Bowing for the Buddha

At the Monastic Academy, in late Spring we often held a two week long awakening period, followed by a public celebration for Vesak, the Buddhist holiday marking the Buddha’s birthday, enlightenment day, and day of final passing into nirvana. During the awakening period, our head teacher Soryu often shared some of the story of the Buddha during his nightly exhortations.

In the 12th year of training, as this awakening period progressed, Soryu shared stories of the Buddha’s life through the lens of skillful means. As the second week went on, the phases of the moon became fuller and fuller, bringing us closer to the traditional full moon anniversary of the Buddha’s birthday, day of enlightenment, and day of final passing. Every night during this retreat, after the final group chanting, Soryu stayed in the zendo with us until well past 11 pm, sitting with us as the momentum from the day and weeks built. To my knowledge, he had never sat “yaza” in the zendo with us like that before.

Finally the night of the full moon arrived. In his exhortation, Soryu vigorously encouraged us to go for it in our practice. After the exhortation, he gave interviews, and when that was done, he came back to the zendo to begin the evening chanting.

Each night at the start of this chanting, he makes prostrations to the Buddha by bowing his head all the way to the floor as the chant leader and drummer began the chant. Usually he does three prostrations.

On the night of the full moon, as we began the chant, Soryu made three prostrations, and then kept going, making prostrations all throughout the chant. As he did this, at first I was surprised and confused, then when I realized he wasn’t going to stop honoring the Buddha in this way, I became filled with immense joy.