Ceremonial
This is an edited transcript of a talk given during the Regional Sangha Day, attended by members of several UK meditation groups, at the Jamyang Centre, Leeds, 16th July 2022.
It’s very nice to see everyone; this is quite a special occasion, really. It’s very nice to be able to hold this meeting in a Buddhist centre, and it’s quite an appropriate day to choose actually, because a number of other Buddhist traditions are going to have a celebration around this time, to mark the Buddha’s first discourse on the Four Noble Truths. It’s called Dhamma day, and it was actually on Wednesday, when there was a full moon, in fact it was a ‘super moon’. That’s a big celebration in the Theravadin Buddhist world. Lots of Buddhists get together for that, so it’s quite apt that you’ve chosen this Saturday.
I was asked if I could give a talk about ceremonial, which I think some people have had quite a lot of problems with ‒ maybe not so much now but certainly in the past. They’ve wondered what ceremonial has to do with Buddhism. People think that what we normally do is practise meditation, and that’s enough. But following the Buddha’s Way, the Buddha Dharma, is really a practical thing. It’s what you do with your body, what you do with your speech, and what you do with your mind ‒ all of those, and ceremonial is a way of expressing the Buddha’s teaching in a non-verbal way.
The circumambulation we did ‒ when we all went round offering incense and chanting ‒ that is a centuries-old tradition ‒ a simple form of ceremony, and you’ll find it in all different Buddhist schools. There are caves in India which were excavated ‒ they literally carved out temples in caves ‒ they’ve been there since the second century, and in the middle would be a stupa, or an image, and there’s a gallery where people can circumambulate around this representation of the Buddha Dharma, so it’s an ancient practice.
Ceremonies have something in common, in that they all involve some form of offering, because offering is the way that you deal with a lot of things. It’s a way of letting go, in a very positive way. Usually we offer nice things, but you can offer anger, you can offer worry, you can offer doubt. Offering is an integral part of ceremonial. There’s always an incense offering, and we had quite an elaborate offering at the beginning of the second ceremony today, with offerings appearing, being offered to the Buddha and then placed on the altar.
Another thing that you actually offer is your participation, as your state of mind can have an effect on everyone else. If everyone joins in wholeheartedly, there is a unity of purpose, a communal kind of expression; something which people do together that unifies them. One of the other aspects of that is chanting; chanting a text or some teaching, and this goes right back to the beginning of Buddhism. For many years, while the Buddha was alive, they would recite the teachings regularly; it was an oral tradition ‒ it wasn’t written down ‒ people didn’t have Scripture books. Today I didn’t have a Scripture book. Most of you didn’t have a book; you know the Scriptures through having listened and chanted them before. You heard them and then you’d repeat them, and so they became integrated into your body and mind. That’s why we chant the same Scriptures day after day; they become integrated into your life in that way. These days neuroscientists are quite interested in what you say and how you say it, and how it can change your state of mind by saying things in a different way. They have seen it is literally mind-changing to repeat something which has a positive effect on you. Chanting also has that unifying aspect to it; it’s something which you can’t do so much intellectually; it’s something where you have to listen to others, and be in harmony with everyone else. It unifies; it creates the Sangha, if you like ‒ so the chanting is another common feature.
One of the UK prisons has a celebration every year around a Buddha statue, and the Thai community show up in force, and they have candles, flowers and incense (in the past they even had little orchids). They carry those candles, flowers and incense, and circumambulate around the statue that’s been put there in the prison gardens. They circumambulate three times, and then the incense, flowers and candles are offered. It’s all rather nice in some respects. So that, once again, is a ceremony ‒ there’s the offering of incense, the offering of flowers, or fruit, and then the offering of brightness, or light.
The offering of flowers also goes way back. You see this in Asian countries ‒ people offer lotus flowers. Lotuses grow like weeds in some places, and you can go and buy a great big lotus bud and take it to the temple ‒ so you see people offering these flowers.
The lotus flower represents transformation. It’s rooted in the mud; it grows through the murk. It comes right out of the water and produces a beautiful flower ‒ the flower of enlightenment, if you like, which is unstained. That’s because of its waxy petals; even its leaves are hydrophobic. (There’s talk about making clothes out of them now.) So the lotus is symbolic of something which changes greed, anger and confusion and transforms it into compassion, love and wisdom, and then the seeds disperse ‒ go back down again, to help everyone else and yourself transform more, if you like. So it’s a lovely image of transformation, and it appears everywhere in Buddhist iconography. Buddha statues often sit in a lotus, and there are usually pictures and symbols of lotuses on altars. And fruit is something which is sweet, and something which will sustain you, so that also is seen as a valuable offering. That’s why fruit is often seen on the altar.
The ceremonial way of expressing the Buddha’s teaching has become quite diverse. The offerings which were made in the ceremony we just did here are things like sweet tea and cakes, and this practice has come out of Japan and China. Buddhism has moved through many different cultures; it’s gone from India into China and then to Japan, and our forms of ceremonial are influenced mostly by China and Japan; in fact some of our monks’ robes are styled after mediaeval Chinese court dress. That’s based on that idea that spiritual wealth and material wealth are intermeshed, and they’re like that to show that there is something here of value; here is something that you can respect and reverence.
The flow of this kind of ceremonial into Japan happened after Dōgen arrived there ‒ apparently it was Keizan who really developed it in Japan, or made the ceremonial more of a way of conveying it to people. The people of that country could respond to ceremony; it resonated with them perhaps more than, for example, the Scriptures. Everyone could relate to a ceremony done in this kind of way. If you’ve seen some of the YouTube videos that are going around, there’s one of a Japanese morning service, and it’s actually more like theatre and a dance, and it’s incredibly elegant how the footsteps are done. They are like dance steps – no two ways about it. And so with our ceremonies, it’s like you’re learning dance steps, and after a while you find you can relax, and appreciate what it’s about, and give some expression to the teaching through it. That’s the idea anyway.
In our culture ceremonial tends to mean something that is done to you, and there’s some kind of power imbalance in it. This is not the Buddhist way: ours is much more the case that everyone is giving expression to something. So when ceremonial was taken from Japan and plonked into Western culture, which is basically what Reverend Master Jiyu did, she thought, well, we’ll do it as the Japanese did it, see what works and adapt as needed. So we have things like everyone standing in a straight line, which is normal in Japan. Everyone would be in a straight line, make no mistake, no one would even think of being out of line; it expresses a way of being; paying attention to your relationship to everyone else, so that you’re not sticking out.
So ceremonial becomes a practice, as opposed to just a fixed sort of form. It’s being used to practise mindfulness in a way that you can’t do so easily in other kinds of activities. Ceremony becomes an opportunity to practise mindful awareness, like today when we were offering the objects during the Great Monk’s Offertory at the beginning of the ceremony. You actually held them in a very careful way, in such a way that someone else could receive them without dropping them, and you’re going to do it in the most beautiful way you can, because that’s what the ceremony starts to represent. Here we have something which can be done in a very elegant, beautiful way, and it has a flow to it. For some people that can give rise to worry, but that means they have to work at relaxing and being still. It shows you something about training in that respect.
So while you’re learning it – you have to learn how to relax with the form. As a celebrant, I once had someone come up to me with the incense stick, and they were almost cross-eyed with stress. And they handed it to me and it wasn’t lit! Their purpose was to take the stick of incense to the celebrant who hasn’t got enough hands to do it, and offer it to them and they can put it in the Three Treasures tray ‒ simple enough. But it can become: “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to do it in this particular way!” If you can learn to relax with the movements, it can flow, it has an elegance to it. Some of the things – the twiddly bits – are because our ceremony has been influenced by Sōjiji. I gather Sōjiji was a temple which chose at some point to do things in a bit of a flowery way. So those kinds of details are the Sōjiji influence ‒ we’ve inherited that. It’s a way of doing something which has got an elegance to it if it’s done right. If you‘re not relaxed with it, it’s going to look like you’re thinking: “what am I doing this funny thing for?” And it won’t look, or feel, right.
The whole thing is more like a theatrical dance, which gives an expression of the beauty of the Buddha’s Dharma. That’s what it’s for, and the idea is that the Celebrant is a kind of exemplar. That’s why there’s a bowing seat; it’s a bit higher up than everyone else, giving the Celebrant an elevated status. They’re supposed to be able to show the teachings in the way that they walk, the way that they move and what they do. For instance the number of steps they take for each action is significant, it can show some Buddhist teaching in it, like taking 12 steps when going up to the altar, to show the 12 links of interdependent origination. But if they do more or less than 12 they need to be prepared to answer the question “what’s the teaching in that?”, so it’s something that can be used in quite a creative way, to show things.
This is what Rev. Master Jiyu learned in Japan, and what she passed on to us. I think it’s valuable; it’s helpful to do these ceremonies in meditation groups, as well as the monasteries, to introduce people to aspects of the practice which grow out of the meditation. So they get the sense that there’s more to Buddhism than just the sitting, and if you learn how to relax with it they will see that it doesn’t have to be wooden.
You don’t have to do ceremonial in the flowery style I’ve described, you can make small ceremonies for yourself. When this was being taught in Shasta apparently, I think that rather than using delicate, valuable offering items, Rev. Master Jiyu got people to practice using waste paper baskets, to try and learn how to do it ‒ they used something that was big enough, and it wasn’t going to be a disaster if it dropped.
But then they started to think, right, well, we can do this in our ordinary life, and they naturally created a ceremony of ordinary life, by starting to treat things with that kind of care and respect. That’s all part of it: care, respect, reverence, these kinds of qualities; that’s what ceremonies are for, in a sense. They’re ways of using your body, speech and mind to show those kinds of qualities ‒ of reverence, respect, gratitude and carefulness. And doing this in front of a Buddhist altar helps you consolidate your practice. You align yourself with the Buddha nature ‒ your true nature ‒ so you’re awakening your aspiration for Buddhahood, and thereby dissolving the old greed, hate and delusion which clouds that real deep understanding of it.
Ceremonies usually involve an offering to the Buddha; the Buddha’s teaching, the Dharma, and to the Sangha, the community who practise. And then there are bows. It’s said that Buddhism will cease if bowing ceases, and bowing is something which is, once again, part of our culture, but you see western people, when they’re going to bow, for example to a member of the royal family, they often do it very stiffly, or in a way which doesn’t look natural. So although it’s there, we haven’t quite got it as part of our heritage in the way that east Asians have, in some respects
The full bow, the full prostration, making gasshō or monjin, this bowing is a way of bending a bit, and it’s a practice of opening. There’s a way of using the hands that’s a way to make a lotus ‒ Reverend Master Daizui used to do it. He was making a lotus to hold up. The way we bow also illustrates raising the Buddha above you ‒ when you raise your hands, you’re putting something above your sense of me; acknowledging there is something greater, so you’re humbling yourself. There’s that power dynamic again ‒ but you’re consciously putting yourself below the statue or whatever that represents. So the bowing is a way of surrendering to a degree; it’s a letting go of one’s ego, and offering, all encapsulated in an action.
Our sadly deceased Rev. Master Teigan was famous for his amazing bow. Wherever he went, he’d sort of go right the way down; he bowed very deeply and then he came back up and it was all part of a flow, and it looked so dignified and devotional; he did it so well. He showed something in doing that, he was careful in how he did it; it wasn’t put on or self-conscious in any way; it was just his way, his expression.
Bowing shows something very directly without having to have a commentary on it. We had a Sunday festival ceremony broadcast on the TV years ago at Throssel, and the presenter gave a voice-over commentary on what we were all doing. It was the Morning Worship programme, the ITV equivalent of Songs of Praise; a so-called outside broadcast. So all of the ceremonial was explained as we went along, with this hushed voice, which worked quite well. It meant many viewers got to see a Buddhist service, which was unusual for television in the 1980s. And nobody dropped anything, so that was quite good!
The other thing that is sometimes seen in our ceremonies is the scattering of petals – lotus petals. If you go to Throssel, you’ll see people throwing these little petals on the ground, during the circumambulation. It’s to show that this is the Pure Land right here. There’s a well-known story in the Vimalakirti Sūtra1 when people ask: “Why is the world the way it looks?” Like here, where we’re in an industrial complex ‒ the beautiful Buddhist centre we are in is situated in the middle of a load of factory buildings. Well, a ceremony can show the Pure Land appearing, even in the middle of an industrial estate. The idea of the petals is to show that the Pure Land is in front of you right now. In that story, they were asking the Buddha: “Why can’t we see it?” and the Buddha put his foot onto the ground, and suddenly, everything looks wonderful. And then he picks his foot up off the ground, and it all goes back to being a kind of wasteland ‒ you know, trees with bits of plastic bags in them and the like. Then he basically says the reason you can’t see it like that is because your mind isn’t clear. If you clarify, or clean your mind, if you have a pure mind, you will see everything as the Pure Land, because that’s what it is.
There are people who practise Amida Buddhism, who chant “Namo Amituofo” with their rosaries all day, trying to get to the Pure Land. Their practice is sincerely calling on Amida’s name, the idea being that at the time of death the Buddha will appear with the lotus for them to step into and take them to the Pure Land. But there is another way: There was the story of an old lady who was asked: “You’re going to the Pure Land, aren’t you”, and she said “No, the Pure Land is here.” Her practice had led her to realize that the Pure Land was already right here, right now within her, which is why, in a sense, Pure Land Buddhism and Zen Buddhism have quite a similarity. One’s totally devotional and the other one has more of an intellectual aspect to it, or a meditative way of practising, but that idea of realizing liberation in the present moment now is very much part of both, so ceremonial is to demonstrate: “Here it is, the Buddha’s Pure Land is right in front of you! Wake up!”
Notes
1. Luk, Charles, translator & editor, Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sūtra. Shambhala Publications, Incorporated, 1990.
