Prostration (Buddhism)

A prostration (Pali: panipāta, Skt.: namas-kara, Ch.: 禮拜, lǐbài, Jp.: raihai) is a gesture used in Buddhist practice to show reverence to the Triple Gem (comprising the Buddha, his teachings, and the spiritual community) and other objects of veneration.

Among Buddhists prostration is believed to be beneficial for practitioners for several reasons, including:

an experience of giving or veneration
an act to purify defilements, especially conceit
a preparatory act for meditation
an act that accumulates merit (see karma)

In contemporary Western Buddhism, some teachers use prostrations as a practice unto itself,^[1] while other teachers relegate prostrations to customary liturgical ritual, ancillary to meditation.^[2]

^ See, for instance, Tromge (1995), pp. 87-96.
^ See, for example, Aitken (1982), pp. 29-31, where he discusses such rituals as having a twofold purpose: "First, ritual helps to deepen our religious spirit and to extend its vigor to our lives. Second, ritual is an opening for the experience of forgetting the self as the words or the actions become one with you, and there is nothing else." (p. 29).

[1] See, for instance, Tromge (1995), pp. 87-96.

[2] See, for example, Aitken (1982), pp. 29-31, where he discusses such rituals as having a twofold purpose: "First, ritual helps to deepen our religious spirit and to extend its vigor to our lives. Second, ritual is an opening for the experience of forgetting the self as the words or the actions become one with you, and there is nothing else." (p. 29).

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