This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center, on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. My name is Charlie, and today we have the children with us. And... I'm going to start by talking about something that this person said 800 years ago. And we think he's, the Zen people think he's kind of great. His name is Dogen. And my wife's Dharma name is Dogen. Sometimes people get them confused. And she gave the talk here last month. Anyway, Dogen said... that as long as there's a certain thing in the world, the way of awakening will flourish.

[01:04]

So as long as there's this one thing in the world, the way of awakening, the life of true happiness and true love will flourish in this world. And so, you know, what is that one thing? I think if you gave Zen people a test, saying, like, what, you know, when there's blank in the world, the Buddha way will flourish. What did Dogen say? A lot of people might say meditation. And some people might say love. There's many things you could say. You could say wearing black robes. Or... having Dharma talks. But Dogen didn't say those things. What he said was bowing. So there was once a young Zen monk and he was kind of full of himself.

[02:20]

He was very sharp and he quickly had a deep insight. And he was told, you know, well, yeah, you're doing pretty good, but you should go see this old master who lives in the mountains. And so this young monk made this long journey into the mountains. And he finally found his way to this old master who was in a kind of just a simple temple. And all this guy was doing was just bowing over and over again. And the young monk was pretty disappointed. And he said, what are you doing, old man? This isn't Zen. And then he thought, well, I have come a long way. So he asked him, is there something you can tell me about enlightenment? And the old man looked at him and he smiled and he said nothing.

[03:23]

And then he just went back to bowing. And at that time, that young monk understood something he did not understand before. And he started bowing right alongside the old master. And he couldn't say what he understood, but he bowed for the rest of his life. He did other things, but he never stopped bowing. So when we bow, we put our palms together and we lower our head. And this is Jizo. Jizo is a being of great awakening. And Jizo is particularly known for understanding children and protecting children. And so if you'd like, we could offer a bow to Jizo right now. I have to kind of go this way.

[04:25]

We don't bow like this. So we bow to awakening. And we also, we bow to each other. Sometimes when we're training, we bow to each other every time we meet each other. So now, if you'd like, you could bow to your neighbors. And... And the kind of question I leave you with is, is bowing to the Buddha and bowing to your neighbor the same or different or both? So thank you very much for coming. And I bow to you. I bow to you as the same as Buddha and as different from Buddha.

[05:30]

So please have a wonderful morning. I got you! I can't... I'm not... So, I can't do that. I'm ready to talk about everybody who wishes to make a forward.

[06:45]

The first time I sat Zazen was at San Francisco Zen Center in August of 1991. And I made it through the 40 minutes, which was a challenge. And then everybody stood up and kind of lined up. And this wasn't mentioned in the Zazen instruction I attended. And so I was kind of curious, like, well, what's going on here? And I didn't see any kind of way to leave. So I just lined up two. And then there was some bells. And then everyone was just putting their heads on the floor and doing full prostrations. And this was a big surprise to me. And I was kind of shocked. And not what I expected. And this kind of like, putting the head on the floor felt like kind of worshipful and kind of dualistic.

[08:31]

Like I was kind of submitting myself or lowering myself to some higher something. But I was doing them anyway, but I was uncomfortable. And I continued to go to Zazen and continued to do these uncomfortable prostrations. And I... And part of the reason was actually I'd kind of come to Zen. I had this very, very clear thing happen to me at that time, which was I needed to put myself into a tradition. Like I'd been making my own kind of religion to that point and my own kind of spirituality of kind of picking and choosing things I liked. And then it became kind of apparent that I was just going to replicate my own underlying delusion by doing that. And I kind of had this feeling like I'm like in an Escher drawing and going up the steps that don't go anywhere. And so I did these frustrations because I was like, let's try this.

[09:37]

Let's try the Zen package. Let's try the whole thing. And, you know, eventually, you know, I kind of continued with my doubt and my question about prostrations, eventually I came to love them. Love ga sho, love a bow, love a full prostration. So Dogen, founder of Soto Zen in Japan, of our tradition, he said, when there's bowing in this world, the Buddha way flourishes. When there's no bowing in this world, the Buddha way perishes. So for Dogen, bowing and the life of awakening are intimately tied together. Bowing is vital to actualizing awakening in this world, in our lives together, in our lives with all beings.

[10:40]

And Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, he said, bowing is very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow even in your last moment. And in our practice, prostrations do not embody submission, but deep respect or aspiration or vow. So we bow to what we aspire to become. you know, when we bow to Buddha. And bowing, it expresses respect and homage and reverence. Sometimes a bow can be sometimes a way that we do a request. Sometimes it's an expression of gratitude.

[11:43]

Sometimes it enacts humility. Sometimes it performs repentance. Sometimes it embodies hierarchy. And sometimes it embodies equality or communion or intimate meeting. We sometimes feel that real expression is that we feel something here like gratitude, and then we, from that kind of authentic feeling, say thank you. And if we don't feel gratitude and we say thank you, it's not real. It's just kind of being polite. It's not really sincere. And there's a kind of value in that, actually, of kind of... putting our inner feelings as being more real than our embodied physical activity.

[12:53]

And it's a kind of dichotomy of body and mind, or inner and outer, that I offer we should question. And we can wonder if our feeling is somehow more real than what we do in the world. And we can wonder also, Are they separate? And if they're not separate, how can one be more real or authentic than the other? And so I would offer in our practice, you know, sometimes we could say that mind leads body. Or like we have a feeling and then we express it. We have gratitude and then we bow. But sometimes body leads mind. Sometimes we do something and then we feel it. Sometimes we bow and then there's gratitude or devotion or oneness or a vow.

[13:55]

And so what we do can open and cultivate and shape and deepen what we feel, just as what we feel opens, cultivates, shapes what we do. And this mutual turning is a process. of integration and transformation. We have a teaching text we call the Jewomir Samadhi, and that says, the meaning is not in the words, but it responds to the inquiring impulse. So the meaning lives with this inquiring impulse, or the engagement we bring. to this moment or this activity. So before we sit or before we bow, somebody might try to tell us what the meaning is, what's gonna happen, what is it really about to sit or to bow?

[15:02]

But the meaning's not in anything anybody could say. The meaning happens when our engagement meets the activity. when we sit, when we bow. And so our practice, we have these forms that are leading us to wholeheartedness, to being completely here, totally being our life. And so our sitting practice and our practice of bowing, all of our practices, we don't look at these as things we do when we have a certain feeling and we don't really look at them as things to do to get a certain feeling. They're just the total presence of our life, which includes feeling and whatever else is happening.

[16:07]

And there's a description for how to sit There's like a how-to of how to sit. There's a how to bow. But that under-determines the performance, under-determines what happens when this body, this person, in this moment, does the bow, goes to sit. And the performance under-determines the meaning, how it actually lives for us. ultimate truth is not a static thing. It's alive. It's alive with this moment. It's alive with our relationship to the world. So it's not like something we get. It's something we live with moment by moment forever. So we have this gasho.

[17:20]

Gasho means join palms. And this is, we say, a mudra, hand posture, hand position, a gesture. And this is all Buddhist traditions. And then other traditions, they have this basic mudra. In some ways, it's the most fundamental mudra of Buddhism. And we can look at this as an expression of awakening. as a path to awakening. It arises from hearts living and encountering with ultimate truth. And, you know, just to put the palms together, it expresses, like, can express respect or to honor, offer, give. And in our practice, I think we feel like we feel we often feel, I think, collected by this. Bringing ourself together, we're bringing our mind and our body and our heart right here.

[18:23]

And it kind of invites us to be awake and alert. And it's also, in our ritual practice, like our ritual of opening this talk, We put our hands in Gosho whenever we do something with our words. So a performative speech. So a vow is to do something with our words. We're not really describing something. It's not really saying something that's true or false. We're vowing. Vowing to taste the truth of the Thetagata's words. Vowing to save all beings. And so we have this thing we do with our body to help. bring our whole being to bear on this action. So I feel like when I put my hands together, my heart kind of goes out here.

[19:31]

And then bowing, it's sort of like offered up, given away. So our kind of simple bow is like... Sometimes we say a standing bow, but we can also do it while sitting, but just a bend at the waist and the head lowers. And this can be kind of a, it can be kind of a communication and also a communion. And we use this bow, we use it to say hello and goodbye and thank you and I'm sorry. And it also, it includes a kind of ungraspable mutual acknowledgement. And so when we bow to each other, we reshape the space between us. So there's a space, it separates us and it connects us. And we're kind of swimming in it, in our mutuality.

[20:38]

And a bow is a way of changing the quality of the space between us. And our hearts can meet across this space. And we give each other a gift. A gift of acknowledgement and recognition. Sometimes we feel like, I don't know if I have anything to give. We can always give a bow. can give our joint palms and give our heart. And just a bow can be a profoundly intimate thing. So we also have, you know, shaking hands or a hug, and those have touch. And touch is kind of, you know, very powerful and important. But the intimacy we enact through a ga sho, it can actually be deeper, I think, because it can go to the heart of what we are.

[21:41]

It pertains to our whole being, and it actually includes everything. And then we also have full prostrations, or sometimes we say a deep bow, or we all say five-limbed prostration, like the knees go down, forearms go down, head touches the earth. And then we say we're receiving the Buddha's feet on our hands. We raise our hands a little bit. And the Japanese is rai hai. And this is what Dogen actually, this is what he said when he's talking about this, when there's bowing in the world, the Buddha way flourishes. He was talking about full prostrations in this case. And part of, I think, what can be powerful and problematic about bowing is there's a vertical distinction that's created.

[22:51]

We're lowering our head down to the ground. We're actually raising up Buddha's feet above our head. And so we can experience this as a kind of self-debasement. like we're devaluing ourselves or making ourselves small or lowering ourselves. And so sometimes we hear, well, we're not lowering ourselves, but our pride and our arrogance. We're not lowering any part of ourselves or we're lowering you know, any part of ourselves that feels it's above others or some others. Or we're kind of lowering or releasing some sense that we're separate. And, you know, we might look at this as kind of a difference between humiliation and humility.

[24:00]

So humiliation, we're made to feel small. We feel... or we hate ourselves, and it's painful, we're diminished. Whereas humility, I think humility is not painful and not self-loathing or self-diminishing. When we're humble, we're accepting, and we're actually open to a larger sense of ourselves and the world. And we're not kind of puffed up with self-importance, which means that we're actually more relational, more human, more in touch, more vulnerable, and more empathic, more responsive, more engaged, and compassionate. We might also say when we're lowering our delusion, our greed, hate, and delusion, our self-hate, our self-judgment, all of our mental afflictions.

[25:15]

And then also just to say that this lowering is not disrespectful. So when we practice letting go, it's gentle. it's kind, it's respectful. If letting go is not kind and gentle, it's actually, it's not letting go. It's a kind of, it's another kind of grasping. It's another way of holding on. So this, our real letting go is filled with respect. And so, you know, if in bowing, we're letting go, we're also honoring the power and the depth of suffering and the ancient twisted karmic history of what we're letting go of. And so we have this spirit then of how we understand this lowering I would offer as being kind of a respectful process of letting go.

[26:27]

But this This vertical distinction has its own kind of life, you know, and it's kind of like a cross-cultural metaphor for power relations. I think that, and that's part of the reason, I think, why bowing has this kind of primal elemental power that's carried for thousands of years across many cultures. So it can invoke this kind of human tendency to feel like some people are up here and some people are down here. And in relation to this cultural context, I'm thinking about the treatment and genocide of indigenous peoples, our long history of

[27:35]

slavery and racism, white superiority, white privilege, and patriarchy and misogyny, discrimination based on sexual orientation or class or ability, and other realms and dimensions of oppression. And how this interacts then with this practice of bowing. So on one hand, as a white person, as a man, I have this role or this position in societal structures that gives me unearned privilege and power. And so for me, bowing can be a way of letting go of that, of relinquishing that, which I would say could be really positive, a good thing to do. But as a person...

[28:37]

by these structures bowing could be experienced as enacting them or reinforcing them so I feel like when we offer this practice when we invite each other to do this practice that we're willing to also engage with the challenges of how bowing feels when we first come to practice and to be open to the paths that we each have to take through this practice. And that these kind of cultural, interpersonal forms of suffering are partially going to be worked out in a relationship, in conversation. And I also bring this up in part because I feel like it can be hard to acknowledge the privileged position.

[29:56]

It's easy to acknowledge responsibility for things that we consciously did, I think. Well, relatively easy. But it's harder to take responsibility for a kind of power and privilege that's been kind of just given to us by virtue of our position in a societal structure. And that kind of obscuring of responsibility is part of what maintains the unjust structure. So to learn to see how, to start learning how to acknowledge this and take responsibility and then actively join a process of transformation and justice. So one of Suzuki Roshi's teachers, Kishizawa Ian Roshi, he was asked, how low one's head should be in bowing to the floor?

[31:03]

And he said, well, the forehead should touch the floor. And then he also said, I'd like to bow even lower, but the floor stops me. And... And I really appreciate this. And I think it speaks to something about our urge, actually, that we have a bow of gratitude, a bow of respect or aspiration or oneness. And wanting to bow even lower is like our urge for it. We want to bring this gratitude in the world in ever deeper, more thorough ways. And that actually our gratitude is boundless. Our respect and our humility and our aspiration are boundless.

[32:07]

Our true nature is boundless. So I hear that. that urge for our boundless true nature to be actualized in a boundless way in what he's saying. At the bottom of a prostration, our heart is over our head. Our head touches the ground We can let our dualistic ideas roll off into the earth. And then when we bow, we're not over here bowing down to Buddha over there. Shinra Yu Suzuki also said, Buddha bows to Buddha and you bow to yourself.

[33:15]

This is the true bow. So a Buddha on the altar is a mirror. It's a mirror to reflect our true nature. And our true nature is non-dual, so it's a non-dual mirror. The Jewel Mirror Samadhi says it's like A jewel mirror, form and reflection behold each other. You are not it, but it actually is you. So you are not it, but it is you. That's sort of like a reflection in the mirror. It's us. It's not us. We're Buddha. We're not Buddha. When we bow to a Buddha, we're not exactly bowing to ourself, or we're not bowing to the self that feels it's separate.

[34:23]

The me or the self that experiences itself as separate is not it. It actually is the me or the self or the us that happens with everything. It's not separate. It's life is in total relationships. And so then when we have a mirror, we can bow, and Buddha bows to Buddha. Awakening bows to awakening. And awakening bows to awakening is how awakening comes to live in our lives, through our lives, through our bodies, our activity in the world. And so when we're bowing, if we hold back from the bow, awakening may seem to hold back from us.

[35:27]

If we push forward into the bow, awakening may seem to push back on us. So what is it to just totally bow? Without holding back, without pushing forward, without resistance, without trying to get something out of it? So this is like a wholehearted bow to mention a teaching from the Avantam Sakha Sutra, the Flower Adornment Sutra, the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra talks about the practice of bowing. He said, bowing with this body is bowing with all beings. When we bow, we bow with all the bodies in the universe. Bowing to Buddha pervades all activities throughout space and time.

[36:29]

It's bowing to all Buddhas, to Buddhas pervading space and time, to Buddhas as numerous as atoms in the universe and each atom of the universe. So this is, I see this as like bowing as a boundless enactment of emptiness, actualizing emptiness. And then he says, you know, that that that actualization deepens our engagement with the bowing. It's a circular, open-ended practice, activity, and actualization. Dogen, this quote from Dogen about bowing and the Buddha way flourishing in the world, it's from a writing on Dharani. A dharani is an incantation or a spell, you could say, but kind of magic words or syllables that usually don't have semantic content, or if they do, they have an efficacy apart from that.

[37:48]

Their main purpose is not to convey meaning, but their sounds have a power, and you might say their power has been They've been empowered by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. A special efficacy. And Dogen talks about bowing as a Durrani, which, as far as I know, is pretty unusual. But you could look at bowing. We could imagine various meanings of bowing. but to actually just do bowing has its own efficacy. And we could say it's been empowered by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. We could also say it's been empowered by everyone who's ever bowed. And we don't often associate bowing in Zen, but actually Zen is, there's lots of bowing in Zen stories. Lots of wonderful bows, lots of amazing moments finished with and then

[38:55]

he bowed, or she bowed. And these may all kind of be part of our practice of bowing. And Dogen also says to thoroughly investigate this Durrani, thoroughly investigate bowing. Bowing, actually, for Dogen, bowing pervades all of our activities. You bow while you lie down or while you have a meal. You bow while you use the toilet. You bow beyond the wall or beyond mountains and rivers. You bow beyond eons or the coming and going of birth and death. You bow beyond enlightenment and nirvana. So when we wholeheartedly bow, Buddha bows to Buddha.

[40:07]

Awakening bows to awakening and the universe bows to the universe. And this is awakening, investigating awakening and actualizing awakening. And there's no end to this. And also in a bow, in bringing our hands together, there's not even the slightest turning away from our life, our pain and our messy truths, our unresolved stuff. It's all welcome and included. And we honor all of our stuff as the ground of our practice. So a bow can hold everything.

[41:10]

Our life can pour through a bow. A whole universe can pour through a bow. In relation to recent events, there are a lot of survivors of sexual assault in pain right now. and survivors of sexual harassment, survivors of diminishment and dehumanization. And I would say this pain can pour through a bow. However we relate to this pain, it can pour through a bow. And that a bow is a way to acknowledge it, and a bow is a way to restore and find a resolve. to keep working for change. So our whole life and the whole universe can pour through a bow and through Zazen, through our sitting practice too.

[42:20]

The Zazen and bowing can illuminate each other. They can deepen each other and reflect each other. stillness and movement. Bowing has its source and its fruition in a resonance. And it's not a resonance we can grasp, but we can take care of it. the resounding of awakening with awakening. We can care for it with bowing, with zazen, with all our forms of practice, with an ethical life, generosity, patience, endurance, wisdom, compassion.

[43:29]

And as we care for this resonance, nourishes us. Our practice of bowing and zazen, these are not separate from our activity in the world. A small act of kindness enacts inconceivable awakening. our ungraspable relatedness is expressed right there. It actually has bottomless depths. And these depths, this resonance, this is nourishing. It's nourishing for us to be in touch with this. It's nourishing to us, nourishing to kindness, nourishing to others, and nourishing to beneficial activity in this world.

[44:35]

So, I just wanted to talk about bowing today as this traditional practice we have to care for and be nourished by the bottomless depths of our life. So, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:29]

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