Recently, I wrote a brief introduction to the Buddhist canon, the sutras. Sutras come in many shapes and forms, but I want to focus on one of the most famous, and most popular to recite: The Heart Sutra.
A sutra book from Japan showing the Heart Sutra, preserved in old Chinese, but with Japanese pronunciation guides.
The full name of this sutra is the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra (般若波羅蜜多心經), and was one in a series of “perfection of wisdom sutras” that were published starting around 2nd century BCE. Starting with the “Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Verses Sutra“, the authors made longer and longer versions, culminating to a 25,000 verse version of hte same sutra. Then, they started making shorter versions, getting down to the Diamond Sutra, and finally the Heart Sutra.
Or, so the theory goes.
The Heart Sutra is believed to distill the essence or “heart” of the Perfection of Wisdom teachings to its smallest, most essential version. More on that soon. This version is very short, can be read in 1-2 minutes, and is pretty cryptic. Because it is so short, it is easy to learn and memorize, and thus easy to recite. Its utility for everyday Buddhists is among the reasons it has such lasting popularity. I have a copy of a translation of the 8,000 verse sutra,1 and while it is interesting, it is a tome. It is not practical for most Buddhists to read such a tome, so you can imagine why the Heart Sutra was composed, and why it is so much more popular.
But that gets to an interesting question: who composed it? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
The traditional assumption was that it was composed in India, using Sanskrit language, and then brought to China like most other Buddhist sutras. And yet, a scholar named Dr. Jan Nattier proposed an interesting theory that the Heart Sutra in particular was composed in China, not India, and that it was translated back to Sanskrit, not from it, by our favorite wandering monk Xuan-zang when he visited India. There is considerable debate about this, and valid arguments for one or the other, but it’s an interesting idea that some plucky Chinese monk found a clever way to distill the Perfection of Wisdom teachings into a more bite-sized form.
That said, one of the interesting features of the Heart Sutra is that it does contain a genuine Sanskrit mantra at the end (a trend that continues with later Buddhist texts) in the Siddham script:
𑖐𑖝𑖸 𑖐𑖝𑖸 𑖢𑖯𑖨𑖐𑖝𑖸 𑖢𑖯𑖨𑖭𑖽𑖐𑖝𑖸 𑖤𑖺𑖠𑖰𑖭𑖿𑖪𑖯𑖮𑖯 ga te ga te pā ra ga te pā ra saṃ ga te bo dhi svā hā
For various reasons, this mantra was written in Chinese characters that approximated the pronunciation of the Sanskrit:
As I eluded to earlier, the Heart Sutra is the most condensed version of the Perfection of Wisdom teachings, or prajñā-pāramitā in Sanskrit. This was a teaching that provided an important foundation for Mahayana Buddhism (everything from Tibet to Japan). “Perfection of Wisdom” is hard to explain. But, roughly speaking you can think of it as the fundamental understanding of existence, which is sitting right in front of your face, but not obvious until you see it. Like the first time you noticed a small crack in the wall. Once you see it, you don’t “unsee” it.
But instead, the Perfection of Wisdom is about undoing the filters in one’s own mind, so you can see the world unvarnished. That’s easy to say, but extremely tricky to sincerely accomplish. Hence the extraordinary accomplishments of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
The Heart Sutra talks a lot about “not this”, and “not that”, and like other similar sutras (e.g. the Diamond Sutra, another of the series), this is to try and undo the filters of one’s own mind. But, on its surface, the Heart Sutra is cryptic and vague. Yet, because it is so pithy, and so over time bits of it start to sink in, or something that didn’t make sense in the past finally clicks.
So, if you do pick up a copy of the Heart Sutra, don’t worry if it doesn’t really make sense. Recite it from time to time,2 study it with help sutras guides (there are many) and make it a part of your Buddhist life, regardless of what tradition you follow.
For a such tiny, little composition, it’s a pretty neat contribution to Buddhism.
1 Purchased years ago at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, OR. One of the best bookstores, and well worth a visit if you go there.
2 Some people recite in their native language, others recite in one or more “liturgical” languages. It doesn’t really matter. Pick something you can stick with. You can change it later.
I have never tried using these WordPress writing prompts, but I thought I’d try as a fun exercise today.
Life is stressful. That’s the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. More precisely life is marked with stress, unease, discontent, and so on, collectively called dukkha in Sanskrit. Put more succinctly, shit happens sooner or later. It is impossible to avoid, but at the same time, a well-trained even-keel mind can weather the storm and thereby help ease one’s life, but also make life better for those around you too.
Buddhism as a 2,500 year old religion comes with a really large toolkit of methods, practices, and liturgy that can help bring peace of mind.
Most people think of meditation first, but this is simply not always practical, especially if you are a working parent, busy college student, and so on. There are other practices available that can more easily be fit into a busy lifestyle, and are not difficult to learn.
The first is to take up the Five Precepts as a baseline for one’s conduct. This is a passive practice, but helps provide some guideposts to life, gradually smooths out our rough edges, and builds self-confidence as well.
The second is Buddhist chanting.
There are many, many things one can chant in Buddhism: mantras, excerpts of Buddhist texts (sutras), full Buddhist texts, or devotional phrases as well.
Mantras are very short, but esoteric phrases often used for chanting, recited originally in Sanskrit language, but filtered over time in other languages. One of the best known is the Mantra of Light, but you can find many mantras. People often recite these 3 or 7 or even 21 times, but traditions vary. Consult your preferred tradition if you are unsure. Keep in mind that many traditions within Buddhism simply don’t use mantras, or use very sparingly.
Buddhist texts (sutras), or even excerpts of Buddhist texts, are an almost universal chanting practice. They are longer than mantras, but also more commonly practiced, and have a nice habit of reinforcing important teachings within yourself. You can recite them in the old, liturgical language, or recite in your own language. It does not really matter.
By far the most popular Buddhist text to recite is the Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra is somewhat unusual because you can recite the entire text, from start to finish, in about 1-2 minutes. It is profound, but also really pithy. Another common chanting text you can do from start to finish is the Metta Sutta in the Theravada tradition. Most other Buddhist sutras are a challenge to recite in one sitting (some are extremely long), so instead people traditionally recite key excerpts only. The Lotus Sutra is particularly quote-worthy; it has many verses and quotations that are chanted by themselves without chanting the entire chapter. There are other good quote-worthy Buddhist sutras as well.
When chanting Buddhists sutras (or excerpts), you can either do it in a chanting voice, or simply recite the same way you might read a poem aloud, or something like reciting the “Litany of Fear” in Dune. Personally, I find chanting in English sounds silly, so I recite with an even voice instead.
Finally, we have devotional phrases. Because Buddhist deities are many and varied, each embodying some essential truth or concept in Buddhism, people tend to gravitate toward one or another. This is fine, and perfectly normal in Buddhism. One might gravitate toward the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. One might gravitate toward Guan-yin (aka Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig, Kannon, etc). One might gravitate toward the Buddha of Infinite Light (aka Amitabha, Amida, etc). Over time, you might shift as well. Again, perfectly normal.
In any case, many of these deities will have some simple devotional phrase: “Hail to X”, or “Praise to Y”, and so on. These might overlap with mantras, but aren’t necessarily mantras. They are often exoteric (no subtle, hidden meaning), not esoteric. Sometimes mantras are used as devotional phrases too. It’s also common in some traditions to praise the Lotus Sutra itself, not as a deity, but as the embodiment of the highest and best Buddhist teachings.
All of these devotional phrases are short, simple, and easy to recite. People often recite in groups of three, but you can recite as little or as much as you like. Consult your preferred tradition if you are unsure.
When should one do Buddhist chanting?
Whenever appropriate. If you get up first thing in the morning and recite your chosen sutra, mantra or devotional phrase, that’s great. If you do it before going to bed, that’s great. If you are stressed out at work, and need a moment, go in a quiet spot, and recite something Buddhist. If you are moved by something spiritual, you can also recite something in the form of gratitude. There are many times and places to do Buddhist chanting. Find what works, experiment if needed, see what sticks in your life.
One thing to keep in mind though: always do it respectfully, solemnly, and without showing off. Intention and sincerity are important.
Why should one do Buddhist chanting?
There are many reasons why one takes up the practice. For some, it helps settle the mind, especially when stressed or worried about something. It tends to reinforce positive habits too. Sometimes it can also bring a flash of insight because one’s mind is settled and they meaning of the texts finally makes sense. It also helps generate good karma for the future, like planting seeds for later harvest. By settling the mind, it also helps disengage negative habits and avoid negative consequences later.
Coupled with the Five Precepts I mentioned above, the long-term effects are both peace of mind for yourself, but also others around you as the wholesome effects “rub off”.
The Five Precepts and Buddhist chanting are two practices that almost anyone can do almost anywhere under any circumstances. You might have to tailor things to make it sustainable in your life, but there’s plenty of wiggle-room to make it work. Also, don’t be afraid to make adjustments.
For months, I’ve had on my to-do list to go and fix up the Wikipedia article about the nembutsu (or nian-fo in Chinese). I had started contributing to that article way back in 2006 shortly after I first got interested in Pure Land Buddhism, and occasionally update or add details. The article was flagged for some quality control issues recently, and I decided to help clean it up.
Some of my early contributions in Wikipedia way back in the day… can’t believe it’s been 18 years.
As I began to write some updates to the article, though, and trying to distill what the nembutsu is within the Pure Land tradition, I realized that this is a really tough question. There’s centuries of interpretations, layers of culture, and divergent viewpoints. I tried to summarize this in an older article, but after reading over that article, I realized that I didn’t quite hit the mark there either.
So, let’s try this again.
Pure Land Buddhism is a large, broad, organic tradition within Mahayana Buddhism (an even bigger tradition). It is not centrally-organized, but follows many trends and traditions across many places and time periods. However, these traditions all have a couple things in common:
Reverence toward the Buddha of Infinite Light (a.k.a. Amitabha Buddha, Amida, Emituofo, etc.). The nature of who or what Amitabha Buddha is is open to interpretation though.
Aspiration to be reborn (as in one’s next life) in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. There have been many ways to interpret what exactly this means, but I am sticking to the most simple, literal interpretation for now.
In any case, these two things are what make the “Cult of Amitabha” what it is. By “cult” I mean the more traditional, academic definition, not the modern, negative definition. Amitabha is to Mahayana Buddhism, what the Virgin Mary is to Catholicism.
Every Pure Land tradition across Buddhist history is mostly focused on #2: how to get to the Pure Land. The early Pure Land Sutras spend much time describing how great Amitabha Buddha is, and how getting to the Pure Land is so beneficial towards one’s practice, but differ somewhat on how get reborn there.
One early sutra, the Pratyutpanna Sutra is one of the first to mention Amitabha and the Pure Land at all, but it very strongly emphasizes a meditative approach, in order to achieve a kind of samadhi. According to Charles B Jones, being reborn in the Pure Land wasn’t even mentioned in this sutra, nor Amitabha’s origin story. It was a purely meditate text. Nonetheless, this sutra was highly favored by the early Chinese Pure Land Buddhists, namely the White Lotus Society started in the 5th century by Lushan Huiyuan.
The main textual source for being reborn in the Pure Land is from the Immeasurable Life Sutra, also called the Larger [Sukhavati Vyuha] Sutra. This is where we see the famous 48 vows of the Buddha, including the most important, the 18th vow (highlights added):
設我得佛。十方衆生至心信樂。欲生我國乃至十念。若不生者不取正覺。唯除五逆誹謗正法
(18) If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten quarters who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my Name, even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment. Excluded, however, are those who commit the five gravest offences and abuse the right Dharma.
translation by Rev. Hisao Inagaki
This is where things get interesting, in my opinion.
The Chinese character 念 (niàn) was used to translate the Buddhist-Sanskrit term Buddhānusmṛti or “recollection of the Buddha”. But, according to Jones, the Chinese character 念 had multiple nuances in Chinese:
And in fact each one of these interpretations can be applied to the nembutsu (Chinese niànfó) because it means niàn (念) of the Buddha (fó, 佛).
But which is it: concentration, a moment of recollection, or verbal recitation?
Most of the early Chinese Buddhist teachers like Tanluan, Daochuo and Shandao all promoted a mix: usually visualization was the superior method, but verbal recitation was a fallback for people who couldn’t dedicate themselves to visualization-meditation and ritual. The earliest Buddhist teachers mostly emphasized the visualization-meditation approach, but by Shandao’s time (7th century) the verbal recitation was deemed the most effective method.
Later, in Japan, the monk Genshin (not to be confused with the game…) summarizes these various methods in his 10th century work, the Ojoyoshu. It was a high quality work and even praised by Chinese monks when it was sent over as part of Japan’s diplomatic missions. But Genshin came to the same basic conclusion: the nembutsu can be any one of the three.
Finally we get to Buddhist teachers like Honen (12th century), who taught that the verbal recitation was the only viable choice. Honen praised past methods, but his target audience was a mostly illiterate population, as well as monks whose monastic institutions had largely declined into corruption and empty ritual. So, for such people, better to rely on Amitabha Buddha’s compassion and recite the verbal nembutsu wholeheartedly.
Multi-lingual sign at the temple of Chion-in in Kyoto, Japan where Honen’s mausoleum rests.
This approach isn’t that different from the Chinese approach which varied by teacher or patriarch but through Shandao’s influence had a parallel development. Some teachers emphasized the efficacy of simply reciting the nembutsu (much like Honen), others added the importance of concentration while reciting the nembutsu.
However, turning back to the Larger Sutra, let’s go back to the 48 vows. The 19th and 20th vows state:
(19) If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten quarters, who awaken aspiration for Enlightenment, do various meritorious deeds and sincerely desire to be born in my land, should not, at their death, see me appear before them surrounded by a multitude of sages, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment.
(20) If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten quarters who, having heard my Name, concentrate their thoughts on my land, plant roots of virtue, and sincerely transfer their merits towards my land with a desire to be born there, should not eventually fulfill their aspiration, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment.
So, taken together, the 18-20th vows cover the various interpretations of 念 we discussed above. All of them are included in Amitabha’s vows to bring across anyone who desires to be reborn there. The common theme is sincerity (至心 zhì xīn). If you look at the original Chinese text, all three include “sincerity”.
Further, when asked about how many times one should recite the nembutsu, Honen replied:1
“….believe that you can attain ojo [往生, rebirth in the Pure Land] by one repetition [of the nembutsu], and yet go on practicing it your whole life long.”
So, let’s get down to business: what is the nembutsu / niànfó ?
Based on the evidence above, I believe that the nembutsu is any of these Buddhist practices described above, taken under a sincere aspiration to be reborn in the Pure Land. It’s about bending one’s efforts and aspirations toward the Pure Land.
If you are calculating how to be reborn, or if your heart’s not 100% into it, then it may be a waste of effort.
Instead, if you feel unsure, study the Buddhist doctrines, get to know the Pure Land sutras, read about past teachers and if you feel fired up about, recite the nembutsu, or do whatever moves you. You will just know when. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it too.
Amitabha’s light shines upon all beings, like moonlight, and if you feel inspired by it, just know that you’re already halfway to the Pure Land.
Namu Amida Butsu
1 The site is long gone, sadly, but the Wayback Machine has an archive of the site. The updated Japanese-only site is here.
This is another reference post. I noticed that one of my most popular posts is the entry on a Buddhist chant called the Mantra of Light, and there’s multiple ways to read and recite it depending on what language you choose. Anyhow, it made me realize that there’s a big knowledge gap about Sanskrit in a specifically Buddhist context. There’s plenty of Sanskrit language resources out there, but they’re focused on Hinduism, and Hindu-related literature. Even the writing system used in language textbooks, Devanagari, tends to assume certain things.
Sanskrit is a language that’s used in a variety of contexts, and religious traditions, including Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism.
As a language, it is way too big to cover in this blog, and I am just a novice, but I wanted to provide some real, fundamental basics of how Sanskrit works, with an emphasis on Buddhism.
What is Sanskrit?
Sanskrit is a very old language still widely used in some contexts. It is related to Greek and Latin, among other things, but mostly as a distant cousin. The Arya people who come into northwest India spoke it natively, and then as they took over north India, they imposed their language on people there.
Just as Latin eventually morphed into languages like Spanish, French, and Italian (among others), or influenced languages such as English, German or Russian, Sanskrit followed a similar trajectory. Languages descended from Sanskrit are called Prakrits. Prakrits were the colloquial forms of Sanskrit, each with regional differences, while Sanskrit remained the “high” language, increasingly relegated to things like religious ceremonies or literature.
Why Sanskrit and Buddhism?
The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, did not use Sanskrit when teaching his disciples. His native language was probably Magadhi (still spoken today), but he often used Pāli when speaking to others since it was so widely known. Both Magadhi and Pāli are prakrits, descended from Sanskrit.
Since Pāli was such a popular language, it was how most early Buddhist sermons were memorized and passed down to future generations. Some Buddhist traditions, especially Theravada Buddhism, preserve these sermons using Pāli.
However, as Buddhism spread northward along the Silk Road, it was recorded in yet more prakrits such as Gandhari (Pakistan area), and such, not Pāli. By this point, there were Buddhist texts preserved in all sorts of local prakrits, not necessarily Pāli, and it probably became unmanageable.
The early Mahayana Buddhists started converting texts and teachings to Sanskrit instead. While Sanskrit wasn’t a common, spoken language, it was something that everyone more or less knew, just as medieval writers in Europe all knew at least some Latin. Thus as the layers of literature built up over time, and especially outside the core areas of India, it made more and more sense to just use Sanskrit for everything. Their Sanskrit wasn’t always “pure” Sanskrit, but it was good enough.
The featured image above is of the temple of Sensoji, better known as Asakusa Temple, in Tokyo, Japan. The central altar has the Sanskrit letter “sa” for satyam (truth) prominently displayed using Siddham script. Thus, even in a place like Japan, Sanskrit is still being used.
What Writing System Does Sanskrit Use?
This is a surprisingly hard question to answer. Unlike some languages, like Greek or Chinese, it had no fixed writing system. Every knew at least some Sanskrit, but everyone wrote it down in their own way. The Pillars of Ashoka used the Brahmi script to convey Buddhist teachings to the masses, while Buddhist texts on the Silk Road were often recorded in Karoshthi, and Buddhist mantras were recorded in Siddham.
So, what writing system should Sanskrit be written in? Whatever conveys it best to the reader.
For the purposes of this blog article, we’ll stick with the Roman Alphabet, with extended diacritics. For Buddhists, there is no benefit to using modern Devanagari, since early Buddhists didn’t even use it, and it’s just an extra layer to learn. Just don’t bother. The Roman Alphabet is sufficient for Western audiences.
Sanskrit Alphabet
The Sanskrit alphabet (regardless of what script you use) is broader than English because each sound has its own letter (sometimes two), and thanks to the grammarian Pāṇini, it’s all carefully organized in a sensible system.
Many of these sounds exist in English, but do not have their own letter to distinguish them; we just pronounce them automatically. Some sounds definitely do not exist in English and require extra care.
We can’t cover all these letters in detail here, especially pronunciation. There are some excellent pronunciation guides like the video series below. While it’s a Hare Krishna channel, not a Buddhist one, the explanations are excellent and clear.
A notes worth calling out here though:
ḥ – this is like a “breathy” h-sound that shows up at the end of certain words.
ṃ – although it looks like an “m”, it sounds more like an “ng” sound as in running. In the Buddhist tradition of praising the three treasures, the phrase Buddhaṃ Saranaṃ Gacchāmi, it is pronounced like “boo-dang” not “boo-dam”.
Sanskrit distinguishes between letters like k and kh, g and gh, d and dh and so on. These are separate letters in Sanskrit. Letters with an “h” are pronounced with a puff of air. Think of the English word redhead. That’s a fairly close analogy to “dh”. Similarly, egghead, for “gh”, dickhead for “kh” and so on. Not very civilized, but it works. 😆. Thus, Buddha, can be broken down to letters bu-d-dh-a, where “dh” sounds like redhead.
Side note: the ph in Sanskrit is not an “f” sound. This confused me a lot when I looked at works like “phalam” (fruit). It’s a breathier “p” sound.
ś and ṣ are both like the English sound “sh”. A common example in Buddhism is the word Śastra, which is a kind of important treatise. This is pronounced like “shastra”, not “sastra”. I am not 100% sure how ś and ṣ differ, but for practical purposes they’re more or less the same.
ñ – Just like Spanish in words like El Niño.
The letters ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh and ṇ (the ones with a dot beneath them) are extra difficult to pronounce for English speakers since we don’t really have “retroflex” sounds (sounds where the tongue touches the roof of the mouth). Thankfully these don’t come up too often in Buddhist Sanskrit.
r – a nice rolled “r” sound like in Spanish, Latin, etc, not the American “r” sound.
v – This one is confusing, but the “v” is actually pronounced like a “w” sound. The aforementioned “Bodhisattva” is correctly pronounced like “Bodhisattwa”.
This not a complete summary, but will hopefully address some pitfalls. Let’s look at vowels too.
Vowels in Sanskrit are fairly straightforward, but with a few caveats worth noting:
Sanskrit vowels are distinguished by “short” and “long” sounds. As with the consonants, each one has its own letter to distinguish it, unlike English “o” which can be pronounced multiple ways. The video series I linked above shows vowel pronunciations as well. Just remembere that long and short vowels might look similar in the Roman alphabet, but they are distinct letters.
a is the default sound that’s used when there is no other vowel explicitly used. It sounds like “uh” as in “duh” not as in “father”; that’s the letter ā instead.
Sanskrit has a vowel ṛ that doesn’t really exist in English. Imagine the English word “rip”, remove the ending “p” and roll the “r”. That’s ṛ. Even the Sanskirt word for Sanskrit, saṃskṛta, uses ṛ instead of an i. Usually in English people transliterate this as “ri” instead of “ṛ”, but be aware that this is its own vowel. Also note that r is a consonant, and ṛ is a vowel. They are not the same.
The au sound is like English “ow”, not “aw”. Imagine hitting your head on the door-frame. That’s “au”.
The ai sound like the same as “yipe!”. Imagine touching a hot pan. That’s the “ai!” sound.
A Note on Pronunciation
The reality is is that, like Latin, there are few, if any native speakers today. Many people in India, and even abroad, learn Sanskrit (and for good reason), but each person colors their Sanskrit pronunciation with their own native language. That’s ok. It’s normal. So, nobody today pronounces it perfectly.
That said, even knowing a few basics rules, like the ones I highlighted above, will go a long way to really appreciating how beautiful Sanskrit is, and when reciting Buddhist mantras or prayers, it really brings them to life. Give it a try!
But also don’t worry: the Sanskrit Police will not arrest you if you make a mistake.
Sandhi Rules
Every language has at least some rules where sounds blend together or change sightly to make things smoother. Some languages have more rules than others. Sanskrit has a lot. These are called “Sandhi” rules (the grammatical term “sandhi” even comes from Sanskrit). While Sandhi rules for Sanskrit are a huge pain to learn, they are super important for making sense of Sanskrit, including Buddhist Sanskrit. Why? Let’s look at an example below.
buddhāya – Buddha, but with a dative-case ending: to the Buddha. We’ll get to conjugation soon.
Glomming words together like this is common in Sanskrit, and the Sandhi rules help “glue” them together. Of particular note is the final aḥ in the first word, followed by a vowel. According to Sandhi rules (very handy chart here), aḥ + vowel sound changes to o. So, namaḥ + amitābha becomes namo‘mitābha. The apostrophe is a visual tool to help with readability.
For Avalokiteśvara, the famous bodhisattva, if we were to praise them, the same Sandhi rule would apply: namo‘valokiteśvara.
On the other hand, if we were to praise Śariputra, the Buddha’s important monastic disciple, then according to Sandhi rules aḥ + ś would not actually change and simply be namaḥ śariputra written as two words.
Similarly, if a bunch of Buddhas (buddhāḥ) were going somewhere (gacchanti), the Sandhi rules would simply drop the ḥ: buddhāgacchanti
Anyhow, these are pretty basic examples, but Sandhi rules get complicated, and memorizing the entire Sandhi chart isn’t necessary for most people. The important thing to understand is that when two words abut one another, the final sound of the first word, and initial sound of the second often blend together to make pronunciation smoother. Further, Sanskrit often strings multiple words together in written form.
Conjugation
If you ever dealt with noun declensions in classic languages like Latin and Greek, guess what? Sanskrit has them too. Since they are distant cousins, this isn’t really all that surprising.
Modern languages have comparatively fewer conjugations because over the centuries languages become smoother and more streamlined. Modern Indian languages based off Sanskrit such as Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali are relatively simple to learn, while Romance languages like Spanish, French and Italian are streamlined versions of Latin. In the same way, modern Greek is a simpler, more streamlined version of classic Koine Greek, which itself was a simpler, more standardized form of ancient dialects such as Homeric Greek.
Older Indo-European languages often had complicated conjugation and inflection systems, and since Sanskrit is among the oldest, it’s inflection system is quite complex.
Like every language, Sanskrit has to describe who does what to whom, and with what. Languages like English usually use prepositions like “to”, “from”, “with”, etc. Japanese and Korean uses particles. Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek use inflected endings. For example, let’s look at the word Buddha:
buddhaḥ , usually just written as buddha – this is the nominative form (e.g. “the Buddha”).
buddham, this is the accusative form (e.g. a verb does something to the Buddha)
buddhāya – this is the dative form meaning “to” or “for” someone. Or for indirect objects. (e.g. we give a direct object to the Buddha)
buddheṇa, this is the instrumental form (e.g. “with the Buddha”)
buddhe, this is the locative form (e.g. “on the Buddha”)
buddhāt, this is the ablative form (e.g. “away from the Buddha”)
And so on. You can convey a lot with inflection in just one word, but the drawback is that the rules are complicated to learn.
Further, Sanskrit divides nouns into the following declensions:
Masculine nouns with “a” endings – Buddhaḥ, bodhisattva, nṛpaḥ (king), etc.
Neuter nouns with “a” endings, satyam (truth), vanam (forest), śāstram (a Buddhist treatise)
Feminine nouns with “ā” endings – adityā (sun)
Feminine nouns with “ī” endings – bhikṣunī (a buddhist nun), nadī (river)
Masculine, neuter, and feminine “u” endings – bhikṣhu (a buddhist monk), Vasubandhu (the famous monk), dhenu (cow)
Nouns with “ṛ” endings – pitṛ (father), mātṛ (mother)
In short, it’s a lot. There are 12 different categories of noun declensions (Latin had 5, iirc, or slightly more if you count things like masculine first declension, etc).
Note that “grammatical gender” is not always the same as the actual gender of an object. It’s just how nouns are organized. The word for sun is “feminine”, but moon is “masculine”. There’s usually no logic to which gender a word fits, it is just what category it happens to fit.
Conclusion
Knowing Sanskrit is not required to be a devout Buddhist. Buddhism doesn’t really rely on the notion of a “holy language”, so Sanskrit is just as good as Pāli, which is just as good as Classical Chinese (a frequently underrated language), which is just as good as Korean, Japanese, English, French, Ukrainian, etc.
But Mahayana Buddhism does owe much to Sanskrit due to how the tradition grew and then consolidated along the Silk Road before coming to China. Thus, knowing even a little bit of Sanskrit is a really nice way to connect with the past, and appreciate what we’ve inherited thus far.
This page is pretty unpolished, and probably has a few errors, but I hope you find it useful.
Namo’mitābhabuddhāya
Edit: Somehow my blog app kept re-posting an old draft, making publishing difficult. This should all be cleaned up now, and other typos have been corrected as well.
Although I have happily taken up with a local Soto Zen group in my area, one of the first challenges I’ve noticed is that the group is probably 99% white, and have little or no knowledge of Japanese culture or language, despite the tradition they’ve inherited. This came into stark view when one the teachers, a very nice elderly man, proudly showed some Zen calligraphy that his teacher had composed for him. I could read it, but when I explained how it’s read in Japanese, he simply gave me a confused look.
Further, another peculiarity is that we almost always recite Buddhist liturgy in English. Hearing the Four Bodhisattva Vows chanted in English frankly feels a bit odd to me, though I have gotten used to it. Teachers also frequently mispronounce basic Japanese-Buddhist terms, which is a bit grating for a language student myself.
But then I started thinking about it: am I right to criticize the lack of grounded tradition, or am I just being a Japan-snob? Am I just nit-picking a bunch of minor things while ignoring the positives?
First, I admit I am a giant Buddhist-Japan nerd. I’ve devoted a significant chunk of my life to these two subjects, written more than one blog about it over the span of 15 years, read countless books and updated more than a few articles on Wikipedia. So, my perception of things may be rather skewed. It’s like one of those snobs in a sushi restaurant who insists that “it tasted better in Tokyo”. That’s me sometimes. I have to occasionally stop and remind myself “dude, you’re a huge nerd”.
Further, the Buddha in his own time, taught his disciples in the vernacular languages of the time (Pāli being a kind of lingua franca back then) and encouraged his disciples to continue teaching in whatever local languages were suitable. There was no “holy language” or “liturgical language” in the early Buddhist community. In fact the Buddhist teachings weren’t preserved in Sanskrit, by this point a literary language in India, until centuries later.
So, reciting Buddhist liturgy such as the Heart Sutra or the Four Bodhisattvas in English, even when it sounds a bit clunky, is both practical for disciples in the US, and less intimidating for new students. Expecting students especially new students, to know what Sino-Japanese (Classical Chinese preserved with Japanese pronunciation) is is admittedly unrealistic.
I suppose this is like liturgical language in Christianity. A pious person might wish to read the words of Jesus in the Bible in the original Koine Greek. A lot of Christians wouldn’t necessarily devote the time to do this, but they still go on to be pious, god-fearing Christians. Different people express their faith in different ways.
In the same way, I consider myself a pious Buddhist, so for me, studying and reciting the sutras as they are best preserved, in Classical Chinese, makes sense. Maybe it’s not for other people though. So, when you think about it, who am I judge other Buddhists based on their grasp of other languages?
Still, in spite of all this, the one thing that continues to bother me is the lack of appreciation for, and shallow understanding of, the tradition that we white Buddhists have inherited. When I read Xuanzang’s lament about the state of Buddhism in China at the time in the 8th century, and the need to go all the way India to bring more teachings and knowledge, I empathize with this.
Buddhist immigrant communities here have maintained a continuous, unbroken tradition from the beginning, passing from generation to generation, in spite of discrimination and challenges adapting to a new culture. By contrast, a lot of start-up Buddhist communities in the US feel somehow half-baked: people trying to imitate “how things are done in Asia”, but there are just some things that can’t be transmitted through books sold at Barnes and Noble. Sometimes those “cultural accretions” that white Buddhists gripe about in their quest for “pristine Buddhism” exist for perfectly good reasons, and enrich the tradition, not detract from it. The problem is when white Buddhists don’t understand something and just write it off as unnecessary. I used to do this too when I first met my wife, now I see things pretty differently.
I was prompted to write about this after an acquaintance told me recently that they used to go to the same community “for the meditation”, and had since moved on to transcendental meditation. That was disappointing thing to hear, and makes me question her motives in the first place. It’s frustrating to hear things like this.
Then again, when I am in Japan and I visit a famous historical site, knowing the history of it, and the dramatic events that happened there, and yet others shrug it off, it frustrates me too. So, sometimes I really think this is just a bunch of snobbery and all in my head.
However, setting aside my self-centered and selfish feelings on the subject, I do think that’s important to keep sharing information, translating things as best as I can, and bridging the cultural gaps. If Buddhism continues to prosper in the West, and beyond, then things will look very different from now, and hopefully more mature (not to mention diverse) too. The little seeds we plant now can have big effects for others we will never see.
P.S. The second chapter of the Lotus Sutra has a verse related to this:
[Even] If persons with confused and distracted minds should enter a memorial tower and [only] once exclaim, “Hail to the Buddha!” Then all have attained the Buddha way.
Japanese language, on its own terms, isn’t that difficult a language to learn I believe, but it does have some things that are pretty different from English, and require re-learning. One of them, surprisingly, is rhythm and lack of stress accents. I’ve talked about the “flat” sound of Japanese, but I haven’t really talked about its rhythm before.
Since Japanese is usually written using hiragana syllabary, it’s important to note that each kana “letter” is actually a self-contained syllable, and represents one “beat”. So, if you take a word like the city of Yokohama, it has four beats:
よ
こ
は
ま
Yo
ko
ha
ma
Once you grasp this concept, and get familiar with hiragana, Japanese is fairly easy to spell. However, there is one wrinkle that’s really important to pay attention to.
In Japanese the letters ō and o are not the same. They both sound like “oh”, but one of them is two beats, and the other is a single beat. In Romanization, the sound ō is actually two beats, comprising of o, followed by u “ooh”. Many words in Japanese use this combination. For example, the city of Tokyo, is actually Tōkyō. If pronounced correctly, it actually has 4 beats, not 2:
と
う
きょ
う
To
u
kyo
u
It really helps if you clap to the beat to help you adjust to this. For a native English speaker, it’s really hard to tell the difference between ō and o in conversation, but a native Japanese speaker can and does. A good example is the word ryokō (旅行, “travel”) which has both:
りょ
こ
う
ryo
ko
u
The “ryo” is pronounced as a single beat (not 2, as in English), while the kō is pronounced as two beats.
In Japanese, the ū and u, both pronounced as “ooh” as in “soup” similarly are distinguished by two beats vs. one. The word for shumi (趣味, “hobby”) has only two beats:
しゅ
み
shu
mi
But compare with shūmatsu (週末, “weekend”) which has two beats for shū (4 total):
しゅ
う
ま
つ
shu
u
ma
tsu
This is also why relying on Romanization of Japanese is a bad idea: it’s hard to convey this. IF you can read hiragana, then the pronunciation is super obvious because it’s a WYSIWYG writing system: what you see is what you get. Take this book cover for example (which I talk about in my other blog):
I’ve highlighted in green the interesting characters. The word 百 is pronounced as ひゃく which is two beats:
ひゃ
く
hya
ku
And the word 道 in this context is pronounced as しゅ (shu) which is a single beat, like English “shoe”. Romanization can convey this, but if you can read hiragana, it is just so much easier.
Slight tangent, but Korean Hangeul works much the same way: Romanization doesn’t convey the sounds very well, but like Japanese hiragana, native Hangeul is also a WYSIWYG system. My wife and I have a children’s book in Korean from a friend:
I’ve highlighted each Hangeul syllable, but as you can see, Hangeul neatly divides each syllable by blocks anyway. Thus, you can easily tell who to read each one:
선
래
동
화
seon
rae
dong
hwa
If you try to write the title in Romanized Korean: seonraedonghwa, it’s hard to distinguish syllables. Is “seon” actually “se” and “on”, or is it one syllable? If you write with spaces in between words, it’s still hard to tell what’s what.
Also, this need to learn the native script isn’t limited to Asian languages. Ukrainian is much easier to read and learn once you grasp the Cyrillic alphabet. It is a pain upfront due to overlap with English, but it also makes it much easier to read words like the surname of the current president: Зеленський. In Ukrainian, there is only one way to read/pronounce Зеленський, but in Romanized Ukrainian it is written as Zelenskyy, ZelenskyorZelenskiy. Close, but not quite. The same goes with reading Greek (both modern and ancient), and so on.
Think of learning Hiragana, Hangeul, Cyrillic, Devanagari, or Greek as a one-time investment. It seems like a hassle upfront, but once you get past that barrier, a whole new world opens up.
Anyhow, back to the original point of this post. When it comes to learning Japanese, it’s important to pay attention to rhythm, because your pronunciation will sound much better, and you’re likely to reduce your foreign “stress” accent in the process. It’s perfectly fine to have some lingering accent (that’s life as a foreigner in any country), but your ability to clearly convey what you want to say to native speakers will go a lot smoother, and be less tiring to the listener.
One of the challenges of pronouncing Ukrainian language is the pronouncing the “soft-sign” ь. It is not an independent sound, but simply softens the letter before it through a process called palatization. I’ve struggled to understand this concept even after watching some helpful Ukrainian introduction videos.1
However, it turns out that other languages use palatization, including Sanskrit. The venerable Sanskrit language has been thoroughly studied for countless centuries and has developed (similar to Latin) well-structured learning methods, both ancient and modern:
So, palatization is just a way for taking sounds like “s”, “t” and “d” and changing them like so:
An English “t” sound becomes “ch” or something similar.
An English “s” sound becomes “sh”.
An English “d” sound becomes more like a “j” sound.
An English “n” sound becomes more like “ñ” as in canyon.
And so on.
Going back to Ukrainian in particular, the sounds change like so:
Ба́тько (father) sounds roughly like “bachko”, instead of “batko” without the soft sign.
Будь ласка (please) sounds roughly like “booj laska” instead of “bood laska”.
До́нька (daughter) uses the same nasally “n” as in “canyon” rather than regular English “n”.
Similarly, the “l” sound in сіль is a softer, more nasally “l” sound.
These are explanations by a non-native Ukrainian speaker but comparing the same process with other languages, such as Sanskrit or English, hopefully will provide another way to make sense of soft signs in Ukrainian language. Enjoy!
1 I think the issue, at heart, is that Ukrainian language hasn’t been a widely studied language until very recently. People are finally taking it seriously, and that’s a good thing. I look forward to seeing Ukrainian resources increase over time, just as Japanese language resources increased and have greatly improved since my days in college.
Mantras are a strange beast within Buddhism. The tradition of mantras predates Buddhism and goes all the way back to the early “Vedic religion”, that is the ancient devotional practices around the Vedas (precursors to Hinduism as we know it), and they continue to occupy an awkward spot.
The Mantra of Light as shown in a Rinzai-Zen service book.
“Recitation” in Buddhism usually comes in the form of recitingsutras, which makes sense, because the tradition of passing down the teachings from teacher to student has existed from the beginning. Mantras do not fit this role since they are essentially obscure (not to mention mispronounced) Sanskrit phrases, with esoteric meanings. The esoteric traditions such as Vajrayana in Tibet, Shingon and Taimitsu (Tendai school) traditions in Japan all embrace them as a central practice,1 but in other non-esoteric traditions mantras are relegated to a backup “support” role, protecting the Buddhist disciple.
For example, here’s a certain mantra as found in a Rinzai Zen liturgy book I own. This is the famous Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon, 光明真言), which reads in various languages like so:
Ǎn ā mó jiā wěi lú zuǒ nǎng mó hē mǔ nà luō me nǐ bō nà me rù mó luó bō luō wà duō yě hōng
Japanese:2
オン アボキャ ベイロシャノウ マカボダラ マニ ハンドマ ジンバラ ハラバリタヤ ウン
Japanese romanization
On abokya beiroshano makabodara mani handoma jinbara harabaritaya un
Here’s an example of how it’s chanted in Japan (notice the Siddham letters, too):
What makes the Mantra of Light somewhat unusual within the world of mantras and esoteric traditions in Buddhism is how widely it’s been adopted. You will find it in many Buddhist traditions, even ones that are otherwise not interested in esoteric practices.
In fact, for a time in the late Heian Period of Japan, the Mantra of Light was propped up as a rival practice to the nembutsu in the Pure Land tradition particularly by a monk named Myoe (明恵, 1173 – 1232).
At that time, there was an existing funerary practice of scattering sand blessed by the Mantra of Light on the deceased, but Myoe tried to popularize it further by playing up its benefits in helping one to be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. This interpretation is largely Myoe’s, however.
It never quite worked as Myoe hoped, and the popularity of the nembutsu prevailed, but even today it’s common for Buddhist practitioners to chant both. I do this in my home service for example. I happen to like the Tendai-sect approach of “umbrella Buddhism” where meditation practices, Pure Land practices and esoteric practices are given roughly equal weight, with the Lotus Sutra as a kind of capstone.
Thus, reciting the nembutsu (pure land Buddhism) and the Mantra of Light (esoteric Buddhism) are both perfectly fine.3 For me at least, I chant the nembutsu for the benefit of others, and the Mantra of Light to reinforce my commitment to being a help to others (and be less of a dickhead). That may not be the correct approach, but it’s a start.
Speaking of which what does the Mantra of Light actually mean? Like all mantras, they’re infused with meaning in esoteric traditions, so a simple translation doesn’t tell the whole story. Furthermore, in esoteric traditions, mantras are supposed to be recited while visualizing a specific image and holding your hands in a specific “mudra”. This combination is thought to jar something deep inside, not at an intellectual level, but on an experiential level. Thus, the meaning of the mantra is something shared between teacher and student. So, I don’t have a good answer for this. If you really want to know, consult a trusted teacher in good-standing!
But it’s not necessary to know the exact meaning either. The act of recitation is more important, or so I have been told. So, if you chose to recite the nembutsu, Mantra of Light, both, neither, that’s fine. Buddhism has a large toolbox, so try what works, and enjoy!
1 Interestingly enough, the Japanese word “shingon” as in the Shingon school, literally just means “mantra”.
2 Mantras are usually written in Japanese using katakana, given that they’re technically foreign words, but for ease of readibility, hiragana is also used.
3 Meditation has always been my Achilles Heel, but I still meditate from time to time.
As my studies of Ukrainian continues, one pattern that definitely appears over and over is the clear presence of grammatical gender. I’ve touched on this a bit in a recent post on how it relates to classical languages, but wanted to provide more context here.
Screenshot from my Duolingo session
The concept of grammatical gender is something that’s endemic to Indo-European languages (as far as I know),1 and is not related to the actual gender of a word. In Latin, the word miles means solider and is masculine (makes sense), but the Roman legion, legiō, had a feminine grammatical gender.
Modern western European languages such as Spanish and French tend to have shed and streamlined some aspects of grammatical gender. Neuter words no longer exist, so there’s only masculine and feminine genders left. Languages like English barely have any grammatical gender at all, even though it still exists in German to some degree.
Ukrainian language keeps the three classic genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, and like Spanish, French and Latin, nouns and adjectives have to agree with case (nominative, genitive, etc), number (singular and plural) and gender.
Here are three words:
Ukrainian (Romanization)
Meaning
Gender
Кіт (kit)
A male cat (more on this later)
Masculine
машина (mashyna)
A car
Feminine
місто (misto)
A city
Neuter
As far as I can tell, there is no definitely article like “the” or “a” in Ukrainian, but let’s use the word for “my/mine” in front of these and you can see how grammatical gender:
Ukrainian (Romanization)
Meaning
Мий кіт (miy kit)
My cat
Моя машина (moya mashyna)
My car
Моє місто (moye misto)
My city
You can see how in all three cases the same word, “my”, changes according to grammar, and it’s not a small change. In the screenshot above from my Duolingo session, you can see that the adjective “older” changes the same way depending on whether it’s a sister (feminine) or brother (masculine).
Another example of gender in Ukrainian where all the words in the sentence end in “а” because the word for daughter, донька (donka), is feminine.
Further, I was surprised that there are many words for living beings that are also divided by gender. For example кіт above means “cat”, but implies a male cat. The word for a female cat is кішка (kishka). For “friend” there are separate words for a male friend (друг, “druh”) and a female friend (подруга, “podruha”). Note that these are platonic friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. There are separate words for those.
Also, from what I can tell, the plural friend has only one gender: друзі (druzi) means “friends” for example, though I am pretty fuzzy so far.
So far, I think I have only learned the nominative case (e.g. nouns as the subjects of sentences), so I suspect that these forms will also change depending on what part of the sentence a word is. This makes conjugation pretty tricky (just like Latin and Greek), but also means that you can upfront glean many details quickly once you get familiar with it.
Another example is in describing people. Ukrainian frequently identifies gender in a person through endings such as ець (ets) for masculine and ка (ka) for feminine. Thus, українець means a Ukrainian person, masculine, while українка means a Ukrainian person, feminine. Even words like “vegetarian person” have different endings: вегетаріанець (vegetarian, masculine) versus вегетаріанка (feminine).
P.S. I had my first actual conversation in Ukrainian recently, and I did a pretty lousy job. My mind blanked on words, and I mispronounced things. It’s been a long while since I learned a new language, and it’s easy to forget how little you actually know at first. But it also is a reminder to focus on fundamentals and nail those down before getting too hung up on the finer details. Easier said than done, but it’s been an interesting journey so far.
1 I have practically never seen any examples of it in languages like Japanese, Korean or Chinese or Vietnamese. Of course, there are gender-specific words, but inflections based on grammatical gender definitely do not exist. Bear in mind that the above Asian languages are in separate language families (despite being geographically next to one another).
Lately, I started taking up the Ukrainian language, which is something very outside my comfort zone. In my younger years, I’ve studied Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese for 2 years in college, and of course Japanese, so Asian languages tend to be familiar even if I am not fluent. I have also dabbled in Latin, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek over the years, but I am not particularly good at either one.1 Even so, I have zero experience with Slavic languages, so it’s been a totally new experience for me, and yet, to my surprise an oddly familiar one.
Having spent weeks on DuoLingo practicing basic, basic Ukrainian I started to notice some patterns.
For example, the phrase моя мати (moya matih) and мій кіт (miy kit). The first means “my mother” and the second means “my cat”. After a bit of sleuthing, I figured out that “my” will conjugate depending on the gramamtical gender of the noun. In this case мати is a feminine gender word, and кіт is masculine. There are “neuter” gender nouns as well.
Side note: the Ukrainian word for “samurai” is самураї (samurayi)
Grammatical gender? Ancient Greek,2 Latin, and Sanskrit all had masculine, feminine and neuter genders for nouns. Modern Western languages tended to drop the neuter gender (e.g. modern Spanish or French), but it’s fascinating to see that Ukrainian, and Russian evidentially, retain all three. You can also see grammatical gender with words like студент (“student”, male student) vs. студентка (“student”, feminine student).
But even more fascinating is that Ukrainian nouns have seven grammatical declensions:
nominative (“the student”)
genitive (“of the student”)
dative (“to or for the student”?)
accusative (“verb the student”)
instrumental (“with or by means of the student”)
locative (“on the student”?)
vocative (“hey, student!”)
Seven declensions? The only language I know that had that many was ancient Sanskrit (eight total, including ablative)! Latin had five, and Ancient Greek only had four. Adjectives also behave like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit in that they agree with the noun in case, number and gender.
I haven’t really gotten into verbs much yet, but I do notice that they inflect too, depending on who speaks it (I eat vs. you eat), so I wouldn’t be surprised if it fits a similar pattern to other European languages.
All this is to say is that Ukrainian language, and much of the eastern European Slavic language family represents a linguistic “cousin”, with fascinating relics from much earlier Indo-European languages, and yet full of innovations and adaptations as well.
1 I confess I dabble in language study a lot, but not very good at follow-through. Japanese is the only language I’ve really committed too long enough to develop any skill, but since I married into the culture, it’s been a worthwhile experience. I suppose that’s what really keeps one going: personal value in learning a language more so than just idle intellectual curiosity. On the other hand, even learning another language a little bit is a worthwhile experience. I dabbled in Korean at one point due to the KPop craze at the time, and it’s nice to still be able to real Hangeul, and to encounter the only other language I know that has any grammatical similarity to Japanese (through convergence, not genetic origin). Similarly, my time spent learning Vietnamese, which I don’t get to use much anymore, was a fascinating time when I got to study abroad in Hanoi, Vietnam. Plus it was fascinating to see how Chinese influenced Vietnamese in the same way that Chinese influenced Korean and Japanese even though they were all unrelated languages! In that sense, any foreign language study is a worthwhile investment.
2 The term “Ancient Greek” is kind of vague and nebulous. There’s Homeric Greek (e.g. the Greek of the Iliad), Classical Greek (e.g. Attic dialect), Koine Greek (e.g. the Hellenistic Period and the New Testament), Byzantine-era Greek and so on. There’s even Archaic Greek, which is poorly attested due to lack of sources. So, when people talk about “ancient Greek” it’s important to be clear which one. Greek as a language is a fascinating continuum from the archaic period all the way to modern times. One of my co-workers is Greek American and she loves to swap tips with me as she is also learning both ancient and modern Greek.
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 
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