Prostrations. Buddhist head banging?

So another thing that we did a lot of during the retreat and is now part of my daily practice is prostrations. Its somewhat traditional to do 108 prostrations in the morning, or derivatives of 108 (54, 27 etc). Doing prostrations can be physically difficult, especially if you are out of shape, have bad knees, or don't enjoy doing a ton of squat thrusts. I am starting to get through this better since I have been working up to doing 108 every morning. I started doing 27, then 54 and then made the jump to 108. I have been able to keep this up now for a few weeks, maybe skipping a day here or there, but for the most part, I do them.

So, what they hell is a prostration? Why do this?

It throws off a lot of people I can tell you when they come to visit the temple. I have heard more college students say or ask this after visiting as part of a religions class visit: "Are you worshiping? Worshiping idols? Bowing and worshiping false idols? Are you IDOL worshipers?"

So, first, I have to say, so what if we are (we are not, but I will get there)? I think it is funny that people see what we do, immediately make the jump to compare to their belief or religion and then get offended or upset. You are visiting what we do, this isn't a satan rally. Second of all - we are not worshiping a statue of Buddha when we do prostrations. Its more like bowing, shaking hands, smiling - all forms of polite respect. We are paying respect to the concepts and teachings the Buddha represents. Its a humbling gesture, like bowing your head lower then a senior person. We do prostrations to our teacher when he visits. The action is generally misunderstood, since we don't know how to be humble in this country. We are too often running around with our foam fingers up high, instead of knocking ourselves down a bit. Humility is important, how else will you ever learn anything if you think you are the smartest person in the room, or the world?


When people take the precepts in our order, they are expected to do 3,000 prostrations prior to the event. These can be broken up, 50 day for so many months, etc. Its a sign of commitment and respect to what you are about to undertake. Some orders do many more, up to 10,000 in the Tibetan groups.

We did 108 on Saturday morning before the precept takers arrived. On Sunday, after morning worship (there is that word again) the clergy did 108. Well, the precept takers were supposed to do 108 as well that morning, so some of us did them again with them! So we did 216 prostrations that morning, within about 45 minutes. When I took my precepts the first time, we did 324 the night before. It was tough to walk the next day. It can be hard to get through, but after a while it becomes very meditative, much like walking meditation. By the way, there are also walking prostrations: take three steps, do a prostration, stand up, three more steps, etc. There are pilgrims who do this for hundreds of miles to get from their home to Bodh gaya sometimes leaving big welts on their foreheads.

I have heard a lot of reasons for prostrations, but the one I like the best is that when we do prostrations, we are bowing to the Buddha nature in ourselves. So try and lower your head every now and then, the world is a huge place and its very likely that you don't know much.