Jizo Bodhisattva

by Jan Chozen Bays

  My attraction to Jizo then made little sense to me. I had been raised Protestant and had been taught that Protestants never pray or bow to a “graven image.” Maezumi Roshi then brought another statue of Jizo back from a trip to Japan. It was a slender golden figure with a staff in one hand, a round globe in the other, and two children at his feet, clutching his robe. He asked me to place it on an altar at the Zen Center’s medical clinic where I worked as a pediatrician. Still I had little true feeling in my heart for this gilded statue. Probably it was more familiar and comforting to our poor Mexican patients, like a little golden saint for their sick children.

  I did not encounter Jizo Bodhisattva again until I attended a mizuko led by Zen teacher Yvonne Rand. A mizuko is the ceremony for children who have died, which I describe later in this book. The mizuko opened my heart and mind to the ability of Jizo to intervene in the world of human suffering. As others experience the benefit of the Jizo ceremony, interest grows in Jizo Bodhisattva and the mizuko ceremony in America. There are Jizo sites in gardens and on altars around North America as well as Jizo sites on the unlocated space of the World Wide Web.

  I hope this book will be of help to those who wish to know more about Jizo, to Buddhists and also to spiritual seekers who are not Buddhist.

  In Buddhism we do not regard any being as outside of our own true self, no matter how small or repulsive—an earthworm or a tick—nor how large and lofty—an enlightened bodhisattva like Jizo. Our proper relationship then to an earthworm is not to withdraw in disgust from it; our proper relationship to a bodhisattva is not to admire or worship from afar. If we enter spiritual practice hoping to know ourselves completely, then our proper attitude toward all creation is one of curiosity and ultimately of communion. To know ourselves we must truly know all beings—from earthworms to bodhisattvas—intimately.

  In this book we take up a particular form in which wisdom and compassion have manifested and continue to manifest in the many worlds. This is the form of Jizo Bodhisattva. In studying Jizo thoroughly, the separation between us and Jizo begins to disappear. Actually it is only the illusion of separation that disappears. Jizo Bodhisattva is never separate from us. In studying and practicing with Jizo, we do not actually become anything else; we only become more completely ourselves.

  This practice of becoming a bodhisattva will be familiar to students of Vajrayana Buddhism whose training includes visualization. During a visualization, a student sees or, more accurately, uses all the senses to experience him- or herself as vividly as possible as a bodhisattva, with the beautifully colored raiment, ornaments, jewels, body postures, and attendants. This practice says, essentially, start pretending that you are a Buddha. Now go back to being a person. Now go back to being a Buddha. Now go back to pretending to be a human. If this practice is continued with great dedication and energy, we can drop the narrow awareness and outlook of a human and adopt the wide awareness and compassionate outlook of a Buddha any time we wish. Vajrayana practitioners could approach this book as a visualization practice with Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva, as Jizo is also known.

  How can Theravadin or Vipassana practitioners relate to Jizo Bodhisattva? Students on these paths use concentration, or samadhi, to investigate the mind and its creation, the world. In this practice, the mind is concentrated by using a focusing object such as the breath. Once the mind is still and one pointed, it can be used to ponder a question. This is how the Buddha practiced before his enlightenment. He realized that:

  Whatever a bhikkshu frequently thinks and ponders on that will become the inclination of his mind. If he frequently thinks and ponders on thoughts of sensual desire, ill will and cruelty, then he has abandoned the thought of renunciation to cultivate the thought of sensual desire, ill will and cruelty.

  For it is not by further hatred that hatred is ended. Hatred is only ended by the cultivation of loving kindness. This is a constant and unvarying law.

  The mind’s attention is energy. Wherever the mind is directed, energy flows. If we direct the mind to thoughts of ill will, or think a lot about what makes us angry, then ill will and anger are nourished. We are thus actively turning away from the possibility of renouncing human suffering and becoming free from it. If we direct the mind toward compassion or wisdom, the aspects of a bodhisattva, we actually give energy to these qualities in ourselves and in the world around us. By using Jizo Bodhisattva as an object of meditation and investigation, we nourish the qualities of the bodhisattva in ourselves and in all that surrounds and supports us.

  How can a Zen student relate to Jizo Bodhisattva? In Zen practice, meditation on breath is used to develop the ability of the mind to concentrate and see with clear insight. We also concentrate the mind through koans. Koans are questions that function as a sort of drill to penetrate the layers of confusion in the mind and to find the essential truth that dwells in each of us. We have collections of many hundreds of koans, some a thousand years old. Each one was a burning question for an earnest spiritual seeker and helped him or her open to the reality that underlies all existence. There are koans about aspects of Jizo Bodhisattva in this book. I have taken up several as a Zen student might, unfolding each aspect as a presentation of that One Truth. The Zen reader may wish to take up these koans, the non-Zen reader may learn something about how koans are used for self-excavation.

  I hope this book gives non-Buddhists, no matter what your religious tradition, more understanding of your Buddhist companions and fellow spiritual pilgrims on this planet. I also hope it will enable you to probe more deeply into that great mystery that is your life.

  I have tried to use a minimum of words that are specific to Zen or come from foreign languages. Practice refers to spiritual practice or discipline. In Zen the word practice includes not only meditation, both seated and walking, but also chanting, bowing, and eating. Ultimately practice becomes bringing the awakened mind to all activities of life and work. Zazen is the Japanese term for seated meditation. Zazen is a particularly potent tool for developing clarity of mind and heart. Sesshin is a silent Zen retreat, usually three to seven days in length. Unfamiliar words or concepts that are not defined in the text can be found in the glossary at the end of the book.

  The bodhisattva called Jizo in Japan and America is known by different names in other countries. In India he is Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva, in China Ti-tsang Pusa, in Korea Ji-jang Bosal, in Tibet Sati-snin-po. Because I came to know her first as Jizo and because this is her name in Japan, the country where she is most revered, I have used the name Jizo throughout this book, except when discussing historical aspects unique to one country.

  Because Jizo Bodhisattva has both male and female aspects, I have used masculine and feminine pronouns interchangeably. The energy of Jizo in this world is not limited to male or female bodies. It pervades all space and time. It is available to all in need.

  Another source of potential confusion is the use of the term “the West” to refer to America and Europe. We say that the Dharma has been taken from Japan “to the West,” even though America seems to be located to the east of Asia on our flat maps. This reflects an originally Eurocentric view, that Asia was the “Far East” thus making America “the West.” Actually we are no direction from each other on this shining spinning sphere known as Earth-not up or down, east or west, only blue, green, brown, and white appearing and disappearing, half in darkness, half in light.

  I explore four aspects of Jizo Bodhisattva in this book. The first is that of Jizo as a figure of history, a bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism who arose in India as Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva, and emigrated to the countries of northern Asia, becoming a deity that is popular and widely venerated. This traveler-saint has now arrived at a few Zen centers in America as the central figure in a particular ceremony for children who have died.

  The second aspect is that of Jizo the protector and savior, who intervenes and helps those caught in places of suffering. That suffering may range from anxiety over passing a high school exam to terror ov
er the possibility of falling into the vivid hells described by Chinese Buddhists. This is the Jizo who is fleshed out through myths and folk tales, the Jizo of the mundane world, to whom any small request can be brought. She acknowledges that we know what we need to alleviate our daily distress and that if she can provide relief, our faith will be rekindled and we will return to the path of practice.

  The aspect of Jizo the rescuer is given life in the Jizo legends included in this book. Of course some of the miracle tales about Jizo Bodhisattva are inventions or colorful embroideries. As an example, in 1776 crowds of people went to hear a marvelous Jizo near Yedo who could be heard reciting the sutras continuously in a low voice. When the covering to protect the image against the rain was removed, however, a nest of bees was found to be making the humming sound! The stories of Jizo’s powers and interventions in peoples’ lives should not be just discarded by the skeptical mind as improbable or impossible. These legends speak to deeper truths: the power of faith and the possibility of transformation and redemption when our life has gone astray. These stories about Jizo tell of the kind of being we hope does exist. For if she does, we could become like her, a being of gentle benevolence, unquenchable optimism and unflagging energetic devotion to those who suffer. We tell and retell stories like these in order to envision the bodhisattva who moves among us today and thus to call forth the Jizo within us.

  As Jizo became worshiped by both nobility and peasants, numerous legends arose about his intervention and assistance in the human world. Statues of Jizo Bodhisattva in temples often have one or more miracle stories associated with them. These stories can be divided into several general types: Jizo aids the weak, children, women or poor peasants; Jizo helps a person with physical labor; Jizo warns of and averts a disaster; Jizo intervenes and rescues from hell someone who has died; Jizo substitutes his body for someone and prevents his or her death; Jizo assists warriors; and Jizo heals illness. Often these themes are mingled in one tale, as you will see from the examples included in this book.

  These legends have been preserved as part of historical records of towns or temples. It is hard for us to imagine, in a country that is just over two hundred years old, written records of events occurring fourteen hundred years ago. The caretakers of Japanese temples keep meticulous records. For example, my teacher Shodo Harada Roshi, abbot at Sogen-ji Temple in Okayama, keeps several diaries, writing each evening of the day’s happenings, visitors, donations, and of those who came for sesshin and sanzen (private interview with the Zen master). If miracles occur, I am sure they also are logged. There are records at Sogen-ji, as at many other temples, dating back to its founding three hundred years ago.

  Buddhist practice is new in America. History tells us that it takes several hundred years for Buddhism to adapt to a new culture. History can inform us about how those adaptations may occur. Jizo Bodhisattva is now almost unknown in America. As interest in Jizo and religious practices with Jizo are taken up in the West, I hope this book will help those who wish to know more of the history of this bodhisattva: how Jizo was born, where he has traveled, and how he has met the needs of suffering people, from Chinese and Japanese aristocrats of the sixth century who feared that their dying parents would fall into hell to twentieth-century women grieving after an abortion.

  The third aspect of Jizo Bodhisattva I explore is that of practice. When spiritual practice is the foundation of our lives, we sometimes seem to be swimming upstream against the determined drive of our own ego and of society to accumulate material possessions and individual power. Jizo’s unflagging optimism illuminates our nights of self-doubt. His endless vow shores up our flagging determination. His benevolence melts our harsh judgment of ignorance—both our own and that of others. His example inspires us to get up out of bed and to practice, and once practicing, we begin to experience benefit for ourselves and others.

  Zen Master Dōgen has said that paintings of a rice cake will not satisfy our hunger. Just to read a history of Jizo Bodhisattva will not satisfy our deep longing to know personally the heart and mind of a bodhisattva. Thus to the history of Jizo I have added the fourth aspect, portions of Dharma talks I have given that were focused on practicing with this bodhisattva, his attributes and qualities. In addition, the Appendix is a collection of supplemental readings for those who treasure any bit or piece of extra information about this many-bodied bodhisattva.

  I have selected poems to open each chapter. Most of these were written by Zen Master Ryokan, who was a “living Jizo.” He lived in Japan at the end of the eighteenth century. After twenty years of formal Zen practice in a temple, he retired to the mountains near his birthplace. Ryokan lived in simple huts and supported himself by begging. He often forgot himself in the samadhi of games with children and of drinking with village friends, in addition to meditation. He brushed thousands of poems in a free-flowing calligraphic style.

  A few poems are those of Dōgen Zenji, the most revered Soto Zen master in Japan. Ordained at age thirteen after both of his parents had died, he traveled to China at age twenty-three to study Zen. Upon returning to Japan, he began teaching Zen and established Eihei-ji, a large monastery in a remote mountainous area. His extensive writings include many poems, both in the formal classical Chinese style and also in Japanese in a more free-flowing form.

  This book opens and closes with the ceremony of remembrance for children who have died, performed in the sacred space of a Jizo garden. In one Jizo garden in Japan, one thousand Jizo images are hidden among the trees. It is said that a person who looks long and carefully enough will find their own face on one of these Jizos. May this book help you to find your original face, to reveal yourself as a bodhisattva, and to continue to do whatever you can to help heal the suffering of the human world.

  Introduction

  It took twenty years from the time I first encountered Jizo Bodhisattva before I awoke to the power of Jizo to ease human suffering. It took ten years of working as an expert in child abuse and accumulating the pain of thousands of children in the hidden places of my heart-mind before I called for help.

  In 1993, thirty-two child-abuse deaths occurred in Oregon. I had known most of these children. I had examined their limp pale bodies in the pediatric intensive care unit. I had gently run my fingers through downy soft hair, turned back ear folds, opened unresisting mouths and eyelids, looking for subtle bruises. I had turned their bodies over, careful not to pull out tubes that pumped air into their lungs and infused intravenous fluid into their veins. I had talked as gently as I could to frightened and aggressive parents, parents whom I knew had smashed, shaken, and beaten these infants, and also to the nurses who were angry at these parents. When the nurses were busy and no one was looking, I held each baby’s hand for a moment to pray for its transition out of suffering and into peace.

  I had arranged for good-byes to be said, last kisses given. Then their bodies, still warm and only appearing to breathe (a respirator inflating their lungs), were taken away to surgery. Finally, those once warm and living bodies, now cold and lifeless, were transported to the morgue. Their organs, now in insulated boxes, were carried off into dark skies to be transplanted into other little bodies thousands of miles away, bodies from whom life was ebbing slowly, watched over by parents now filled with hope that their child might live.

  I attended many of their autopsies. I carefully photographed their bruises, cigarette burns, rib fractures, and dark burgundy brain hemorrhages. I pried open cold lips and genitalia to swab for semen. I meticulously labeled film and swabs so lawyers could not prevent valuable evidence from being presented at upcoming trials.

  One part of me did all this with clinical efficiency, talking with the medical examiner and detectives about likely mechanisms of injury. Yet another part of my mind worked hard not to think of the horror of these children’s last hours and days, their screams for help, their cries met with more kicks, curses, punches, and burns. I locked away the vivid scenes, the long bloody hair of the girl raped and drown
ed in the tub, the terrified blue eyes of the small boy photographed during the torture that finally killed him.

  I dictated reports, testified in court, and used all the tools of my medical and meditative trades to keep the images at bay. For ten years, I had been successful. But finally there were simply too many, too close. There was not enough time to wipe the mind’s eye clear between each battered child. I would suddenly find myself weeping in my dark car on the way home when a few lines of a soppy country-western song came on the radio. I became afraid that if I began to cry I might never stop. I had dammed up so much.

  I called my Dharma sister Yvonne Rand. Could I come to the mizuko, the Buddhist ceremony of remembrance for children who had died, that she would be holding at Green Gulch Zen Center outside of San Francisco? Only as a participant, she said. No observers allowed. Fine. I was far beyond observer.

  At the start of the ceremony, Yvonne’s words defined a space that would be held in the deep intimacy of Noble Silence. It was a place and time made secure by her calm knowledge of this universal pain called grief. We sat in silence, sewing small garments of red material, to clothe the Jizo statues during the ceremony to come. Several people made capes, one a hat, another a scarf. I used red thread blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to string a handful of gray-green eucalyptus leaves together by their stems, forming a little cape like the grass and leaf raincoats worn in Japan and Africa hundreds of years ago.

  One leaf for each child battered to death. I said their names silently and willed my mind to open its locked places and bring up their images. I made myself look again into the horrified eyes and twisted mouth of the baby buried, perhaps still alive, in her father’s backyard. When the medical examiner’s deputy dug her body up, he had swaddled her completely in a blanket and carried her tenderly, as if she were only asleep, out into the darkened street. They were greeted by the harsh flash of cameras and newspaper photographers waiting to do their job. Tears dripped on my little leaves. A box of Kleenex was passed.