Pure Land Chanting

Evening was settling, and the small house grew quiet. The lamp had just been lit, and the dinner tray was not yet cleared, when a steady sound rose from the inner room. Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật. Then again, Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật. The grandmother's voice was slow and round, swelling and then sinking, repeating over and over like breathing. Her small grandchild stood in the doorway, head tilted, listening for a long while. At last the child shyly asked who she had been calling all this time.

The grandmother paused, turned around, and drew the child down to sit beside her.

She was not calling anyone far away, she said. This was called niệm Phật, chanting the Buddha's name. Vietnamese call these six words lục tự danh hiệu, the six sacred words. This, she said, is the most familiar and widely used chant among Vietnamese Buddhists. In almost any home with Buddhist grandparents, the child would hear these words.

She asked the child to listen closely to each word. The two sounds Nam Mô mean turning back to take refuge, bowing down in reverence. A Di Đà Phật is the Buddha A Di Đà, known in English as Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. Put together, Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật means that the one chanting turns back to take refuge in the Awakened One of boundless light. The line is short, she said, yet it holds a whole heart turned toward what is good.

The child asked what the point was of calling the same line again and again.

The grandmother smiled gently. The human heart, she said, tends to follow whatever it keeps returning to. People who dwell on sad things grow sad. People who dwell on anger grow angry. That was why people of old chose to repeat a good name. Chanting the Buddha's name, she said, trains the mind in a good habit, called mindfulness. As the chanting goes on, the heart grows still along with it. Chanted over many days, a troubled mind slowly turns into a mind that leans toward goodness. The chant cannot change heaven and earth, she said, but it can change the heart of the one who chants.

Those who practice with this chant follow the Pure Land path, Tịnh Độ in Vietnamese. Chanting with firm faith, they hope one day to be born into a realm of peace called Tây Phương Cực Lạc, the Land of Utmost Bliss in the West. She had once told the child about that land. But she wanted the child to remember one thing. Believing in that land is only half of it. The other half is living kindly, starting right now. People chant the Buddha's name to remind themselves, day by day, to live a little more gently.

The beauty of this chant, the grandmother said, is that it belongs to everyone. The Pure Land path is one of the three long-standing ways of practice in Vietnamese Buddhism, easy to learn and suited to every kind of person. No one needs much schooling to chant it. It makes no difference whether someone is old or young, well off or poor. An old man out in the fields can chant it. A grandmother in the kitchen can chant it. A little one like the child can learn it after hearing it a few times. That is what makes it precious: a single line within everyone's reach.

The child wondered how long the chant had been around.

A very long time, the grandmother said. The practice of chanting the Buddha's name was kept and handed down through many generations of teachers in China. One of them was a teacher named Shandao, who lived around the 7th century. He devoted himself to chanting the Buddha's name and carried the practice far and wide, and those who came to learn from him numbered in the tens of thousands. Then the chant followed the footsteps of monks to Vietnam. It settled under every pagoda roof and into every household, right down to the present day. Today the practice is widespread in many countries, and in Vietnam almost every Buddhist family knows it.

Some people ask which is better, chanting the Buddha's name or sitting in meditation. The grandmother said the monks often teach that the two ways do not oppose each other. They can go together, and this is called Thiền Tịnh song tu, practicing meditation and Pure Land side by side. Sitting quietly to still the heart is practice, and softly chanting a line is practice too. Each person follows the way that suits them, as long as the heart grows a little brighter every day.

That is why the chant is heard everywhere in Vietnam. At first light, in a pagoda hall dim with incense smoke, the monks chant together. In the evening, at home, the grandmother sits and chants. When someone in the village lies gravely ill in bed, the family sits nearby and chants softly so that their hearts can be at peace. Even when people accompany someone who has died to their final resting place, they chant these words gently, as if walking a stretch of the road together. Those six words stay with Vietnamese Buddhists all their lives, in joy and in sorrow, in strength and in weakness.

The grandmother chanted a few more lines before she stopped. The house fell completely still. The child sat without a sound and seemed to understand. All this time, she had not been calling anyone far away. The chant calls to the gentle part already present in every heart, calling it to wake, calling it to grow. Every evening across the country, the six words Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật still ring out under countless roofs, soft and warm, like a lamp that people light within themselves.