Chanting as a Practice

So even the simple recitation of the meditation word ‘Buddho’ can capture both aspects of mindfulness – the first one, where you just completely let go and immerse yourself in the present moment experience and just let the awareness of the atmosphere take over your mind, feeling your mind expanding, widening and broadening, becoming radiant and all-encompassing towards anything that happens. And there is the second aspect of mindfulness, where you are putting everything down to a certain particular task and exercise, giving rise to a specific meaning, that then fully captures your mind.

Doing this practice of sitting silently meditating on the two syllables ‘Bud-dho’ can bring up a lot of joyous, blissful feelings – an experience of elevation. By reciting and correctly focussing attention we fill our hearts with faith and devotion. In so doing we begin to sense a connection with something beyond ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’. Meditating on the name of the Buddha can lead us to a connection with an aspiration shared by many practitioners through the centuries; something very broad and universal. Previously we had studied about the Buddha and reached a good enough cognitive appreciation; now we are including feelings of devotion in our practice.

This reflection by Ajahn Kevali is from the book, Seeing the Way, Volume 2, p. 144.