Discourses of the Buddha chanted for protection and blessing — at sickbeds, housewarmings, New Year, and through the night in times of danger.
Tagged: Community Prayer Remembrance Buddhist
How It Is Practiced
Monks — or lay chanters where monks are not present — recite the classic set: the Maṅgala Sutta on blessings, the Ratana Sutta on the jewels' excellence (recited, legend says, to free a plague city), the Mettā Sutta, and others, in Pali, often antiphonally and from memory. A thread may be tied and blessed water sprinkled; in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia, an all-night pirit ceremony fills a pavilion with chanting until dawn. The texts are the Buddha's own words, which is the point: the Dhamma itself is the protection.
Purpose and Meaning
Paritta works by recollection and by truth: the chanting assembles the community inside the sound of the teaching, and the blessings claimed are the natural fruit of hearing it with faith. Its scholars note the ethic inside the magic — most paritta texts are sermons on virtue. The protection is not instead of the teaching but through it.
References
- Paritta — Wikipedia Free / open access
Related Practices
- Vandana and Taking Refuge — Buddhist devotion opens with homage: bowing before the shrine and going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha.
- Uposatha — The Observance Days — On the moon's quarters, lay Buddhists intensify their practice: eight precepts instead of five, white clothes, the temple for the day, and sermons until night.
- Kīrtan and Bhajan — Devotional Song — The singing of God's names and deeds, in call and response, with drums and cymbals: the devotion of the bhakti movements that remade Hindu practice.
Related Across the Site
- Novena Devotion — A novena is a prayer or set of prayers repeated on nine consecutive days for a particular intention.
- Offerings at the Buddhist Shrine Devotion — Flowers, candles, incense, water, and fruit before the Buddha image: the daily offering whose lesson is impermanence itself.
- Stations of the Cross Devotion — The Stations of the Cross walk the worshipper through fourteen scenes of Christ's journey to the crucifixion.
- The Mourner's Kaddish Devotion — For eleven months after a death, and on every anniversary, mourners stand among the congregation to sanctify God's name in an ancient Aramaic prayer that never mentions death.
- Vandana and Taking Refuge Devotion — Buddhist devotion opens with homage: bowing before the shrine and going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha.
- Dhikr Prayer or Creed — The remembrance of God through repeated short formulas of glory, praise, and greatness.
- Metta Sutta Prayer or Creed — The Buddha's discourse on loving-kindness, chanted as a blessing and a protection.
- Refuge Prayer (Tisarana) Prayer or Creed — The formula of going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha — the act that makes a person a Buddhist.