Beads: Significance in Spiritual and Religious Practices
The significance of religious and spiritual practices in the world is enormous. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist practitioners make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. The CIA estimates are that Christians (33%), Muslims (23%), Hindus (14%) and Buddhist (7%) make up the majority of religious followers. Atheists and non-religious believers make up only 12% of the world’s population. About 11% of the world’s population practices other spiritual and religious traditions. ALL of the major spiritual and religious traditions have used beads in their practices. Below I have listed some details about the nature of spiritual/religious beads used by major groups. As you will see the use of beads in spiritual and religious practices is very common.
- Roman Catholics use rosary beads (from rose petal “beads” in the rose garden or rosarium) – usually 54 + 5 beads. When beads are used to recite 150 psalms, they are 150 beads long and called patermasters.
- Muslims use their misbaha/masbaha, tasbih, subha beads – usually 99 or 33 beads.
- Hindus (from 500 BCE) use mala beads – usually 108 (the cosmos) or 27 beads.
- Buddhists (mala) for 108 worldly desires, and Sikhs have generally maintained the Hindu “counts.”
- Baha’i uses beads – usually 19 or 99 + 5 beads.
- Orthodox Jews, use tassels tallit or tzitzits (Moses – to remember the commandments of god).
- Ortodox Greek and Russian Christians use knots as beads – Greek prayer ropes are called kombologian, and Russian prayer ropes are called chotki – Greek knots are 33, 50 and 100 while Russian knots are 33, 100, and 500.
- African Masai, Native American, and Greek and Russian Orthodoxy also use beads.
So why use beads in spiritual and religious prayer practices? There are many, many reasons why beads are used in these spiritual traditions. However, I will note just a few. Here are some reasons. Beads are used:
- To maintain your counting in prayers practices – in praising the object of your beliefs;
- To confirm your level of dedicated practice by repetitions;
- To deepen your personal belief by mantra-like or out loud speaking;
- To enhance your level of faith by deeper and deeper contemplations about your beliefs; and,
- To deepen practice by repeated, deeper contemplations (called lectio divina ) in Catholicism.
Here are some other reasons why beads are used. These reasons deal more with contemporary neuroscience research than with ancient and current religious practices. These are:
- Enhanced learning in frontal and prefrontal areas by verbal/cognitive repetitions;
- Temporal area strengthening by hearing the words you are saying either to yourself or out loud;
- Multi-sensory applications to bead mantra work – using fingertips (huge representation in the brain) to touch beads as you repeat verbal statements over and over again;
- Multi-sensory applications open up pathways for brain plasticity, so your brain changes over time to make your religious practices and beliefs stronger and stronger over time;
- Possible multi-sensory brain coherence – lighting up neurons across various brain regions in your practices, which allows even more powerful plasticity to occur about your practices and beliefs; and,
- Ritualize the spiritual or religious practices, thus making the objects of practice more sacred.
So, now you have some information about why beads are so, so common in spiritual and religious practices. This same information is the basis for use of beads in contemporary spiritual practices without religious connections.
For more information refer to Dorff, V. (2014). The Little Book About Big Things: World Religion. New York, NY: Fall River Press. See also www.dharmabeads.net for more information. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont
Author of Mindful Happiness
I genuinely enjoy examining on this website , it holds great blog posts.
It is appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I have read this post and if I could I desire to suggest you few interesting things or advice. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I wish to read even more things about it!
Woh I enjoy your articles, saved to bookmarks! .
I am often to blogging and i really appreciate your content. The article has really peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your site and keep checking for new information.
There is obviously a bundle to realize about this. I suppose you made certain good points in features also.
I have recently started a blog, the info you provide on this website has helped me greatly. Thank you for all of your time & work.
Thanx for the effort, keep up the good work Great work, I am going to start a small Blog Engine course work using your site I hope you enjoy blogging with the popular BlogEngine.net.Thethoughts you express are really awesome. Hope you will right some more posts.
Thank you for some other excellent article. The place else may anybody get that type of info in such an ideal method of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I am at the look for such information.
It’s hard to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
Thank you so much for giving everyone such a special possiblity to discover important secrets from this site. It is always very sweet and as well , jam-packed with a good time for me personally and my office friends to visit your website at minimum thrice per week to find out the fresh guidance you have got. Of course, I’m so certainly pleased for the tremendous guidelines you serve. Certain 1 points on this page are absolutely the very best we’ve ever had.
Hi my friend! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include approximately all important infos. I’d like to see more posts like this.
Dead composed subject matter, Really enjoyed examining.
Wow, amazing weblog format! How long have you been running a blog for? you make blogging look easy. The entire look of your site is wonderful, as smartly as the content material!
What i don’t realize is if truth be told how you’re now not actually much more well-favored than you might be now. You’re so intelligent. You realize thus considerably in the case of this subject, produced me individually consider it from a lot of various angles. Its like women and men don’t seem to be fascinated unless it’s one thing to accomplish with Woman gaga! Your own stuffs excellent. All the time maintain it up!
Thanks for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our local library but I think I learned more clear from this post. I’m very glad to see such fantastic info being shared freely out there.
hello!,I like your writing very much! share we communicate more about your article on AOL? I need an expert on this area to solve my problem. May be that’s you! Looking forward to see you.
Sweet blog! I found it while surfing around on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Thanks
Everything is very open and very clear explanation of issues. was truly information. Your website is very useful. Thanks for sharing.