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Sakyamuni, the sage of Sakyas, as a youthful and vigorous searcher
of truth, realized the underlying cause of this fundamental social
problem and his understanding of the reality finally led him to
retire to the forest as if mendicants in other religious traditions
who also retired to the forest for the search of a remedy to the
social problems they might also have experienced. After six years
of his vigorous search for freedom from social problem in a deep
forest habitation, Sakyamuni Buddha discovered a way out to it through
his own persisting perseverance in meditation and finally, he assured
the remedy and eased up social/human problems. Thus, Sakyamuni Buddha,
the founder of Buddhism, made a great contribution to humankind
by revealing his discovery of universal remedy to social beings.
The remedy is found only in the discourses of the Buddha delivered
at different places to people of various social backgrounds who
were hungry for the remedy. In these sutras, Sakyamuni Buddha, as
an all time psychotherapist, proclaimed that the fundamental problem
of the
humankind is "discomfort or stress." That is to say that
the social beings were/are not happy with anything and it leads
them to the state of misery, insecurity and fear. Even though the
individuals are constantly struggling to get to the state of security
and serenity through material things, something is constantly triggering
the individuals that they are not psychologically assured to be
secured through materialism. Despite the fact that the social beings
would constantly attempt to experience an instantaneous happiness
by any means i. e., through gratification of the five basic sense
organs. While there cannot be guaranteed to have stability of sensual
pleasures, which are under constant change, the social beings are
threatened of losing such pleasures and people dear to them.
Likewise, the life of the modern social being has become so hectic
along with advancement of knowledge in science and technology causing
the already existing human problem to snowball, because of rushing
for something the life has become more complicated and miserable
than it has been ever before. Today, along with advancement of scientific
knowledge, the life has become so techno-centric in the man-made-world
of technosphere and there can be seen thorough disconnection from
the ecosphere, a natural world which has the nature of generating
happiness in social beings through the principles of simplicity.
The technocentric world seems to have led the individual to more
self-centred state and it has therefore resulted in stress, tension,
fear, insecurity which have become parts and parcels of social beings
shattering life in the twenty first century.
To ease up the fear and to uproot self-centredness, the practitioners
of Buddhism employ the ancient therapeutic chant as a daily practice.
Buddhist Chant, an ancient particular art among many others, is
a systematized technique developed within the Buddhist religious
tradition so as to slow down mental activities and to develop mental
purity, a state of mind free of mental corruptions. This may be,
in fact, traced back to the time period of Sakyamuni Buddha himself
who admonished monks, as a collective social group, to congregate
in an assembly hall twice a month in order to chant monastic rules
together to develop mental purity as a necessary spiritual value
to maintain a peaceful life of a monk. By this time, there had been
developed multifarious soothing techniques by the ancient Indian
society and there had been gatherings to chant religious hymns for
spiritual feelings. Sakyamuni Buddha certainly employed and adapted the ancient Indian religious
chant of times which according to popular belief helped sooth stress
and hence, was held to be of therapeutic value. Next>>
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