It is her great love for all living beings that renders Jizo fearless. It is said that Jizo can use her staff to strike the iron doors of hell and they must open and release those who have done even one good deed. Love has this, the greatest power—the power to overcome all fear.
Jizo is often shown with the mudra of charity or the cintamani jewel in his left hand. These indicate the best gift that can be given to those in need, the clear light of Dharma truth. Those who live by that truth lose personal fear and are able to walk straight along the twisted paths of human suffering. When energy is not wasted on fearing for and protecting the individual self, it finds another outlet. It turns around and flows outward. A kind of miracle occurs. As the energy flows out, the innate heart of compassion is opened and there is the experience of a pure love for everyone and everything. People’s faces change when this transformation occurs, becoming bright and radiant like the glow of an inner jewel. The outward-directed light illuminates the source of people’s suffering. Its warmth brings them hope and ease. The mudra of charity is also called the mudra of consolation because the teachings of the Buddha provide us with an inner refuge in times of external or internal turmoil. The combined mudras of fearlessness and charity show the serene confidence that arises from taking complete refuge in the Dharma.
For over fifteen hundred years Jizo Bodhisattva has been a spiritual pilgrim, traveling from India to Northern Asia and now to America and Europe, fulfilling her original vow not to rest until all beings are saved from hell. As she travels, her body and dress transform according to need. As she enters new countries new forms of practice develop that make her more accessible and are most suited to the suffering particular to each time and place. Whatever her external appearance, male or female, monk or royalty, Oriental or Western, she always can be recognized by the benefit that appears in her wake.
In the next chapter we will look at how we ourselves are spiritual pilgrims and can be inspired by the example of Jizo Bodhisattva to continue on the spiritual path.
chapter seven
Jizo Bodhisattva
AND THE
Path of Pilgrimage
Early on the first of August
I take my bowl and head for town.
Silver clouds accompany my steps,
A golden breeze caresses the bell on my staff.
Ten thousand doors, a thousand gates open for me.
I feast my eyes on cool groves of bamboo and banana trees.
I beg here and there, east and west,
Stopping at sake shops and fishmongers, too.
An honest gaze can disarm a mountain of swords;
A steady stride can glide over the fires of hell.
This was the message the Prince of Beggars
Taught his disciples over twenty-seven hundred years ago.
Ryōkan
Pilgrims
Jizo Bodhisattva has been a pilgrim for two thousand years. What can we learn from Jizo’s pilgrimage about our own spiritual journey? A pilgrim is defined as a person who travels a long distance to a sacred place as an act of devotion. In the West we do not generally encounter people on the roads and sidewalks who are identifiable as pilgrims. They are more common in Asia, particularly in India, where wandering holy men with matted hair and convoys of trucks packed with religious pilgrims on their way to a temple celebration are an everyday sight. In Japan, too, there are group pilgrimages by bus to temples in a series, each with a different image of a particular bodhisattva such as Jizo. In recent years, as the population of Japan has aged, a new image has been created, the antisenility bodhisattva. A ten-foot bronze statue portrays an old man and woman kneeling in prayer at the feet of a benevolent standing Kannon or Jizo. Busloads of elderly Japanese tour the chains of temples that have installed these new images, offering prayers at each one for longevity and freedom from dementia.
Although modern pilgrims travel by plane or bus, the tradition of the walking pilgrimage does persist. In Japan pilgrims climb the sacred mountain Fuji carrying wooden staffs purchased for the occasion. On the path up the mountain they stop for tea and have the staff stamped at each way station. Other pilgrims undertake a walking tour of several weeks to thirty-three temples on the island of Shikoku. The tradition of a pilgrimage to six Jizo temples in Kyoto began in medieval times and continues to this day.
Jizo Bodhisattva is often portrayed carrying a pilgrim’s staff and wearing pilgrim garb. In the ancient Chinese caves of Tun Huang and also in Korea he was shown with his robe worn as a traveler would, draped over his head and shoulders for protection from the weather. Statues of Jizo are found at thousands of crossroads in Japan, from intersections of major highways to the divergence of dirt paths among rice paddies. His presence helps travelers choose the right direction. Jizo is the guardian not only of those who travel on the earthly plane but also of those at crucial crossroads in the spiritual journey.
As we consider these aspects of Jizo we should assess our life honestly. Am I a pilgrim, or more of a wanderer?
There is a difference between a pilgrim and a wanderer. Buddhist teachings use “wanderer” to refer to someone who is lost in the rounds of suffering existence, transmigrating through the six worlds. As we move day by day, hour by hour, among states of ignorance and stupidity, irritation and anger, greediness, coveting and jealousy, pain and mental discomfort, we are like people wandering in a dense primal forest, unable to find a way out or even to climb above the trees to see if there is an edge to this tangling wilderness. We will do this until we realize, hear, or are shown that there is a way out.
Path Consciousness
What is the difference between a wanderer and a pilgrim? First we must know there is a path. If we are lost and can’t find a way out, our only choices are despair, a grim determination just to survive, or for some who suffer terribly, suicide. What transforms despair and resignation to hope and joy is to know there is a path.
The Story of Sara
We have a number of nurses, doctors, and therapists in our sangha. There often is a reticence among helping professionals to even admit, let alone attend to, their own physical and mental problems. They are the ones in charge, fighting and conquering disease. They have to be strong for the sake of helping others, with no time for vulnerability, rest, or self-care. Eventually they “burn out” or become victims of what is called “compassion fatigue.” When we first offered meditation retreats for health-care professionals, we asked those who came whether their primary interest was in learning meditation for themselves or for their patients. “For ourselves!” everyone responded. “If we are healthy, our patients will benefit.”
I heard Sara’s story at one of these retreats. Sara was a social work student at the University Hospital. She was assigned a preceptor who had trained with Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn and who had begun a mindfulness meditation clinic for patients with chronic pain and disease. In her previous work in the university pain clinics, the preceptor had not been impressed with the results, which were mostly unhappy patients on a rotation of medications. The mindfulness meditation techniques seemed much more effective.
Sara had been suffering from headaches, by her own estimate, twenty-seven days a month, with no relief after complete medical evaluations. She was taking painkillers almost daily. Her preceptor suggested that the student join the mindfulness meditation group for patients with chronic disease and pain. Sara was skeptical, but it would look bad to refuse her mentor. She committed to the course, eight weeks of meditating forty-five minutes a day, and to learning and trying several new techniques of meditation. To her surprise the meditation worked. Within five weeks her headaches had been reduced from twenty-seven days to three days a month.
Sara had discovered that if she could be mindful of a small spot between her eyebrows, checking it many times a day and keeping it relaxed, she could prevent the headaches. She was quite delighted with the technique and with herself. When the doctors had failed, she had been able to find the source of her suffering
and to treat it successfully.
First Sara needed to be told there was a path. To know there is a way to freedom is called “path consciousness.” Next she needed practical instruction to begin practice, to step onto the path and begin to walk. Listening to her story, feeling her happiness, I realized that if I know of such a path, the way taught by the Buddha, it is my obligation to use it to relieve suffering. If I do not, I condemn others to pain and despair. It would be like having a cure for cancer and keeping it to myself. In Christian terms, not sharing the path is a “sin of omission.” This is the birthplace of the bodhisattva vow. Jizo Bodhisattva is sure that sentient beings do not have to suffer. Her certainty that the path brings ease and happiness manifests as Jizo’s great optimism and is the source of Jizo’s unflagging determination and energy.
The difference between a pilgrim and a wanderer is to know there is a path and to set out on it. We also need guides, both printed maps and also human guides. The Buddha provided the first map in the teachings he expounded so thoroughly, adjusting them to the individual and the circumstances. Surprisingly, many people who follow Buddhist principles have never read the original teachings. This is akin to Christians not reading the Bible. It is important to return to the source. Books on the direct teachings of the Buddha appear in the notes for this chapter.
Books and audio-tape teachings by current Buddhist teachers also provide maps for us, describing parts of the path and giving hints for the traveler. We should realize that all of these, including this very book, are interpretations of his teachings and insights by individuals less enlightened than the Buddha. Be discriminating.
Students often ask if they should read books about Zen. I say to read books that inspire you to sit down on the cushion and practice, not books that entice you to hide out in information acquisition or in more intellectual speculation. If you find a book that inspires you to meditate, read a little upon first awakening, and a little just before going to bed. Begin each day with practice; and end each day with practice taken into sleep time.
Preparing for the Trip
Setting Aside Resources
Before setting out on the journey we must set aside the resources. These include time and money. How much time should be set aside for spiritual practice? In other religious traditions, there is the practice of tithing. People give one-tenth of their gross income to the church. This is a good principle to apply to the energy resource we call money or income.
What if we applied this same principle to the resource of time? If we gave one-tenth of our day, that would be 2.4 hours. If we gave even one-tenth of the sixteen hours we are vertical and have our eyes open (I hesitate to say “awake”) that would be 1.6 hours of practice a day. Few people do this. It is ironic that in this age when we have so many gadgets to “save time” that the pace of our life is more frantic than ever. We have less time than previous generations for spiritual practice. Time has to be deliberately and repetitively set aside.
Gathering the Needed Equipment
A pilgrim carries only the essentials. Jizo has a robe and bowl, a staff, and the Dharma jewel. Nothing extra. What do we need to step out on the path of practice? Just the equipment we were born with. A body and a mind. Actually, a body that is breathing.
Body, breath, and mind. That’s all that’s needed. The beauty of this is that it means you can practice anywhere, anytime. In line for the bank, in a traffic jam, rocking your child to sleep. Just align body, breath, and mind, and there you are. There is no longer such thing as “waiting.” Only a gift of additional time to practice.
Students ask, “How do you find time for practice?” There are two answers. First, my life makes me practice. I could not do what I do without practice. Second, I turn my awareness around. Instead of looking for time to practice and trying to expand it, I look for time I am not practicing and try to shrink it. One way to begin to make a seamless practice is to pick points of awareness. These points depend upon your particular life. They could be upon opening the eyes, upon sitting on the toilet, upon putting your hand on a door handle and before opening it, upon entering an elevator, upon looking in a mirror, upon stepping into a shower. These many small moments of mindfulness, a pause to take one or two breaths in awareness, eventually fill in the background of “not practicing” like many small dots of paint eventually fill in a canvas.
I recently discovered a new one. I became aware of restlessness arising when the hourglass icon (meaning “wait a bit”) came up on my computer screen. My mind and often my body would run off to another place, unable to endure even ten seconds of waiting. I decided to use the hourglass icon like a mindfulness bell to move mentally back from the computer and take a few slow breaths. This “paint by dots” method for weaving a tapestry of increasing awareness works well and prepares the way for the great reversal of figure and ground we call enlightenment.
What Vehicle to Take?
Buddhist practice traditions are divided into three schools—some-times called “vehicles”—the Theravada, the Mahayana, and the Vajrayana. Theravada means the “way of the elders” and is closest to the original form of Buddhism. Mahayana means “great vehicle” and includes Chinese Ch’an and Japanese Zen schools. Vajrayana means “diamond vehicle” and includes many forms of Tibetan Buddhism. These paths are only different ways to approach the same Truth. Any statements about a particular school being better or best arise from insecurity. The only thing we can really say is, “This practice is the best for me at this time.” There is only one Truth. If there were more than one, it would not be the Truth.
In America, the great melting pot, the differences between different schools of Buddhism seem relatively unimportant. We are all working against the same enemies: delusion and suffering. There is plenty of suffering to go around, an unending supply. We needn’t compete for customers. As my husband says, “The more Dharma, the more Dharma.” What is most important is to find a good teacher. The trappings of the tradition are only a kind of lure to get you practicing until the practice begins to practice you.
Setting out on Pilgrimage
Our pilgrimage began very early in our lives, so early we can’t really remember. It began before we had mind-words to hold memory. It began as soon as we were born into separateness, as soon as we experienced separateness and therefore discomfort.
Once in a practice group we asked the question, when did our spiritual journey begin? Some students had a clear memory of the pilgrimage starting as early as ages two to five. One student recalled at age four seeing a tomato plant in the sun, glowingly alive. She knelt down and offered her life to God. Another student recalled walking down a road at age three wearing a red-and-white gingham dress. She saw a rainbow on the road ahead and wondered if she walked into the rainbow would she continue to exist. Thus began the asking of the great spiritual questions: Who am I? Is there a meaning to my life?
Even though the pilgrimage begins very early, perhaps before we are born, our experience is that of setting out over and over. Each period of meditation, each retreat is a venture into unknown territory. It’s not so easy to keep setting out. We’re reluctant to undertake a small journey into our minds, one that lasts only for the three or seven days of a retreat. The most difficult parts of retreat are actually deciding to go and then physically getting there, stepping around all the detours the ego lays out. There are so many cogent and tempting alternatives. And they don’t even have to be that attractive. Faced with the prospect of sitting still for seven days and looking straight at what the mind is up to now or again, faced with having to acknowledge what we are clinging to, faced with giving up our neurotic habits—habits that make us suffer but that give us a lovely sense of security and familiarity, a specialness, an identity—faced with stepping out into what we think is unknown territory, staying home even to scrub the kitchen floor or do the taxes looks pretty good.
But a very wise and intelligent and compassionate part of us knows that the work we really have to do is home-leavin
g. The work that is most essential if we are not just to cling to survival in our dirty nest of self is the scrubbing of the mind, the meticulous accounting of the taxes we pay to the action of karma, the cleaning out of the old trash of conditioning. This work we do best on the cushion.
The most wise and warmly compassionate and intelligent part of us is our True Mind. It calls to us in our little not-so-cozy nest, “Remember me? Remember me from when you were a child? From when you fell in love? From when your life hung by a thread? From when you looked through the stars that dark night and opened to your existence as a speck on a tiny globe whirling through vast space? Remember me from when you first looked through a microscope into a world of billions of exquisite, dancing living beings all interconnected by strands of light? Remember me from when sound became color and color became taste and taste became shape and shape became sound?
“I’m still here. Just waiting for you to give up all the confusion, desperation, cleverness, climbing, dullness, restlessness, pursuit, and the running away. Just waiting for you to sit quietly and discover you’re home.”
The most wise and compassionate part of us is what signs us up for retreats, makes us pack up and leave home, gets us there and sits us down. A small step in a long pilgrimage.
The Discontent of Being a Bystander
Once as Dipankara Buddha walked by, a bystander stepped forward and laid down his hair upon the mud in the path for the Buddha to walk on.
This is part of a story about the Dipankara Buddha, who was a Buddha many eons before the Buddha Shakyamuni of our historical time. This phrase “a bystander stepped forward” is important. Are we content to stand by, eon after eon, as Buddha after Buddha arises, passes by us and disappears? Are we happy sitting in the pews, listening to sermons preached from the front of the assembly and then returning home, lives unchanged? If so, we step back from our palpably real potential. We cannot be bystanders, for to take no action is to be tossed about by the action of cause and effect, by the evil of other’s actions, and to condemn ourselves and others to lives of pain and unhappiness.
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