Briefest Reflection On Bowing In Zen

When one receives Dharma transmission in the Japanese Soto lines among the lovely and impressive documents one gets most of the time are a pile of papers (well, in my lineage they’ve been collected into a small handwritten book) called kirigami. Mostly they’re odds and ends focused on liturgical matters. However they also include various admonitions to the new Dharma successor.

The most striking for me was the assertion that (Zen) Buddhism will last only as long (Zen) Buddhists bow.

I’m not super good at bowing.

When I was preparing for the Unitarian Universalist ministry I was required to take a battery of psychological tests. As I sat with the psychologist he pointed out how I was a “strong” personality. That is on a printout chart my various personality issues bounced along the top of that chart often touching the magical line that was considered over the psychological top. Except, however, the test for conformity. I was not to put too fine a point on it, well below the acceptable line for nonconformity. He smiled at me and observed how fortunate I was that I wasn’t aspiring to the Episcopal priesthood, because, if I were, this would be the end of the process. But, he added, for a Unitarian this suggested the strong possibility of a highly successful career.

Did I mention how I’m not super good at bowing?

And there is no Zen without bowing.

If one cannot bow, if one cannot set one’s ego to the side, if only for fractions of seconds, one will continue to stand in the way of realization.

But, there’s good news for us wherever we stand on the continuum of conformity and nonconformity. There are several ways one may bow.

In Zen mostly there are two schools of training, with considerable overlap. Each assumes zazen, but after that they are rather different approaches. Broadly speaking they are the ways of monastic or quasi-monastic training and the ways of koanic perspective, of deep inquiry.

In the monastic and quasi-monastic ways one is expected to bow to the teacher and indeed to everyone senior, which for most of their training means pretty much everyone else. I’ve heard rhapsodic accounts of people following this way describing their attention to the person of their teacher, of intimate appreciation of their body and motion, how they sat and walked and bowed, how they drank a cup of tea or worked in the garden. Followed, usually, by an attempt on the part of the student to imitate that pattern.

In Sufism something like this discipline is called fanna fi’l shaikh, finding God through attention to one’s teacher.

No doubt this can be powerful. And the potential for transformation is great doing this. That’s why it is the most common discipline in Zen Buddhism beyond the fundamental practice of zazen.

And, it is obvious, I hope, what the dangers are, both for the student and for the teacher. The drift into cult, the possibilities for idolatry on the part of both student and teacher are only a heartbeat away. And, in my experience and observation, this is as often a path to failure as success.

After a brief attempt at this way with my primary pure Soto teacher, I discovered this was not going to work for me.

Fortunately there is another way.

This one, too, is grounded in zazen.

But it is the way of sustained inquiry, it is the way of koanic investigation, it is the way of deepest not knowing.

Are you critical, suspicious and faithless? Well, this variation is for you.

Don’t believe the teacher. Don’t believe the way. Don’t believe authority of any sort.

But, sadly, also, not believing yourself.

The bumper sticker tells it like it is: Don’t believe what you think. No bigger liar than one’s ego. Sad. Sad.

On this iconoclastic way the biggest idol to knock over is one’s own.

For it to work we need two things, I suggest.

Zazen is the foundation. Gotta keep returning to the pillow. It is true people can wake up without this, but it becomes much harder, much more problematic. You don’t have to believe me when I say this, but I hope I at least plant a seed of doubt if you think you need no formal discipline.

Doubt is a good thing.

And, also there is a real place for a teacher. You don’t have to like this person. Maybe its even better if you don’t. You don’t have to think they’re competent in anything but one. If you think they can see through you at least a little and call you on your shit, then that’s the person you need. This calling can be harsh, it can be gentle; depends on how you can hear it. But, if the biggest idol in your pantheon is the one called “me,” and I’ll put money on the assertion it is, well, you need an iconoclast of some sort to let you know when you’re being an idolater, worshiping some pile of bull shit.

So, bow to that.

Here is the way of distrust.

Until you find your little distrusts tumble you into the great pit.

Of real not knowing…

Then, the heart breaks. At least I’ve found this to be so.

Then, the mind surrenders, again, perhaps only for a moment or two…

And then, the ideas of self and other are seen through as useful conventions, but not precisely the truth.

Then a rather different heaven and earth appears.

And then one finds it as easy as pie to bow.

No longer the bowing of one surrendering to another, but rather the bow of the universe to each of its parts…

That’s the bowing we’re really about.

That’s the bowing that supports the Zen way from past to present to future.