Something I really enjoyed about my Indian trip was the daily Buddhist service. We had two chants every day, one at 5AM and one at 6PM. You might be surprised to learn this but I actually don’t participate in the religious side of Buddhism, so the pilgrimage was the first time I actually got to do the chants together with other Buddhists.
It’s simple: we chant the “Seven Bows”, the heart sutra, “Nirvana Mantra”. Optionally if it’s the morning we do the 108 bows and meditation and 3 recitals of the sutra of the day. The seven bows chant is a very Korean-specific tradition and there is a phrase there that I especially feel called to share today.
The seven bows is a prayer that was introduced to Korean Buddhism around the 1930’s. Although Buddhism was always a major religion in Korea, it wasn’t always thriving; sometimes it was repressed in favor of Confucianism, at other times it was repressed by the Japanese. Each sangha had different ways of doing rituals and there was a consensus around Buddhists wanting a standardized prayer procedure. And so it was created!
The prayer goes like this:
Incense of restraint, Incense of calm, Incense of wisdom
Incense of awakening, Incense of Buddhahood
I offer these to the three jewels,
surrounded by bright light among the clouds, unbounded in this world.
Mantra of incense offering:
Om vara dobya hum
Om vara dobya hum
Om vara dobya hum
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to the master of all realms, my original teacher
the Shakyamuni Buddha;
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to all the Buddhas interwoven in every fabric of the world
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to the dharma interwoven in every fabric of the world.
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to the “grand wise” Manjushri, “grand acting” Samantabhadra,
”grand compassion” Avalokiteshvara, “grand core” Kshitigarbha.
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to all the followers at Vulture Peak, entrusted by the Buddha:
the ten disciples, sixteen arahat, five hundred arahat, and all the twelve hundred arahat.
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to all the teachers who spread the light of teachings from the west to the east,
all the teachers under the sky, the countless Sǒn masters.
With a dear heart, I bow with my life
to all the monks interwoven in every fabric of the world.
I pay respect to the unbounded three jewels, with the wish to attain Buddhahood
along with everyone else, please accept our offering and grant our wish.
Here’s the prayer in demonstration.
The thing I want to highlight is this. When you read the sutra, it’s practically full of stories about how people attained awakening left and right after talking to the Buddha. This naturally leads to questions from current-day followers: is it that Buddha was THAT great at converting people, or did we just get stupider with time? Why is it so hard for us to attain awakening when the sutra is full of stories that make it seem so easy?
There is some truth to the statement that Buddha is just that good at conversion. He was a prince after all; he was well educated in the field of ruling, influencing, and governing people. This is why he was especially talented in converting kings and princes; he was one of them, so he knew their psychology like the back of his own hand.
Another element that contributes to this is, the sutra wouldn’t be all that readable if it included the majority of the people who didn’t get awakenings and insisted on their delusions. The sutras have some famous stories of this, but they are primarily to illustrate a point. The example that comes to mind right now: shortly after Buddha had awakened in Bodh Gaya, a Brahmana asked “how does one become the higest of the brahmana?” to which he replied, “By one’s deeds; not by birth”. The Brahmana is said to have scoffed and walked away, shaking his butt (pretty random detail, lmao).
But the thing is, in the past 2600 years there have been countless students and teachers who passed on the dharma. Although the dharma is ultimately singular, there has been so many variations on how it has been explained and taught to us there HAS to be a way that it is expressed in a way we can understand.
I have had a deep thirst for the dharma because I was suffering in my life, and even after I became a coach and had success with clients I could see that all I did was relieve temporary suffering and did not uproot suffering. At this point I met teachers who opened a floodgate of awakening for me and I haven’t been the same since.
Awakening and Buddhahood, we cannot accept that it is an ideal that only the holiest and the most committed attain. We cannot think we are too ordinary and worldly to attain the dharma to ourselves. The dharma is available to us, awakening is available to us. Yes, it may be difficult to attain it because nothing guarantees anything should be instantly accessible to us. But there is a very big difference in living life with the assumption that it’s some grand ideal that only few people can aspire to, vs. something that I also can attain if I put my mind to it.
My coaching is beyond coaching for practical life situations. My coaching completely eliminates your suffering and that is the hill I will happily die on. Because nobody deserves to suffer, especially when there is no reason. Try all the ways you think will work to remove your suffering. Maybe you’ve already tried. You’re already rich, have a good job, have a good spouse, have good children but you’re still suffering. Complete eradication of suffering is available to you, right here right now as you’re reading this.