Talk:Buddhist chant

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I removed the {{expert}} tag from the article as there was nothing on the talk page to indicate what was wrong with the article or how to improve it. Hyacinth 00:10, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Improve "Adherents" section?

If improvement is sought for this article, I'd like to suggest:

  1. deleting the first paragraph of the "Adherents" section
  2. then renaming the remaining paragraphs something like "Non-Buddhist manifestations" (that is, changing the header "Adherents" to "Non-Buddhist manifestations" or whatever).

Here's the current first paragraph of the "Adherents" section:

Chanting plays a more substantial role in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism than in Theravada, owing largely to the expansive and religious nature of the former pair as well as the simplicity of chants (e.g Namo Amitabha does not require much memory, nor does Om mani padme hum). This does not mean chanting does not occur in Theravada practise. Rather most chanting concerns the Suttas (Skt: Sutras), while the Mahayana schools include sutras, prayers, and Tantric invocations, the latter two of which are not common (if present at all) amongst Theravadins.

Here my reasons for suggesting its deletion:

  1. What's the basis for saying that "Chanting plays a more substantial role in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism than in Theravada...?" Intuitively, I could think this might be true but, on the other hand, based on my limited and uneven experiences, I've found that Zen practitioners are the least likely of all to chant. Is there a citation for this claim?
  2. "owing largely to ... the simplicity of chants"? The Heart Sutra is way harder to chant than the "Namo Tassa." I doubt this is a real factor. Moreover, in a perverse way, the logic of this statement could be taken to suggest that Mahayana and Vajrayana practitioners have feebler memories than Theravada practitioners. And, again, it has no citation.
  3. "This does not mean chanting does not occur in Theravada practise." This information is already known from this article's prior section where eight Theravada chants are identified.
  4. "Rather most chanting concerns ...." This seems to me to be an another attempt to corroborate the paragraph's initial statement; but, there are at least two problems: (a) I question the first statement's empirical veracity; and, (b) while the textual basis for Mahayana and Vajrayana chants might be greater than that for Theravada chants, it doesn't logically necessitate that Theravada practitioners chant less. (To give a logical counter example, one could conceive of a school that does nothing but recite its one-word chant all day long — thereby having a school with a diminutive repetoire but a huge chanting practice.)
  5. "...while the Mahayana schools include sutras, prayers, and Tantric invocations, the latter two of which are not common (if present at all) amongst Theravadins." Do Mahayana schools use "Tantric invocations" or only Vajrayana schools? (Could we have a citation?) And, no, to the best of my limited and suspect knowledge, Theravada chants do not include what Westerners would call "prayers" or "Tantric invocations." Is this article the best place to equivocate ("if present at all") on this?

Without citations, I think this paragraph could perhaps be stripped down to something like:

While the basis for Theravada chants is the Sutta Pitaka, Mahayana and Vajrayana chants draw from a wider range of sources.

This stripped down paragraph could then be placed as a first or second paragraph under the sectional heading, "Chanting."

While I don't mind, of course, if this suggestion is ignored and regret if it causes anyone any vexation, I was motivated to write this simply because the current "Adherents" section seems to me to be redundant, suspect and confusing. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 19:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

With no contrary view stated after seven weeks, I went ahead and implemented the above today. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)