While I initially saw this as a daunting and somewhat onerous task, the work of that memorization served to provide an unexpected overlay of Dharmic momentum to my practice, where those sutra's and life up to this day, still offer some illumination for one and other.

I am not suggesting you memorize anything.
Just that you can expect out of it, what you put into it.

I was only trying to gain merit. I don't have the capacity to understand the Lotus Sutra. Only praying will allow me to understand the Lotus Sutra.

Jeroen

@Omar067 said:
I was only trying to gain merit. I don't have the capacity to understand the Lotus Sutra. Only praying will allow me to understand the Lotus Sutra.

It seems a perfectly beautiful practice.

Kotishka

I am not suggesting you memorize anything.
Just that you can expect out of it, what you put into it.

Wise words.