Bhakti Marga in Buddhism

The Meaning and Importance of Prayer

By Lama Anagarika Govinda (Acharya, Arya Maitreya Mandala)

The Buddhist tradition inclines more to jnana marga and the Christian to bhakti marga. Nevertheless, every complete religion contains elements of both and provides scope for both types of approach. In this article the venerable author shows the very important place that prayer, a bhakti technique, can hold in Buddhism. It is a resume of talks delivered by him during the international religious conference of 1960 at Venice, convoked by the Cultural Centre of the Foundation Giorgio Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore. The subject of the Conference, to which representatives of the main religions of the world were invited, was 'The Experience of Prayer'.

Lama Govinda is already known to many of our readers as author of the important study 'Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism'. (Rider & Co., London.)

Every religion recognises a highest value, a summum bonum; theistic religions call it 'God', non-theistic religions call it Tao, Nirvana, Sammasambodhi (Perfect Enlightenment) etc. If in theistic religions prayer has been defined as a communion or a dialogue with God, in non-theistic religions it could be defined as intense longing for the highest state of perfection or completeness, the realization of perfect Enlightenment.

Prayer in its widest sense is "a direction of the heart" (Rilke) and presupposes a mental or spiritual polarity: either between man and God, or between the finite and infinite, the individual and the universal, the imperfect and the perfect, etc. In Christianity, Judaism and Islam the individual human pole is conceived as the soul, the divine pole as the Creator; in Hinduism as Jivatma and Paramatma (or Brahman), in Buddhism as the limited, mundane individual consciousness and the potential universal consciousness which is latent in every sentient being and can be experienced and realized in its totality in the state of Enlightenment.

Prayer thus arises from a state of creative tension between the human and the divine, the consciousness of incompleteness (or imperfection) and the ideal of completeness (or perfection), between the present state of ignorance or delusion and the longed-for, future state of liberation: the awakening from the illusion of separateness to the wholeness of life.

What here appears to us as 'future' however, is something that is ever-existing, ever-present in our universal depth-consciousness (alaya-vijnana), which modern psychology has now at last rediscovered though greatly misunderstood, by conceiving it as an enemy of reason and the source of uncontrollable drives and emotions and calling it "the Unconscious"¹ — in order to subordinate it all the more to the limited surface-consciousness, which identifies itself with the ephemeral interests of its momentary individual existence, thus losing the connection with its origin, the living source of creative power.
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1 - "It has long ceased to be a secret that the venerable root-concept of modern psychology 'the Unconscious' is a rather uncritical and obscure concept", says Medard Boss in his Indienfahrt eines Psychiaters (p. 19).

"Present-day psychological terminology which postulates an 'unconscious' in contrast to consciousness, becomes thereby guilty of a falsification of fundamental psychosomatic facts. This terminology and the subsequently wrongly structurized phenomena are a typical example of the faulty conclusions which arise from a radically applied dualism." (Jean Bebser: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Vol. I, p. 327).

"The modern mind suffers from the odd prejudice that consciousness is a purely superficial outgrowth of reality, and that the more fundamental the power, principle or substance becomes, the more blind and unconscious it must be." (Alan W. Watts: The Supreme Identity, p. 56)

"In Freud's view the unconscious is essentially the seat of irrationality. In Jung's thinking the meaning seems to be almost reversed; the unconscious is essentially the seat of the deepest sources of wisdom, while the conscious is the intellectual part of the personality. (Erich Fromm in Zen Buddhism & Psychoanalysis, P. 96).

In prayer, however, we turn back to that source, we re-establish its connection with the individual, focalised surface-consciousness, so that the tension between surface and depth, like that of a string, produces a pure sound, a higher vibration of the Spirit. It is not the object of prayer to eliminate this tension, but, to transform it into a creative force by establishing a meaningful, harmonious co-operation between the two apparently contradictory, but in reality complementary, poles. Thus prayer becomes a source of strength and certainty, and not merely a sedative or a tranquilliser. The inner peace that comes from it is due to the establishment of a balance between the forces of our individual consciousness and the vast potentialities of our depth-consciousness, in which the experiences of a beginningless past are stored and through which we participate in that greater life that encompasses the universe and connects us with every living being.

Prayer — and in a still higher degree, meditation (of which prayer is only the first step) — is the consciously directed approach towards this vast storehouse of experience, which modern psychology merely observes in its passively accepted, functional effects on our subconscious mind (as in dreams and archetypal symbols) as if it were driven by irresistible forces. "Common experience looks on the idea that we are pushed about by such inner drives as unreal and artificial. What meaning can it have, we say, for men whose lives are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge or the creation of beauty or the service of their fellows? What place in it is there for devotion and sacrifice and that endless striving for truth and human betterment which ever has distinguished man at his best? ... Men seem not to be pushed into the finest things they do but to follow the urgent call of something that draws them on through hardship and uncertainty and discouragement to the attainment of a high desire."² "This conception has the advantage over present psychological orthodoxy in that its attitude is forward, toward a goal to be reached, and not back to the push and drive of circumstance, and is thus in harmony with the common verdict of experience."³
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2 - The Biology of the Spirit by, Edmund W. Simmoss, p. 88.
3 - Ibid., p. 90.

Prayer — being a "direction of the heart (i.e., of the inner centre of a human being, which participates equally in his individual consciousness and in his super-individual depth-consciousness) and thus of his intuition, and not merely of his surface-consciousness — is, therefore a positive and active approach to the hidden treasury of universal experience. It does not blindly take hold of experience-contents that happen to well up - but have no bearing on its intuited aim, like a man who descends without a light into a dark storeroom in the cellar of his house, aimlessly taking hold of whatever comes into his hands.

Prayer is indeed the lamp that enables us to discover in the vastness of the treasure-house those very items, that are useful or essential on our spiritual way towards completeness. Instead of dragging fragmentary glimpses of contents of the depth-consciousness into the glaring light of the intellect and submitting them to a deadly analysis, prayer turns our conscious mind inwards and transforms the potential forces of the depth into active ones, because "making the unconscious conscious transforms the mere idea of the universality of man into the living experience of this universality."⁴ In other words: instead of raising the archetypal symbols and visions of the depth to the surface and subordinating them to conceptual thought and the trivialities of temporal aims and purposes, the focus of our individualised mind should turn inwards in order to become aware of its universal source and make use of its immense potentialities in the pursuance of ultimate completeness and perfect enlightenment.
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4 - Erich Fromm, op. cit. p. 107.

Prayer as a means towards this aim would defeat its own purpose if it was the expression of selfish desires or exclusively concerned with our own individual welfare. Moreover the Buddhist neither believes in separate ego-hood (or an unchangeable individual soul that has to be 'saved' and preserved for eternity) nor looks upon the Buddha as a God, who fulfils his wishes. To him the Buddha is the model of the complete or perfect man, who has become conscious of his universality, realized the divine within himself and thus become a light to others.

If, therefore, the Buddhist bows down before the image of the Buddha, he does not ask anything of him, he does not pray to him, but gives vent to his feelings of veneration in the same way in which he would show his respect and love to his living religious teacher or Guru, in whose footsteps he is determined to follow in order to make his teachings a living reality within himself. The formula, which he utters during the act of veneration before the image or symbol of the Enlightened One (such as a statue, a stupa, a reliquary, the Bodhi-tree, or whatever helps him to bring the noble figure of the Buddha before his mind), consists of the words:

"I take refuge in the Enlightened One;"
"I take refuge in the Teaching" (the Sacred Law, taught by all Enlightened Ones);
"I take refuge in the Community (of those who have realized the teaching)."

In Tibet this formula is preceded by the words: "I take refuge in the Guru"; because the Guru is the living representative, the mouthpiece, of the Buddha, the transmitter and embodiment of the Buddha's Teaching, who kindles the flame of faith in the disciple and inspires him to follow in the footsteps of those who have realized the Sacred Teaching (dharma), and become members of the Community of Saints (Sangha).

The first step of devotion and prayer in Buddhism, therefore, consists in the expression of veneration, loyalty and gratitude towards the Teacher, the living Guru, as well as the Buddha who speaks through him. And just as the person of the Guru is conceived as a link in the continuity of spiritual transmission of Buddha Sakyamuni's teaching, in the same way Buddha Sakyamuni is only one link in the infinite chain of Enlightened Ones. Thus the term 'Guru' comprises the complete chain of spiritual teachers who have passed on the living tradition through millenniums from generation to generation: and similarly the term 'Buddha' includes the totality of all the Enlightened Ones who preceded him or may follow him.

Thus, in Mahayana tradition, the historical personality of Sakyamuni-Buddha recedes behind the universal figure of the Perfect Enlightened One, the symbol of the Complete Man who has realized his divine nature. Instead of worshipping a God beyond all human conception, enthroned in a realm of metaphysical abstractions and generalisations, the Buddhist strives after the realization of those divine properties which have been demonstrated by innumerable saints and Enlightened Ones. He tries to realize them in his own heart, in his own mind and in his own life.

The thought that a god should have created the world with all its evil, its suffering, its imperfection, stupidity and cruelty, appears to him a kind of blasphemy of the very idea of God as the embodiment of perfection. For him it is not a god who is responsible for the evil and imperfection of the world, because the world that we experience is the creation of our own ignorance, our own cravings and passions. That imperfection should come out of perfection and completeness seems to contradict all reason, while the opposite appears more likely to the Buddhist. The experiences of life and the example of those who have attained enlightenment, has taught him that from a state of imperfection perfection can be achieved and that the sufferings resulting from our passions, are the very forces that lead towards liberation.

But while the Buddhist rejects the idea of a Creator-God, he believes in the divine principle in man, the inborn spark of light (bodhi-citta) embodied in his consciousness as a yearning towards perfection, towards completeness, towards Enlightenment. To put it paradoxically: it is not God who creates man, but man who creates God in his image, i.e. the idea of the divine aim within himself, which he realizes in the fires of suffering, from which compassion, understanding, love and wisdom are born.

The unfoldment of individual life in the universe has no other aim apparently but becoming conscious of its own divine essence, and since this process goes on continuously, it represents a perpetual birth of God or, to put it into Buddhist terminology: the continuous arising of enlightened beings, in each of whom the totality of the universe becomes conscious.

These Enlightened Ones are what the Mahayana calls "the infinite number of Buddhas" or — insofar as they are experienced as actively influencing the development of humanity — "the infinite number of Bodhisattvas". The latter represent the active forces emanating from those who have attained the highest state of consciousness, inspiring and furthering all those who are striving for liberation. This is represented pictorially by the aura of the meditating Buddha, which is filled with small replicas of the Buddha, symbolising the infinite number of Bodhisattvas who in myriad forms appear for the welfare of all living and suffering beings. Though they manifest themselves in innumerable individual forms, they are one in spirit.

I have described the first step of Buddhist prayer as an expression of veneration and gratitude towards the great Enlightened Ones, who taught the way of liberation to humanity by word and deed. As an example of the profound devotion which fills the Buddhist sadhaka, I may quote here some passages from Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara, which describes the awakening of the inner light, or the practice of the Bodhisattvas on the way towards Enlightenment.

"In order to take possession of the pearl of Enlightenment, I worship the Tathagatas and also the faultless jewel of the doctrine, as well as the spiritual sons of the Enlightened Ones, the oceans of virtue.

Whatever may be found in this world; flowers, fruits, vegetables and life-giving waters; mountains of precious stone, forest-solitudes for meditation, creepers adorned with beautiful, radiant blossoms, trees whose boughs are bent under the burden of delicious fruit, perfumes and scents from the world of gods, miraculous trees, jewel-trees, lovely ponds of lotus-flowers reverberating with the sweet song of swans, wild plants as well as those of the fields: everything that is suitable as an offering and all that is contained in the infinity of space and does not belong to anybody; I collect all this in my mind and offer it to the Perfect Ones and their spiritual sons (the Bodhisattvas)."

"I am without merits and, therefore, very poor. I have nothing else for their worship. May, therefore, the Perfect Ones, who have no thought but the welfare of others, accept this for my sake."

The next step is the complete self-surrender and change of heart in awareness of our faults and weaknesses.

"Wholly and without reserve I dedicate myself to the Enlightened Ones and their spiritual sons: take possession of me, exalted beings! Filled with humility I offer myself as your servant. Having become your property, I have nothing more to fear in this world. I will do only what is helpful to other beings. I will give up my former wrong-doing and not commit further misdeeds. Due to hatred and infatuation I have committed many wrong deeds. I did not realize that I am only a traveller, passing through this world. Day and night, without cessation vitality decreases and death approaches. This very day, therefore, I will take refuge in the great and powerful protectors of the world. From the bottom of my heart I take refuge in the doctrine and likewise in the multitude of Bodhisattvas. With folded hands I implore the Perfect Enlightened Ones in all the regions of the universe: may they kindle the light of truth for all those who on account of their delusion would otherwise fall into the abyss of misery."

After the devotee has thus opened himself to the Enlightened Ones and offered himself to them 'an instrument of their peace' (in the words of the beautiful and universal prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which could have been spoken by Santideva or any devout Buddhist)⁵ he renounces the fruit of his good deeds and instead of being concerned for his "own salvation", he vows to dedicate himself to the welfare of all living beings. In other words: he will rather share the sufferings of his fellow-beings, in order to inspire and assist them on their way towards Liberation, than rest blissfully on the pedestal of his virtues, enjoying for himself the fruits of his good deeds.
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5 - "Lord, Make me an instrument of Thy Peace,
That where there is hatred, I may bring love;
That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
That where there is error, I may bring truth
That where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
That where there is despair, I may bring hope;
And where there are shadows, I may bring Thy light;
That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, Grant that I may seek, rather to comfort than to be comforted,
To understand than to be understood: to love than to be loved;
For it is by giving that one receiveth.
It is by self-forgetting that one finds,
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven;
It is by dying, that one awakens to eternal life."

It is in this spirit that he utters the vow:

Whatever merit I may have obtained, may I become thereby the soother of every pain for all living beings. The merits which I have acquired in all my rebirths through thought, word and deed, all this I give away without regard to myself, in order to realize the salvation of all living beings. Nirvana means to give up everything; and my heart desires Nirvana. If I must give up everything, is it not better to give everything to living beings? I have dedicated myself to the welfare of all living beings; may they beat me and abuse me and cover me with dust. May they play with my body and make me an object of their ridicule. I have abandoned my body to them; why should I worry about it? Those who abuse me, those who treat me badly, those who jeer at me, may they all attain enlightenment."

Who would not be reminded here of Christ's words: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you"? Every true Buddhist who hears these words, will be convinced that he who spoke them, was one of the great, Bodhisattvas, one of the enlightened helpers of mankind, to whom he pays respect in his daily devotions, when he remembers the Enlightened Ones of the past, the present and the future.⁶
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6 - "Ye ca buddhd atita ca
ye ca buddha anagata,
paccuppanna ca ye buddha
aham vandami sabbada."
(Pali)

"The Enlightened Ones of the past,
the Enlightened ones of the future,
the Enlightened Ones of the present
I worship them at all time."

The cultivation of an attitude of loving kindness and the conscious penetration of the world with compassionate thoughts and a loving heart — "like a mother who protects her child with her own life" — has been called by the Buddha a "divine state" literally a "dwelling in God" (Brahma-vihara). Herewith he has at the same time given a perfect definition of what he considers 'divine'. The love of which he speaks here is far more than humanitarian goodwill, into which some Western interpreters have tried to dilute the maitri (Pali: metta) of the Buddha, though the above-mentioned quotation, which defines maitri as the spontaneous and selfless love of a mother, should have taught them a deeper understanding.

The other constituents of this 'divine state', constituents which naturally flow from this boundless love (and which, on account of their boundlessness, are also called 'illimitables'), are compassion (karuna) and sympathetic joy (mudita), i.e. the sharing of others' sorrow and joy, and finally that state of equanimity (upeksa) which is unaffected by one's own sufferings or successes.

One of the greatest misunderstandings concerning the spiritual and emotional attitude of Buddhism is due to the wrong interpretation of the term upeksa (Pali: upekkha). A purely negative rendering of this important term as 'indifference' has repeatedly led to the opinion (especially from the side of Christian theologians) that love, compassion and the sharing of happiness with others are only preparatory steps to the attainment of complete indifference, which would thus seem to be the highest aim and the culmination of Buddhist ethics. The fact that upeksa is placed at the end of these 'divine states' has led to the conclusion that to the Buddhist love and compassion are only convenient means for his own salvation and that therefore they are not the outcome of true altruism or of equal value with the similar qualities in Christianity.

In reality the opposite is true: just as love is not negatived by compassion or by the capacity to share the joy of others but actually finds its fulfilment in these qualities, so also upeksa does not extinguish the preceding attitudes. In fact only a man who is not shaken by enmity or favours, who is indifferent towards his own gain or loss (but not towards that of others) is capable of showing equal sympathy to all beings. Not only do love and compassion and rejoicing in the happiness of other beings find their ultimate perfection in upeksa, but we can even say that upeksa is the very foundation of these qualities which the Enlightened Ones and those who follow in their footsteps cultivate and offer to the world, as the sun shines for sinners and saints alike.⁷
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7 - It will be remarked by Hindu readers that upeksa is equivalent to the Hindu vairagya. Those who read the article by Father Lazarus on the 'Spiritual Traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church' in our issue of January 1964 will also note its equivalence with the equality of apatheia which he there describes, (Editor)

Thus upeksa, in its highest aspect, is that unshakeable steadfastness, that perfect mental and spiritual balance and equanimity in which neither indifference nor lukewarm emotions find a place and in which the difference between one's own self and that of others has disappeared. This has been beautifully expressed by Santideva in the first Karika of his Siksasamuccaya:

"Yada mama paresam ca bhayam duhkham ca na priyam
Tadamanah ko viseso yat tam raksami netaram?"

"If my neighbour, like myself, hates fear and pain,
in what way, then, do I distinguish myself from others,
that I should seek protection for myself and not for others?"

Here we come to the heart of the problem and to the chief motive of Buddhist prayer: it is love and compassion based on profound understanding of the essential unity of life and the mutual relationship of all sentient beings. Just as the selfless love of a mother is not the outcome of any ethical demand or categorical imperative but rests on her knowledge of the essential oneness of mother and child, so also the Buddhist's attitude towards his fellow-beings is the natural result of his innermost conviction.

This conviction is nurtured by experiences of meditation, of which prayer is the first step. In this sense we may call prayer a preliminary form of meditation. It uses words to guide the mind in a certain direction, and the further it proceeds the less words it needs. Finally prayer becomes mantra, creative speech or word of power, that awakens the dormant forces of our soul — until the mind of the devotee dives into the ocean of his depth consciousness (alaya-vijnana), where the reality of a greater life, that connects him with all living beings and the very spirit of the Enlightened Ones, reveals itself through direct experience, beyond words and concepts.

Thus prayer in Buddhism is the path of devotion (bhakti-marga) — first to the Guru and the Enlightened Ones (through saranagamana, vandana and puja), then to all living and suffering beings (maitri-bhavana) through the Bodhisattva-vows of perfect self-dedication (pranidhana) — that ends in the light of knowledge. For he who wants to partake of the light must first open himself. Prayer is an act of opening heart and mind; and while we open ourselves we not only allow the light to enter, but we make the first breach in the walls of our self-created prison which separates us from our fellow-beings. Thus, in the same measure in which the light streams in and makes us recognise our true universal nature that connects us with all that exists in the infinity of space and time, our love and compassion for all living and suffering beings wells up and streams out from us like a mighty current that embraces the whole world. In this way prayer becomes an act of devotion in a twofold way: to the forces of the light (bodhi) as well as to our fellow-beings (maitri, karuna). The forces of the light, however, are not an abstract ideal but a living reality, embodied in those great teachers of humanity, whom we venerate as the Enlightened Ones.

The more intensely we can put ourselves into their presence, the more alive they become in our consciousness, the deeper we feel for them in response to their love, in admiration of their deeds and in gratitude for their teachings, the greater is their power to act upon us. But in order to experience their presence, we require visible symbols in which the highest qualities of the enlightened mind are expressed and through which at the same time our deepest feelings are aroused.

Such symbols are the various representations of the Buddha-figure, which not merely depict a particular historical personality, but are the outcome of the integrated religious experience of innumerable generations of devotees. Thus the image is not an object of veneration (i.e., the Buddhist does not pray to the image) but a means to experience the presence of the Enlightened Ones. Instead of merely worshipping our ideal or praying to the Enlightened Ones - as if they were something outside ourselves - we must ourselves become our ideal, identify ourselves with it, in order to be able to live it also in our outward activities and in our daily life. An ideal becomes an effective or active force only when it is felt and experienced as an ever-present reality, as is the case in the higher states of meditative experience (dhyana) or inner vision. Thus the outer, material image and likewise the puja-ritual and the liturgy in congregational worship, in which prayer becomes an act of joint devotion and self-dedication, is only the beginning and the preparation for the unfoldment of inner vision in meditation, in which the devotee becomes one with his ideal. In the gestures (mudra) and actions (such as bowing down, offering lights, water and flowers, etc.) of ritual worship (puja) our thoughts and emotions are made visible as a means of guiding and concentrating the mind upon the sacred path. We may call it a dramatised form of meditation: meditation put into action and rendered visible and audible. Through the parallelism of body, mind and speech, the co-ordination of movement, thought and word, the harmony of feeling, creative imagination, visualisation and verbal expression, we achieve a unity of all the functions of our conscious being, which affects not only the surface of our personality, namely our senses and intellect, but equally the deeper regions of our mind. In the regular performance of such ritual worship the very foundations of our being are slowly but certainly transformed and made receptive for the inner light.