This content was created by Satya Robyn. This content was uploaded by Satya Robyn. This is a YouTube video titled "bowing - the wisdom of the body - a short dharma talk" (uploaded March 3, 2016). It is a single-speaker dharma/meditation talk in which the speaker explores the practice and meaning of bowing and the Nembutsu (Nam-myoho-renge-kyo), emphasizing bodily wisdom versus discursive mind, how posture evokes feeling and devotion, and the relinquishing of control through ritual bowing. The piece reads as a reflective lecture aimed at a spiritual or meditative audience rather than a multi-person dialogue.
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Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. We often talk about 'namo' as meaning to call out to, or take refuge in, or sometimes even to give thanks for the Buddha. But the root of the word 'namo,' what the word originally means before it became part of Nembutsu, is to bow. So what is bowing? I guess bowing is something you do with your body. It seems a bit obvious to say that, but the reason— there's method in my madness. You know, call out, give thanks for— these are all concepts, ideas that are to do with the state of mind, or the mind, or speech. They're sort of things that happen in the head, maybe in the heart. When you bow with your body, all sorts of different things can be happening. There's lots of different associations. The, the body is more complex in a sense than the mind. It includes the mind. The body includes the mind. It includes the whole nervous system. It includes the unconscious mind. Sometimes our bodies can be wiser than our minds. The instincts, the intuition. Studies on decision-making, for example, show that actually they tested people just pressing buttons, and they asked them to say out loud, they said, "Just leave it as long as you want, and then at some point make a decision to press the button. Tell me when you've made the decision, and then press the button." So the volunteers, you know, they'd wait 10, 20, however many seconds it was, and they'd say, "Okay, now I'm going to push the button." and they'd push the button. And there, what the science discovered was that the decision to push the button, it's made in the body first, and then the mind tells a story about having made the decision. The impulse to push the button, the impulse, the wisdom comes from the body, and the mind just creates a narrative around you. So when we do something with our body, we're accessing the whole of our being, or a wider part of our being. If the impulse to bow comes up spontaneously, if it's the wisdom of the body, that includes gratitude, it includes paying homage to, it includes recognizing, esteeming something as greater than ourselves. It includes praising, it includes exalting. And when we bow in the service, when we're sort of bowing because somebody rings the bell that we should bow in sort of Pavlovian response, We're sort of conditioning the body. When we put our body into the shape of bowing, all of those associations, all of those things come to us. Sometimes when I was working in the theatre, I'd instruct people to get into a state of mind for their character. I'd talk them through their backstory. I'd invite them to imagine a particular environment around them. And we'd see— I'd see their body change as they started to inhabit the character. And sometimes we would start by just saying, put your body in this position. The famous Russian director Stanislavski once asked his actors to behave like scorpions, and when they did so, when they put their body into that position, all of the feelings that come up associated with that posture, with that stance, with holding the tension in those places and being relaxed in those places. All of that comes in and starts to evoke the sense of whatever the action is. So when we bow, the idea is that we're working from the outside in. When we bow in the service, we're starting to evoke all of those feelings. So all of the Nembutsu is like this. It's a container for creating the conditions for this feeling sense of being in relationship with something greater. And I guess that's the key, isn't it? You know, when we bow here, we put our hands above our head, we say, 'There's something greater.' than me. There's something I can trust that's outside of my control. That's also part of bowing. There's a giving up of being in charge, like the part of the brain that tells the story about being in control. I suppose that most of our lives are like that. We live under the illusion of control. We tell ourselves ourselves that we're in control, and we fight to be in control, whereas the act of bowing physically puts us in touch with the reality that we're not really. Our concerns go to the ground, our sense of control goes to the ground, and we ask something greater than ourselves to— well, maybe we don't ask anything of it, but we appreciate that there's something greater than ourselves that's already there, that's already loving us, that we can relax into. We bow because there is something to bow to, and because bowing to ourselves doesn't work. Namah mete guru.
