Archive for February, 2011

“Om mani peme hung.”

“Kan-ji-zai-Bo-sat-su-gyo-jin-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta…”

Looking back, I think I first became interested in Buddhism because of the meditation practice.  Being a fairly anxious type, I hoped that meditation would help me be calmer and not feel so scared all the time.  I wanted to be able to throw myself into life completely, not listen to that constant nattering nabob of self-negativism that seemed to live in my head and evaluate every little thing I did as it was being done.  So I meditated.  And started reading about Buddhism.  So I learned about the other aspects of Buddhism, the philosophy, the ethics, and I learned that I…needed a Sangha.

Living in a big city at the time, I was in the (fortunate?) position where one could practically go “sangha shopping” – there were so many groups around, it made choice difficult.  I started going to the Tibetan center that was less than a mile from my house.  There, yes, I encountered meditation classes, classes on Buddhism, but also…chanting.  Oh, the chanting!  In this case, it was chanting, “Om mani peme hung” on a mala. Later I would visit Zen centers and encounter chanting that ranged from the robotic monotone of Rinzai Zen, to the more melodic chanting I encountered at a Korean center, to something that made me think I was in a Sunday church service ¹.  But it seemed that chanting was a constant I could not avoid.  With the exception of the Vipassana groups, chanting seemed to be a given if I wanted to participate in a Buddhist sangha.

After years of returning to solo meditation practice ², I would again return to sitting with a Rinzai group.  And, of course I,again, encountered chanting.  In Japanese.  In a language I don’t understand, but am making some effort trying to learn.  Oh, why all this chanting?  Why couldn’t I just sit zazen, listen to a talk, and have some tea, and be done with it?  What was the point of robotically intoning these incomprehensible syllables, and worse – doing it badly.

I was very tentative about this chanting thing.  I worried that I was off-key, that I wasn’t pronouncing things correctly, that my voice was bad.  I seemed to recall every little criticism everybody had ever given me about my singing – even though this chanting couldn’t exactly be called singing. I imagined that I sounded like Elmo, or a frog.  I found myself chanting the Lotus Sutra at 6 AM once thinking that my tongue felt like lead in my mouth.   Of course, the truth is that, most likely, nobody was giving my “bad” chanting much consideration.  At first I quietly mouthed along.

But, outside of the zendo, I started thinking about all this chanting.  And I remembered myself as an eight year old who would talk friends into singing with me for show and tell at school.  Later, in middle school, a friend of mine would recall, “You’d get up there with someone and they’d be singing really quietly, and you’d be really, really loud…”  The point is that I didn’t care.  I didn’t worry about how I sounded (I think I thought I sounded great), I wasn’t worried about my volume, or my being on key, or what everyone was thinking – I just got up there and sang.

I think that this is why many religious traditions say we should be like children – both Jesus says that one won’t enter the kingdom of heaven (which, in my interpretation means something akin to enlightenment) unless he becomes like a child, and, I believe, the Buddha also said something about being childlike, though I can’t find the exact quote or source right now.  When we are children, we have the ability to just throw ourselves into life completely, into whatever we are doing.  But as we grow up, we tend to lose that ability and become separate from our activities.  Our Zen practice, hopefully reduces that separation once again, allowing us to be like children in the activities that we do.

It doesn’t matter what we chant – I’m reminded of the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn, who said that chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola was OK if you kept a clear mind.  The important part is that, when we chant, we let go, we become like children, we throw ourselves into it and just chant.  That is the point of all this chanting.  So, when you chant…

Open your mouth.

Get out of your own way.

Chant like a third grader.