The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
23 April 2024
Q: In regards to pūjās and chanting, when a person is sick and the family members chant for him, the person will either get well or get worse. I would like to get your point of view on this.
Than Ajahn: Chanting has no effect on one’s sickness.
The person’s sickness depends on the medicine he took or on the condition of the body.
Student: So if the person recovers, it’s because his body overcomes the sickness on its own, right?
Than Ajahn: That’s right.
Student: It has nothing to do with the pūjās that we do.
Than Ajahn: No, not at all. If chanting can affect the health of the body, then we don’t have to do anything, we just keep chanting and we’ll live forever.
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Q: During chanting, if we don’t know what were being chanted, are we supposed to just meditate on our own or do we try our best to follow the chant?
Than Ajahn: The purpose of chanting is to develop mindfulness, to keep your mind away from thinking about things that can cause you worry and anxiety. So when you have worry or anxiety, you do chanting.
When you do chanting then your worry and anxiety will not be able to come up because you have to do the chanting instead of thinking about things that make you worry. So that's the purpose of chanting.
And when monks do the chanting for you, it means that the monks are just setting an example, teaching you that you should learn to chant like monks. That’s all.
Because if you know how to chant like monks then you have a certain amount of mindfulness to deal with your emotional problem. When you feel sad or have worry or anxiety, you do chanting, you have to do a long chanting like half an hour or one hour chant then your worry and anxiety will disappear.
So when monks do chanting, they’re just demonstrating to you how to chant so then you can follow the example. When you go home, you then keep practising chanting every day.
When you feel sad, lonely or worried, then you can use chanting to get rid of this feeling.
Student: That’s very enlightening because when I was at a ceremony, when the monks were chanting, I was wondering if I should meditate or focus on a mantra Buddho.
Than Ajahn: You can follow the chant without chanting it yourself. Focus on listening to the chant even though you don't understand what they're chanting. If you can keep your mind with the chanting then you cannot go think about other things. That’s all the purpose of chanting, it’s to keep your mind focus on something so that you can’t go and think about other things that can cause your mind to be emotional.
This is the way to calm your mind although it’s better that you do the chanting yourself.
Monks don’t really need to chant (for you). Chanting is an individual practice. You chant for yourself, not for other people. Lay people think that monks are giving blessing to lay people when they chant. But in fact, they’re not giving any blessing.
Laypeople get their blessings from the generosity they do. When you do dāna, you already have the blessing without the need for the monks to do the chanting to give you the blessing. Blessing cannot be given. It has to be earned by yourself, by your own actions.
When you keep sīla, you get blessing. When you give dāna, you get blessing. When you meditate, you get blessing. When I meditate, I cannot give you the blessing, because it’s mine, I cannot share it with you.
“Dhamma in English, Jul 18, 2023.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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