Respect in Buddhist Thought & Practice ~ Ajahn Thanissaro

If you’re born into an Asian Buddhist family, the first thing your parents will teach you about Buddhism is not a philosophical tenet but a gesture of respect: how to place your hands in añjali, palm‐to‐palm over your heart, when you encounter a Buddha image, a monk, or a nun.

Obviously, the gesture will be mechanical at first. Over time, though, you’ll learn the respectful attitude that goes with it. If you’re quick to pick it up, your parents will consider it a sign of intelligence, for respect is basic to any ability to learn.

As you get older, they may teach you the symbolism of the gesture: that your hands form a lotus bud, representing your heart, which you are holding out to be trained in how to become wise. Ultimately, as you grow more familiar with the fruits of Buddhist practice, your parents hope that your respect will turn into reverence and veneration.

In this way, they give a quick answer to the old Western question of which side of Buddhism—the philosophy or the religion— comes first.

In their eyes, the religious attitude of respect is needed for any philosophical understanding to grow. And as far as they’re concerned, there’s no conflict between the two.

In fact, they’re mutually reinforcing. This stands in marked contrast to the typical Western attitude, which sees an essential discrepancy between Buddhism’s religious and philosophical sides. The philosophy seems so rational, placing such a high value on self‐reliance. The insight at the heart of the Buddha’s awakening was so abstract—a principle of causality. There seems no inherent reason for a philosophy with such an abstract beginning to have produced a devotionalism intense enough to rival anything found in the theistic religions.

Yet if we look at what the Pali canon has to say about devotionalism—the attitude it expresses with the cluster of words, respect, deference, reverence, homage, and veneration—we find not only that its theory of respect is rooted in the central insight of the Buddha’s awakening—the causal principle called this/that conditionality (idappaccayata)—but also that respect is required to learn and master this causal principle in the first place.

On the surface it may seem strange to relate a theory of causality to the issue of respect, but the two are intimately entwined. Respect is the attitude you develop toward the things that matter in life. Theories of causality tell you if anything really matters, and if so, what matters and how. If you believe that a supreme being will grant you happiness, you’ll naturally show respect and reverence for that being. If you assume happiness to be entirely self‐willed, your greatest respect will be reserved for your own willfulness. As for the how: If you view true happiness as totally impossible, totally pre‐determined, or totally random, respect is unnecessary, for it makes no difference in the outcome of your life. But if you see true happiness as possible, and its causes as precarious, contingent, and dependent on your attitude, you’ll naturally show them the care and respect needed to keep them healthy and strong.

This is reflected in the way the canon treats the issue of respect. It details the varied ways in which lay people of the Buddha’s time showed respect to the Buddha and the monastic Sangha, and the more standardized ways in which the members of the Sangha showed respect to the Buddha and to one another.