Where did bowing originate?

Bowing is the act of lowering the head, or sometimes the entire upper body from the waist, as a social gesture . This is common around the world, but is especially prominent in Oriental cultures especially in China, Korea, and Japan.

-Wikipedia

In Japan it's called "ojigi" and is distinguished from religious bowing, "gassho", which includes hands palm-together as in prayer.

Wikipedia says bowing originated as an act of subordination, as "lowering the head leaves the bower vulnerable." I mentioned this to a Japanese friend and was told that failure to bow to a samurai entitled him by decree to remove your head.

Well, bowing was prominent there long before the samurai, so my question remains. I've asked friends from Japan, Korea, and China and no one seems to really know. There was speculation that the source was Confucianism.

From an outsider, bowing seems to be practiced differently in those Oriental countries, and in China almost not at all. In fact, a Chinese friend said anyone who bowed there would look like a fool. And I'm sure that's right, it's just not part of modern Chinese culture. A result of the cultural revolution? Or does its disappearance predate that?

Bowing in Korea seems more hierarchical in the sense that juniors are very much expected to bow before their seniors, and do so more deeply. While there is some hierarchy in Japan as well, it feels much more egalitarian ... bowing is happening all over the place and by everyone regardless of whether the person being bowed to is known.

How do you feel about bowing to another, or to someone you don't know? Or even perhaps bowing to someone you know but don't respect?

I don't see a problem with it. Bowing affects one's attitude. Despite growing up in the west, I have a mild preference for living in a culture where such forms of respect and humility are not considered out of place. I miss this about Japan.

I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never, satisfied a single interlocuter. Why? Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which is really known already. Every man knows he must love his enemies, and sell all he has and give to the poor, but he doesn't wish to know it--so he asks questions.

-- R. H. Blyth

Karma

All things born of karma disappear when that karma is exhausted,
But where is this karma born?
From whence does the First Cause arise?
Here words and thoughts are of no avail.
I asked an old woman in the east about the matter
But she wasn't pleased,
And the old fellow in the west
Just frowned and left.
I wrote the problem on a rice cake
And gave it to a puppy
But even it wouldn't bite.
Realizing that such words are bad luck,
I blended life and death into a pill
And gave it to a weather-beaten skull.
The skull suddenly leaped up,
Singing and dancing for me:
A spellbinding ballad that spanned past, present, and future,
A marvelous dance that sported through the realm of samsara.
The skull covered everything very thoroughly:
I saw the moon set on Ch'ang-an and heard its midnight bells!

-Ryokan

Going the distance

My whole life long I've sharpened my sword
And now, face to face with death
I unsheathe it, and lo --
The blade is broken --
Alas!

-Dairin Soto

The long-time friend of a close colleague (and friend) passed away a couple of days ago ... rest in peace. On my daily run I recalled how the great runner-philosopher George Sheehan faced death and wrote about it, up to the very end. Doing so took a great deal of courage. But even so he expressed at the very end his wish not to die ... alas.

It's hard to know how any of us will handle the final moment.

There is a story about a village being plundered by a warlord and the people fleeing into the hills, all except for a Zen priest who remained behind. When the warlord arrived, he drew his sword and the priest sat calmly, undisturbed. Then the warlord exclaimed "Don't you know who I am? I am one who could run you through with this sword and never bat an eye." To this the priest replied "Don't you know who I am? I am one who could be run through with your sword and never bat an eye."

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

-Kozan Ichikyo

Death poetry

Living in hell
Is like taking a walk
In a beautiful park.

-Lin-chi (Jap. Rinzai)

A friend asks about the difference between God and Zen, and my thoughts turned to the parting poems that some Zen monks and poets compose at the hour of their death, sometimes called "death poems" (jisei).

Since there are so many different conceptions of God, and Zen as well, that's a question that might be better answered by a theologian than a layman, but that won't stop me from saying something anyway.

There's an emerging dialog between Christians and Buddhists seeking common ground. So-called "contemplatives" in the Catholic Christian tradition have a practice and vocabulary that's actually very Zen-like in nature, and I'm thinking of patriarchs like St. John of the Cross here.

Neither contemplatives nor Zennists take a very rational approach to their practice, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense ... "non-rational" isn't the same as "irrational," it's just an acknowledgment that there is something that exists outside of the bounds of rational thought.

So while some view Zen as a philosophy, it's not. It's probably more correctly viewed as a practice. To what end? Is it incompatible with Christianity?

One of my favorite death poems:

Sixty-six years
Piling sins,
I leap into hell ---
Above life and death.

-Tendo-Nyojo* (1163-1228)

* Dogen's master

Just sitting

Because of my last entry, I suppose, a friend asked about meditation practice. Do I do it? Is it useful? Another friend, a Christian, asked about my spiritual walk and whether I have found a way back to God.

The western and eastern concepts of God and spirituality are so different it's no wonder the first westerners in Asia viewed Buddhists as atheists. As Alan Watts put it:

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

But how does one get there? Or, as I asked before, how does one find peace?

I believe Shakespeare said something like there was never a philosopher who could endure a toothache patiently. The point is that a mental game, or an abstraction, or what someone simply tells you to believe, is never going to save you in a "real way," like when you're lying on your deathbed. Or at least that's my intuition.

If you see your father walking down the street, you don't need someone to tell you so. You don't "believe" he is your father, and it's more than knowing (or less than knowing, in a sense).

I've said too much. There's a Chinese expression that goes something like, "open mouth, already a mistake."

I like how Ryokan put it:

The great way leads nowhere, and is no place.
Affirm it and you miss it by a mile;
"This is delusion, that is enlightenment" is also wide of the mark.
You can expound theories of "existence" and "nonexistence"
Yet even talk of the "Middle Way" can get you sidetracked.
I'll just keep my wonderful experiences to myself.
Babble about enlightenment, and your words get torn to shreds.

Get out of jail, free

You awake at 4:00 am, think of a monopoly card, and then fall back asleep peacefully. Why?

This might be viewed as a "koan", an object of meditation used primarily in Rinzai and less often in other schools of Zen. In this approach known as "gazing at the topic" Zen, you're "not to employ discriminative understanding, thinking or calculation, intuition, verbal strategy, absolute nonchalance, engagement, analysis of the words, or anything else" (Broughton, the Bodhidharma Anthology). You're simply to raise up the topic 24 hours a day and constantly be aware of it. Hmm ...

This and other Zen topics have been on my mind, given the number of temples I visited in Japan. While some forms of Buddhism like Jodo (Pure Land) and Shingon (True Word) have a devotional aspect, Zen says ... the mind is Buddha. But it also says the mind is not Buddha. How does one find peace?

A classic collection of koan used in the Rinzai school is the Mumonkan, the "no gate" barrier. From the introduction:

Buddhism makes mind its foundation and no-gate its gate. Now how do you pass through this no-gate? It is said that things coming in through the gate can never be your own treasures. What is gained through external circumstances will perish in the end. However, such a saying is already raising waves when there is no wind. It is cutting unblemished skin. As for those who try to understand through other people's words, they are striking at the moon with a stick, scratching a shoe, whereas it is the foot that itches.

In order to master Zen, you must pass the barrier of the patriarchs. To attain this subtle realization, you must completely cut off the way of thinking. If you do not pass the barrier, and do not cut off the way of thinking, then you will be like a ghost clinging to the bushes and weeds.

Time to print my own "get out of jail, free" card and have some dinner ...

Even in the remotest corners

Even in the remotest corners
flowers will bloom
if we attend them in earnest
nothing at all though we are.

-Ryokan

Otogo Forest

In Otogo Forest beneath Mount Kugami
You'll find the tiny hut where I pass my days.
Still no temples or villas for me!
I'd rather live with the fresh breezes and the bright moon,
Playing with the village children or making poems.
If you ask about me, you'll probably say,
"What is that foolish monk doing now?"
-Ryokan