buddha's and mantra's

2bEnlightened

hi people
i purchased a book on buddhism this weekend. this book has information on all the "buddha's", eg: Green Tara, White Tara, etc; and their individual mantra's. in this book it states that to cleanse oneself of negative karma, one must chant specific mantra's 100 000 times, and even memorise all these buddha's names, etc. being english, i would find it very difficult to memorise these names, nevermind the chants. it was encouraged in this book to purchase the statues of these buddha's and make offerings and pray to them. i dont get this- i dont care how naive i sound saying this- but i just do not get it. according to previous readings of buddha- i am not to just accept things if i do not understand it- and i do not understand why i should have statues of all these other buddha's, make offerings to them, memorise their mantra's and especially why following the eight-fold path, taking refuge in the three jewels and acknowleging the four noble truths is not more important.

also- how important is it to find a guru/lama?

thanks,

Jeffrey

Sounds ridiculous expectation to me. Maybe if they described 1000 statues and the meanings. But expecting you to purchase all of them? Maybe if you purchased 1 or 2 that would be helpful. Even starting a hobby is helpful as an outlet for energy and perhaps some wisdom is contained in the statues. I don't now if it is buddhism.

I think the intention to cleanse negative karma is powerful. If the poetry resonates with you then maybe it would magnify the power.

Just being devil's advocate. But sounds like this is not your calling.

ShiftPlusOne

There are some branches which are more faith based than others. Personally, I am not interested in praying or worshipping, so I am not drawn to mantras or altars. I understand people find chanting to be calming and an altar is a good way to get into the right frame of mind, but I don't understand the dogmatic side of things.

If you feel the same way, then maybe the books you picked up aren't for you.

laurajean

I don't mean this in a rude way, but it sounds like you bought a ridiculous book. You certainly do not need to go buying a bunch of buddha statues, learn all their names, recite whatever however many times, or any of that. I would stick to much more simple books on the fundamentals and basics of buddhism for beginners. If it weren't so late, I'd list some good ones from my bookshelf, maybe tomorrow I'll add some suggestions, but that book sounds "way out there", in my opinion.

zombiegirl

i practiced Nichiren buddhism for several years. it is very similar to what you describe. i chanted nam-myoho-renge-kyo morning and night along with recitation of several excerpts from the lotus sutra. there were also prayers involved in the morning and night "gongyo" ceremony. my altar consisted of the usual stuff (incense, bell, bowl) and a scroll called the "gohonzon" that described in japanese calligraphy the ceremony in the sky (an event described in the lotus sutra).

doing things on my own, i felt as though the morning/night ceremony was beneficial for getting me on a schedule. there's nothing wrong with prayers or recitation, and the chanting was relaxing once you got into a comfortable rhythm. but things changed for me once i joined an official group. i was once given a book that had check boxes for each 100 recitations, all the way up to one million. the belief was that once i made one million recitations with a single goal in mind, i would achieve said goal. it made me feel really weird. for this reason and a few others, it wasn't too long before i left this group.

imo, there is nothing wrong with chanting. the effect for me, is very similar to more classic forms of meditation. but i don't believe that chanting anything any magic number of times is going to change anything for you. i don't think chanting ever magically solved my problems, but if i wanted to, i could pretend it did. a lot of people in my sangha did. i think it just depends on your outlook.

laurajean

I agree with zombiegirl, and from my impression 2benlightened is very new to Buddhism, so there are much more basic things to learn before getting into this level of practice.