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January 16, 2017 By Admin

Significance of Beads in Spiritual & Religious Practices

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.

  1. 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.
  2. Muslims use their misbaha/masbaha, tasbih, subha  beads – usually 99 or 33 beads.
  3. Hindus (from 500 BCE) use mala beads – usually 108 (the cosmos) or 27 beads.
  4. Buddhists (mala) for 108 worldly desires, and Sikhs have generally maintained the Hindu “counts.”
  5. Baha’i uses beads – usually 19 or 99 + 5 beads.
  6. Orthodox Jews, use tassels tallit or tzitzits (Moses – to remember the commandments of god).
  7. 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.
  8. 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:

  1. To maintain your counting in prayers practices – in praising the object of your beliefs;
  2. To confirm your level of dedicated practice by repetitions;
  3. To deepen your personal belief by mantra-like or out loud speaking;
  4. To enhance your level of faith by deeper and deeper contemplations about your beliefs; and,
  5. 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:

  1. Enhanced learning in frontal and prefrontal areas by verbal/cognitive repetitions;
  2. Temporal area strengthening by hearing the words you are saying either to yourself or out loud;
  3. 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;
  4. 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;
  5. 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,
  6. 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, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

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June 18, 2016 By Admin

Two Brief Mindfulness-Based Contemplations

Mindfulness Based Contemplations

Best to practice both of these contemplations using the lectio divina method, that is each time you MindfulHappiness_lectio-divinacontemplate the content of the two messages concentrate a bit more, go a bit deeper into your mind. Concentrate! Concentrate! Concentrate! Go deeper into your mind to discover your answers.

Contemplation 1 – Who Am I?

If I am NOT my thoughts, my breath, my body, my sensations, my emotions, my sensory awarenesses, my intuition, my joys and sorrows,  and ALL of my memories – then, WHO AM I?  Contemplate this question deeply and repeatedly until you come up with an insightful and personally meaningful answer.
Write your answers down.

MindfulHappiness-contemplations

Contemplation 2 – Buddhism, A Universal Philosophy of Life or a Religion?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, in Coming to Our Senses, defined practically the more universal meanings of  mindfulness and dharma.  His comments suggested that both were about the deeper functioning of people, especially the quality of attention and experience in suffering and happiness.  The core important variable was one’s personal relationship with the outcomes of the experiences. He also suggested that if we desire more and more people to benefit from mindfulness and it’s Buddhist dharma, we Buddhists may have reconsider our strong attachments to Buddhism as religion.

Read this statement a few times, and then write your response/reaction to it in the space below. Contemplate deeply exactly what the meaning of the statement is for YOU. Personalize it!

Write your answers down.

For more information refer to Shambhala Sun (November, 2015), pp. 11-12 and Kabat-Zinn, J. ( 2005). Coming to Our Senses…New York: Hyperion.

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By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

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Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Benefits of Mindfulness, Buddhism, Contemplative Practices, Featured, Meditation, Meditation Activities, MIndfulness, MIndfulness Activities, Mindfulness Training, Training Tagged With: CONTEMPLATIONS, DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, MINDFULNESS

November 11, 2014 By Admin

Contemplative Practices of the Skillful True Self

Contemplative Practices – Affirmative Self-Inquiry

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Contemplation and affirmative self-inquiry may be helpful in improving your awareness of your better parts of self – your positive strengths and traits.  Our self-critical mind often causes us to spend far too much time on critical, negative thinking about ourselves and about others.  The practice below may be helpful to you in shifting your mind to a happier, more productive, positive stance.  This approach combines some of the processes found in adaptive lectio divina, contemplative inquiry, and appreciative inquiry.  Some aspects of these approaches to creative cognitive processes have ancient roots.

Simply follow the steps below.

Step One) Simply sit in mild meditation.  If you are not a meditation practitioner, simply sit quietly with a cup of tea and look out a window or look at a neural object in your home.   Just sit!  Relax!  Notice! Do your best to stay focused on an object of meditation (your breath or object at home) or the scene outside your window.  Do your best NOT to evaluate anything.  Remain in the present moment of just sitting.  Simply rest.

Step Two) Within your deeper, meditative state simply ask yourself (inquire) WHAT is your most positive, meaningful trait as a person.  Do your best NOT to be too perfectionistic OR too devaluing in this inquiry.  Find the middle way – What is your most positive or most meaningful strengths or trait?

Answer here:_____________________________________________________________

Step Three) Repeat step two.

Answer here:______________________________________________________________

Step Four) Contemplate when, where, why and how this positive trait activates itself in you.  Are there any patterns?  If so, what is the pattern?

Answer here:____________________________________________________________________________

Step Five) Focus on your innermost feelings when this strength activities in you. What is that feeling?

Answer here:____________

Step Six) Going deeper into yourself in a meditative state, what is your most important, meaningful strength as a person?

Answer here:

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Step Seven)  Simply sit in the feelings of joy with the reality of having that strength.  Allow!

Step Eight)   Stop!  If you keep a journal, write a statement in your journal about this personal experience of positive inquiry.

Note: This inquiry contemplation may also be done in dyads or with a significant other.  One person thinks and speaks; the other person listens (no comments).  Then switch roles.

For more information refer to Appreciative Inquiry into Organizational Life: Toward a Theory of Social Innovation.  

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

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Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Contemplative Practices, Featured, Meditation, Meditation Activities Tagged With: ACTIVITY, ADVANCED MEDITATION PRACTICE, CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES, DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, PRACTICE

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