Buddhist music

[7][2] The chanting is often of traditional texts which include: sutras, mantras, dharani, parittas, or verse compositions (such as gathas, stotras, and caryagitis).

The main criticism is that music leads to sense desire and attachment, and is thus a hindrance to meditative concentration (samadhi), and to peace of mind.

In the Ghitassara Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 5.209), the Buddha admonishes Buddhist monks for reciting the teaching (Dhamma) in a musical way:

[13] The Uposatha Sutta asks Buddhists to reflect how noble disciples "have given up singing and dancing, the playing of musical instruments and the watching of entertainments, which are stumbling blocks to that which is wholesome.

For example, in one story, a bird named Cittapatta sang songs to the past Buddha Vipassī, and he eventually gained a good rebirth and became a god, and then an arahant.

Similarly, when Sikhī Buddha died, a tree dwelling spirit offered flowers and instrumental music, and this contributed to his future nirvana (Therapadana 118).

[20][21][22] Xuanzang (7th century) mentions that when he traveled to India, the music of Aśvaghoṣa was still remembered as having the power to impress upon people the truth of impermanence.

[26] According to the Theravada commentary to the Long Discourses, the Dīgha-nikāya-aṭṭhakathā (Sumaṅgalavilāsinī), king Aśoka's consort Asandhimittā attained stream entry when she listened to a kalavīka bird's song and imagined that it was the sweet voice of the Buddha (DA ii.453).

[13] One Theravada commentary on the Subhāsita Sutta (Sn 3.3) contains a story about sixty monks who attained arahantship in Sri Lanka after hearing a slave woman sing a song about birth, old age, and death.

[13] In the Theravada tradition, chanting of certain texts called parittas are considered to have the power to "avert illness or danger, to ward off the influence of malignant beings, to obtain protection and deliverance from evil, and to promote health, prosperity, welfare, and well-being.

Their heavenly garments floated and fluttered in the air, while in the sky the devas played hundreds of thousands of myriads of kinds of music together at one time.

[30] Furthermore, Lotus sutra chapter two states:If someone employs persons to play music, striking drums or blowing horns or conch shells, playing pipes, flutes, zithers, harps, balloon guitars, cymbals and gongs, and if these many kinds of wonderful notes are intended wholly as an offering; or if one with a joyful mind sings a song in praise of the Buddha's virtue, even if it is just one small note, then all who do these things have attained the Buddha way.

It is said that because of the roots of merit cultivated by this devotional practice, he attained rebirth in another Buddha's pure land and gained transcendent powers.

In the first chapter, Ravana and his attendants first greet Shakyamuni Buddha by singing verses of praise which were "gracefully accompanied by music, a lute studded with coral and cat's eye, slung at the side by means of priceless perfumed pale cloth and played with a sapphire plectrum, producing a melody ranging through all the notes of the scale.

[35] In the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha, Amitabha's bodhi tree produces "innumerable exquisite Dharma sounds", "which spread far and wide, pervading all the other buddha lands in the ten directions".

Until they attain buddhahood, their senses of hearing will remain clear and sharp and they will not suffer from any pain or sickness... Again, in that land, there are thousands of varieties of spontaneous music, which are all, without exception, sounds of the Dharma.

"[3] Perhaps the most detailed Mahayana philosophy of music is found in the Sutra of the Questions by Druma, King of the Kinnara (*Druma-kiṃnara-rāja-paripṛcchā), which was first translated by Lokakṣema (Taisho no.

[3] When asked where this beautiful song came from, Druma explains his philosophy of music, which is encapsulated in the following passage:All sounds emerge from empty space.

[3] According to Rambelli, this sutra was influential in Japanese Buddhism, where it was used to defend the activities of Buddhist musicians and performing artists not just as an offering, but as a kind of self-cultivation.

[40] An inscription from Gaya also shows that during the Tantric age, sophisticated styles of song and dance offerings were made in Buddhist temples with the support of Indian royalty.

[41][42] Indian Vajrayana sources state that these songs, along with music and dance, were part of tantric Buddhist feasts (ganachakras, esoteric gatherings and celebrations).

[54] In his Nanhai Ji Gui Zhuan (Commentaries on Dharma from the South Sea), the Chinese Tang dynasty monk Yi Jing (635-713) presented six merits of Buddhist chanting: "1) understanding Buddha's great virtue better; 2) becoming well versed in Buddhist sutras; 3) purifying organ of speech; 4) improving the thoracic cavity; 5) inducing calm and confidence in the multitude; and 6) longevity.

Someone on the Bodhisattva Path stays within the world, and by letting go the habit of loving or hating sounds, cultivates stillness right within the movement of the busy marketplace.

[57][58] In this way, developing an intimate practice of chanting can be a skillful means to allow the practitioner to transcend all conceptions of self and other and to experience the non-dual ultimate truth.

When the temple's thousand images of Buddha were paraded through the streets clouds of incense hung like a dense fog, the sacred music shook Heaven and Earth, the players ranced and danced, all was a festival.

[68] Honkyoku (本曲) are the pieces of shakuhachi or hocchiku music originally played by wandering Japanese Zen monks called Komuso.

In the 18th century, a Komuso named Kinko Kurosawa of the Zen Fuke sect was commissioned to travel throughout Japan and collect these musical pieces.

[92] The Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition (found in Tibet, Bhutan, some north Indian states, and in the Tibetan diaspora) includes numerous musical elements, and vocal chanting accompanied by various instruments is a central feature of Himalayan Buddhism.

He was originally a travelling performance artist, a pakshi, who became an influential lama and founded the Upper Druk (stod 'brug) lineage of the Drukpa Kagyu school.

Dutch gothic-symphonic metal band Epica are also incorporating and combining Tibetan monk prayer chants as background openings in 2009's Design Your Universe,2014's The Quantum Enigma,and 2021's Omega.