Three hours. Ten hours. We called it a "toso," a full day or evening of chanting. I used to participate in "million daimoku" campaigns, which amounted to hundreds of hours of chanting within a prescribed period of no more than three months.

I used to swear by it. When I needed a "benefit" or "breakthrough," I chanted obsessively. The group in which I practiced at the time applauded such an approach to Buddhist practice, hosting group chant-a-thons for specific purposes, such as the defeat of a rival sect.

Looking back, I am horrified. I feel that such practice is rooted in ignorance.
One of my current dharma friends likens such "hammering" daimoku to sending repeated e-mails to someone. As she explains, you write an e-mail and you send it. If there's no response after a week or so, you might want to follow up with another message or pick up the phone. But you don't keep sending and sending the same thing thousands of times until there's a response.

This analogy applies to prayers, such as wishing to connect with a romantic partner or find a job. There has to be some trust that what we long for in life is trying to find us as much as we are trying to find it. Heartfelt prayers are not forgotten or mis-delivered. To chant for hours and hours obsessively about such things demonstrates a lack of trust in the immediate interconnection of everything, and a lack of trust that one is always in the right place at the right time.

Nichiren wrote that while he was exiled on Sado Island, he chanted and recited the Lotus Sutra ceaselessly. His modern day followers often assume that this is a model for modern practice as well. Perhaps if we truly were exiles in such precarious circumstances with no social support and no visible means of sustenance -- in other words, an extreme crisis -- perhaps ceaseless chanting would be the appropriate response.

Today, surrounded as most of us are by family and friends, demands and responsibilities, "ceaseless chanting" can easily become a mere distraction or avoidance strategy more than a survival necessity. By chanting for three hours a night, we may feel that we are "creating fortune." We feel that we have accomplished something. But if one's family, friends or obligations are neglected, what's the value? Does obsessive practice truly create more value in life than, say, chanting for ten minutes then going off to night school or sitting down to write the novel you keep putting off?

Nichiren extolled the incalculable benefit of chanting Namu-myoho-renge-kyo even once, and of merely hearing it chanted. To suggest that one must chant for hours to obtain benefit is to overlook this important aspect of Nichiren's teachings.

I have one friend who chanted for a rich husband. Within only a few months, she met a wealthy doctor and they married very soon after. She stopped chanting. They have lived as happily ever after as any other couple I know. I asked, "If the practice worked so well, why did you stop?" She said, "My prayer was answered. Why would I keep asking?"

Dearest, because there is so much to pray about, I might have responded. Who am I to judge the prayers of another, though?

Another dear dharma friend advised, "Chant until you can smile." If one must use some sort of yardstick for how much daimoku is enough for one sitting, this is a sensible one. Even so, there is no magic formula for how much to chant each day or week. It is up to each of us to find what feels right.

I would caution all chanters about practicing in an obsessive way, always in crisis mode. Try if you can for a few days to concentrate all the intention and enthusiasm of your hour of daimoku into one, single intonation of Namu-myoho-renge-kyo. Sometimes less is more.