Have you ever wondered ... Why We Prostrate?

re-published from November 2007 newsletter
compiled by Cathy Young

When we first come to a Buddhist ceremony, visit a Lama, or visit a Buddhist center you may notice that many folks stand in front of a Buddha image and drop to the floor. What they are doing is a prostration. They place their hands together, with their thumbs cupped inside the hands, at their heart. This is called the prostration mudra. They then place the thus joined hands at the crown of the head. Then with finger tips still pointing upwards they touch their prayer hands to forehead, then the throat, lastly bringing them down to rest at the heart. Then placing their hands flat on the floor, go down to their knees touching their forehead to the floor. Only to stand back up again. Some even lay flat on the ground, bringing their prayer hands over the back of their heads, coming up to the knees and then fully upright. Only to start the whole procedure over again till they have finished 3 rounds of this devotional gymnastic. This is the act of “Prostration”.



The forehead to floor prostration is called the “Five-Limb Prostration”, because all four limbs and the forehead are touching the floor.
“Full length Prostration” is when the entire body is stretched out on the floor.
The shortest form of prostration is to place your hands in prostration mudra at your heart.

Prostrating at the beginning of teachings is a gesture of respect for the teacher and/or the teachings, and it help to subdue one's pride so that we can be open enough to listen. If we sit down to a teaching full of pride, we won't be able to learn anything, and in our minds we may even criticize the teacher or teaching.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says: When you put your palms together to a statue of Buddha, a picture of Buddha, or whenever you see a holy object, you immediately get ten benefits:
1. You will achieve rebirth in the king’s family, you will have wealth and power, and you can become king. If you were a king, you would have a lot of influence to benefit so many sentient beings. You could make charity of your wealth to many sentient beings and those beings would listen to what you say. In this way, you would cause so many beings to meet the Dharma. You could teach them the right ways to practice, and to abandon wrong things that harm themselves and other sentient beings. You could give them correct wisdom.
2. You will achieve the extensive form. That means you will have a perfect body with complete sense faculties, as I mentioned before. If you have a perfect body, there are no obstacles to whatever Dharma you wish to practice, such as taking vows, taking ordination.
3. All the people surrounding you, maids or servants people in the office or your family, will be perfect. Their minds will be harmonized to yours, so there won’t be any fighting or difficulties, and they will do exactly as you like according to your wishes. So your practice of benefiting other sentient beings becomes even more beneficial, because you have the help and support of people around you.
4. You will be able to make extensive offerings to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
5. You will receive respect and service from others.
6. You will be able to listen extensively to the Dharma.
7. You will have extensive devotion. Prostrations cause us to achieve devotion. without devotion to the Guru, without faith, you cannot receive blessings from the Guru. Therefore, you cannot achieve the realizations of the path to enlightenment. Without devotion to the Triple Gem, you cannot achieve their qualities within yourself, the qualities of Buddha, the qualities of Dharma, and the qualities of the Sanga. Being without faith is like a vehicle without fuel - unable to function; or like everything in a city not functioning and then collapsing when there is no electricity. Devotion is an extremely important foundation.
8. You will have a very good memory and a clear mind. If you want good memory, it means doing a lot of prostration! If you don’t want to become a vegetable or suffer from Alzheimer’s, do a lot of prostration.
9. You will achieve extensive wisdom.
10. You will achieve extensive realizations, all the way up to enlightenment. You will achieve the complete, perfect quality of cessation, the perfect quality of realization. In the case of the Lesser Vehicle, you will achieve the right-seeing path, the path of meditation, the path of no more learning, freeing you from the cycle of death and rebirth, old age, sickness, and death. In the case of Highest Tantra, the clear light of meaning, you will be completely free. You will cease the disturbing-thought obscuration and achieve the pure illusory body.


Wow, all that from putting your palms together. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”

Geshe Loden, in “Path to Enlightenment”, says: “Prostration is paying homage.... It is a powerful form of body language by which we generate and demonstrate respect, humility and devotion to the holy objects, such as Buddha's and gurus, who are the inspiration for our practice of Dharma. The real purpose of prostration is to train the mind with devotional attitudes. Prostration is a powerful method to overcome pride. Pride will cause many to have a strong resistance to bowing down before any other being, including the Buddha. The real purpose of prostration, however, is to train the mind in attitudes of devotion which are a source of happiness, not to grovel at the feet of someone else."
Geshe Loden continues: "By physically bowing before the field of merit (or teacher, buddha image, etc.), we make prostrations of the body. By praising them and speaking of their qualities we prostrate with our speech. We prostrate mentally by holding an attitude of respect, faith and devotion and reflecting on the good qualities of the Buddha's, gurus and holy objects. We can prostrate body, speech, and mind together by bowing before the field of merit and reflecting on their qualities as we recite a prayer of praise...."
Now that we have established what prostration is and why do it, the question most often asked is “What if I can’t physically do a prostration?”. The good news is, you can do them mentally. I was recently a participant of a purification ceremony called a Nyung Nae which required a lot of prostration. Well, by the second day my knees would no longer allow me to physically prostrate. At which point our leader, the amazing Venerable René said to go ahead and do mental prostrations. He also said it would be good to stand (if possible) while mentally doing them. Between you and me, I don’t think mental prostrations have quite the bang as doing them physically.


However, our teachers tell us over and over to be sincere and do the best you can. The practice of prostration is powerful at any level. If you can remember to generate the mind of bodhichitta while prostrating this will ensure that your practice leads to enlightenment and thus enables you to be of the greatest benefit to others. I have only briefly touched on the benefits of this simple and important practice. So one way or another, get out there and start prostrating!

I asked Emily Hsu, if there was a difference between mental and physical prostrations. Below is her gracious reply.

"Your question about a mental prostration vs. a physical prostration. I haven't found anything in the texts about this, so I'll just share some of my own thoughts with you. In general the mind is what determines the power of a particular practice. It is what we do with the mind that has the power to purify and subdue the mind. If we do a prostration physically but our mind is distracted or full of pride, then the prostration will have little strength to purify the mind. In contrast, if we do a mental prostration correctly, with a focused mind, genuine humility and regret for our negative actions, with deep respect, truly bowing down with the heart, (and ideally with an understanding of emptiness), then this would have a tremendous power.

"So I think that you could say that a mental prostration could be just as powerful as a physical prostration if it is done purely. However, I think that the physical prostration really helps us get into the proper state of mind, physically bowing down, becoming lower than someone, surrendering, showing humility. It might be more difficult to generate this same state of mind without the physical aspect. But if we are able to do a mental prostration with the same degree of humility, regret, and surrender, then I would say that it may be just as powerful as a physical prostration. But we need to be really honest with ourselves to see if the same state of mind is induced merely mentally or if we also need the physical side. I would recommend that if people are not able to do a prostration physically, at least try to put your hands together and bow your head."

Source: The Preliminary Practice of Prostrations, to the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas. Translation and Instructions by Lama Zopa Rinpoche FPMT Practice Booklet