Group chanting of Dhamma is one thing
Group chanting of Dhamma passages as a communal activity and for preservation of Dhamma scripture accuracy, is one thing.
Because it's a group, you need to synchronize, chant at an even tempo, usually a slow tempo.
Personal chanting of Dhamma is an entirely different beast
I discovered two incredibly important things over the last ten+ years of chanting everyday, at least 20min in the morning, and usually 20min in the evening,
1. your personal chanting and group chanting are two entirely separate practices that should not be mixed up.
Why did I have to discover this? Why is this just not taught to everyone?
The short answer is the learning methods of the oral tradition are hardly used by most people.
We don't memorize the important things.
We use books, and personal computing devices, to look up information when needed, as needed.
Life, and defilements, come at you at blinding speed.
If you don't have the Dhamma memorized, fully understood at an intellectual level, ready to deploy, it's like an unarmed man attacked by a gang of thugs.
So the right way of chanting in your personal practice, is to utilize the full range of sati, samādhi, jhāna, vitakka, vicāra, upekkha.
Don't chant to a metronome at a slow tempo.
Chant everytime according to the needs of sati, vitakka, vicāra.
Sati (Remembrance of Dhamma)
You notice you don't have something memorized really well? It doesn't come to your mind instantly?
Then add extra repetitions, for sati's sake (memory faculty, what people usually translate as "mindfulness").
vitakka (directed thought)
what you just recalled with sati, your vitakka should have the rough, superfical compherension of what you just recited, at least to the extent that you memorized it correctly.
If you have doubts about the fidelity, whether what you just recited was accurate, then you need to work on your sati. Add extra repetitions.
And as you recite (vocally or mentally), vitakka should be doing the job of knowing to the extent what you recite is accurate, and if you have extra brain power capacity to spare, to know the basic meaning of the vitakka that sati memorized.
vicāra (evaluation, pondering of that vitakka)
vicāra reflects on the meaning of the Dhamma vitakka that sati memorized and recited.
You understand that Dhamma at a deeper, fuller intellectual level than vitakka.
Chanting in your personal practice, you don't have a group needing you to chant at an even tempo and be in sync with them.
In a group chanting, vicāra either
* doesn't have enough time to operate, meaning you don't have time to reflect on the meaning of the Dhamma that you just recited,
* or in most cases, people chant pāḷi so slow it's hard to follow the meaning of what you recited.
* there's also the problem with group chanting, different people's unfamiliar intonations and accents sucks up your brain capacity to merely comprehend what people are saying and whether you're in sync with them.
So when you chant in your personal practice, you get to finally let vicāra out!
This is your chance to savor the meaning of Dhamma, the meaning of every phrase, every word if necessary.
To really take the time to think about, ponder, reflect, enjoy, appreciate the meaning of that dhamma phrase before you move on to the next phrase.
Don't chant to a metronome in your personal practice!
Take as much time as you need to savor and ponder the meaning.
This is what no one ever taught me about chanting.
In your personal practice, the purpose of chanting is to absorb the meaning of Dhamma,
not to mindlessly recite memorized teachings for the sake of memory.
Group chanting is like taking a daily multivitamin where your body can only absorb 2% of all the dead nutrients in a small pill.
Personal chanting, done correctly, is like eating at a gourmet vegetarian restaurant for 3 hours, savoring each bite of food from fresh living ingredients, chewing thoroughly, absorbing all the nutrients each bite of Dhamma has to offer.
continued here:
Chanting is not just a devotional group activity. It's an integral part of samādhi, the oral tradition, and life, if done correctly.
Forum discussion
aequanimo·22 hr. ago wrote:
quoting frank:
"Group chanting is like taking a daily multivitamin where your body can only absorb 2% of all the dead nutrients in a small pill.
Personal chanting, done correctly, is like eating at a gourmet vegetarian restaurant for 3 hours, savoring each bite of food from fresh living ingredients, chewing thoroughly, absorbing all the nutrients each bite of Dhamma has to offer."
Would like to know more about the benefits of group chanting. I know it's hyperbole but 2% of dead nutrients in a multivitamin doesn't seem very useful.
frank response:
I don't want to over generalize.
My comparison is more about how you use your personal time, not using group chanting style in your personal time. Specific example:
Anatta lakkhana sutta, if you had to pick just one sutta to live on a desert island, is probably the one most people want.
If you chant it in the style of group chantig, it takes maybe 15 min., and it's hard to follow the meaning of what you're chanting because the chant is going so slow.
Whereas if you chant with the intent to absorb Dharma meaning, at your own pace, pausing nice and long between the especially juicy parts, the chanting time is still a lot less than the group chanting time, because you speak fluently and fast when the meaning is shallow and easy, and you slow and really contemplate things when the meaning is deep on certain phrases.
Re: The right way of chanting, this will change your life and improve your Dharma absorption efficiency a hundredfold
Post by frank k » Wed Apr 05, 2023 7:39 am
Good question!
I'll have some more specific ideas for you later, but the more general and complete solution is Here:
https://lucid24.org/misc/raft/index.html
An easy and specific idea you can do right away if you're not already doing:
https://lucid24.org/tped/g/goldcraft/index.html#3.1.1
Memorize that passage on eating AN 3.16 STED formula for eating.
recite that before your meal, during the meal, after the meal.
Until you have that memorized, you can use the mantra, "eat for need, not for greed", since it's a concise summary (every line in AN 3.16 is just giving you more detail on how to do it).
I spend most of my meal contemplating the section on eating from SN 12.63 (son's flesh).
Not so much on the gross parts, but on the fact that the purpose of food is keep the body functional to cross over to nirvana,
and also not to be fooled by the taste of delicious food.
since that can never be satiated. How many times have we eaten in our life?
A 100 person year person may have eat 3 x 365 x 100 times, so roughly 100k times.
That's maybe 10lbs of food and water a day?
So a million pounds of food, and a million pounds of excrement created over a lifetime.
Was food ever able to satiate your sensual desire for delicious food?
cocaine, sex, music is all the same.
So you apply the insight from eating food to all 5 cords of sensual pleasure.
If you comprehend that fully with vitakka, vicāra, upekkha, then you can attain non-return.
When I lived at a monastery, the abbott when he was leading us on retreat would eat lunch sitting and facing the wall of the meditation hall.
No chatting, no looking around, just eating the right way, thinking the right thoughts, gaining a deeper understanding of the 5 cords of sensual pleasure and their insatiability.
No comments:
Post a Comment