The efficacy of chanting

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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DarwidHalim
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The power of sound and chanting

Post by DarwidHalim »

There is a question about chanting effect to bring enlightenment to ourselves.

How can a sound change you? Or sometimes, we think we just chant alient voice without knowing the meaning, how can it change you.

Chanting actually already exist since long time ago. In Hindu, there are mantra yoga, where the job is chanting. We are doing meditation with chanting. This chanting is believed to open the chakra which is blocked.

Although for the practitioner who do chanting regularly can actually feel the difference, but for outsider, this effect is very difficult to be believed.

Scientiest actually has open this door by showing us that sound can change the object.

Prof. Masaru Emoto did an experiment with rice.
http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/ediary200508.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Image

"Also, a friend of Ayano Furuya who lives on the Gold Coast attended the seminar and kindly brought two jars of rice in which her friend conducted a very interesting experiment on. As you can see in the picture below, the rice on the left is still white and looks like normal rice while the one on the right is black and has turned into liquid. Believe it or not, these rice are 11 years old! The rice on the left was prayed to once a day for just a week and the rice on the right was left on top of the fridge and ignored. The audience gasped in amazement and we were once again reminded of the power of prayer, words and intention."

If you go to youtube, you can see a lot of people actually trying to redo the experiment done by Masaru Emoto, by keeping two bowl of rice. One bowl of rice, we say good words, another bowl of rice, we say bad words. The rice, which is subjected to good words can last for many days. But, the one with bad words, it will spoil.

Prof. Emoto also did another experiment with water. Subject the water to different sound, and you will get different shape of "ice".



The impact of sound is then clear that sound can change you.

Rice don't understand human language.
Water don't understand human language.

For both of them, our language is alient.

Same thing. When we do chanting, sometimes we don't understand the meaning, it sounds like alient language. Although each sound has a meaning, but not all of us know that. Interestingly, although you don't know the meaning, it definitiely change you. In Mantra yoga, it is said that it changes your energy pattern.

Mantra yoga is real. It is not just noisy sound.
I am not here nor there.
I am not right nor wrong.
I do not exist neither non-exist.
I am not I nor non-I.
I am not in samsara nor nirvana.
To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!
David2
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Re: The power of sound and chanting

Post by David2 »

"Also, a friend of Ayano Furuya who lives on the Gold Coast attended the seminar and kindly brought two jars of rice in which her friend conducted a very interesting experiment on. As you can see in the picture below, the rice on the left is still white and looks like normal rice while the one on the right is black and has turned into liquid. Believe it or not, these rice are 11 years old! The rice on the left was prayed to once a day for just a week and the rice on the right was left on top of the fridge and ignored. The audience gasped in amazement and we were once again reminded of the power of prayer, words and intention."
Nothing wrong with praying, but that story sounds like superstitious, pseudo-scientific nonsense to me.
the rice on the right was left on top of the fridge
Obviously that rice was in different conditions (like different temperature and/or different humidity). No surprise it looks differently.
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DarwidHalim
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Re: The power of sound and chanting

Post by DarwidHalim »

David2 wrote: Obviously that rice was in different conditions (like different temperature and/or different humidity). No surprise it looks differently.
Scientiest knows how to do research. When they want to compare 2 things, they know the temperature, humidity, or whatever it is, has to be same.

There is no cowboy job in research.

This is reality. No point to deny it.
I am not here nor there.
I am not right nor wrong.
I do not exist neither non-exist.
I am not I nor non-I.
I am not in samsara nor nirvana.
To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!
David2
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Re: The power of sound and chanting

Post by David2 »

DarwidHalim wrote:
David2 wrote: Obviously that rice was in different conditions (like different temperature and/or different humidity). No surprise it looks differently.
Scientiest knows how to do research. When they want to compare 2 things, they know the temperature, humidity, or whatever it is, has to be same.

There is no cowboy job in research.

This is reality. No point to deny it.
I don't deny anything. But you can't leave something on the fridge (which is obviously on the outside warmer (or maybe at some parts colder) than room temperature) and tell people at the same time that you are doing objective science.
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DarwidHalim
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Re: The power of sound and chanting

Post by DarwidHalim »

David2 wrote: I don't deny anything. But you can't leave something on the fridge (which is obviously warmer on the outside than room temperature) and tell people at the same time that you are doing objective science.
In this case, you can search in internet how that professor do his reseach. See whether he is that idiot or not putting the rice on the fridge.

http://www.positive-thinking-principles ... power.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Do you know the sound can also affect the growth of the plant?

See this research:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustaina ... -Uses.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This research has been repeated by another university and all show same result.
http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~tanshenm/2171.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Same thing. THat rice experiment has been repeated many times by householders. You can see that in youtube.
I am not here nor there.
I am not right nor wrong.
I do not exist neither non-exist.
I am not I nor non-I.
I am not in samsara nor nirvana.
To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!
David2
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Location: Germany

Re: The power of sound and chanting

Post by David2 »

DarwidHalim wrote: Do you know the sound can also affect the growth of the plant?
Yes, I've heard of it. That may be true, still the rice-experiment is a different thing.
THat rice experiment has been repeated many times by householders. You can see that in youtube.
Well, as long as I don't see a real objective scientific study "with facts and numbers", I don't believe it.

This is how the Buddha wanted us to live: to not believe anything too early.

:anjali:
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Cittasanto
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by Cittasanto »

The utterance of truth is a powerful invocation in the discourses, I believe the most noticable example is by Angulimala.

sound does have an effect upon us, particularly, in my experience, our own.

either the nada sound, or our own voice. it seams to me that the quality of our voice plays a role in/representing the quality of our inner life, either the words we actually say or the manner inwhich they are said, be it deliberate or not.
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
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pilgrim
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by pilgrim »

Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls,[9] and for not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community.[10] In addition, Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them open to human error influencing his findings.[11]

In the day-to-day work of his group, the creativity of the photographers rather than the rigor of the experiment is an explicit policy.[12] Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist,[13] and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs.[14]

In 2003, James Randi publicly offered Emoto one million dollars if his results can be reproduced in a double-blind study.[15]

In 2005, Kristopher Setchfield (a graduate of Castleton State College in Vermont with a BA in Health Science) published a paper[16] that analyzed deeper motives regarding Emoto's study. In his paper, Setchfield writes,

Unfortunately for his credibility with the scientific community, Dr. Emoto sells products based on his claims. For example, the products page of Emoto's Hado website is currently offering "geometrically perfect" "Indigo water" that is "highly charged hexagonally structured concentrate," and supposedly creates "structured water" that is "more easily assimilated at the cellular level" for $35 for an eight-ounce bottle. Without providing scientific research references for the allegedly amazing qualities of his Indigo Water, Emoto's commercial venture calls to mind ethical concerns regarding his intent and motivation—questions that would not be present if any scientist had published research supporting his claims.

In 2006, Emoto published a paper together with Dean Radin and others in the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. They describe that in a double blind test approximately 2000 people in Tokyo could increase the aesthetic appeal of water stored in a room in California, compared to water in another room, solely through their positive intentions.[17]
[edit] Triple-blind study

A better-controlled "triple-blind" follow-up study published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration did not yield positive results. More than 1,900 of Mr. Emoto's followers focused gratitude on water bottles in a vault over a period of three days. The water was then frozen and compared to two different sets of controls in a very elaborate protocol. Crystals from all three groups were not, on average, considered to be particularly beautiful (scoring 1.7 on a scale of 0 to 6, where 6 was very beautiful). Crystals from the experimental group were also rated slightly less beautiful than a set of controls. An objective comparison of contrast did not reveal any significant differences among the samples.[18]

There were, however, potential problems with the "triple-blind" follow up. As the study explains:

In any experiment involving intention, the intentions of the "investigators" cannot be cleanly isolated from those of the nominal participants and this in turn constrains how one should properly interpret the results. In addition, there were many uncontrolled degrees of freedom in this experiment which may have allowed ‘‘unintended intentional’’ effects to creep in. They all involve human decisions, e.g. selecting six specific bottles of water from a huge population of available bottles, randomly assigning those bottles to three conditions, selecting and preparing the water drops, placing the water drop samples inside the freezer, searching for and photographing ice crystals on the frozen water drops at different magnification levels, choosing one of a large possible set of image processing algorithms to provide an objective measure of image contrast, and so on."[19]

Physician Harriet A. Hall writes, about the ideas of Emoto, that "This watery fantasy is all very entertaining and imaginative, full of New Age feel-good platitudes, holistic oneness, consciousness raising, and warm fuzzies; but it's hard to see how anyone could mistake it for science."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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DarwidHalim
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by DarwidHalim »

This world is like this.

Have you heard people condemn Buddha? You go to YouTube you will find thousand.

Have you heard people condemn meditation?

Same thing here, even when science moves in people still don't believe it.

This kind of experiment is very easy to do. We can even do it ourselves.

This link show a lady repeat the same research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjfN3K_v ... ata_player" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is the result after 5 days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTz-cYk9 ... ata_player" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Even when Buddha is Standing in front of you, you won't see him due to your karma or mindset.

Samsara is really thick.
I am not here nor there.
I am not right nor wrong.
I do not exist neither non-exist.
I am not I nor non-I.
I am not in samsara nor nirvana.
To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!
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pilgrim
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by pilgrim »

DarwidHalim wrote:This world is like this.

Have you heard people condemn Buddha? You go to YouTube you will find thousand.
Have you heard people condemn meditation?
Same thing here, even when science moves in people still don't believe it.
This kind of experiment is very easy to do. We can even do it ourselves.
This link show a lady repeat the same research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjfN3K_v ... ata_player" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This is the result after 5 days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTz-cYk9 ... ata_player" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Even when Buddha is Standing in front of you, you won't see him due to your karma or mindset.
Samsara is really thick.
OK...if you say so...
David2
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by David2 »

If you search the internet you can also find videos of people who "prove" that it is possible to bend spoones only with mind power.
No reason to believe Uri Geller is a scientist. :tongue:

Edit: Btw, DarwidHalim, did you read the top-comment of the result video?
When I watched you set this up, you put your fingers in the "you fool" jar when you taped the paper on it. You also touched the rice when you pushed it down inside the jar. None of that happened in the "Thank you" jar. A small thing, but it only takes a small bit of bacteria to make a HUGE difference. I would be interested to see what two jars of rice without any words on, in or spoken over them do when has fingers in it and the other does not.
santa100
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by santa100 »

While simple mind power might not be able to bend spoones but a tiny butterfly flapping its wings could effect the strength of a hurricane half a world away. Google for "Butterfly effect" and "Chaos theory". So, while more research and time is needed to validate the experiments in the OP, at least there's an experiment we know that works and can be tested for oursevles: that the chanting of various Suttas or Mantras do bring peace and happiness to our mind and that in turn greatly benefits our overall wellbeing both physically and mentally.
David2
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by David2 »

santa100 wrote:that the chanting of various Suttas or Mantras do bring peace and happiness to our mind and that in turn greatly benefits our overall wellbeing both physically and mentally.
I agree. No need for pseudo-science because everybody can experience the great effects of chanting on one's own mind.
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Cittasanto
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by Cittasanto »

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_cymatics.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I remembered watching a documentry on Roslyn chapel (yes the one made famous by the DaVinci code) and there was a claim that the patterns on the roof maybe musical notes so I had a search and found the above link, which seams interesting.
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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imagemarie
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Re: The efficacy of chanting

Post by imagemarie »

I've been a regular chanter for a couple of years. Several members of the meditation group I sit with weekly, meet 30 minutes beforehand to chant in Pali (largely self-taught from listening to cd's). It provides a way of settling into the practice. Some (if not all), papanca/hindrances, are put on hold for the duration. I enjoy doing this as part of a group. We have a common purpose, and it is intended to be Dhamma related. Certainly, when we feel that we "get it right" (rhythm, pace, breathing, intonation, pali vowels and consonants, recollection, the "tune" etc) there is mudita and metta expressed. And karuna and upekkha when we don't. :smile: There is no pride in the performance, we just like doing it.

Efficacious? Inasmuch as everything is teaching us. And that depends upon the chanter.

:anjali:
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