Chant / Worship Same or Different?
April 2, 2012
Binh, my student in ESL 51, and I collaborated on this essay addressing chant and worship, two words often confused by students of Buddhism. We both look forward to your comments, as we hope to write another piece that further explores the use of language between religions.
Webster’s Dictionary tells me that worship is, first and foremost, reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage. The rendering of such worship is usually in a formal or ceremonious form, such as to attend worship in Sunday service. When we worship, we show adoring reverence - reverence being the deep respect which overwhelms us when we find ourselves in awe of our God. A Buddhist monk, Binh, has recently brought to my attention that this word, worship, is often incorrectly used in the teaching of Buddhism. It makes sense to me that terms we use to describe religious rituals we are familiar with would be used to help us understand these ceremonies that we are not familiar with, customs which are new to us, such as those I would encounter in trying to understand Buddhism, a religion with fundamental differences from the religion within which I was raised.
So, to begin with, what is my own understanding of the word worship? That’s easy, for I vividly remember one of those stunning spring mornings, a Sunday, and I was walking past a church whose windows were opened wide to the fresh and already warm morning air. The congregation inside was wholly engaged in the singing of a hymn. Powerful music and even more powerful words poured out of the open windows and added a sublime sense of joy to that spring morning whose beauty had already overwhelmed me with awe of my creator. It was no matter which hymn was being sung nor the denomination of the congregation singing the hymn – every church I know has a choir and music. To my mind, when we gather in a church and we lift our voices up in song, we are praising our God, we are showing reverence for our God, our devotion to our God, and yes, our love for our God. This is worship.
But now it is another magnificent spring morning, and on this day my walk takes me past a temple. As I approach, I hear a sangha, or a collection, of monks whose voices seem to float in harmony on the warm spring air in the recitation of a chant. The similarity between the two events leaves me with a question. So, I ask my friend, Binh, who is a Buddhist monk , if he is worshipping Buddha when he chants? If not, what is he doing?
Monks never worship Buddha, Susan, but rather they study the Buddha’s teachings by reading them aloud or silently. When monks and Buddhist followers gather at the Buddha’s Hall, they bow to the Buddha and sit down for chanting or meditating. Chanters sometimes use instruments such as a bell, a wooden fish, or a chime, etc. to add onto the service. The listener or participant feels that the chanting time is a moment to come back to our “true home” – the intrinsic nature of our minds. There is not any action of worshipping in any Buddhist service. Buddhist followers read/chant the teachings out loud with or without musical instruments. The purpose of the chanting is to understand what Buddha taught in the sutras, which are Buddha’s teaching in writings. When we chant the sutras, we have a chance to “water” the good seeds in us. In order to realize our Buddha nature, we need to do good deeds and purify our minds. Reading or chanting the sutras is like cleaning the mirror which is our Buddha nature, a nature which is already within every sentient being. Buddhist followers do not worship any deity or even Buddha. We study under the guidance of Buddha and we consider Him as a teacher. We show our respect to the Buddha, but we do not worship him like Christians worship their God.
In any language, there is a word that is used for a person a place or a thing and everyone fixes their mind on to that word for that one person, place or thing. We need to introduce a new word when a new idea is coming into the language. Worship is a good example of this in the English language. Worship is a word that is used to describe an action in praise and adoration – and this idea is fixed in one’s mind to denote this aspect of their relationship with their creator.
As Binh has explained, the relationship that a monk has with Buddha is significantly different from relationships with a God whom people adore. While Christians engage in an act of adoration to their creator through hymns, Buddhists engage in chants as an act to water the good seeds lying within us.
Yes, Susan, and we need to understand that if English speakers use the word worship when speaking about Buddhism, they are misusing their language. When we practice Buddhism, we do not use the word worship, but chant. It is my hope that this lesson makes this clear to each interested reader.
Staying or Moving On
February 25, 2012
A few weeks ago, I was digging around a box of old pictures, looking for a certain one to send to a childhood friend to whom I owed a letter. I was looking for a picture of the two of us going into town on a summer’s day in 1965, she on her bicycle and me on a black pony. But in my search, I came across another picture I had forgotten about. This picture, taken the same summer, shows her father leading the same black pony by the bridle through the gates leading to the thatched white-washed cottage where he was raising his family. The pony is rigged to a cart which holds an overflowing bundle of freshly cut hay. On top of this bundle sits her uncle, her father’s brother, who in sitting there is keeping the bundle of hay in place. Bringing in the hay is no easy task. But from the smile on each of these men’s faces, there was also some pleasure on this fine summer’s day in the west of Ireland in 1965.
I have had this picture on my desk for a while now, as it brings me back to an old Ireland long gone, when boys, who were raised together on their father’s land, grew up to raise their own sons on the same land, working the same fields their father and grandfather had worked. Cousins grew up together on the same land their fathers knew as children, cousins whose Granny would be found in the comfy chair closest to the fire, whose mothers brought cheese sandwiches and flasks of hot tea at noon to the men working in the bog. Families – generations of people- who were and are as much part of a place as the fields, the bog, the gate leading into the house, and the house itself. This picture depicts a place and life so different from the many places I see when I look back on my own life.
I am someone, like many others I know, who has called numerous houses home – twelve to be exact. That would be twelve different doors to which I had the key, and when I entered, I thought - It is so good to be home! As a result, my memories do not reside in one place. Rather, each time I call up an event from my past, the story is framed by where in the world I was when, for example, my wallet was stolen (Amsterdam) the worst job I ever had ( grooming a feisty black stallion in England), the best teacher (Dr. Holiskey in Washington, DC) where my husband proposed to me (Florida) or where he was (in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean) when our second child was born, leaving me to drive myself to the nearest hospital in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
We make choices each day. Sometimes it is a small decision, such as choosing fish or chicken for dinner, while sometimes it is a big decision – to stay or move on. Either of these paths is difficult, as each has its own exclusive set of challenges. Tom and Paddy chose to stay, with the result of having the same people - family and friends- around them from cradle to grave. Clearly, I chose to move on, with the result of never seeing again so many people whom I have met, admired and come to know, with whom I have laughed and cried and loved along the way. This is, at times, heartrending. Perhaps this is why I gaze at Paddy and Tom and wonder what a life like that would have been like.
But perhaps this is also why, through the astonishing capabilities we now have with the Internet, Facebook, and Google, I have reconnected with this childhood friend to whom I could send that picture of the two of us setting off for town, she on a bike and me a pony, on that summer’s day that has been so closely held in my heart of memories ever since.
Rainbow Part II
December 22, 2011
December 22, 2011
When I am teaching sentence patterns to my students, I stumble on this simplest of sentences.The dress is green. My class has already talked about nouns and verbs, so we quickly identify is as the verb, dress as a noun, and green as a…….
Color bewilders me. Is color – green, red, yellow - an adjective? The dictionary first defines green as an adjective, saying that green is the color of foliage, green is verdant, or green is not ripe, as in This peach is still green. However, the dictionary also defines green as a noun, with the first noun definition getting down to the brass tacks.
Green (noun) is the color between blue and yellow on the spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 500 – 570 nm.
Color is a complex phenomena. Each thing in this world is a play of energy and this play consists of electromagnetic waves – waves which flow in different frequencies. All colors are present in each thing in this world, but the colors are unseen because the object – the thing itself – absorbs those colors. The one color that an object rejects is the color we see it dressed in.
In other words, the dress is green because the dress has absorbed yellow and blue and all other colors in the spectrum, but the dress rejects green. So, it is in this rejection of green that we perceive the dress as green.
I have recently found myself in places drenched with color, most usually picturesque places brimming with light and subtle shades. When in these surroundings I have found myself trying to better comprehend color and its underlying principle, which is new to me, with the underlying principles of a language, which for me is more familiar territory. Languages are designed over hundreds and hundreds of years by its speakers, and the languages which speakers create for themselves manifest ideas inherent in their culture. My students must be taught English sentence patterns which are based on the Subject/Verb/Object pattern because in their first languages the pattern may be Verb/Object/Subject as in Is green dress! But differences between cultures manifested through language run much, much deeper than structure. For example, Gaelic, a language heavily influenced by the Druids, does not allow for any expression of ownership, as in the Druid world, no one owned anything. So my husband is expressed as the man at me, and my house is expressed as the place where I am staying. My job is expressed as the teacher in me!
There is much I can understand of another culture through studying the structure of its language, but I find myself struggling to understand my creator through the design this world – specifically, color. How does this design–rooted in my only being able to see what is rejected- manifest my creator? What is it that this divine spirit is trying to tell me?
On reflection, I know I am guilty of looking at a person and seeing only what they are rejecting rather than trying to see and understand what they have absorbed. The student who aggressively questions a final grade, a young man who wears his pants low, so low that it is way past my acceptance of decency, a relative who tells jokes I cannot laugh at; I only remember them for what they are rejecting that I have absorbed – and I, so arrogantly, feel they should absorb, too.
But then I am brought back to that rainbow I saw below me from that mountain. Who could witness a rainbow and not believe in the goodness, the inherent goodness of the world in which we live? In that arc of prismatic colors in the heavens created by the reflection of light in a soft and mellow mist of water – only there nothing is absorbed and nothing is rejected. The creator’s complete palette is in plain sight, for a moment, maybe two, to be witnessed.
Rainbow Part I
September 24, 2011
Come away, oh human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
These were among the first lines of William Butler Yeats’ poetry that I ever read. The lines come from his poem entitled The Stolen Child, a legendary poem of his which rests on the Irish idea that a child never dies. Too merciless to understand, an explanation evolved among the Irish people that if a child does leave us, it is because the faeries have come and taken the child away. The death of any child leaves us all wondering why. We simply do not understand. We cannot take it in. We don’t get it. We can’t see. Those things for which we cannot comprehend why, we make something up.
Recently I returned from Ireland, and when there, I indulge in endless picture taking. You cannot take a bad picture in Ireland because the landscape is stunning – in any weather. One day I was walking in the Nephin Beg mountain range, which is located in the west of Ireland. Reaching the summit of the trail I was following, I walked to the edge to take in the view, and found myself looking down on a rainbow. I quickly produced my pocket camera and clicked away for a few minutes. Then the rain came pouring down, so I hurriedly put my camera back in its plastic bag and deep into my pocket, and began my descent.
Shortly after returning to the states, I reviewed the hundreds of pictures I had taken and selected about a dozen to print. Upon arriving home with the prints, I went through them taking immense pleasure in each one. I had taken several of the rainbow, but printed the one which seemed to best capture the rainbow, and to my delight, it did. However, this picture perplexes me and continues to perplex me ever since I got home that day. I take it out and look at it for the longest time trying to understand it. My mind would repeatedly say we are not supposed to look down on rainbows. Rainbows are supposed to be above us. Why did I see one below me? Why?
Go ahead, Susan, and take another good look. You will never get it. You are not supposed to understand this. It is a mystery, just like a few other things you have relentlessly been trying to figure out lately. Sometimes, you will just never understand why.
I am a teacher, and I strive to first understand my students’ questions and then to clearly explain to them the answer. So, it profoundly disturbs me that I cannot explain some things to myself. Not big things like wars and budget deficits and recessions, but small things, like looking down on a rainbow, or a dear friend ending a friendship. And this rainbow embodied my unexplainables – those things too wrapped in sorrow and mystery to understand.
Yeat’s poem ends with a stanza that dwells on the sadness for the child, even though life is now full of faery fun. Yeats gives the child solemn eyes, for the young child will never again hear the cattle lowing on the warm hillside, nor will he hear the kettle on the hob bringing peace into his heart – this final image giving some remnant of comfort for the family and friends left behind.
Like Yeats’ final stanza, has this rainbow come to me as a comfort in itself – a soothing reminder of days and a friend long gone bye? Or is it I simply do not understand. I cannot take it in. I don’t get it. I can’t see. One of those things for which I cannot comprehend why, so I make something up.
