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| Working Toward a Standard Buddhist Liturgy in English. ABC Liturgy Committee Americans, especially Protestants, are used to having a Participatory role in religious services such as reading the scriptures, leading a prayer, joining in responsive readings, singing solos, etc. and hearing a text from their scriptures expounded in a sermon. In many Asian services, there is little participation by the assembled faithful except for chanting or passive listening to the monks chant and often there is no “sermon” explaining the scripture or applying it to their daily lives- a practice most religious Americans accept as customary and appreciate. We have often found in attending services of other ethnic Buddhist traditions that we do not understand what is going on, either in terms of the language or the ritual. Frequently there is no point in the ritual where some text of the Dhamma is taken and explained in a way appropriate to the significance of the particular event, time of year, or the occasion for the ceremony. We feel that there should be regular service in which a monk, nun or Dhamma Teacher has the chance to speak on the significance of some particular text to help the faithful interpret how the Dhamma can be applied to their personal lives and in which the faithful are able to participate in a language understandable to themselves. In this issue, we propose a simple liturgy for a weekly service; in coming issues we want to propose for discussion liturgies for weddings, funerals, and other significant events in the lives of the people of key days in the Buddhist calendar. We would like to work for a flexible standardization of the liturgy so that anyone attending service anywhere in the country could feel at home, understand, and join in. We would also like to encourage the inclusion of music in Buddhist services. Music has played a very important role in the Christian tradition familiar to most Americans and it can have a powerful effect on the heart and mind. It is good for setting meditative moods, for helping to express joy in the Dhamma, and in paying respect and gratitude to the Buddha for showing us the path. If we have traditionally shown this respect by burning incense and presenting flowers, there is no reason we should not routinely add another lovely method of expressing respect. As to the music, it is obvious that most Buddhist temples and certainly the many “house” temples that about in America do not have grand organs or even pianos. But the music we are proposing need not be on that scale. The flute, a solo string instrument, even a guitar could be perfectly appropriate. A greater problem might be what music to play since there seems to be little liturgical music in Buddhism. In Korea many temples are experimenting with using familiar Christian hymn tunes with words appropriate for Buddhist services; they are also encouraging the composition of entirely new hymns and liturgical music. Either of these routes to introducing music to Buddhist services seems appropriate to us and we would be interested in sharing your experience and actual musical compositions with our readers. We would also like to have you examine the proposed liturgy and e-mail your comments and suggestions. Ideally the hymns, prelude, and postlude would be live music specifically composed for the service. If necessary, the congregation could even sing to the accompaniment of taped music if appropriate in the particular situation. The ABC would appreciate receiving recordings of appropriate music or the titles and sources of such music which could then be recommended to those who contact us and published in this journal. We would like to encourage the work of poets and musicians to produce good Buddhist hymns, even oratorios, in English and will be delighted to give credit and publicity for such works and would like to sponsor concerts of such music. Proposed Liturgy for Weekly service: Prelude |
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