While I'm working on Part 2 of Practicing Without Faith I thought I'd share some of the cool titles I've come up with for future blogs. Whether I actually write them or not we'll see. For your approval:
Surfing the Event Horizon
Blue, Red, Purple and Gold: Transcending Crosstown Rivalries
Addicted to Insight, Addicted to Breakthrough
Out of Body or Out of Mind?
Getting Used to the Smell of the Privy, Getting Used to the Smell of the Roses
And the Dog Shall Lie Down With the Cat: Thoughts on Eternity
The Invisible Chapter of the Lotus Sutra
It's a Wonderful Life
Feelings. Nothing More Than Feelings
I Guess I Have Been Contemplating my Navel: Who Knew!
Playing With Words
Nurturing My Inner Blackhole
Jesus in the Cheesetoast
Bikini Zombie Slayers: Will All My Dreams Come To Naught?
No More Signs, No More Coincidences, No More Benefits
That's all I've got for now but I really do have thoughts to go along with each of the titles. I'm hoping that writing down the titles will help me to remember the thoughts that go with them. Let me know if any of them particularly make you want to know more and then, who know's, maybe I'll write it.
See y'all soon,
Bill
It's been quite a while since I wrote anything here. I'm not going to make any comments about the appropriateness of my blog title. Will leave that to others.
For a long time I really had nothing to say, and for the past couple of weeks or so I've had so much running through my head I didn't know where to start. So I'm just going to start.
From around the beginning of this year to just a couple of weeks ago I hardly chanted at all. About the only time I sat in front of my gohonzon to chant was when we had our gatherings, once a month. It was a very interesting experience. I enjoyed my life during that time, experienced benefits which ordinarily I'd have attributed to my practice, and very much enjoyed the few times I actually sat down and chanted in front of the gohonzon.
One thing I realized is the amazing power of controlled breathing. During this time of no practice, I did yoga about once a week. I also just practiced controlled deep breathing periodically. Breathing in from my belly, breathing out from my belly and concentrating on long, slow deep breaths. the few times that I did that for extended periods of time, like half an hour, the feeling I had was close to the feeling I'd have after chanting for similar periods of time.
I've heard people say that the benefits of chanting were attributable to deep breathing and I'd always thought of it as dismissive of the deeper benefits of accessing one's buddha nature. I've also heard people say that chanting was a kind of self hypnosis which I though of as similarly dismissive. Now I wonder if both those statements might be true, and if so, so what?
There's no doubt in my mind that the physical feeling of well being I get from chanting is at least partially attributable to the way I breath when I chant. Since I was a new member I've focused on chanting from my belly and on taking deep breaths which would allow daimoku to flow out of me, uninterrupted by breathing as much as possible. So, without knowing it I was incorporating yogic breathing techniques into my practice.
There's also no doubt that the practice of monotonously chanting the phrase nam myoho renge kyo while focusing on an abstract depiction of buddhahood while at the same time concentrating on accessing an abstract deepest levels of my being (buddha nature) helped to calm my mind and to create, over the years, a kind of auto suggestion very similar to hypnosis, which would allow me, when I chanted, to quickly move from being carried along by my thoughts and feelings to observing them and allowing them to arise and fall into that deepest level which I labeled buddha nature. Strangely, that phrase "buddha nature" now seems restrictive. I'm working through that now. But I digress.
During that time I was not practicing chanting, I would sometime just find myself chanting silently, or under my breath when I'd start to feel scattered, negative grasping or obsessive. And I realized it's just a part of who I am, no need to fight it. It works really well for me and very quickly I found myself calming, becoming open and flexible. I could move quickly from self absorbtion to honestly intending compassion to myself and everyone around me.
These are all amazing benefits from my practice but I wonder if I had used silent meditation, some other chant, or just deep breathing with the same twice a day rigor and with the same intent, if the benefits would have been any different? Would I have simply created a different mode of hypnosis, a different form of auto suggestion?
And you know what? It doesn't matter to me at all. I'm very glad to have developed such a strong tool that works well for me. It's nice to have deconstructed some of what makes it work for me. I've gotten over the need to rationalize why chanting daimoku is special. In the past when meeting people who have similar experiences with other practices or after doing yoga and feeling pretty much the same as if I had been chanting I'd find my mind whirring away trying to come up with reasons that my particular practice was special and better. I've now learned that I don't need my practice to be special. It actually feels alot better to not have to be special.
I don't have Faith in the Gohonzon, or Faith in Nam(u) Myoho Renge Kyo or Faith in the Eternal Shakyamuni buudha. When I first started to write this blog I was just going to call it "Practicing Without Faith". Then it occurred to me that while I am happy to be rid of the need to have Faith in my practice, the reason I am able to do that is that I am now able to actually just live with faith. I'll get into that in Part 2.