According to the annals of the Tang dynasty, a Korean monk landed on the coast of China in 742. His surname was Chin (in Korean, Kim). He was a prince in a royal family of the Silla Kingdom in Korea. He had renounced earthly riches, been ordained, and was given the Dharma name Lofty Enlightenment. He settled on the mountain, living in austerity in a stone hut. In 756 c.e., visitors found the only food in his cook pot was a meager amount of white clay mixed with boiled millet. They worshiped him as a holy man, building a monastery and providing food for the disciples who gathered around him. The hermit monk was protected by many spirit beings. Once when he was bitten by a poisonous creature he was saved by a deva who caused a spring of healing water to issue forth from a rock.
Lofty Enlightenment died at age ninety-nine while seated in meditation. The noise of crashing rocks and moaning came from the hills around, sounds of the spirits of earth and water mourning his passing. When his disciples opened his coffin three years later to move his remains to a newly built tomb, his body was not decayed and his complexion was fresh and glowing as if he were alive. As the body was lifted out of the coffin his bones gave forth a sound like the rattling of golden chains, the sign of a saint. His disciples reflected on his qualities of compassion and mercy and realized that he must have been an incarnation of the bodhisattva Ti-tsang. When his body was placed in the new tomb a tongue of fire erupted from the ground and remained burning over the grave for a long time. Various miracles occurred around his tomb and crowds began to flock there. He soon became known as Chin Ti-tsang.
The pilgrimage to Mount Chiu-hua became one of the most famous in China. Chiu-hua was one of four mountains, each sacred to a different bodhisattva, that every devout Chinese monk hoped to visit within a lifetime. Writers from the early 1900s give a picture of what occurred there. The pilgrimage season was September to November, a time when the air was cooler and the maples became brilliant among the groves of bamboo and pine. Over one hundred thousand people visited the mountain annually. Every family tried to send one or two members to pray for their relatives. The pilgrims arrived in thousands of boats decorated with religious banners and painted lanterns. A Buddhist monk was assigned to each boat to pray and offer incense to Ti-tsang on behalf of the pilgrims. The path to the sacred mountain led through azaleas and rhododendrons that grew in the lowlands around the mountain. On the slopes the monks cultivated a special tea to sell to pilgrims, a tea reportedly brought from Korea by Chin Ti-tsang. Once the pilgrims ascended the mountain there were many sights to see.
Young men arrived at the temple dressed in women’s clothing, asking the monks to print the seal of Ti-tsang on the dresses. Then they removed the clothing and folded it carefully to take it home as a sacred treasure for their aging mothers. Rich people paid thousands of dollars to sponsor religious plays, generally on the theme of the deliverance of Mu-lein’s mother from hell. Famous actors were commissioned for the plays, which were believed to have the power to free one’s ancestors from hell. Firecrackers were set off and piles of mock money were burned, to be used to bribe the officials in hell.
The paths leading to the temples on the mountain were lined with shops and booths selling goods to the pilgrims, sweets, children’s toys, Buddhist books, and images. Fortune-tellers and palm readers plied their trade in the crowds. Poorer pilgrims treasured paper amulets that sold for a few cents. They bore the image of Ti-tsang and were thought to protect against demons, disease, and other misfortune, as well as conferring health, happiness, and long life. Pilgrims could ask the monks to pray for their relatives and to stamp the amulets with the seal of Ti-tsang.
Chin Ti-tsang’s tomb, guarded by two Taoist deities, was preserved in a temple reputed to be the original one built for him. The flame that hovered at his enshrinement was said to be visible occasionally after nightfall. There was a shrine containing the guilded mummy of a former abbot and a large library and printing house where the Sutra of the Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva was never allowed to go out of print. The walls of the main temple on Mount Chiu-hua bore a painting of Ti-tsang surrounded by the Ten Kings. Ti-tsang also was depicted with the “Inspired Drunkard Poet” Li Po, who was shown offering the enthroned bodhisattva a cup of wine. A legend says that Li Po rescued Chin Ti-tsang when the saint fell into the Yangtze, and they became as close as brothers.
A modern miracle tale indicates that Ti-tsang remains alive in China. In the preface to a twentieth-century translation of the Earth Store Bodhisattva Sutra there is a description of curious circumstances that occurred at the temple where work on the translation was being carried out. One evening two monks and two laymen
completed their day’s labor at ten o’clock and immediately retired to their beds. After they had extinguished all lights they were amazed to catch sight of a dazzling light of electric blue in the locked shrine room. . . . The light was of human shape and size . . . transparent [and] very similar to the marble figure of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva on the shrine. A staff was in its right hand. The luminous figure . . . lasted for perhaps half an hour at full brilliance and gradually diminished.
Six days later when the two monks locked up for the night at eleven o’clock they saw
six luminous figures seated before the main altar. These lights were not in human form—but merely uniform areas of light, vertical and of about the height of men seated in the lotus posture. This phenomenon persisted for perhaps half an hour before fading . . . strange lights of bluish radiance. Be it remembered that Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva’s color is a jewel blue—of the shade referred to in modem times as “electric blue.”
Other Asian Countries
Because Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva arose from Mahayana Buddhism, he is not found in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Cambodia where Theravadin practice persisted. He is known in all the countries to which the Mahayana doctrine spread from China including Tibet, Manchuria, Japan, and Korea. He is also known in Vietnam where Tien (Zen) Buddhism is practiced. There is a stone image that may be Kshitigarbha, who is called Ji-jang Bosal in Korea, in the Sokkuram caves dating from the late 700s. Beautiful paintings of Ji-jang Bosal from the Koryu dynasty show him wearing a head scarf and holding a mani jewel that is completely transparent. In Tibet Kshitigarbha is called Sati-snin-po. Sati-snin-po was not as popular in Tibet as Ti-tsang was in China or Jizo in Japan. Statues of Sati-snin-po are uncommon in Tibet, but he frequently appears in Tantric mandalas of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.
To Japan
Buddhism was brought to Japan from Korea and China during the fourth or fifth centuries. The first official record of worship of Jizo Bodhisattva is a repentance rite held for the ailing emperor in 850 c.e. Jizo was seen as an absolver to whom harmful or wrong actions were confessed in an annual ceremony. Jizo rapidly became popular, first among the nobility and later common people. There are Jizo statues preserved in Nara and Kyoto that date from the 800s. Pilgrimages to Jizo images and temples were practiced from the late Heian period on, becoming very popular in the Tokugawa period. In Japanese temple paintings he often appears as master of the six realms because he can move unhindered through them all. He is surrounded by six figures, one for each world, a bodhisattva from the heavenly realms, a man from the human sphere, a horse and ox representing the animal realm, a demon from the hells, an asura and a hungry ghost. Many sutras related to Jizo were copied from Chinese originals during the Nara period. In the Kamakura period a Japanese sutra appeared, the Enmei Jizo-kyo, its text promising longevity to believers in Jizo.
Several traditions surrounding Ti-tsang in China also were adopted in Japan. The first series of miracle tales about Ti-tsang were assembled toward the end of the Sung dynasty in China. In these stories, Ti-tsang was able to free many people from hell, at times by substituting his body for theirs. He rescued deceased parents if their children made offerings to him, commissioned statues, or made copies of his sutras. These stories influenced the miracle tales that arose later in Japan, and seem to be the basis for beli
ef in the migawari (surrogate) Jizo. In China the local gods were adopted as protectors of Buddhist temples, and were depicted as ferocious guards standing at the temple gates. In Japan a similar process occurred when Shinto kami were adopted as the original manifestations in Japan (honji) of the Indian Buddhas and bodhisattvas. In this way the deities of indigenous religions and of Buddhism—and more important, their believers and priests—developed a peaceful coexistence.
Chinese Buddhists believed that punishment for sins was not permanent, but temporary. Once restitution had been made the person would move to a new place of existence. If they were unable to do so under their own power, Ti-tsang would help deliver them. The Japanese adopted these beliefs. When Christian missionaries arrived eight centuries later, the long-held faith of the Japanese in the infinite mercy of bodhisattvas such as Jizo who would descend into hell to redeem the lowliest sinner became a problem. Compared to Jizo, who embodied the spirit of pity, or compared even to the impartial bureaucratic justice of the hall of the Ten Kings, the Christian God seemed hardhearted. As the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier recorded:
The Christians of Japan are afflicted with sadness, and the reason for this is that they feel keenly what we have told them, that there is no remedy for those who go to hell. They feel this because of their love for their fathers and mothers, wives, children and others who have died in the past and they feel pity for them. Many weep for their dead, and they ask me if there is any remedy for them through alms and prayers. I tell them there is no remedy for them. [T]hese people . . . had great doubts about the supreme goodness of God, saying that he could not be merciful since he had not revealed himself to them before our coming; if all was true (as we said) that those who do not adore God all go to hell, God had no mercy on their ancestors, since he had let them go to hell without having given them a knowledge of himself. . . They do not cease to weep when they see that their ancestors cannot be helped. I also experience some sadness when I see my friends, so loved and cherished, weeping over things for which there is no remedy.
The Jesuits also reproached the Buddhist monks for allowing lay people and women to make offerings during the Obon festival for the dead. While some Japanese believed in the cosmology of the underground realms of hell ruled by the Ten Kings, and were troubled by the Christian idea of a hell without possibility of salvation, some clearly were not. When sixteenth-century Jesuits asked Zen monks about hell, the monks replied that hell and punishment were in this world. They said,
. . . that there is no hell after a man’s death and that hell is in this world. And when through death we are liberated from these physical miseries by leaving this hell, we shall be at peace. There is a principle from which all things arise: men, animals, plants: every created thing has in itself this principle, and when a man or animal dies, they return to the four elements, into that which they were, and this principle returns to that which it is.
Asked how one could become a saint, the Zen monks replied that there were no saints or Buddhas to look for outside of ourselves.
Mudras and Attributes
How to Recognize Jizo Bodhisattva
The historical Buddha asked that no statues be made of him since he was, as a human being, an example to be followed, not a god to be worshiped. After his death such symbols as the Buddha’s footprints or the eight-spoked wheel connoting the eightfold path were used to represent the World Honored One and his teachings. By the second century c.e., statues and artwork began to portray the Buddha in human form. Buddhas and bodhisattvas were shown with mudras—hand gestures indicating aspects of a Buddha or bodhisattva’s manifestation in the world—and with attributes—objects held by bodhisattvas, symbolic of their powers. The Buddha is seldom shown holding objects other than his begging bowl. Most bodhisattvas were shown with certain mudras and attributes that later became characteristic and could be used to identify them. The number of mudras and attributes is small and no gesture or object is unique to a particular bodhisattva.
The clothing, mudras, and attributes of Jizo Bodhisattva vary according to country and era. Jizo appears in two forms, either as a simple monk or as a royal bodhisattva. In China and later in Tibet Kshitigarbha appears in the bodhisattva form, wearing silken garments, jeweled necklace and crown, and seated on a throne. He may be accompanied by a winged lion or a tiger. In the art of the Tun Huang cave she is shown standing on a single lotus and also with a white lotus under one foot and a yellow lotus under the other. The lotus is a symbol of purity arising from defilement or the sacred blooming in the ordinary. In Korea Ji-jang Bosal is shown wearing a pilgrim’s head scarf that touches his shoulders.
In Tibet Kshitigarbha usually holds the mudra of fearlessness and charity as in Japan, but he is also shown in the mudra symbolic of speaking and teaching. In mandalas he is seated at the right of Shakyamuni and opposite Akasagarba, the Womb of Space (or Sky) Bodhisattva. His color is white or flesh, because, as white is the source of all colors, he is the source of all virtues, and because he appears on earth in flesh, as a human being. In mandalas of the eight bodhisattvas he is often shown with an alms bowl in the left hand. In Tibetan art he holds various implements, a fly whisk (symbol of repelling obstacles to enlightenment and of not harming any creature), a book (the sacred texts and teachings), a vase (symbol of being most useful by virtue of emptiness), or an alms bowl (symbolic of being a receptacle of the Dharma).
In Japanese art Jizo Bodhisattva rarely appears as a regal bodhisattva. He usually has the shaven head of a monk and wears a Theravadin monk’s robes. Sometimes a more ornate over-robe (o-kesa) is added. Either his feet are bare or he wears a monk’s sandals. Jizo is usually shown standing quietly with eyes lowered or subtly poised with the toes of one foot lifted slightly or a foot turned as if he is about to walk. Less often he sits, either in meditation posture on a large lotus, or as if resting during a long journey. Seated Jizos are sometimes shown in the earth-touching gesture appropriate to the Earth Store Bodhisattva.
Early Jizos in Japan had mature faces. Immature and somewhat effeminate faces began to be shown in art from the twelfth century, becoming overtly childlike in the Mizuko Jizos of the twentieth century. The first Jizos in Japan had empty hands, making the mu-dras of fearlessness with the raised and extended right hand and the mudra of charity or giving the gift of the Dharma with the left hand open, facing out and pointing downward toward the earth. By the ninth century Jizo began to be shown holding the radiant cintamani jewel of the Dharma in the left hand, and by the twelfth century the ringed staff appeared in the right hand. Japanese statues of the Mizu-ko Jizo, protector of children, have children in various poses around them, clinging to their robes, holding on to the staff for support or held securely in Jizo’s arms. Not all Jizos carry the traditional attributes. A group of Roku (six) Jizo may each hold a different object and make a different mudra appropriate to each of the six realms. In one representation, the Jizo who visits hell holds a staff topped by a skull or a human head, the Jizo who visits the realm of the hungry ghosts carries a begging bowl to feed the hungry, the Jizo of the human realm carries a rosary, the Jizo in the world of animals holds a banner, Jizo of the asura realm carries the triple cintamani, and the Jizo of the heavenly realm holds a solar disk and vajra. The Shogun Jizo rides a horse and carries a sword (symbol of the power of wisdom to cut the fetters of delusion) and a banner. One Jizo statue at Kongorin-ji holds a huge arrow (symbolic of the Dharma as the weapon against evil) instead of a staff.
Jizo may have two young monks as attendants, Sho-zen and Sho-aku. Sho-zen controls good and harmonizes the underlying nature of all things. He is dressed in white and holds a white lotus. Sho-aku controls evil and subjugates ignorance. He is dressed in red and carries a vajra or thunderbolt. The custom of dressing statues of Jizo in red or white garments in Japan may have its origin, now forgotten, in the red and white attendants.
The Greatest Gift: No Fear
Jizo Bodhisattva is usually shown with the right hand making the m
udra of fearlessness or holding the six-ringed staff. Like other Buddhas and bodhisattvas, she is fearless because she has seen through the illusion of self. One Dharma teacher has defined self as the process of defining and defending personal territory. When we think our puny little self is all that we are, then we are afraid when there is any threat to it. That fear is the source of all anger. When the self is seen as empty, that is, simply an ever-changing process with no thing at its heart, then there is nothing to defend and nothing to fear.
Fearlessness also arises when someone we love is at risk and must be saved. The mudra of fearlessness is said to come from a gesture the Buddha used in subduing an attacking elephant.
Devadatta was a monk who became jealous of the Buddha and tried to kill him by many and various means. Once he went to the elephant stables where a savage, man-killing elephant called Nalagiri was kept. He bribed the mahouts to let Nalagiri loose in the road where the Buddha was walking. When the elephant saw the Buddha he raised his trunk and charged. The Buddha’s disciples tried to convince the Buddha to turn back but the Buddha told them not to be afraid. “It is impossible, cannot happen, that anyone can take a Perfect One’s life by violence,” he told them.
As the maddened elephant thundered toward him the Buddha raised his right hand and encompassed it with thoughts of lovingkindness. The elephant lowered his trunk, stopped and stood quietly before the Buddha. The Buddha stroked the elephant’s forehead and spoke to him quietly. Nalagiri took the dust of the Blessed One’s feet with his trunk and sprinkled it on his forehead. Then, keeping the Buddha in his sight as long as possible, he retreated backwards to the elephant stables, peacefully entered his stall and was thenceforth tame.
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