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How do Buddhists pray?
I never really felt comfortable with prayer, associating it heavily with Christianity and asking for favors.
Do Buddhists pray like this? Words sent up to somewhere? Or is it just like talking to a friend? If so, does this entity have a name to call them by?
I've also seen like prayer beads and chants, is that how to pray? Memorizing the chants and repeating them a particular number of times?
Do Buddhists pray like this? Words sent up to somewhere? Or is it just like talking to a friend? If so, does this entity have a name to call them by?
I've also seen like prayer beads and chants, is that how to pray? Memorizing the chants and repeating them a particular number of times?
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Comments
Every human being prays with the same organ. The mind.
The chants are called mantras.
I feel that if the concern of bodhisattva's is the well-being of others, placing others before oneself, then any 'prayers' should be directed toward others, but not prayer for oneself. Pray for anyone and everyone except oneself. At least that is my take on things.
I don't argue what it is with people though. Most of my friends are Christian, and they'll ask for prayers, and I absolutely send them. They just don't go to God.
Mantras don't work well for me, not at this point anyhow. I find them distracting, but not in the way they are intended.
Do what works for you. I personally rarely pray TO anyone, though once in a while I do because it is what feels right to do. Not because I except Buddha up in the clouds somewhere to listen to me of course, but just because sometimes it seems to make sense to "send" my prayers to someone who can take a load off my shoulders for me and send some compassion my way. Of course it's really me doing it for myself, but visualization helps me often, so I use it.
:wave:
Many 'born as Buddhists' ask the Buddha for help, much like it seems some Americans go to the Abe Lincoln statue and talk/pray to him . . .
In some tradititions such as the 'yuppy Buddhism' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sōka_Gakkai you are encouraged to chant towards goals.
Vajrayana makes extensive use of prayer/puja. How this works is dependent on the understanding of the practitioner. At the lowest level it is asking for the blessing mind stream associated with a particular Buddha persona to come visit. Which is not so different to the highest level. Whether this is regarded as internal or external or a combination is up to a practitioners unfoldment . . .
Mantras are not prayers, though they can be used in this way.
It would be more skilful to associate them with ways of focussing and associating the mind with skilfull attributes.
OM MANI PEME HUM
As I like to hum to my Inner Buddha rather than the latest pop ditty . . .
Senpai Sensei -
Buddhist prayer is a practice to awaken our inherent inner capacities of strength, compassion and wisdom rather than to petition external forces based on fear, idolizing, and worldly and/or heavenly gain. Buddhist prayer is a form of meditation; it is a practice of inner reconditioning. Buddhist prayer replaces the negative with the virtuous and points us to the blessings of Life.
“The whole of Blessed Staretz Silouan's life was prayer. He prayed unceasingly, in the course of the day changing the mode of his prayer to accord with the circumstances of the daily round. He possessed, too, the greatest gift of mental prayer, to which he devoted chiefly the night hours, in the complete silence and darkness propitious to this form of prayer.
The question of forms or aspects of prayer is one of the most important there is in asceticism generally. It was for the Staretz, too, so let us pause and consider it.
Concerning the Three Forms of Prayer
Prayer is creation, the loftiest form of creation, creation par excellence, which makes prayer infinitely diverse. Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish different modes depending on the situation or orientation of the main spiritual powers of the one who prays. This is what the Fathers of the Church do.
In this respect prayer corresponds with the stages in the normal development of the human spirit. The first impulse of the mind is outward-bound. The second, a return into itself and the third - ascent towards God through the inner man.
To accord with this progression the Holy Fathers instituted three forms of prayer. The first, because the mind is as yet incapable of attaining directly to pure vision of God, is marked by the imagination. The second, by meditation, and the third by rapt concentration. This last, the Fathers consider to be the only sound, proper and fruitful mode of prayer but taking into account the impossibility of such prayer for man at the outset of his pilgrimage towards God, they accept the first two forms also as normal and duly profitable. However, they do point out that if one is content with the first form of prayer, and cultivates it in his spiritual life, not only unfruitfulness but deep-rooted spiritual ill health may result.
Concerning the second mode of prayer, though in many ways superior to the first, it still bears little fruit and does not rescue one from the constant battle against wrong thoughts, does not free one from the passions or, even less, lead to pure contemplation. The third, the most perfect form of prayer is when with his mind stationed in his heart, a man prays from the very depths of his being, without images, with a pure mind standing before God.
The first form of prayer imprisons man in constant error, in an imaginary world, in a world of dreams and, if you like, of poetic creation. The divine, and in general all that is spiritual presents itself in various fantastical aspects, following which actual human life, too, is gradually diffused by elements from the sphere of fantasy.
With the second form of prayer - when heart and mind are wide open to all that is extraneous - one is left continually vulnerable to the most heterogeneous influences from without, unable to discern what exactly is happening objectively. How do all these alien thoughts and conflicts arise in man, impotent, as he ought not to be, against the onslaught of the passions? Grace sometimes comes with this sort of prayer, putting him in a good frame of mind, but because his inner disposition is not right he is unable to continue in this grace. Having accumulated a measure of religious knowledge and achieved relatively decorous behavior, content with matters, he gradually takes to speculative theology, and in step with his success in this, so does his inner battle against the subtle passions - vanity and pride - in his soul decrease, and loss of grace is intensified. As it develops, this form of prayer, which is characterized by the concentration of attention in the brain, leads to rational, philosophical intuition, which, like the first form of prayer, opens the way to a contrived world of the imagination. True, this form of abstract conceptual imagination is less naive, less gross, and less far from the truth than the first.
The third form of prayer - when the mind is conjoined with the heart - Is, generally speaking, the normal religious state for the human spirit, desired, sought after, bestowed from on high. Every believer experiences this union of mind and heart when he prays attentively, 'from the bottom of his heart'. He knows it to a still greater degree when his heart is softened and he feels a sweet sense of Divine love. Tears of compunction during prayer are a sure sign that the mind is united with the heart, and that pure prayer has found its prime place - the initial step in ascent to God. This is why ascetics rate tears so highly. But now, in our given case, in discussing the third form of prayer, I am referring to something different and more important - the mind in prayerful attention stationed in the heart.
As a typical consequence, the virtue of this movement and installation of the mind within, the Imagination is curtailed and the mind released from all the mental images that have invaded it. In this state the mind becomes all ears and eyes, and sees and hears every extrinsic thought approaching from without, before it can invade the heart. Praying the while, the mind not only refuses to admit extraneous thoughts into the heart but positively thrusts them aside and preserves itself from association with them, thereby at the very outset cutting short the action of every passion in its initial stage. (This is an extraordinarily profound and complex question, and I can only give a very primitive outline of it here.)
On the Development of Intrusive Thoughts
Sin becomes sin after completing specified stages in its inner development.
The first stage is when some spiritual influence approaches from without, which may, to begin with, be quite vague and shapeless. The initial stage in formation is the appearance in the field of man's inner vision of an image - and as this does not depend on one's will, it is not regarded as a sin. Images in some cases appear to take on visible form, while others are mostly products of the mind, but more often it is a combination of the two. As visible images also generate some thought or other, ascetics label all images 'Intrusive thoughts'.
The man who is not in thrall to the passions can recognize the force of an intrusive thought and yet remain completely free from its power. But if there is some 'place' in one - some suitable soil for the development of the intrusive thought the thought will strive to take possession of one's psychic being - of the heart, the soul. It achieves this because it prompts a feeling of the delight to be afforded by one or another passion. The delight figures 'temptation'. But even the fleeting pleasure, though it testifies to man's imperfection, is not yet to be reckoned as sin. It is only a 'proposal' for sin.
The further development of a sinful intrusive thought can be portrayed roughly as follows: the mind is attracted by the delectation to be afforded by the passion, and this is an extremely important and crucial moment because the fusion of mind with tempting ideas provides fertile soil for passion. If the mind does not by an exercise of the will tear itself away from the suggested delights but continues to dwell on them, it will find itself pleasantly attracted, then involved and finally positively acquiescent. After that, the ever-increasing delight in the passion may take possession of - make captive - mind and will. Lastly, the whole strength of the one enslaved by passion is directed to a more or less determined actualization of sin, if there are no outside impediments or, where there are, to seeking ways of getting round them.
Such captivity may happen once only and never recur if it had come about because of the inexperience of someone engaged in the ascetic struggle. But if the enchantment repeats itself, passion becomes second nature, and then all man's natural forces are at its service..."
If interested the remainder of the excerpt can be found here: orthodoxprayer.org/Articles_files/Silouan-Pure%20Prayer.html
I've also used prayer during making amends to those I've harmed. For example my mother had disowned me; we had no contact for nearly 10 years; I didn't know if she was even alive. Once I made contact and the initial period passed, my mother was still severely pissed at me and used to give me a tough time on the telephone (she lives 100s of miles from me). So, on advice, before I phoned her I prayed for her happiness. This put me in the correct frame of mind that when my mother gave me a hard time, I didn't lose my temper and 'bite' her back.
Eventually she calmed down and we met face-to-face and I made a formal amend. It was a very touching moment and we both cried.
Prayer works; just drop the Christian baggage and use it as a psychological tool.
I don't know about other Buddhist traditions, but the Tibetan traditions has prayers in which one can ask for help for oneself or others from various Buddhas or protector spirits.
From my sangha's liturgy: