How To Practice ZenProstrations
Riding the Ox Home
Mounting the Ox, slowly
I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones
through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats
the pulsating harmony,
I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody
will join me.
The picture called "Riding The Ox Home" is subtitled: "Great joy." This is the stage of where zazen has become the central focus of the practitioner's experience and great joy wells up from within. The Ox is ours, and we are riding it home.
Gratitude sets in.
A diligent prostration practice lowers the mast of ego. However, a belief in an independent self still remains. Prostrations will not dissolve that belief, but they will make the goal of self improvement finally disappear.
An authentic prostration practice dissolves the last remnants of seeking enlightenment. It brings us the peace of not striving towards a goal. Enlightenment is always beyond the grasp of those who seek it. Prostrations help us to stop grasping.
Enlightenment appears like a thief in the night, unsummoned and unannounced. When the Christ said he would appear like a thief in the night, he was talking about enlightenment. The second coming of Christ has occurred many times in the past two thousand years; whenever a sentient being wakes up, that is the second coming.
When the goal of enlightenment and the independent self that attains that goal are both forgotten, the Christ, the Buddha, True Nature appears.
We should build up our prostration practice at our own pace. We can start with three to twelve prostrations a day and gradually build up to 108 per day. We may even do one set of 108 prostrations in the morning and another set at night. Some people go on retreats and do prostrations all day long.
Most Chinese practice centers promote the practice of performing 88 prostrations at a time; the number 108 apparently derives from Hindu sources and is the number of prostrations performed in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The Chinese, of course, consider 8 to be a lucky number, as the world learned when they began the Beijing Olympics at 8 minutes after 8 o'clock on 08/08/08.
For inspiration, let's read Heng Sure and Heng Chau, News From True Cultivators: Letters to the Venerable Abbot Hua, (Burlingame, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1983). That book will inspire almost everyone who reads it to start and maintain a prostration practice.
If prostrations make us feel sick or physically upset in any way, we should not do them or at least not exceed the number we feel comfortable with. If we can only do three prostrations per day, we do them slowly and mindfully. That will be better then running through 88 or 108 in an athletic manner.
A single mindful prostration exceeds in value a countless number of mindless prostrations.
A young monk once asked his teacher: "When will I have performed enough prostrations?" The teacher replied: "When you have performed enough prostrations, you will know."
We begin standing erect, facing a Buddha statue if available, or just empty space if we prefer. We can use a yoga or pilates mat, or just a towel on a carpet. We squat down and place our hands in front of us, preferably one hand at a time, and then rock forward so that our knees are on the floor. Our left hand is on the mat in front of our left knee and our right hand is on the mat in front of our right knee, palms down. Our hands may be further apart than our knees and our hands may be just a few inches in front of our knees. We bend our elbows and lower our head to the floor or mat, touching our forehead. With our neck muscles now supporting our torso, we lift our hands, move them forward, turn the palms up and shift the torso weight back to our arms. We lift both palms together about six inches or so, hold them there for a moment, and return them to the floor, still palms up, pausing a moment just above the floor before putting them down. Then we turn both palms back to the floor and return to a standing posture. We may visualize when lifting the hands that we are lifting the Buddha or the Buddhadharma.
The Chinese version differs from the Japanese version just described in that instead of lifting the hands when the palms are turned up, the hands remain down, the fingers are closed to form a fist, re-opened, and then the hands are turned palms down for returning to the standing posture.
Flexible people can drop to their knees before placing their hands in front of them, and they can rock back to a standing position after completing the prostration without using their hands to push up from the floor.
Here is a short YouTube video demonstrating three prostrations.
Are we bowing to the Buddha when we perform prostrations? No, we are bowing to our inner Buddha nature, our original self. There is no one "out there." The infinite Buddha is us, always has been, always will be because there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.
There is no independent self, no other, no time, no space, no sun, no universe, no life, no death. Empty your cup if you believe otherwise.
As Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy so accurately observed, all thoughts of health and sickness, God on the one hand and self on the other, are merely "mortal thoughts," the thoughts of the deluded. How could we, on the one hand, bow to the Buddha on the other? The concept of bowing to some external agent is a deluded thought. There are no two things.
The belief that there are two things is a mortal thought. How could there be a savior out there, separate and apart from us? Mary Baker Eddy, like the Buddha, had the insight that there are no seams in reality. So did Meister Eckhart who said: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."
Performing prostrations also increases our sense of gratitude for the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. Here is the greatest story ever told about gratitude:
In the eighteenth century, a samurai warrior was determined to bring all of Japan under his control. Assembling an army of like-minded ruffians, he attacked his first town and slaughtered the inhabitants without mercy. “When people see how ruthless I am,” he predicted, “they will stop resisting my advance and I will be the Emperor above all.”
A few people escaped from the destroyed town and warned the people in the next town down the road that a warrior who lacked mercy was approaching. The people of that town fled and the warrior was quite pleased when he learned that they had done so. “My strategy of putting all who resist me to the sword is working,” he smiled.
One day, however, his scouts did not make the usual report. Instead, they said: “The next town has been evacuated, Your Highness, thereby coming under your control and expanding yet further your majestic empire. However, there is one old Zen monk who declined to leave his monastery when we warned him of your approach.”
This infuriated the warrior. “How dare an old man resist me! I will teach him a lesson.” He stormed into the monastery, saw the monk sitting on the floor in the lotus position, pulled out his sword and roared: “Don’t you know who I am?” The old monk responded by saying: “Sorry, sir, but I do not know who you are.”
Brandishing his sword, the warrior said, with pride: “I am the one who could run you through, and think nothing of it.” To this the old monk responded: “Pleased to meet you. And I am the one who could be run through and think nothing of it.”
This reply so astonished the warrior that he sheathed his sword and said: “To face me so fearlessly, to be so unafraid of my sword, you indeed are a better man than I am. I see that you are a monk, a holy man. Teach me about heaven and hell. I have heard of these things but I never received an education on these matters.”
“I do not teach dogs or swine such as yourself,” replied the monk, without looking up.
Needless to say, the warrior was incensed by that answer and quickly retrieved his sword. Trembling with anger, he raised it high over his head, the better to decapitate the monk with a single stroke.
“That is hell,” said the monk.
“What did you say?” inquired the warrior. “This is hell? This anger? This hatred?” “Yes,” affirmed the monk.
“I see,” said the warrior. “Oh! I understand! This desire to kill, this feeling that comes with wanting to kill someone! So that’s hell! It’s such a terrible feeling! As I prepared to bring my sword down on your neck, I felt so bad! My rage made me truly miserable.”
“You did teach me! I have learned what hell is! Thank you kind sir for this lesson. Thank you, Thank you!”
And the old monk looked up and said: “And that’s heaven.”
I first ran across that delightful (even if apocryphal) story in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the cite for which is Paul Reps, and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, A collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings (Boston, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957).
The warrior emptied his cup, repented of his war-loving ways, and became a disciple of the monk who could be run through and think nothing of it - legend says it was Master Hakuin.
If we haven't yet committed to memory Master Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen, let's do it now.
We will move on to Step Six only when our prostration practice has produced in us such feelings of profound gratitude. By then, we will have forgotten the Ox, the goal that was being pursued. There is no goal to pursue; we have lacked nothing from the very beginning.
We have to do prostrations until we realize the truth of that statement. And then we will increase our prostrations both in quantity and quality.
What is there outside us? What is there we lack? Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes. This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land, and this very body the body of Buddha.
There is no place to go, no thing to do, no goal to reach. Awakening is the realization that there is no one to awake, no one to fear being run through.
Intermediate Zen
Intermediate practitioners perform fifty four prostrations per day.
Advanced Zen
Advanced practitioners perform a full set of one hundred eight prostrations per day.
Chinese Pure Land Monks typically perform 500 prostrations per day.
Step Six: Buddha Name Recitations