You might be surprised to know many Buddhists pray, given that Buddhism is fundamentally a nontheistic religion. It’s possible to be an avowed atheist and a devout Buddhist at the same time. In fact, such a Buddhist might even pray! I’ll explain more about how this works in this episode, which will be the first of three. I’ll introduce you to three basic reasons for Buddhist prayer, take you through the first two reasons, and then go into more detail about the third type of prayer next week.
Quicklinks to Transcript Content:
Not Reliant on Gods, Prayers, or Wishes
Three Reasons Buddhists Pray
1) Buddhist Prayer to God, Gods, Bodhisattvas, Spirits, and More
Trends within Buddhism to Externalize the Sacred
2) Expressing Reverence, Gratitude, or Devotion
The Effect of Reverence and Devotion on Us
Not Reliant on Gods, Prayers, or Wishes
Buddhism is unique among the major world religions in being nontheistic. (One exception to this is Jainism, which arose in India around the same time as Buddhism, but its adherents are largely limited to India.) Significantly, the founder of Buddhism, Shakyamuni, did not deny the existence of gods, or devas, but these supernatural beings were seen as limited and stuck in the world of suffering just like humans, so such gods were incidental to Buddhist practice. They were never seen as holding the keys to enlightenment, liberation, or even happiness. A deva might help someone out now and then, but a spiritually awakened person, or a Buddha, was seen as being far superior to the many gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings Buddhism inherited from the native religions of India (and from the many countries to which the religion later spread). Buddhist teachings and practices were not in any way reliant on the existence of an omnipotent God, or supernatural beings of any kind, or on belief in such beings. On the other hand, neither did the existence of, or belief in, God or gods threaten Buddhism in any way – so Buddhists generally didn’t bother trying eradicate native beliefs.
Rather than concerning itself with belief, the emphasis within Buddhism was – and is – practice. That is, what you actually do, with your own body, mind, and life, in order to relieve suffering, increase happiness, and cultivate wisdom. For example, in the Ittha Sutta of the Pali Canon, the Buddha explains how a householder, or lay Buddhist, natural longs for five things that are “welcome, agreeable, pleasant, and hard to obtain in the world,” namely, long life, beauty, happiness, status, and rebirth in heaven. (Note: at the Buddha’s time, most people assumed you were reborn after death in one of six realms of existence, and heaven was the most pleasant realm to live in.) If you really want these five welcome and agreeable things, what should you do?
The Buddha said, “these five things are not to be obtained by reason of prayers or wishes. If they were to be obtained by reason of prayers or wishes, who here would lack them?”[i] Instead, disciples of Buddhism should “follow the path of practice leading to” long life, beauty, happiness, status, and rebirth in heaven. That is, you study and learn what actions of body, speech, and mind actually lead to the results you want, and then you do them. Other Buddhist teachings describe such fruitful and positive actions, such as practicing mindfulness, behaving morally, and acting with truthfulness and generosity. In summary, then, the foundational Buddhist teaching on prayer is that it is ineffective (if the good things in life could be obtained by prayers or wishes, who would lack them?) – at least, ineffective compared with the results of actual practice.
Three Reasons Buddhists Pray
And yet, from the beginning, Buddhists have engaged in prayer and devotional rituals. Why would a Buddhist pray, if they aren’t looking to a God, or gods, for deliverance?
There are difference ways to parse out this explanation, but I see there being three reasons Buddhists pray. I’ll briefly list them here, and then go into more detail about each one:
- A Buddhist may pray because they believe in God, gods, spirits, or other supernatural forces, and is praying to them for support, guidance, to express gratitude, or any the usual reasons people pray. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t incompatible with Buddhism as long as you also try to act in ways that will help bring about the result you’re seeking. A Buddhist may believe in supernatural beings or forces external to the Buddhist tradition (for example, someone may be Christian as well as Buddhist), or they may elevate and externalize certain Buddhist figures, such as bodhisattvas, and relate to them – more or less – as deities.
- A Buddhist may pray to express reverence or gratitude for, or devotion to, what they consider sacred. While “sacred” often describes something associated with God, it can also mean “entitled to veneration or religious respect,” or “regarded with reverence.”[ii] Reverence, in turn, means “deep respect tinged with awe.”[iii] Buddhists have been encouraged from the beginning to cultivate reverence for the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Such reverence, enacted through prayer or ritual, is believed to benefit the person praying as opposed to being something the object of the prayer demands or relies on. For example, cultivating reverence can increase your confidence in the Buddhist path, promote humility, and challenge self-attachment, among other things.
- A Buddhist may pray to obtain a positive result of some kind, for self or other. This can include spiritual results such as peace of mind, moral strength, the ability to concentrate, or eventual enlightenment. Some Buddhists also pray for protection from illness and calamity, and for positive worldly benefits. If a Buddhist doesn’t believe in God or in other supernatural beings, how do think they think these prayers might be answered? There are two answers to this: First, many Buddhists see things like truth, compassion, Buddhist practice, moral restraint, and even sound as having their own spiritual power. The exact mechanism by which these forces bring about a particular result may be less straightforward than a powerful deity hearing and responding to a prayer, but that doesn’t make a big difference to the Buddhist’s experience of prayer. Second, formulating and expressing the intention behind a prayer can have a powerfully transformative effect on us. Changes in our thoughts and actions that seem impossible through sheer force of will can suddenly become possible as a result of prayer, even for the skeptic.
1) Buddhist Prayer to God, Gods, Bodhisattvas, Spirits, and More
As promised, then, I’ll go into more detail about each of these three kinds of Buddhist prayer, starting with prayer aimed at God, gods, and/or other supernatural beings. If you’re interested in practicing Buddhism yourself, I imagine you might be either relieved or unnerved by the fact that many people believe in God or supernatural beings at the same time as they identify as Buddhists.
If you believe in God, you may be relieved to know this doesn’t disqualify you from Buddhist practice in any way. In fact, over the centuries, some kind of faith in God or other deities has probably been more common among Buddhists than atheism. Frankly, in the context of Buddhist practice, the existence or nonexistence of God really doesn’t matter much. That’s not to minimize the importance of divine beings, it’s just that Buddhism focuses on what you do with your own mind and body in this life. In fact, it can be strong complement to faith in God, in that Buddhist practice gives you lots of tools for enacting and cultivating your ideals.
Of course, if you don’t believe in God or any kind of supernatural beings, you may find it disappointing or unnerving to find such belief, along with associated prayers and devotions, intertwined with Buddhism throughout its history. Part of the attraction of Buddhism for some of us, after all, is its non-theism. The Buddha explicitly instructed his followers to rely only on themselves and the Dharma,[iv] and to believe only what they could verify for themselves, through their own direct experience,[v] so for most of us that rules out any belief in God or gods. Personally, when I encountered Buddhism I was thrilled and amazed to find a full-fledged spiritual path that I wasn’t excluded from walking because of my lack of faith in God. So how should people like me view the inclinations of many Buddhists to believe in, and pray to, beings they conceive of as superhuman, and as really, truly, self-existent, conscious, and willful?
Trends within Buddhism to Externalize the Sacred
Basically, human beings come in an almost infinite variety of shapes and flavors. Some of us are naturally skeptical, and require material or scientific proof before we believe something. Or, at the very least, we need an undeniable, personal experience of something first – and even then, we may be inclined to question it. Others of us naturally come to faith, and the existence of God, gods, or other supernatural beings seems perfectly self-evident to us – or at least something we deeply hope is true.
When a faithful person embraces Buddhism, they may hold on to the God, gods, or spirits of their native religion or their culture. They also find ready-made objects of devotion in Buddhism. Clearly, the inclination toward belief in supernatural forces and beings was present in early Buddhists. The Buddha himself instructed his followers to enshrine his relics (physical remains and other personal items) in stupas, and to enact reverential rituals around them.[vi] It was only a slight leap from that to the conviction of early Buddhists that the remains of Shakyamuni had real power, and that proximity to them could have beneficial effects. Before long, some Buddhists started to conceive of Shakyamuni Buddha as continuing to exist as a sort of cosmic principle (too pervasive and profound to be ended by a human death). Subsequently, some Buddhists conceived of additional buddhas (Shakyamuni was just one in a continuing series of perfectly enlightened, benevolent teachers, manifesting the universal possibility of spiritual awakening).
Before long, in Mahayana Buddhism, archetypal bodhisattvas were created, complete with images, iconography, and mythological stories. Previously, a bodhisattva was simply an ideal of an incredibly diligent Buddhist practitioner who vowed to attain complete buddhahood over the course of many lifetimes of difficult practice. Eventually, archetypal bodhisattvas came to symbolize and embody certain Buddhist ideals such as wisdom (Manjushri bodhisattva), compassion (Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva), and skillful action (Samantabhadra bodhisattva). People painted images and created sculptures of these beings, enshrined them on altars, and prayed to them. While it’s certainly possible to regard these bodhisattva archetypes as merely symbolic or metaphorical, there’s no denying many, many Buddhists throughout the centuries have related to them as beings akin to deities. In terms of sheer numbers, there have probably been – and still are – more Buddhists who pray to buddhas or bodhisattvas for real results in the world than there have been Buddhists who practice Buddhism as conscious atheists or agnostics.
You might say this kind of prayer isn’t “real” Buddhism, but that begs the question of what defines “real” Buddhism. Is it the teachings and ideals taken in isolation, or the way the religion has actually been practiced by people – lay and ordained – over the centuries? Increasingly, Buddhist scholars are trying to refrain from ignoring or dismissing the popular practices associated with Buddhism, including prayers and rituals aimed at supernatural beings or forces.[vii]
2) Expressing Reverence, Gratitude, or Devotion
Frankly, even if you only see Buddhist figures such as archetypal bodhisattvas as symbolic, there’s a certain effectiveness in – if you will – anthropomorphizing powerful ideals. It’s just human nature to be more able to feel reverence for, and connection to, a human-like image than an abstraction. An image, name, or statue also helps our ideals seem more real and tangible. Imagine devout Buddhists offering flowers and incense in front of a statue of Avalokiteshvara (the bodhisattva of compassion, also known as Kuan Yin or Kanzeon), as opposed to simply talking or thinking about how valuable compassion is. The first scenario is likely to evoke some warmth in the heart even of a skeptic, while the second scenario is likely to remain cold and intellectual.
This brings me to the second reason Buddhists pray: To express reverence or gratitude for, or devotion to, what they consider sacred. As I mentioned earlier, “sacred” things are those things for which we feel “respect tinged with awe.” Clearly, the sacred isn’t limited to the explicitly religious or theistic; we can sense the sacred when we experience love, connection, generosity, or beauty. We can sense the sacred in nature, music, art, or in otherwise mundane moments of simple perfection.
A valuable – although not required – aspect of Buddhist practice is to regularly call to mind that for which we feel reverence or profound gratitude, and then to express those feelings in some form of prayer. Typically, this is done with the hands palm-to-palm in front of the chest (in the almost universally recognized position of prayer), while established verses are recited or chanted. Buddhist prayer of this type also involves bowing (sometimes all the way to the ground), or making offerings of flowers or incense at altars.
The most universal objects of Buddhist devotion are the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These are called to mind at a fairly concrete level (the historical Buddha, his teachings, and the community of Buddhists), all the way to the abstract level (the possibility of human enlightenment, truth, and many beings with whom we are mutually dependent). Other objects of Buddhist devotion include the ideals like compassion (often represented by a bodhisattva), lineages of ancestral Buddhist teachers without whom we would never have encountered Buddhism, and significant physical locations such as the place where the Buddha taught his first sermon, in India.
Such devotional prayer does not in any way require belief in the supernatural. Not does it imply a greater-versus-lesser-than relationship between the one who prays and the object of their prayer. In other words, just because we revere the Buddha, his teachings, or Buddhist teachers, we’re not saying they are inherently better than we are, or beyond our comprehension. Just because we revere the power of truth and compassion doesn’t mean we’re externalizing those forces and taking the role of sinner asking for redemption. From the beginning, Buddhism has taught that each of us has the potential to awaken just as the Buddha did. Our ideals aren’t meant to remain outside of ourselves, as objects of worship. If we consider them in our prayers, it’s because we want to come closer to those ideals in a real way.
The Effect of Reverence and Devotion on Us
Feeling and expressing sincere reverence, gratitude, or devotion in a Buddhist sense isn’t about appeasing or pleasing the object of devotion, it’s about the effect that cultivating reverence, gratitude, or devotion has on us, in the context of our Buddhist practice. In his essay, “Devotion in Buddhism,” Nyanaponika Thera says it beautifully:
“One who is incapable of a reverential attitude will also be incapable of spiritual progress beyond the narrow limits of his present mental condition. One who is so blind as not to see or recognize anything higher and better than the little mud-pool of his petty self and environment will suffer for a long time from retarded growth. And one who, out of a demonstrative self-assertion, scorns a reverential attitude in himself and in others will remain imprisoned in his self-conceit — a most formidable bar to a true maturity of character and to spiritual growth. It is by recognizing and honoring someone or something higher that one honors and enhances one’s own inner potentialities.”[viii]
In my own experience, devotional prayer or ritual is not something that would have inspired me to choose the Buddhist path, but as I walked the path, there it was. I was skeptical and wary, but I gave it a try anyway, and found my heart opened in surprising ways – ways that strengthened my resolve to practice. For example, a kind of nonverbal prayer we practice in my Zen lineage involves taking a turn in front of a statue of the baby Buddha, surrounded by flowers in the annual celebration of his birth. The statue stands in a bowl of sweet tea with a ladle, and each participant processes in front of the statue, stands with hands palm-to-palm, and then ladles some tea over the baby Buddha’s head. (This is because, according to the myth, sweet tea rained down from the sky when the Buddha was born.)
When I first participated in this ceremony, I didn’t know what to think. Personally, I’m not absolutely sure the Buddha ever existed as a historical figure, and I’m also not sure I particularly care if he did, one way or another. My practice doesn’t depend on the Buddha having literally existed, and I certainly don’t think of him as superhuman, or believe that flowers or sweet tea fell from the sky when he was born. Still, as I had my own moment to stand there and ladle tea over the statue of the baby Buddha, something in me was deeply moved. I can explain my feelings by saying I’m profoundly grateful for the teachings and practices of Buddhism, that they saved my life, and that my heart trembles to consider what my life would be like if some human being, somewhere, hadn’t discovered this path of practice and decided to share it with others… but really, the whole point is to simply experience the gratitude and reverence directly, without intellectualizing it too much.
The Buddha explained that when a Buddhist practitioner contemplates the Enlightened One (the Buddha), “at that time his mind is not enwrapped in lust, nor in hatred, nor in delusion. At such a time his mind is rightly directed towards [the Buddha].”[ix] Because the student’s mind is rightly directed, the Buddha continues, they gain enthusiasm for the goal of enlightenment and liberation, and delight derived from the truth. Thus delighted, “joy arises; to one who is joyful, body and mind become calm; calmed in body and mind, [one] feels at ease; and if at ease, the mind finds concentration.” In other words, devotion and reverence are an entry gate to rigorous Buddhist practice.
Read/listen to Buddhist Prayer Part 2
Endnotes
[i] “Ittha Sutta: What is Welcome” (AN 5.43), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.043.than.html.
[ii] sacred. Dictionary.com. Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacred (accessed: January 2, 2018).
[iii] reverence. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/reverence (accessed: January 2, 2018).
[iv] “Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha” (DN 16), translated from the Pali by Sister Vajira & Francis Story. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html. (Be islands unto yourselves…)
[v] “Kalama Sutta: The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry”, translated from the Pali by Soma Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wheel008.html.
[vi] “Maha-parinibbana Sutta: Last Days of the Buddha” (DN 16), translated from the Pali by Sister Vajira & Francis Story. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html. (Constructing stupas for a universal monarch…)
[vii] Such as Bodiford in Soto Zen in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: 1993) and “Buddhist Ceremonies and Rituals of Sri Lanka”, by A.G.S. Kariyawasam. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 1 December 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/kariyawasam/wheel402.html.
[viii] “Devotion in Buddhism”, by Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/devotion.html.
[ix] AN 6.10, in “Devotion in Buddhism”, by Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/devotion.html.
