Prostrations
Physical practice of bowing to purify pride and accumulate merit.
Prostrations involve full-body bowing while reciting refuge prayers. This practice purifies pride, creates physical connection with dharma, and accumulates vast merit.
With body, speech, and mind, I prostrate.
100,000 prostrations are typically required as preliminary practice.
Preliminary Practice Texts
Written about in
- What Tibetan Buddhism says about habit and discipline
Full-body prostrations are performed while reciting refuge prayers, and in the preliminary practices they are counted rather than merely done. The stated purpose is purifying pride, and the method is deliberately physical — a body that has bowed a hundred thousand times argues less than a mind that has agreed to be humble.