Is Chanting the Advil of Unhappinesss?

SGI teaches us to chant for happiness. In other words, if we don’t have happiness, we should focus our chanting on getting it. Of course, if we are happy, we chant for the happiness of others, but that’s not what I’m writing about.

As anybody with any significant years knows, unhappiness is everywhere. It springs out of nowhere and grabs us when we don’t expect it. We run into it constantly. It is a part of life.

It is impossible to avoid, and so we need something to help ourselves when we meet it. Unhappiness, in its various forms of death and grief, suffering, want, and the rest, were what motivated the Buddha to devise his belief system, Buddhism, which led through a two and a half thousand year history to the founding of SGI last century. So unhappiness and chanting are intertwined. Buddha didn’t chant Nam MyoHo RenGe Kyo, as that got started with Nichiren in thirteen century Japan, but he probably chanted some mantra, as this was the Hindu tradition he grew up in. We would be chanting something else if Nichiren had been Mongolian, for example, so it likely does not make any difference what we chant, as long as it means the same thing in some language, and has the same physiological effect. Maybe someday somebody will study this and let us all know.

The point is, when we are unhappy, what should we do? Should we seek some chemical assistance, like alcohol or an illegal hallucinogen? Should we seek therapy from a licenced or unlicensed professional, or a friend? Should we seek amusement, like a comedy? Should we join a group and get our minds off it? Should we just get more rest and hope for the best? Should we just tough it out and wait for it to pass? Obviously, the unhappy person has a lot of options. Chanting Nam MyoHo RenGe Kyo is only one.

Let’s compare them. Some are distractions: drugs, alcohol, amusement, group interaction on non-related topics, rest and ignoring it. Clearly, they help pass the time, and since most unhappiness is a passing thing, they can provide a mitigation. Maybe distractions will work, and the huge number of people who use them probably means they have found some success, some relief, in doing so. This doesn’t work very well when the unhappiness is caused by a material lack, but likely better when it is caused by a life event.

Others involve reaching out to understand the cause. We can help ourselves by understanding the nature of the unhappiness and then dealing with it. We can seek counseling for this, from a bartender, a psychologist, a close friend, an intelligent advisor, a co-worker, or a SGI colleague. This is one step closer to resolving the unhappiness. This helps us figure out a course of action. Sometimes it is not needed, as the cause is obvious. You have no job. You need a job in order to pay for necessities or to provide mental satisfaction. You need to find a job. You don’t need a counselor to tell you that you need a job. The same also goes with life situations, like a death in the family. More complicated things might need some advice, like in dealing with other people.

Besides distraction and reaching out, there is doing something about it. If it is a life event, you have to do something to your own mind to improve the situation. If it is a material want, you have to do something externally, and to do that effectively, you need to make some internal decisions in your mind, resolve to follow them through, and then do it. This is where chanting excels.

Chanting focuses the mind. It clarifies thinking. It improves introspection. It quiets the noise that interferes with our thinking. It helps us put aside the internal mental obstacles that block our moving forward. It helps make connection between things we know and didn’t connect. It helps us remember things we may have forgotten or deliberately obscured. In dealing with unhappiness, it is hard to imagine a better antidote.

Thus, chanting is like an Advil for unhappiness, but not in the sense that you can take a pill and your unhappiness goes away. It is analogous in that it attacks the problem. Advil is a chemical that interferes with the pain network of neurons, and blocks them from the pain center in the brain. It allows the brain some peace and quiet, so that we can do something useful, like curing the cause of the physical pain. Chanting helps us with a more subtle kind of pain, the kind caused within our mind, by what we perceive about the world and about ourselves. It blocks the noise created by the pain of unhappiness, and helps our minds find ways to resolve the causes. So in that sense, it is much like Advil for non-physical causes of unhappiness.