Buddhist chanting is the vocal recitation of sacred texts, verses of homage, and the names or mantras of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and it runs through every school of the tradition. In Theravada communities monks and laity chant paritta, protective discourses drawn from the Pali canon, at blessings, funerals and times of danger; in East Asia the recitation of a buddha's name, above all Amitabha's, is itself a path of practice; in Tibetan practice the chanting of mantras and liturgies fills the daily office.
The activity is understood in several registers at once: as devotion, as the memorising and transmission of scripture in traditions that were long oral, as a means of concentrating the mind, and, in the paritta and Pure Land cases, as generating merit and protection. The sound, cadence and even the liturgical language (often a Pali, Sanskrit or Chinese not spoken conversationally) are themselves treated as carrying value.