Is Chanting Enough? One Daimoku Is Enough, and a Million Is Not Enough

Everyone asks it sooner or later. Is chanting really enough? Shouldn’t I understand more of this first?

The asking itself is important and good and right. Most of us can go years without ever stopping to ask what we are doing or what it is for. Anyone who slows down long enough to ask has already begun.

And the answer is yes. It is enough.

Understanding does come. It just isn’t required at the beginning. Say the words sour plum and our mouths water before we taste anything. Pull a wet stone out of a river and we can strike fire from it, and nothing about that stone looked like fire. Bring a lamp into a room that has been dark a thousand years and the room lights up, and the thousand years count for nothing. Understanding comes through experience. We practice our way into understanding. Very few of us understand our way into practice. And the people who wait until they feel ready wait a very long time.

Think about how much a small thing can hold. All of a person somehow shows up in the face. All of the face somehow shows up in the eyes. Say the name of a country and the whole thing comes with it, every field, every river, every difficult neighbor. Nothing is left out.

The title of a sutra contains the entire sutra. The title is the face of the sutra, and the whole of it looks out at us from there. When we chant, we are not getting a piece of the teaching. We are not getting the beginner portion while the real material waits until we qualify. We are getting all of it, in something small enough to fit in our mouth.

Chanting morning and evening is not a shortened version of reading the sutra. We are reading the whole thing with every recitation. Chant it twice and we have read it twice. Keep chanting and we keep reading.

People do count, and counting is fine if it helps support our practice. But we are not balancing a book here. Nobody is saving up, a little at a time, hoping to hit the number before the mornings run out.

So how much is enough?

One daimoku is enough, and a million is not enough.

One is enough because nothing is missing from it. The whole thing is there in one chant. Nothing is being held back from us. Whatever we think we are still owed, we are already holding it, and we were holding it before we started.

And a million is not enough because a life takes a lifetime. Knowing we are on the path is not the same as being done with it. The Buddha kept sitting. He kept walking. He kept teaching, right up to the last night under the trees. He was living the practice.

Practice is not a chore we finish and put down. Practice is how the awakened life actually gets lived. One chant at a time. In this body. In this kitchen. Around these people who drive us crazy so regularly that they may as well be part of the training. Practice, like living a healthy lifestyle, is not one and done.

One more thing, and this is the important part, nothing is outside of this. It is already what we are made of. The chanting does not put it there. The chanting is that thing showing up, in a voice we know is ours.

So chant this morning. It is enough.

And chant again tomorrow, because it will not be enough. That is not a failure. That is just what a practice is. Both halves are true at once. Learning to hold them both, without picking one, is most of what this path is asking of us.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo