Blessing Three:
Expressing Respect to Those Worthy of Respect
Expressing Respect to Those Worthy of Respect
B. EXPRESSING RESPECT AND ITS PURPOSE
If you ask yourself what you automatically do, when you have a “hero” in your heart, on analysis, you find that you devote all your waking thoughts to them. We put their picture on the wall. When we speak about them, we only speak praise of them. We take every opportunity to learn their opinions and share them. Given the opportunity we try to meet with them and imitate what they do in their lives. Some people even go to the lengths of dress like them. All these are random components of an attitude we call “respect”. Many of the behaviours are ways of “paying respect” or “expressing respect”.
B.1 What do we mean by “respect”?
Respect means the attitude of looking for the positive aspects of a person or an object and the effort to instill oneself with those same virtues. Such respect, in context of the Manual of Peace is for the aim of furthering one’s spiritual development — it must not have any ulterior motive. It mustn’t be like a judo player who raises someone up (in his own self esteem by flattering them) only to drop him onto the floor more easily. Some bosses blindly believe their subordinates’ flattery is respect to the extent that they overlook the real state of affairs and end up getting fired. This latter case of expressing respect does not come from a mind of pure innocence which expects or demands nothing material in return.
True respect arises in response to someone’s virtues. Something else which may look like respect but which is in fact an imposter is the intention to help someone in the expectation of gaining something material in return. First comes the flattery, and then comes the unrefusable request for this or that favour. Boyfriend praises girlfriend, saying how pretty she is, because he wants her to love him. He has an ulterior motive to get something in return. He’s not interested per se in either her goodness or her prettiness.
B.2 What do we mean by “expressing respect”?
Expressing Respect means any polite and intentional action towards someone or something, both in their presence or behind their back, that is the device that demonstrates that one is really recollecting the virtues of that person or thing.
B.3 Purpose of Respect
The reason behind paying homage to those worthy of homage is an extension of the reason for associating with the wise. We have already said that we associate with the wise in the hope that they will help us to develop accurate discretion in things concerning virtue. It is to help us overcome the weakness in our make-up that we tend too easily to forget all the good and valuable things taught to us by our teachers and masters and parents or the monastic community, the Lord Buddha, or from books we read. When you are taught how to meditate for half-an-hour per day or to do any other good deeds, however, your memory doesn’t seem to be so reliable. The first day, you sit for meditation for exactly half-an-hour — no more, no less. On the second day, you sit for only fifteen minutes — well, that’s better than nothing. On the third day, you think that while you are chanting is actually a sort of meditation, so five minutes of true meditation is enough. On the fourth day it is especially humid, so you think that chanting is enough, no meditation today — after all, thousands of other people don’t meditate, and they seem no worse off for it. By the fifth day you have entirely forgotten how to meditate for half an hour. It is for the reason that doing good deed is so easy to forget that is the real reason for the need to pay homage.
On the contrary, when it comes to being devious, or doing mischievous things, we remember from the first time we’re taught and never need to be taught again for the rest of our lives! We never forget how to play poker. We never forget how to shuffle a deck of cards.
The real reasons behind paying homage are as follows:
1. To give us a firm connection with the virtues of that person. Connecting up our thoughts with a person of virtue will elevate our own minds to the higher level of virtue of that person.
2. To practice expressing virtues so that in the future we might have the chance to gain a real appreciation of the virtues of that person. Whether we are an adult or a child, if our appreciation of the real depth of virtue of a does not really do justice to the depth of their virtue, expressing homage can help us to appreciate it. When we were only five or six years old and our parents took us to the temple they would make sure that we paid respect to the Buddha images. For the child, he cannot see beyond the clay or the brass of the image and might wonder what all the fuss is about. A child that is so young can have no appreciation of the real depth of the virtues of the Lord Buddha. Taken to the home of their old uncle, they are told to pay respect to their uncle. The child cannot distinguish the goodness of their uncle’s character, but pays respect because he has been told to. At school, the child is told to pay respect to their teachers. The child might not be able to tell the real virtue of the teacher, because the child’s ability to comprehend is only limited. However, sometime in the future when we become so used to expressing our respect that we become used to it, the thought will eventually occur to us to look for the reason.
B.4 Three Types of Bowing
Sometimes people confuse respect with expressing respect. However, if you express respect when your attitude is wrong you will not succeed in furthering your spiritual progress. Consider the following examples:
1. Bowing out of obsequiousness: Some people bow just because everyone else does. Usually they bow reluctantly. They have no attitude of respect in their mind. Therefore, all they get for their efforts is a stiff feeling in their muscles.
2. Bowing out of peer-pressure: Some people only show respect in order to please the person they pay respect to, so that they can ask favours from that person, often for things which are not entirely honest or noble.
3. Bowing in search of wisdom: This refers to those who have an attitude of respect and who also express their respect with the determination to practice themselves all the virtues exemplified by the object of their respect. An example of the sort of attitude in mind of someone who benefits from expressing respect is — supposing we bow three times to express respect towards the Buddha:
1. When we bow the first time: to reflect on the supreme wisdom of the Buddha which allowed him to see the existence of suffering, know the origin and the cessation of suffering and find a Path to the Cessation of Suffering — wisdom arising from the Buddha’s extended meditation mind until his mind had become sufficiently clear and bright to eradicate all defilements of the mind. Following his example, we should also determinedly meditate until we can achieve the same wisdom as that of the Buddha.
2. When we bow the second time: to reflect on the supreme compassion of the Lord Buddha that instead of just keeping his wisdom to himself, he spent all his life teaching Dhamma to others so that they could become enlightened in his footsteps. Following his example, we should also find ways of being generous as a way of expressing our compassion to others.
3. When we bow the third time: to reflect on the supreme purity of the body, speech and mind of the Lord Buddha cultivated through his extended practice of self-discipline. Following his example, we should also find ways of finding better ways to extend our own self-discipline so that we too can attain full purity of mind.
B.5 Two sorts of Respect
However, all four of these can be summarized under just two headings, that is:
1. Homage through gifts: [āmisapūjā]: this refers to all material forms of paying homage — whether it be putting your palms together in a gesture of respect or even speaking words of praise about a person.
2. Homage through practice: [paṭipatipūjā] this means paying homage by doing as one is taught — for example, we pay respect to the Lord Buddha by doing as he taught.
Thus, in practice, expressing respect has two major components.
B.5.1 Relative importance
When we pay respect to the Lord Buddha, we should emphasize homage through practice, while homage through gifts should play only a supporting role. As for paying respect to teachers who are still concerned with worldly matters (i.e. king, parents, teachers, elders and boss, we have to emphasize homage through gifts) while homage though practice plays only a supporting role.
To give an example, if we are to meet up with our teacher and when we meet up with them all we have for them is the words, “I have put into practice everything you have taught me”. This would hardly impress the teacher. It would have been appropriate to have some sort of gift to give the teacher as well.
Others go abroad and on the way back think of their teacher. They don’t know what to get as a present for the teacher and so they get a bottle of liquor. In the end the result is that the teacher and the pupil sit down and drink liquor together. The more they drink, the more irritated they feel and end up fighting one another. When it gets to this point, that gift can hardly be counted as a token of respect any more. It is an unwelcome gift resulting from false view.
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