Bowing to a snail

Some notes from a conversation with friends at Bright Earth buddhist sangha about awakening, Buddha Nature and bodies of one kind or another.

Years ago I watched a snail, and realised something that’s never really gone away. I don’t recall much now about the actual snail, but what I do remember is how it felt to watch them. I think I may have lifted my finger close to their face, because I remember the snail recoiling, pulling in both horns. A full-body wince as they shrank away from the unknown threat. I remember my body recognising that wince – not as similar to my experience, but as the same.

Some ten years later, the memory of meeting this snail feels as good a place as any to name what ‘awakening’ means to me. In all honesty the vexed question of whether or not a snail (in this case) ‘has Buddha nature’ is of no interest to me. It’s always felt like an empty and very anthropocentric abstraction. Likewise, the notion that whatever visceral being-ness the snail shares with us is something from which any of us need to wake.

Being awake to the snail feels like a much better place to start. I thought of that little snail again this week as I read the essay What is Amida? by Nobuo Haneda. I love many things in Haneda’s reflection, but especially, perhaps, that the Ground of Being who endlessly calls to our snailish bodymind, provisionally named in Pureland tradition as Namo Amida Bu, translates into English as Bowing Amida Buddha.

Central to what ‘Amida’ means, then, is bowing. What Amida does is to bow, recognising all beings and all things as likewise shining with the infinite, radiant life that is Buddha.

Just saying this makes me want to laugh. It feels grounded and real and alive, not simply an airy mental abstraction. I don’t want to dress this up as a more than it is, but connecting that little snail with Bowing Amida Buddha left me wondering about bowing, too.

What is bowing, anyway? We make a bending-over gesture with our bodies to help ourselves remember – but that’s not really what bowing means, is it? Maybe bowing to a snail might mean sitting and watching them for a while, or taking the trouble to learn a bit more about how they live, and love. Perhaps sometimes it might just mean still remembering them ten years later, and sending them a wave.