When I am chanting and meditating on the various assemblies we are presented in the Lotus Sutra, I can’t help but linger in the susurration of those assemblies. Are you familiar with the word susurrus? I’m guessing many people are not, it isn’t a frequently heard or used word. It is however a perfect word in both meaning and sound.
The word means whispering, murmuring, rustling. It is the soft sounds that you can hear even in a quiet room. Think about even your own existence in space, even when you are at your quietest moments there are soft sounds such as your quiet inhale, the crinkling of event the softest of fabrics when you move and especially so for more rigid cloth. There are of course the sounds of nature, perhaps even birds, or crickets, or the creaking of an old house.
Now imagine a crowd in the thousands, such as the assembly gathered around the Buddha as he sat in mediation at the opening of the Lotus Sutra. Even in the silence of the active participation of thousands in quiet silent mediation there will be all the breaths taken and released. Think about how something as thin and small as a pine needle and how the wind blowing through a pine tree can make such a loud noise out of something so small. The sound of thousands of beings, human and non-human gathered on Vulture Peak all breathing together yet not in time with each other. That sound to me is one that draws my spirit into. When I hold that in my mind I am carried away by the accumulated silences that create noise, the power, the experience of that energy that is a by-product of merely existing in that moment.
When I recite Chapter I from the Lotus Sutra, especially in Shindoku there is the rhythm and sound that goes so harmoniously with the Shindoku. Here are some examples:
Ma ka ka sho,
Uru bin ra ka sho,
Ga ya ka sho,
Na dai ka sho,
Shri hotsu,
Dai mok ken ren,
Ma ka ka sen nen,
A nuru da ko hin na,
Kyo bon ha dai,
Ri ha ta,
Hir ryo, ka ba sha,
Ha ku ra,
Ma ka ku chi ra,
Nan da,
Son da ra nan da,
Hu ru na mi ta ra ni shi
And further on…
Mon ju shi ri bo satsu,
Kan ze on bo satsu,
Toku dai sei bo satsu,
Jo sho jin bo satsu,
Hu ku soku bo satsu,
Ho sho bo satsu,
Yaku o bo satsu,
Yu ze bo satsu,
Ho gahi bo satsu,
And…
U shi kin na ra o,
Ho kin na ra o,
Kyo ho kin na ra o,
Dai ho kin na ra o,
Ji ho kin na ra o,
It is as if Kumarajiva and his committee of translators captured the susurrations of the assembled personages. This is one of my favorite chapters to recite in Shindoku. When doing it there is almost a mystical energy that propels you in the chanting. I liken it to the quite yet unmistakable energy of silence.
Now consider the visual experience. While susurration is not quite the word there is a sort of visual version of ‘susurration’. That is the accumulated vision of all the assembled beings, human and non-human. The sizes, colors of skin, hair, body, slope of the shoulders, arch of the backs, the various postures of everyone sitting in meditation. The quite passing of the clouds overhead, the ground covering whether dirt of grass how it has been scuffed up, smeared, trundled, the various foot indentations and markings.
The scene is almost a cacophony of images even in its stillness, and so it is with the susurrations almost being so loud as to be deafening through silence.
To linger there in our meditation and experience offers almost an infinite variety of potential experiences. The possibilities are huge and endless. And just to think all of that is contained within, or rather between the characters of the sutra, whether in roman characters or Chinese. The spaces between the words are so rich with meaning and value . And to think I haven’t even spoken of the smells, which would be incredibly complex, enough for perhaps an encyclopedia.
How often do you stop to experience what is in between the words you read or recite? I wonder if you will be able to read the sutra the same ever again?
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