Will We End Up Like the Sorceress? Making Sense of Rituals, Mahayana Buddhism, and the Pali Canon

In my previous post on the Maṅgulitthi Sutta, we looked at a rather sobering story. We learned that the Buddha didn’t encourage rituals or fortune-telling to solve daily problems. In fact, the professional sorceress in the story—who made a living selling rituals and exploiting people’s anxieties—ended up reborn in a lowly realm, constantly tormented by scavenging birds.

Naturally, that post may leave some readers feeling a little unsettled. Some may wonder: Wait a minute. If the Buddha of the Pali Canon taught absolute self-reliance and steered clear of rituals, what do we make of Sanskrit Mahayana sutras?

After all, the Mahayana traditions are full of rituals! In the Medicine Buddha Sutra, there are rituals for binding and ransoming yaksha generals. In a Tara Puja, we chant verses asking Tara to grant wishes and protect us from disasters.

So, does this mean anyone practicing these rituals is heading straight for the same grim fate as the sorceress? Should we avoid them entirely? Is the Buddha contradicting himself?

Let’s take a breath, unpack this together, and look at why I believe we are entirely fine—and why the Buddha isn’t actually contradicting himself at all.

The Danger is in the Motive, Not the Movement

First off, will practicing a Mahayana ritual turn you into Maṅgulitthi? I think we are completely fine as long as we aren’t making a dishonest living through exploitation.

In the Pali Canon, the problem wasn’t simply that the sorceress was waving her hands or reciting words. The core issue was intent and livelihood. She was running a spiritual scam, preying on people’s fears for personal profit and keeping them hooked on superstition.

When a modern practitioner lights a candle, chants a mantra, or does a Tara Puja with a good heart—seeking to cultivate compassion, steady the mind, or dedicate merit to all suffering beings—the internal psychology is completely different. As my guru always emphasizes: everything is a creation of our mind. The exact same outward action can be a trap of greed or a tool of awakening, depending entirely on what’s happening in your heart.

Why Does Mahayana Have So Many Rituals?

If the historical Buddha taught a clean, no-nonsense path of personal moral responsibility and meditation, why are the Mahayana scriptures packed with deities, mantras, and colorful rituals?

To understand this, we have to look at human nature and history.

Let’s be honest: if a group of monks insists on a hyper-austere, intellectual approach and doesn’t care whether anyone understands them, the preservation of the text might be safe, but their reach will be tiny. The boat is simply too small.

Human beings are naturally wired to look for comfort when life hurts. If someone is drowning in grief, poverty, or fear, and you tell them to sit down and study non-self or meditate quietly, they’ll probably tune out. But if you tell them a story of a compassionate Buddha who can help anchor their mind, or give them a structured ritual to focus on, they listen.

In ancient times—and even today—moral and psychological teachings were often packaged inside tales of paradise, protection, and miraculous intervention. It’s just like telling stories to children: instead of giving them a dry lecture on ethics, you wrap the lesson in an engaging narrative to help them embrace the principle.

The Brilliant Psychology of Ritual

Beyond spreading the Dharma to a wider audience, rituals serve a deeply practical psychological purpose.

Sometimes, life hits us with challenges so heavy that we feel completely lost. The unfairness of society can make us angry, and panic can lock up our rational thinking. In those moments of acute crisis, telling someone to “use logic” can feel impossible.

This is where a ritual acts as a brilliant, compassionate “trick” for the mind. If you give a desperate person a mantra to chant with absolute concentration, you give their overwhelmed nervous system a safe container. Instead of spiraling into panic, their mind calms down. In that brief moment of clarity and stillness brought on by deep focus, a real solution to their problem can finally bubble up.

For that person in distress, it feels like Tara or the Buddha answered their prayer. But structurally? It was the calming of their own mind because suddenly there is hope, even if that hope is built upon an unseen being.

The Bottom Line

I don’t believe a fully awakened Buddha teaches confusion, because confusion is the exact opposite of the Dharma.

Instead, what we see across different Buddhist traditions is skillful means (upāya). The Pali teachings lay out the clean blueprint of self-reliance and the Eightfold Path. The Mahayana teachings expanded the toolset, offering rich, devotional methods to catch the hearts of people who needed a different kind of entry point.

So, don’t worry. Enjoy your practices, keep your motivation kind and selfless, and remember that whether you are sitting quietly on a meditation cushion or reciting a mantra with devotion, the goal is simply to soften the heart, clear the mind, and be a good human being.

May all be well and happy.