Prostrations #1

by Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Why do we do Prostrations?

1 - The Purification of Pride

First of all, we should know why we do prostrations. We do not do them to endear ourselves to somebody else. We do not do them for the Buddha. Such concepts are completely wrong. The Buddha is not a god of this world. We bow down to purify all situations from the past where we did not respect others. Being interested in our own satisfaction and ourselves we did many negative actions.
Prostrations help us realize that there is something more meaningful than ourselves. In this way we purify the pride that we have accumulated through countless lifetimes thinking: "I am right," "I am better than others," or "I am the most important one." During countless lifetimes we have developed pride that is the cause of our actions and have accumulated the karma that is a source of our suffering and problems. The goal of prostrations is to purify this karma and to change our mind set. Prostrations help us rely on something more meaningful than our pride and ego clinging. In this way, through full confidence and devotion, we get rid of everything we have gathered because of pride.

2 - The Purification of Body, Speech, and Mind

When we do prostrations we act on the level of body, speech, and mind. The result of doing them is a very powerful and thorough purification. This practice dissolves all impurities, regardless of their kind, because they were all accumulated through our body, speech, and mind. Prostrations purify on all three levels. Through the physical aspect of prostrating we purify our body. We offer our body to the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and to all sentient beings, wishing that all their wishes are fulfilled. Through the repetition of the refuge mantra and the meaning we ascribe to it, we purify our speech. Through confidence in the Three Jewels we develop enlightened attitude and devotion. As we are aware of the perfect qualities of the refuge and offer everything to it, the veils in our minds dissolve. When our body, speech, and mind are being purified we realize that what we initially thought of as our body is actually a manifestation of enlightenment as active compassion. What we initially thought of as our speech is the expression of enlightenment on the level of joy; our mind is the truth level of enlightenment. We are able to see the enlightened reality of our body, speech, and mind - their full of wisdom truth that we initially were not aware of. We realize that this practice can lead us to our goal, enlightenment, because the three levels expressing the state of a Buddha appear immediately after the three levels of our existence - body, speech, and mind - are purified. We do not have to look for enlightenment anywhere else. We do not have to chase any perfect realizations. The three levels of enlightenment are true inherent qualities of our own body, speech, and mind. We did not see it before. Prostrations help us discover it.

3 - Physical Benefits of Prostrations

Prostrations strongly influence the balance and harmony in our body. Blocks in its energy channels gradually dissolve. This helps us avoid diseases, lack of energy, and other problems. Our mind becomes clearer. Our ability to understand increases.

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