PROSTRATION WHY, WHEN, HOW and BENEFIT
A familiar Dharma practice is that of prostration. Prostration is an act of devotion and purification, in which we acknowledge and pay respect to the Three Jewels: The Buddha, The Dharma, and The Sangha, and through which we eliminate negative karma and accumulate many merits. Its practice, however, goes beyond ordinary notions of respect, as it helps us transcend ego.
As with all Dharma practice our intention and aspiration is to benefit others, so when we perform this beneficial practice, we are purifying the three doors: our body, our speech, and our mind. It is our ignorance expressed through the three doors as afflictive emotions that causes us to act in ways that create more negative karma which perpetuates samsara. Therefore, when we purify our afflictions, and negative bad karma through prostration we are better able to benefit others.
There are many opportunities to gain merits and the benefits from prostrating, for example we usually prostrate three times when entering any Buddhist environment such as a temple, monastery, or Dharma centre and whenever we see an image or representation of the Buddha. We prostrate to our guru when attending Dharma lessons as they enter and leave the room, or at the start or end of the teaching. Or in our own daily practice wherever and whenever that may be. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition prostration also takes the form of clockwise circumambulation around a Buddhist sacred site: a monastery, the Potala Palace, or a holy mountain, the most well-known being a 52 km Kora around the revered and sacred Mount Kailash which takes approximately four weeks to complete.
How we prostrate can be in the half prostration, or full prostration. The illustration below shows the Tibetan style of full body prostration.
During the practice of prostration our hands form the mudra or gesture of prayer and are placed at our crown/forehead, throat, and heart. As we touch our crown/forehead we bring our attention to our body, at our throat our attention is on our speech, and at our heart it is on our mind, as well as purifying the afflictions and negative karma, it also serves as a reminder for us to be alert and wary of our actions of our body, speech, and mind.
Prostrations are a virtuous action that create an enormous amount of merit. Yet while we do experience the results of our actions in future lives, we also experience the result in this life.
