chanting

Different religious traditions, such as Christian Sufism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, use chanting and singing in their practices. Chanting can be seen as a form of creating and listening to sounds that improve oneself. In Vajrayana Buddhism, chanting is used to invoke and resonate with a principle or deity and is followed by meditation to connect with its qualities. The practice is powerful and effective, even though it may seem strange to some. Other practices, like paganism and witchcraft, also use sensory inputs to evoke specific qualities and achieve desired results. The success of these practices depends on the energy, discipline, and qualities of the group or circle. Hi everyone, Lobster here. I thought I'd talk a bit about chanting, singing, music. It's used differently in different traditions. So, for example, we have in Chistian Sufism, they were quite often accused of being un-Islamic or being heretics or whatever, because they would sing, they would, some of the orders would have women as their devotees and as part of their circles. Again, they were accused of having orgies, because the hypocrites will always find some way of deciding what the proper behaviour is for those who are actually trying to improve themselves in some way. And people are improved by the sounds they create and the sounds they listen to, the music that they listen to. So, Chistian Sufism is spelled C-H-I-S-T-I, I believe. Right, so that's one example. Another example in some of the Dharmic religions is chanting, Sikhism. They sing the, I forget what they call their holy books from the gurus, but they sing them. So there's like singing that goes on in Sikhism. Hinduism as well, they do chantings and songs to the gods and goddesses and in Buddhism, some forms of Buddhism, in fact most of the ones that I'm familiar with, they usually start with some devotional chanting. So it could be in Pali, it could be in Tibetan, it could be in Japanese, Shingon, Shingon, true word, the chanting, usually quite complex chants and they can go on for quite a while. So, to us that seems like a form of droning, you know, for example, Om Mani Padme Hum Hri, Om Mani Padme Hum Hri, Om Mani Padme Hum Hri, you know, that's one chant and it can go on for quite a while. And there's different ways that it's done. But again, that is a form, it may be a form of healing, it may be a devotion to a principle. Let's take Vajrayana Buddhism because I'm quite familiar with a lot of practices that are used there. They will invoke what they sometimes refer to as a deity, a protector deity, but it's really a principle, a principle that they're trying to evoke and resonate with. And the way to resonate with it is to call it by its names, sit with that deity, with the qualities of that deity, usually in stillness, this is where the meditation part of the singing or the droning comes in. So being aware of those qualities and then at the end, snap of the fingers and the deity or the principles, the things that you've been associating with are gone. So it's just an invocation of the qualities of that particular singing or that particular song. And it works very well, it's very powerful. A lot of people who do Vajrayana in the West, they say, God, it's strange, it's weird, but it works. And this is the point really of any practice. It's the same with people who practice paganism, witchcraft, things like that. They are getting together, having a meet, having a circle, and during the process, they do various associative memory-based, sound-based, smell-based, the whole range of sensory inputs to associate with the particular quality that they're trying to evoke for that meet and trying to get the results from that process. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the amount of energy that can be generated and the discipline and the qualities that they have as a group, as a circle, as a coven. Okay, that's enough from me for today, so I'll say bye there. Hope that was of interest or of use. So, bye now.