The Bodhisattva Who Bowed to Everyone

7.2 The Bodhisattva Who Bowed to Everyone

In the Lotus Sūtra there is a bodhisattva whose lifelong practice sounds too simple to be practice at all—he bowed to everyone he met.

His name is Sadāparibhūta, "Never Disrespectful." The Buddha's disciples asked the Buddha: why is this bodhisattva called "Never Disrespectful"? The Buddha said:

"This bhikṣu, whenever he saw anyone—whether a bhikṣu, bhikṣuṇī, upāsaka, or upāsikā—would prostrate to them, praise them, and say: 'I deeply respect you all and dare not slight you. Why? You all practice the bodhisattva path and shall become Buddhas.'"

Whomever he saw—monastic or lay, man or woman—he would bow to with full respect and praise, saying the same words: "I deeply respect you and dare not slight you. Why? Because you are walking the path to Buddhahood, and you shall surely become a Buddha."

The sūtra makes a special point of adding: he "did not devote himself to reading and reciting the sūtras; he only practiced prostration." He did not do much sūtra-chanting; he did not sit in meditation or investigate Chan; he did not debate or lecture on the Dharma. His practice was this one thing alone: seeing a person, he bowed.

What He Bowed To Was the Buddha Not Yet Awake in the Other

Now this is strange. Ordinarily, bowing goes from low to high—the ordinary person bows to the Buddha, the believer bows to the sage; we bow upward. Sadāparibhūta turned it exactly the other way: he was a practitioner, yet he bowed to all the ordinary people—even a peddler or a porter, even someone in the very act of cursing him, he bowed to all the same.

What, in the end, was he bowing to?

Not the person as they appeared before him—not their station, their standing, their temper. What he bowed to was the Buddha-nature in them that "shall surely become a Buddha"—the Buddha not yet awake at this moment, yet there all along.

So this bow is a kind of giving. It gives no money (it is not material giving), and it teaches no doctrine (it is not the gift of the Dharma). When the bodhisattva Nāgārjuna speaks of giving, he divides it into three: giving things—material giving; teaching the Dharma—the gift of the Dharma; and a third kind, called the offering of reverence—"with faith purified, with reverential prostration": this is the offering of reverence. Sadāparibhūta's bow falls squarely within this third kind. What he gave away was the reverence and the affirmation of "I see that you have been a Buddha all along."

Nāgārjuna also said: "The ocean of the Buddha-dharma is entered through faith." Faith is the first door into the Buddha-dharma; even giving, precept-keeping, meditation, and wisdom all stand behind that door. And what Sadāparibhūta's bow carries is exactly this "faith"—an unshakable faith that everyone shall become a Buddha. So his bow is not something low-grade, waiting to be surpassed by higher practice; in itself, it is already a complete offering.

The More He Was Cursed, the More He Kept Bowing from a Distance

The most moving part comes next.

Bowing to everyone he met like this, Sadāparibhūta did not find everyone grateful. Some thought him absurd; some thought him a hypocrite; and some grew angry—they cursed him, struck him, even threw stones and tiles at him.

What did he do? He did not answer back, did not strike back, did not argue. He withdrew to a distance, stood farther off—and still, loudly, lifting his voice, he said the same words to the very people who beat and cursed him:

"I dare not slight you all; you all shall become Buddhas."

You strike me, you curse me—that is your affair; but what I see in you is still the you who shall become a Buddha—so I still respect you, still bow to you.

His name, "Never Disrespectful," in fact holds two layers of meaning. One layer: he is "never disrespectful"—he never slighted anyone. The other layer: he is "ever disrespected"—he was forever being slighted, forever being bullied. And here is the marvel: it was precisely in bearing "being slighted" that he completed the giving of "never slighting." The more the other slighted him, the more weight his affirmation—"I respect you; you shall become a Buddha"—revealed. For this affirmation did not depend on whether the other received it kindly; it was one-sided, already given, unshakable.

Explaining this passage, a patriarch said something beautiful: "Bowing to sentient beings and bowing to Buddhas share the same origin." To bow to sentient beings and to bow to the Buddha—the source is one and the same. For the Buddha-nature beings possess from the start, and the Buddha-nature a Buddha has brought to fullness, are from the start one and the same. When Sadāparibhūta bowed to each person, he was in truth bowing to a future Buddha.

An Offering Anyone Can Afford

This road of Sadāparibhūta's has one supremely good thing about it: anyone can afford it.

Chanting sūtras takes literacy and memory; investigating Chan takes skill and a clear-eyed master; keeping the precepts takes a foundation. But Sadāparibhūta's bow—it does not require deep cultivation or broad learning; it has no threshold at all. You need only be willing, in your heart, in your dealings with people, to hold toward every person you meet a measure of respect that says "this one too has been a Buddha all along"—even if their face is hateful at this moment, even if they are making things hard for you—and you are already making this "offering of reverence."

For us today, this is a very real place to begin. There is no need to wait until "I am in a position to give"—every person you meet today, whether family, a colleague, or a stranger on the road who has soured your mood, you can hold toward them in your heart, gently, a respect that says "you too have been a Buddha all along." That holding is Sadāparibhūta's bow, landed in the middle of your days.

Walking On

The offering of Dharma (carrying the Dharma) and the offering of reverence (bowing to everyone)—we have now seen both.

But in the Lotus Sūtra there is yet another offering, fiercer and more startling than any of these—fierce enough to make the reader's heart seize. A bodhisattva, to make offering to the Buddha, burned his own body.

That scene is the offering of the body pushed to its furthest extreme. It is also the easiest to misread, to read askew. In the next chapter, with great care, following the patriarchs of the generations, we will look at that fire until it is clear: what, in the end, was it burning?