Thank you for those lines. Highly appreciated.
To the rest:
I would think that the same applies to Christianity. The knowledge of what theological writings or their authors had to say is more than superficial.
On the other hand, staying with practical congregational experience, I would not necessarily assume that the language in which prayer or song is recited necessarily needs to be understood by the word. It is not very relevant in moments of congregational singing in a church or chapel to be carried through an event, I am speaking here of funeral ceremonies or the important holidays, for example. We adults are quick to forget the children, who only exert their intellect long after they have already had the mystical experience of what it feels like to hear a congregation chanting.
Chantings, monastic choirs, folklore (lullabies, for example, that stir something deep within you), are of an artistic musical nature, they allow intuitive access and I would even say they are suitable for wanting to engage with an understanding of the world in a theoretical spiritual way. If the singing was there first (without the words being understood), there is the possibility of also becoming interested in the scholastic background. If only scholasticism dominates, it is bad for practice.
The Buddhists who have the Buddha Dharma Sangha have understood, in my view, that not everyone can have an academic, intellectual and scholastic background, and that the "common people" can be quite content with what the monasteries or spiritual centres offer them in terms of a spiritual experience through chanting or reciting, without seeing themselves as knowing in a docile but just in an unscholarly existence.
However, I would immediately agree if it is not the un-worded spirit that flows through one when reciting or chanting Latin or Pali, but the whole affair becomes a dull and automatic one without experiencing the depth in it.
When I was a kid, I came in touch with it and the singing spoke a lot more to me than any command my mother gave me. So I admired her when she was singing, and I detested her when she was preaching.
Just on one point, this is where what one may perceive as "chanting" is not prayers at all - much of the time they are recitations of the visualisations they are doing as part of a meditation. Hence, not understanding the words is a huge handicap!
I have seen English translations tried, but somehow they need more work to make the tones, rhythms and words align. No doubt similar experiences took place in going from Sanskrit to Pali to Tibetan etc - even more so into Chinese and Japanese. There is also a visual aspect to this whereby traditional representations of "deities" (archetypes) do not elicit the same emotional states for Westerners. All of this takes time and an assimilation so that something like Buddhism is no longer seen as purely Asian.
BTW this iconographic syncretism already took place many centuries ago in Gandhara.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandharan_Buddhism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
Sadly, the texts tended to travel eastwards rather than to the west - then again, the entrenched western monotheisms would prove hard to destroy. This is what happens when rampant fideism prevails = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan.
Please, explain. Not sure how to interpret it. I read the wiki entry but as there is much content, I don't know to what specifically you are referring to.
I agree with this to the extent that if no one from the community of those gathered knows the meaning of what is recited or the words and mantras chanted, the rest of the people gathered cannot be grasped by the spirit behind it. It always takes a few to sustain that spirit. Where those who are unlearned in the theological or scholastic contemplations, though, want to be learners and get the meaning, the whole congregational affair can continue at a high level. Where there is no scholar and practitioner of the doctrine within that group, whatever depth of meaning there is is lost. This is clearly noticeable when one goes to services where such things have been lost. In contrast to the congregations, where it is not. All it takes is ten people out of a hundred who are able to hit the tune, to bring the rest of those gathered together into an authentic mood. Instead of developing into an automatic and meaningless repetition of terms.
Agree. Also, assimilation of what is seen as purely Christian could take place.