Blessing Three:
Expressing Respect to Those Worthy of Respect
Expressing Respect to Those Worthy of Respect
E. THE PRACTICALITY OF PAYING RESPECT
E.1 Expressing respect with body, speech and mind
Respect can be paid through the channels of body, speech or mind.
1. Physical Respect: Physically paying respect means the various polite manners that we demonstrate towards someone in their presence, such as standing up when they come into the room, or sitting politely when in front of them. Even if you are not in their presence, you should still show physical respect towards those worthy of virtue even if you are not in their presence but are in the presence of their photograph, their sculpted image — such as a Buddha Image or a photograph of your teaching master. We should show our respect by not pointing our feet towards such an image, and even if we are lying down to sleep — pointing our head towards the image instead of our feet;
2. Verbal Respect: Homage through the channel of speech includes the speaking, chanting or singing of praises of one worthy of homage, rather than gossiping maliciously about them;
3. Mental Respect: Homage through the channel of the mind means recollecting the teachings of one worthy of homage to the degree that they inspire us. We might recollect what that person has taught us in the way of good deeds. We might also consider the good character and virtues exemplified (but not taught) by that person. Both of these are homage through the channel of the mind;
E.2 How to Express Respect
Many people misunderstand paying respect as bundling together a lotus, candles and incense, laying it before the object of respect and bowing down three times. Paying respect in this way is not incorrect, but it is not the whole story. Paying respect that is complete in all respects must exhibit four factors:
1. Physical token of respect [sakkāra]: This refers to a gift which is an expression of respect. It is something we must prepare in advance and which is presented during the act of paying respect. Such a token of respect differs for different situations and different categories of persons worthy of respect — for example, flowers, incense and candles are worthy tokens of respect for paying respect to the Buddha, monks or teachers. Clothes or bedclothes might be more worthy tokens of respect for your parents. Neither of these tokens of respect are suitable as the sort of gift you might take with you when visiting distinguished persons of social standing. Nor would they be suitable as the sort of gift you bring back with you for your friends when you have been away on holiday. Even money can be a token of respect. If your teacher has been putting in extra hours out of the kindness of his heart, giving up his time to give you tutorials at home, giving him money as a gift would not be out of place, and in this respect would be considered a token of respect, not a payment. Another consideration for tokens of respect is that they should be prepared in advance. To leave a bucket of cut flowers, no matter how big the bucket is, in the middle of the main temple pavilion would hardly be considered an act of respect. Any token of respect should be prepared with care and precision and be both clean and well organized.
2. Gesture of respect [vandanā]: this refers to gestures which express respect such as bowing or prostration or praise or chanting praise. Morning and evening chanting can be counted as vandanā. Even recollection of what one has been taught by the wise or one’s teacher can be counted as vandanā.
3. Attitude of respect [mānanā]: This refers to an attitude of respect. Respect consists of the stems ‘re’ which means again and ‘spect’ which means to re-examine a person (for their good points). Given that all people except the Buddha are made up of a mixture of both good and bad then we have to look for the good points in people. Taking these good points, apart from noticing these good points, part of respect is to praise them for these good points and use them as a good example to model ourselves upon.
4. Concern for the object of respect [garukāra]: this refers to an attitude of concern about the wellbeing of the person who is worthy of respect and recollection of the good deeds and virtues of that person.
All of these four components comprise the way of paying respect.
E.3 Consequences of Not Paying Respect to those worthy of homage
If those held in high respect do not behave in a fitting way, many sorts of harm are brought on the individual, interpersonal and social levels. To take the clergy as an example, if members of the monastic community are undisciplined and do not cherish their congregation according to the advice of the Buddha, the harm that will come to the congregation can be concluded on three levels:
1. Losing a sense of responsibility for their own human dignity: If clergy lack self-discipline and don’t fulfill their duties towards their congregation as prescribed by the Lord Buddha, the first level of disaster which will happen to them is that the congregation will lose their sense of responsibility for their own human dignity — this loss giving rise (at the minimum) to the following three undesirable symptoms:
1. Breakdown of self-discipline: Society will degenerate to the point where the majority of people do not keep the Five Precepts and do not even understand what keeping the Precepts means. This will increase the incidence of society of people taking advantage of each other. When taking advantage of each other becomes the norm, especially for those in positions of authority, the effects will have repercussions on a national scale — therefore, citizens must unite in preventing those who don’t respect the Five Precepts from being put in positions of power;
2. Those seeking ordination are of low quality: Low quality ordinands burden their preceptors with problems — it is hard to train them at all. If clergy are unable to develop purity of body, speech and mind, they will undermine the existing faith of the congregation — ultimately destroying the religion;
3. Transcendental attainment becomes increasingly inaccessible: The highest aim of those who ordain is to attain Nirvana. However, if those who ordain are of low quality and are difficult to train, there will be a continuous deterioration in the capability of the monastic community to the point where they will no longer be able to reach any sort of transcendental attainment. When there are no religious exemplars to look up to, the congregation will become more and more firmly entrenched in False View — more and more ignorant of Dhamma teachings, self-discipline — with some of the most serious repercussions for social chaos;
2. Losing a sense of responsibility for the human dignity of others: If clergy lack self-discipline and don’t fulfill the duties towards their congregation as prescribed by the Lord Buddha, the second level of disaster which will happen to them is that the congregation will lose their sense of responsibility for the human dignity of others — this loss giving rise (at the minimum) to the following three undesirable symptoms:
1. Verbal abuse of clergy and monks: Once the congregation no longer realize the value to society of clergy and monks, misunderstanding the duty and lifestyle of the clergy, the public will abuse the clergy shamelessly (as is happening currently in Thailand);
2. Lack of financial support for clergy and monks: Swayed by the often unjustified abuse of clergy in the media, the faith of the public deteriorates, and with it the support with which they should provide the clergy — religions such as Buddhism can only survive through the voluntary support of the congregation, and without it, there will soon be no clergy left, and consequently no-one to perpetuate the religion;
3. Congregation is left without any true refuge: Having dismantled their religion by their own neglect, when the public find themselves in dire straits, they will be without a refuge, lacking the ability to be a teacher to themselves, they will resort to superstition or animism.
3. Losing a sense of responsibility for economic fairness in society at large: If clergy lack self-discipline and don’t fulfill the duties towards their congregation as prescribed by the Lord Buddha, the third level of disaster which will happen to them is that the congregation will lose their sense of responsibility for economic fairness in society at large — this loss giving rise (at the minimum) to the following three undesirable symptoms:
1. Total infatuation with the Six Roads to Ruin: In a society of deteriorating morals, it will become more and more common for people either to eke out their living via, or be enslaved by the consequences (such as debt and disease) of Roads to Ruin such as drugs, gambling, prostitution, entertainment and underground lotteries.
2. Desecration of religious property and establishments: The Roads to Ruin are part of the vicious circle of poverty. Some people try to alleviate their poverty by theft — and religious property is an easy target of plunder. Some encroach on temple grounds in pursuit of their livelihood. In Thailand this practice is becoming more and more widespread, especially because it has been legally condoned by biased legislators;
3. Embezzlement of religious donations: Some people like to extract some sort of ‘commission’ from the funds they manage to raise for the temple (in accordance with the phrase “half for the temple, half for the temple committee’!) In the present day, however, some legislators try to go further than this by giving the government the right to control temple funds directly!
Problems concerning not paying respect to those worthy of respect can be summarized down to two main points:
1. Obvious social problems: Easily seen is public deterioration in morality as a result of ignorance of virtue. Such people like to say they have lost interest in virtue because they see so many examples of hypocrisy. For the same reasons they withhold financial support for spiritual causes and some go further, overtly making legislative changes necessary for the dismantling of the religious establishment;
2. Covert social problems: The covert social problems mostly originate from the hypocrisy amongst those who should be behaving as exemplars of virtue. Considered with wise reflection, the problems might be analyzed as such:
1. Good exemplars are sometimes unable to pass on their knowledge to others because
1. the public are not interested to learn from the clergy— all they want are the material trappings of spirituality and virtue such as holy water and amulets;
2. the public undervalue the teachings on virtue they receive because they think they are already highly qualified in academic subjects — so thinking, they consider their ability in vocational subjects makes earning money more important than knowing spiritual teachings.
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