Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Returning Home with Every Bow

A Polish monk began each day with seven bows — a gesture of apology toward a father he couldn’t face. Bhikshu Jin Wei’s story is not a tidy arc of spiritual progress; it’s an honest account of how the hunger for transformation can become its own trap, and the gentle process of attuning to each moment. The turning came quietly, through a single word: a Thai Forest monk suggested a one-word loving-kindness mantra, and Jin Wei sat in the meditation hall asking himself what his word was. Immediately, it came: “safe”. What followed was the discovery that the compassion he had been excavating through discipline had been waiting in his body all along — “our body remembers our trauma,” he reflects, “but the body also keeps the love.” While on a trip back to Poland earlier this year, he experienced profound, full-circle moments along a softening journey: giving a talk at his own university and sitting down to a vegetarian lunch lovingly offered by his meat-eating family. The monastery, he suggests, is not only a physical place but a quality of listening, available to anyone willing to stop and ask what word is waiting to open their heart.

Be The Change

Sit quietly for five minutes and ask yourself: what single word, right now, describes what your body most needs to feel? Let it arrive without forcing it, then breathe that word slowly through your whole system and notice what shifts.