from South Pasadena to Ukiah, to the city of 10,000 Buddhas. It's more than 600 miles, and to get into this with another monk, actually, Morton, who's on his way, he'll be here during this. And it took over two years and nine months. And so, arriving in November of 1979, so probably nobody here in the West is more qualified to talk about prostitution now than I am. During that pilgrimage, in the end of the two years following the insurgency, we're back to total silence. So we're very fortunate that this could be helped. The journal of the pilgrimage, with one heart, down to the city of 10,000 Buddhas, it was published in nine volumes, followed by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, and also a two-volume, of course, brought to us by the Chukwudage. In addition, Reverend Hongshu's academic accomplishments

[01:10]

include, actually, we're colleagues. He's my senior at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, where we both teach. He's taught Confucian and Buddhist texts and Chinese sacred texts at Tai Chi Tuan. He's ahead of me in the History of Religions area of the doctoral program. He's getting ready to do his dissertation. I'm just nearly finished. Nearly finished. This is where I do this. I'm very happy that he's doing his dissertation on the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who is one of my favorites and not well enough appreciated anyway. In addition to all of that, and I know that Hongshu speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and also French and Japanese. And he's been very involved in interfaith activities, at the Institute for World Religions, and he's a director of the United Religions Center. Also, Reverend Hongshu is the director

[02:13]

of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, an active meditation center in Berkeley, in the tradition of the semester. And he's also very involved in the cutting edge of using computer technology for the Dharma. He's translating texts from Chinese, and he's teaching various computer technology, which I'm not qualified to even talk about. But if anybody's interested in the website that he contributes to for the Dharma Religious Association, it's www.drba.org. I'm sorry, www.drba.org. That stands for Dharma Religious Association. So thank you very much. Thank you. This is joyful

[03:16]

to be able to share something that is taking more strength than I have. I'm getting in Chapter 4 of my dissertation, in progress. And mind you, speaking with Father N, I have no lack of material. I'm not going to present you my dissertation by any means, but for me, the joyful part is to be able to be honest about the comparative aspects which were new to me for this conference. I've been focusing narrower and narrower on one aspect of Buddhist repentance, because bowing certainly is a contemplation that one makes when one bows. And so, to have an opportunity to expand, to go horizontally, and begin to learn more about other traditions' use of bowing, this is new to me. And so I'm asking for guidance and for corrections and for other leads that would increase my

[04:18]

knowledge of how bowing is done in other traditions. The topic is purely a part of contemplation, and I wanted to look at it from the Buddhist point of view. That is to say, clearly, many religions, especially ancient religions and those that tend to be Eastern or Near Eastern, teach that lowering the body parallel to the ground and emptying the mind are an important, even central, aspect of religious practice. From the epic of Gilgamesh to the Dzogchen in ancient China, Confucian-based religions, people in religion and society, both, have always bowed. This continues, nonetheless. There continues to be a curious absence of scholastic attention to bowing and genuflection in the writing of Asian religious history by Buddhologists and Sinologists. It's as if it weren't there. So we're going to talk about that in a bit. We wonder why European and American scholars of religion take so little interest in the

[05:21]

basic practice of worship rituals in Buddhism, for example. It's especially curious in that the trend of research in Buddhist studies seems to be moving towards investigating how ordinary Buddhists in medieval China actually practiced their religion, and less how an elite group believed or philosophized or ruled. For Buddhists, practice meant bowing on a daily basis. What about this? That's to kind of set up the conversation. Now, I want to go, first of all, into what's on the blackboard. And by the way, you will have a—I passed out a handout of contemplations. We're going to get to that halfway through, so please park that conveniently at hand. We heard yesterday that the Buddhists said, Do no evil. Do good. Purify your own mind. This is what all Buddhists teach. We heard that in a haole chant, actually, this morning. And here we see the Buddhist difference in our topic. Dhyana is—I don't know the diacritics, so forgive me.

[06:24]

Dhyana is the Sanskrit word which the Chinese brought forth as chán, which the Japanese pronounced as zen, and the Koreans as song. Same etymological line. Dhyana, as described by the Chan school, had two aspects. The more and more familiar terms in meditation circles, shamatha, vipashyana, right? This, even more than shamatha. Shamatha could be translated as, from the Chinese point of view, stopping. Vipashyana as contemplating. In Chinese, zhi and guan. Purity of heart would be this side of dhyana. Contemplation is this side of dhyana. But the Buddhist difference is, it's an active verb. It's not purity of heart. It's purifying the heart. Okay? So it's an ongoing process. It's important to put the gerund ending on there to get the Buddhist flavor.

[07:25]

The reason being, thoughts flow through the mind like waves on the ocean. To assume that the goal of a meditator is a state of permanent purity is to not have tried to meditate. The Buddhist method is, in fact, to fight fire with fire, to prepare for the arising of what are called false thoughts, bāngqián, delusive thoughts, and have a method ready. A broom, a vajra sword, a vacuum cleaner, whatever it might be, a hot hole, a meditation topic, to purify again and again the thoughts as they arise. You don't engage, you don't discriminate, you just dump them, as we've been hearing, dump the dust. Sweep them away. Purify the mind as you would sweep dust from your altar. One method for doing that is bāng. Bāng has been a traditional method for dumping thoughts of the mind. So in the topic, purity of heart contemplation, we have both sides of the Buddhist word bāng. Now, Buddhist jargon would call purity of heart once the slightest trace of dust has

[08:31]

been swept away as the dharmas that are unmarked, alakṣaṇa, free of marks, free of any kind of trace, any characteristic that what, that the mind can know. Nothing knowable. That would be the mind contemplating unmarked dharmas, and that's the stopping site. Marked dharmas, alakṣaṇa, would be dharmas perceived by the six senses. That would be including dharmas, thoughts cognized by the mind, while unconditioned dharmas are what, those are principles that the mind in a state of samādhi contemplates. Right? So we have this duality again. Both encompassed, contained by the word dhyāna. So a Buddhist stage, a bodhisattva would be one, ideally, who would use both marked and unmarked dharmas to fulfill his vows to rescue human beings. Unmarked dharmas are the realm of samādhi and wisdom. We use a subtle, sublime state of concentration to reflect upon those.

[09:35]

The very same mind contains them both, depending on how you use it. The Flower of the Brahman Sutra says that if there were no living beings, no bodhisattva would ever accomplish anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, right and equal proper enlightenment. So purity of heart, wisdom, sees right through the marks of living beings, sees through the five skandhas and knows them all to be empty, and doesn't attach to them. Contemplation, the other side of wisdom, will see the sameness in all living beings, and compassion comes forth, identifies with beings, and refuses to leave them. Wisdom sees the emptiness of the heart of all marked dharmas, such as wealth, sex, fame, food, sleep. Compassion employs those very same dharmas to benefit and to teach living beings. So this is the idea of dhyāna, or charm. And that's one reflection on our topic here. So where does that leave us in terms of the actual practice of the daily practice of Buddhist

[10:43]

meditation, or to talk in this conference? All religions would say, as far as I know, that pride is a defilement of the mind. Okay? We have greed, hate, and delusion. And yet the first human, those are kind of innate. They're part of being a living being. They're the definition of a living being, three poisons. And yet humanity comes forth with a self based on this. The self, reflecting on the self and kind of defining its being, can take pride, or at least reflects on this view of self, or wrong view. It takes refuge in the self, the view of self, and it reacts with pleasure, experiences a kind of a swelling, which is this arrogance that arises. And from the Buddhist point of view, it's not true seeing. It's holding the self on top. It's called a wrong view. And so this is a good reason to bow. According to whom? According to, for instance, Judaism, the Abrahamic traditions, and this is where I'm requesting

[11:50]

help, soliciting some guidance. For instance, in Islam, Islam says that prostrate is the appropriate human approach to Allah. This is good for people. This is a wholesome way for humans to come to Allah. In Judaism, we bow in order to express adoration of a sublime, creating glory. So there's another use of bowing, which is to express adoration. Humility, again, is the source, but it's going up to why we bow. It's not necessarily a lowering of this. It's an ascension, going up. So another reason why people bow in traditions is for personal practice. I know in the Eastern Orthodox, there is this practice of many, many, many bows. In Sel, in Mount Athos, for instance. Another reason why many traditions bow is repentance.

[12:52]

And we'll get to that in a bit. But, at any rate, making prostrations, the act of bowing, seems to be central to the experience of replacing the self, countering the self. Genuflection, kneeling, and bowing are both physical gestures of humility that purify the mind of this swelling of self. When you put the self down to the ground, the world takes on a different orientation. When you stand again, it's hard to be quite so tall and so central to your world. So, ancient religions seem to have an intuition about that, and prescribe bowing as the particular method for doing that. Now, that's true, especially in Buddhism. In Buddhism, we have a master, the fourth patriarch, Master Qingyao. Qingyao, his name is Chengguan. He's the fourth patriarch of the Yala Tamsika. In his commentary to that sutra, he said, We bow in respect to all Buddhas.

[13:54]

In face, face-to-face with the Buddha, the World Honored One, the Last Common, a feeling of respect comes from your heart, based on his virtue, his adornments, his wisdom, and his compassion. And that feeling travels through your body. It reaches the mouth. And you express this by bowing to every Buddha. The practice of bowing gets rid of arrogance. It transforms ego, both of which are obstacles to the Tao, to the realization of the Tao. And when respect arises, then one develops reverence, faith, the root of faith, which is called the rula, right? Shangdang is a good root in human nature, and potentially the Buddha nature. Good karma grows from that. So this is what happens when you bow, according to the fourth patriarch of the Yala Tamsika school, is you feel respect in front of the Buddha. Pride goes. Faith develops. Good roots increase. All right, so we've got traditions east and west, with one exception. I would say probably one major exception and two minor exceptions.

[14:58]

European Protestantism has questions about power. At least as it informs the scholars. That's where I noticed this. Judith Leaf said in an article, As Westerners, we tend to think of prostrating as a gesture of defeat or abasement. We think that to show someone else respect is to make ourselves less. Prostrating irritates our sense of democracy, that everyone is equal. On one hand, we want to receive the teachings. But on the other, we don't really want to bow down to anyone or anything. We're incredibly impatient and want to get to goods the sooner the better. Now, popular and scholarly literature in English on the subjects of Mahayana Buddhism, Buddhism in general, and Asian religions in larger general, has tended to focus on meditation and philosophy rather than on devotional practice. So that's kind of the context for this. That's, I think, not new. There's almost nothing in Western scholarship about obeisance, about bowing.

[16:03]

And yet the most common and pervasive Buddhist practice in Asia was and still is obeisance to the Buddha. On the negative end of the Western abhorrence of obeisance was aversion to full prostration and the implications therein that is documented in literature from the 18th, 19th century. Self-mortification, despotism, militarism, deception, slavishness, Catholics, idolaters, and dogs. All of them. All of them. This is to remind you, there are great scholars who share with you in the scholarship. This is a throw. Catch the big net here. I'm quoting Eric Reimers, someone who has informed my dissertation. And that was not my quote, mind you. I should give credit where credit's due. On the other positive end of attraction was Herbert Spencer's world. Faint echoes of obeisance, growing fainter every day, freedom industry, free market capitalism, honesty, dignity, Britain, Protestantism, perhaps even God.

[17:07]

Obeisance was the opposite of the imperial model of the victor, towering above the fallen, vanquished, which moved us across manifest destiny. So in this country, number one, we know that Buddhist practice equals sitting. That's clear. And so vowing somehow becomes un-American. Worshiping graven images is humiliating. It's unequal. It's submissive. It's cult-like. It's unsanitary. It's feminine. Careful. It's superstitious. It is mere ritual, that is to say, blind, not textual. It is a mask for the real thing, i.e., doctrine. So when scholars who are in the water of this kind of cultural bias come to look at Asian religions, particularly Buddhism, where vowing is the, I was going to say bread and butter, tofu, which is the tofu of human practice, what happens? It doesn't exist. We look right past it. All right. So who else feels that way?

[18:11]

Well, Reformed Jews feel that way, and wounded Catholics feel that way. And these are often the folks, there are a few nods here, these are often the folks who come to the door of a Zen center or a Chinese Buddhist monastery, people who have said, I got enough of that there, and I'm looking for something different. Don't ask me about it. Now, Jews, Reformed Jews, another story. I have here quotations from the Mishneh Torah, Chapter 5, by Moses Maimonides, on the varieties of vowing, and how important it is to get them just right. So for Maimonides, in Egypt, vowing is very, very important. I have the rubrics for the higher or mass, which describes exactly when one genuflects, and how important it is to do that right, and when one prostrates. And so I mean, this is certainly not, this ignorance or disdain for lowering the body in worship, or in shame and repentance, is not completely across Europe.

[19:18]

It seems to be focused in this Protestant tradition, and also in Reformed Judaism, and also in folks for whom they associate vowing with Catholicism. So the interesting thing is, it seems that European Protestant Reformed scholars have carried their quarrel with Rome into their study of Asian religions. There seems to be some sort of rejection onto Asian religions as being papist. Iconoclasts, right? These are the iconoclasts who say, it's not in that image. It's not in that person. It has to be in the text. OK. So that's one point here. Let me move on. John Ryan, Reverend John Ryan's discussion on Irish Catholic asceticism

[20:20]

was fascinating, how monks of Ireland, especially the monks of Ireland, specialized in ascetic vigor, which included vowing and genuflection. There were phenomenal numbers during prayer, the number of vows that one would do. He says, in the past, the Desert Fathers of Egypt practiced vowing as mortification. And I would love to know more about that if anyone can come forward. As well as to praise the Lord. So different purposes for vowing. Certainly St. Francis of Assisi's humility brought him close to the ground. He wanted to be naked as he died. He was laid on the ground with the portiuncula, naked. To be closer to the ground. As his spirit returned to the Creator. A lot on Judaism. Moving on here. So, Islam, the salat, or ritual prayer of divine service, is an expression of humility, which translated from the root of sal, which means to bow, to bend, and to stretch. So it's loud and strong. Now, I was very interested in reading Norman Fisher's article in Tricycle Magazine

[21:27]

about vowing in Buddhism. And some people might say that American Zen was the most Protestant among Buddhists. Why? Maybe of necessity. And it seems to me that Norman Fisher Roshi's version of vowing showed an interesting tension with Suzuki Roshi's article on vowing in Tricycle Magazine three years earlier. It's well known that Suzuki Roshi, when he got to the Zen center, ordinarily in Japan, as in the Chinese tradition, you bow three times before you begin any ceremony. Maybe Zazen. In American, in Rinzai Zen, you do three bows. Suzuki Roshi got to America and said, Nine bows. These Americans need to bow more. So he increased it to nine. And, let me, let's see, I want to quote Norman with your permission here.

[22:31]

He said, people come with the idea that Zen is beyond words and letters, beyond religion, beyond rules, beyond piety. The idea of such a thoroughgoing and outrageous display of what seems like religious fervor seems quite disturbing to them. So what Norman did is to bring the Buddha down, quoting Suzuki Roshi, or Katagiri Roshi, I believe, Katagiri Roshi was saying, in fact, it's just the Buddha bowing to you. One bow, back and forth. And Americans can do that. Because it's not up, it's not vertical, it's horizontal. I think that's probably upaya. That's probably the only way you can get the reformed Hindus, the Hindu Catholics, the iconoclast Protestants to actually do that. So, we need to talk more about that. Then, Norman goes on to say,

[23:31]

he witnessed Katagiri Roshi bowing. He said he wondered the verse when he bowed, and when asked about it, the answer was that Katagiri Roshi said it was Japanese. And you give a paraphrase, which I leaped at, leapt at, when I saw it. Because why? Because it's exactly the contemplation verse that we use when we bow. I'd like to refer people to this, if you will. This is how Mahayana Buddhists bow. And, if we, in Chinese it goes, nang li, across the top, horizontally left to right, nang li, suo li, xin kong ji, gang yin dao jiao, nang si yi, by this time you're halfway down the bow, going down. You recite this as you bow, wo ci dao chang, lu di zhu, mo lo, and then you add the Buddha's name, whoever the sage you're bowing to at that point, Shakyamuni Buddha, Vairochana Buddha, Avalokiteshvara, your teacher,

[24:33]

mo lo, ru lai, yu xian zhou, wo sheng, yu xian, ru lai qian, tou mian, jie zu, gui ding li. It goes like this, the worshipper, nang li, that who is able to bow, suo li, that whom I bow to, xin kong ji, by nature is empty and still, by their very nature, in their nature, gang yin dao jiao, the response, and the dao, this is the character for tiao, diao, the dao, the way, the path, intertwined, nang si yi, hard to think of, hard to conceive, wo ci dao chang, this my dao chang, bodhimanda, way place is down below, I've got it translated as bodhimanda in Sanskrit, where way place, some people are not happy with that translation, it means the place of practice. Ru di zhu is like a pearl in Indra's net. People are familiar with the analogy of Indra's net, this net that is in front of Shakra Devananda Indra's palace, in the heaven of the 33, where every net, every interstices in the net

[25:36]

has a perfect pearl. Now each pearl reflects the totality of all the pearls. Likewise, the pearl itself is translucent, transparent, so through that pearl, you can see reflected each and every pearl, and all the pearls are gathered back in to a single pearl. And of course the analogy is the roundness and the perfection of the Buddha nature, and the totality of the interrelatedness. So, wo ci dao chang, this bodhimanda of mine is like one of Indra's pearls, the pearl of Indra's net. And, now, this is where it gets interesting. The Buddha, and I say such and such, mo mo in Chinese, you add the Buddha's name at that point, or the sage that you're bowing to, to Tathagata, thus come one, by response, by reflection, yin xian zhong, he appears within. So you contemplate. This is the second side. You contemplate that image in the pearl that you place in your bodhimanda,

[26:37]

which is your body as you bow. Okay, that's the first step. So we're, this is a contemplation that's building up. Next, you visualize your body in front of that sage, Buddha, Bodhisattva, worthy's body. You bow to him, and you visualize this. You make the thought. With my head to his feet, I return my life to worship. And then what, by this time you're on the ground, you stand back up, and it's gone. You don't want to attach to that. It's a mental yoga. It's a visualization, an exercise. Now, the interesting part, this is the standard bowing contemplation, and normally, I respectfully submit that maybe that's the category sensitivity. Sounds pretty close. And I think we can confer that. We can talk about that. The English translation seems fairly different in the last lines. The last lines.

[27:39]

There are two ways to do it. But I'm sure there's no doubt that the Japanese verse was based on this one. They may have changed it or lost or gained something in translation, but there's no doubt it's based on this. There are two ways depending on how you're doing, who you're bowing to, the last line. But it's just, it's my head to his feet, or I return my life to worship, or bowing to, you know, bowing limitlessly throughout the Dharma realm, how it goes. Now, let's go back up to the top of that. The worshipper and the worshipped by nature, empty and still. We have subject and object. One bowing and the one bowed to. Why? It's a contemplation. This is a deliberate false thought. This is not purifying the nature. You pose a thought. The idea being fighting fire with fire. One thought reduces the many thoughts, the myriad thoughts, that the Buddha gave us. Subject and object. The nature here means Buddha nature. Empty and still refers to the doctrine of anatta, right? Not self. These are the three Dharma seals,

[28:41]

dukkha, anatta, and nidja, right? The unsatisfactory, inherently unsatisfying, and then not self, and then transient and permanent. The Tao and the response intertwine. Tao here, way, refers to the same word. It's a happy cognate for Taoism, but not to be confused with that. Tao appears throughout. Tao is very much part of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism. So here, it's the same. Mahayana in Chinese translates marga, path, right? With the word Tao, and it's applied throughout the cosmology of Buddhist cosmology. So you have a Buddhist Tao, fo Tao. You have the bodhisattva's path, pusa Tao. You have the solitary Buddha, the pacceka Tao, and the sound hears Tao, and so forth. It's also the fourth of the four noble truths, marga, right? The same Tao. Response. Response refers to changes that take place when somebody cultivates the Tao,

[29:41]

according to the Dharma, the Buddha's instructions. Transformations occur when you cultivate, and the changes surpass speech and logical thought. That's why it's, in ways, inconceivable. The very functions of conceptualizing and language are the functions that transform in this process. You let them go, so it's as hard to conceive of. I talked about the bodhimanda. Shakyamuni Buddha appears within, or I have here, Vairoshana, Tathagata, appears within. You can alternate the sage that you're bowing to. It's very flexible, so you can apply this, now in contemplation, to whoever you visualize. And my body appears before the dust-cum-winds. So at this point, it's interactive. This is what I think is interesting, that you actually see your body bowing. It's a two-step visualization. I'm translating from my dissertation, the Avatamsaka Repentance, the Hwayang Chan, and it goes progressively, it goes exponentially larger.

[30:42]

You see yourself bowing to Buddhas in number like tiny motes of dust throughout the entire cosmos, throughout the dharma realm. And each and every one of those motes of dust has a Buddha in your body bowing in front of each Buddha. Your body contains limitlessly numbers, limitless numbers of Buddhas, each with your body bowing in front of them. So bit by bit, bit by bit, that view of self gets replaced by this more powerful, as your contemplation muscles grow. And so the view of self is placed by this practice of contemplation, which in turn becomes purifying one. So the practice of bowing is both shamatha and vipassana. Here, there's a contemplation. The point of it is to get rid of that coat of paint on the mirror self that's so hard to get rid of. And we do it by progressively bowing with the proper contemplation. So very powerful, and not to be confused with zazen.

[31:44]

That is to say, bowing is just sitting, right? Which is an expedient to get the Americans to come in and sit with the bowing. This is its own dharma. Now, let me tell a story at this point. It's really clear that the resistance to bowing is something learned, something taught. I had the experience of, on this bowing program in Los Angeles, we were going past Lincoln Heights High School. Lincoln Heights is in South Central L.A., and it's a gang school, it's a very tough neighborhood. And our lay people were saying, better change the rule. Don't bow out of it. Don't, you won't do it.

[32:47]

If you can avoid it, then make sure you're not there at 3.15, when school lets up. Okay, okay, we'll try our best. Either I'll speed up or so. And so, sure enough, round to the corner, had to take a detour for street repair. They were repairing, you know, had to go around, we wound up directly in front of Lincoln Heights High School at 3.15. Ring! The bell went sounding. I'm bowing in front without silence, and Hung Chow, Marty, who'll be soon bowing behind me. And in about 30 seconds, we were surrounded by a gang of very interested high school kids. Huh. What are you doing, man? Hey, where did you get those Converse tennis shoes, Mom? I never owned one of those. Maybe I could have yours. Ha, ha, ha. No.

[33:47]

So, we start throwing things across the construction site. Chunks of rock start coming. Maybe one of the biggest girls. Hey, quit that throwing. They're doing no harm. You quit that. Well, they're weird. She says, what are you doing, Mom? So, Marty, we had this thing prepared. Pilgrimage for world peace in San Francisco. Y'all going to San Francisco like that? Ha, ha, ha. What's wrong with you, man? Ha, ha, ha. And so, the cars started. By this time, they'd gotten to the cars, and the cars were zooming up over the curb. And it was like a chicken, how close they could come, you know, zooming along. And so, I really wanted to turn around, and I was thinking, well, I could run, but I probably couldn't run fast enough, and that wouldn't be deportment anyway. And Marty told me later, he's a martial artist. He has a black belt in tai chi. He was thinking, well, I could probably just pick up Hong Shiro's arm

[34:49]

and take off down the road, but those weren't our instructions, so we just thought, better be sincere. So, driving along, I realized, halfway down the block, that there was more noise. And I got to the corner, and there was a red light, so I could have actually, I had an excuse to stand up and straighten my robe, and look back, and there were 30 high school students in line, bowing. Oh, all down in line, just going up, snickering. Oh, that's good, I'm going to try it. One says, hey, I'm a monk. He says, not by a long shot. So, we got, we just kept on bowing, nothing happened, and bit by bit, after about half an hour, the last ones disappeared. And then, at the end of the day, we'd gone about our average mile, and three of the biggest guys came up, kind of, long as you're in our territory,

[35:50]

you have nothing to worry about, we'll take care of you, you're all right.

[35:53]

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