BOUNDLESS HOMAGE TO BUDDHA
#Chapter1
“Boundless homage to Buddha” is an old topic, but it is very basic and very important. Those, who are going to follow Buddhism, must build up the foundation and understand the basics, especially about paying homage to Buddha. 
If we do not have reverence for Buddha, we would not be blessed, so it would be easy to have the wrong view about Buddhism, leading to superstition, even heresy. And in order to have the solid foundation we must build up the great reverence for the Buddha. Therefore, though the topic is very old, it is never enough even if we discuss about it again and again.

Reverence, fear, or love that rules human beings cannot be defined adequately in words. We often say we love someone, so really "What is love?” It is difficult to describe love accurately and thoroughly. But we would realise that when we love someone, we would miss them when we are away from them; we would be happy when we see them and we always want to help them. In general, we want to do whatever that brings happiness to the person we love. So, if we behave like that, it is love but we cannot define the feeling adequately.

Similarly, respect or reverence cannot be defined either. We could only rely on our expression to know who we would respect. When you meet someone, your emotions rise up; or you want to bow to them, these are the signs of respect.All cultures in the world would have the same view about this matter. When facing a respectable person, we all want to bow and kneel down in front of them. No matter where we live in this world, we would always act like that.

Never would we say "How are you?" when we meet a respectable person. We only say so with our friends in this informal way. As for the person we respect, we just want to bow, kneel and pay respect to Him. This happens in any culture in the world. 
Why is that? 
Because when we bow, we appear to be shorter than the person, we want to show him that we are very ordinary while He is truly great. We take a bow in order to express what could not be expressed in words. It happens exactly the same in any language, in any country. Everyone is similar in this way, in their sub-consciousness. It means, everyone in any culture would bow in front of someone, if they respect the person.

Another expression for the people we respect is that we want to listen to them and take their advice because there are many valuable things that we could learn from them. No one would respect an ignorant person. We only respect people who are much more superior than us. We would respect those people, who have compassion for all beings, and highly intelligent. We would want to listen to every word they say, we would want to learn everything from them. Besides, we also would always want to follow their advice, because our actions would benefit others. So often when they give us advice or teach us, we would always obey and would never argue back. To sum up, there are four signs of respect or reverence:

- The first sign is that we feel emotional, but light and happy when seeing them.

- The second sign is that we always want to lower our heads, kneel down, and bow to them. It is an expression saying that we are too insignificant comparing with them.

- The third sign is that we want to be taught by them.

- The fourth sign is that we want to obey and follow their teachings.

The four signs above demonstrate our reverence for someone. When we meet a respectable person, and these signs displays, it means definitely we have respect for that person, without any questions.

Nhan Khai