So I'm sitting out on the balcony of my Avignon apartment just now, ignoring the traffic noise, enjoying my coffee, catching up on FFL, and I catch a whiff of the smell of incense. That's odd, thought I. Incense -- and especially that brand, which I recognize -- is not all that common in France.
And then the chanting starts. It is clearly a number of male voices repetitively intoning some religious chant. And it is emanating from some apartment window near mine. That's even odder, thought I. Most of the voices are recorded, being played on a tape or CD or MP3 or something, but one voice is more variable, and I figure it belongs to the apartment owner, chanting along with the recording. At first, given what I was reading (FFL), I thought it might be Maharishi-brand Vedic chanting, and smiled at the thought that some TMer might be inadvertently living near enough to me to catch cooties from someone dangerously Off The Program. But then I recognized the chant as what it was, the Nam Myoho Renge Kyo chant of Nichiren Buddhism. Followers of this sect believe that chanting this sutra has benevolent effects, both on the chanter and on the environment. It's kind of the Nichiren version of the ME. The sutra itself even translates to "Dedication to the Mystic Law of Cause and Effect through sound or vibration." And y'know, it IS kinda soothing to have in the background. The low undertones of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo provide an interesting counterpoint to the noises of traffic rolling by and other street noises. It's almost as if these noises recede more into the background, offering your mind the choice to focus on the more pleasant chanting, and bring it to the foreground. Maybe physiologically this effect is similar to the effect of playing white noise (a complex blending of all frequencies of sound; think the hiss that used to play on your TV back when you'd get an empty screen between channels) in noisy environments. Strangely, when they do this, people in those noisy offices or factories report that the environment has gotten quieter. It hasn't; measured technically the sound levels are at pretty much the same levels as before. But our minds *perceive* it as quieter, because the addition of white noise "levels out" the total range of frequencies we're hearing. This wider range convinces the mind that it's not as "noisy" as it was before. Whatever. All I'm rappin' about is that I'm kinda enjoying it. I'm not much of a chanter. I was born without the innate sense of devotion that makes bhakti possible, and without the patience to sit and repeat something that didn't seem to be doing shit for me, so chanting was (and remains) not my cuppa tea. But it IS interesting to hear from time to time, in unexpected places, and see whether it affects my state of attention, or that of other people in the environment. I have no definitive data or conclusions to report on the subject. But this chanting from my neighbor this morning IS a treat, and I've been enjoying it, so I want to thank my neighbor for doing all the chanting stuff so I didn't have to. And for his diligence in doing so; he's been chanting for well over an hour now. Maybe I'll try chanting it inwardly myself as I walk around town today. But because of my limited amounts of patience when it comes to chanting, I'll probably shorten it to "Nam Myo Ho Ho." :-)