Jizo Bodhisattva

by Jan Chozen Bays

  The single gem with three tiers indicates the unity of the Triple Gem(the Three Treasures). No one aspect can function without the others. A Buddha may be enlightened but cannot help others without skillful means to teach. No matter how enlightened, a teacher is useless and his or her teachings are dry pieces of paper or sterile words without people to hear them, to benefit from them, and to bring them to others. The three-tiered gem also shows that the three treasures function within our one body-heart-mind. It is by means of our own body-heart-mind brought into unity by one-pointed practice that awakening can occur, manifest, and benefit others.

  When Jizo descends into the realms of confusion and darkness, the pure light of the cintamani jewel attracts beings to him, to hear and see the Dharma. Humans are naturally attracted to jewels. Jewels become coveted and precious to us. Why is this?

  They are not precious to dogs or to trees. Jewels are actually rocks, but all rocks are not alike to us. We do not string pieces of slate around our neck. Why are we attracted to some rocks, put them into a separate category called “gems,” and pay a lot of money to possess them?

  Anything that is especially valued by humans is worth a second glance with the mind of spiritual insight. I have collected glass all my life. Glass is a poor woman’s substitute for jewels. It began in childhood. My girlfriend’s father had an auto-wrecking yard and we used to play among the rusting car bodies, pretending to drive the cars, scaring each other with the possibility that we would find blood or even body parts in the twisted wrecks. When shatterproof glass began to be used in windshields, we discovered and collected heaps of beautiful “crystals” from shattered car windows.

  In the church my family attended, I seldom heard the sermon but simply enjoyed sitting in that peaceful loving place with the stained-glass windows. I would watch the moving light pour through different scenes and figures, staining the congregation with glowing color. My favorite window was a wall of blues and purples with scattered bits of red.

  Now as an adult I have in my kitchen window amethyst and quartz crystals, glass marbles, and a hunk of blue glass from a glass-blower’s discard heap. Around the house I have glass paperweights, green Depression glass, and a “deck prism” used in sailing boats to let light into the darkness below the decks. I make cobalt-glass windows of Jizo. I don’t wear jewelry, I just like to look at glass and jewels.

  One day I looked at all the glass and asked, “What is going on here?” (The basic question of spiritual practice.) Why have I collected all of this? Is there a quality I am trying to take on or to constantly remind myself of?

  What is it that attracts us to jewels? First, it is their quality of light. Some jewels—like emeralds, tourmaline, topaz, peridot, and diamonds—can be cut so that light reflects off their facets. Some jewels seem to glow with a luminous quality, like moonstones and pearls. Some have light hidden within their depths, like fire opals or star sapphires.

  The conventional truth is that we like jewels because they are beautiful and wearing them somehow confers their beauty on us. The deeper truth is that we are attracted to jewels because they show us a truth about our true nature, the inextinguishable light that is hidden in our depths. Gems reflect to us the truth that we are transparent, luminous, sparkling bits, turned on the lathe of time, cut and polished by constant change. There is a Buddhist view of existence called Indra’s net. It tells of a net formed by the intersecting strands of time and space. Each life is a jewel twinkling off! and on! at the crossing of here! and now! Each jewel life reflects and is reflected by all other life. We are nothing but reflections reflecting reflections, an empty theater full of mirrors, a net of jewels encased in a single great Gem.

  Jewels remind us of our true nature, which is brilliant light. We are the precious jewel. Our spiritual practice is to discover and discard what is extraneous and obscures that light, and to become increasingly transparent, until the clear light of truth shines unhindered through us. There is a luminous quality to those who are transparent to that great shining. It can be seen in the sanzen room. During a long retreat, day by day people come in with faces that become clearer, younger, and more luminous.

  Gems are made precious by their rarity. Semiprecious stones are those that are more common. Ordinary human life is in one way a semiprecious gem. In the mass of life-forms, human life is not common. Once born human, if we are able to hear the spiritual truth and to practice it, our life becomes more rare and thus a precious gem. If we are able to practice intensively we can burn up obscuring impurities. We become the sharira—heart of brilliant jewel, triply rare and beyond price.

  The color of jewels also attracts us. If there were no variety of color and quality, if all gems were clear like diamonds, we would find them boring. What is that color in our lives? How are we that color?

  We are like the pieces of a stained-glass window, bits of colored glass through which the Great Light pours. The more transparent we are to the light, the more it shines through us to illuminate others. If we are able to see our lives from a “higher” and larger perspective, there is a pattern to the moving mosaic of light and glass. If we move in closer, into the perspective of the middle range of vision where we usually function, the different colors and shapes distract us. If we move in very close, into the molecules of glass, the differences and colors again disappear. It is all a-dancing.

  The Origin of the Mani Jewel

  There are several myths about the origin of the mani jewel that Jizo carries. One involves mystical animals called nagas and gurudas. Nagas are mystical ferocious but benign beings with the hood of a cobra, the face of a human, and the body of a serpent or a dragon. They live at the bottom of the ocean where they guard Buddhist teachings until the time that humans are ready to receive them. Nagarjuna, the second-century Buddhist who wrote and taught about sunyata, or emptiness, was named for the nagas. It is said that he received spiritual instruction from them in their undersea palace and brought the teaching on emptiness from caves there. Garudas are half giant eagle, half golden human, and are archenemies of serpents. Both nagas and gurudas are portrayed by artists as companions or steeds for Hindu and Buddhist deities. Both have been used as synonyms for the Buddha, representing the power of an enlightened being.

  According to one legend, Nanda, king of the nagas, took the heart of a guruda bird and made it into a luminous gem. The Buddha then transformed it into the cintamani jewel that grants all desires. In another legend, the mani jewel came from the brain of a naga. In addition to granting wishes, it provides immunity from all harm. One who possess it is unaffected by drinking poison and can pass through fire unburned.

  The Jewel in Us

  These are not just curious legends from the past. Each aspect of these stories points to a truth of our lives in this place and time. Is there a jewel that can fulfill all our desires? Is there a jewel that can give us protection from poison and fire? If it exists, where and how can we find it?

  That this gem was born from the heart and brain of gurudas and nagas means that is birthed in the workings of our own pumping and feeling heart and in the electrical circuits, machinations, and speculations of our own mind. It is within us, not outside of us. It is what we were before we were born, what we are now, and what we will become after we die.

  That it took the strength of great nagas, gurudas, and Buddhas to bring the gem to light and call forth its brilliance means that we have the potential within our small and pitiful self, if we call on the power available within our huge Self, to plunge into the gore of our dark and stinking guts and there find our true power and luminosity. The jewel is our innate enlightened nature. It calls to itself and helps itself emerge.

  Master Wansong wrote a poem about a jewel:

  The thread of the jewel passes nine bends.

  The jade loom barely turns once.

  This is from a legend about Confucius. Once the great sage was given the task of threading a jewel with nine curves in its bore. The penalty for failure was his life
. He did not know how to accomplish this, but a mysterious girl he met in the mulberry bushes told him to think of a secret. The Chinese word for “secret” is close to the sound for the word “honey.” The one word opened his mind and Confucius fastened a thread to an ant, luring it with honey into entering the jewel and negotiating the path with nine curves.

  What is this jewel? This jewel is our life. This ant is also our life. We creep along a twisted path running up against barriers, turning and toiling on, blind to the jewel that surrounds us and kindly provides a path that is called “my life.”

  What is the thread? Also our life. Pulling that one straight thread of our life through nine or ninety-nine or ninety-nine thousand bends and twists, that pulling is the purpose for which we were born, to rescue Confucius, all the sages, the Shakyamuni Buddha from danger. Through our ignorance we grasp and push away, fight and kill. In doing so, we put in peril the lives of the great and mighty; the seen and unseen; medium, short, or small; our life; and the very life of the Buddha.

  Because we are blind to the jewel and the path, we negotiate the twisted path of our life as best we can. Honey is used to lure us. What is that honey? It depends upon the person. Why do you practice? To pass koans? To become enlightened? To be special? To be in charge? To not hurt so much? Because it’s fun? It doesn’t matter. The Dharma accepts any motive. Any motive will do when your life is at risk.

  The real honey has a subtle taste. It is the taste of peaceful abiding, clarity, and spaciousness. Once tasted, no substitute will be accepted.

  The Zen poet Ryokan wrote:

  Leave off your mad rush for gold and jewels.

  I’ve got something far more precious for you:

  A bright pearl that sparkles more brilliantly than the sun and moon

  And illuminates each and every eye.

  Lose it and you’ll wallow in a sea of pain;

  Find it and you’ll safely reach the other shore.

  I’d freely present this treasure to anyone

  But hardly anyone asks for it.

  Zen Master Gensha taught, “The whole Universe in ten directions is one bright pearl, what use is understanding?” Zen Master Keizan added, “Although it is an ordinary jewel it does not come from outside but rather appears completely from the human mind. . . .If you use this jewel when you are ill, the illness is cured. If you wear this jewel when you are worried, the worry will dissipate on its own. All treasures appear from this mani jewel and it is said that no matter how much it is used, it is inexhaustible.” Zen Master Dōgen adds, “Even though it seems to be continually changing the outward appearance of its turning and not turning, it is just the bright pearl. Those who surmise that ‘I cannot be the bright pearl,’ should not doubt that they are the pearl.”

  How can this one bright pearl, the jewel that Jizo carries, grant all desires? When we begin to see its light and then to see by its light, then all our desires—the poison of greed and the burning fires of lust—become pale and cool next to the kindling of the bright flame of the growing desire to awaken fully. As that one desire to draw closer and closer to the Source of all light and life grows greater we will be drawn, if we allow it, into brilliant heart of that jewel, which is our own heart. Dwelling in that heart there are no questions, no fevers, no for or against. There is only the ease and joy of all things perfect as they are. Do not doubt that you are the bright pearl!

  chapter ten

  The Six Rings

  and the Six Realms

  I watch people in the world

  Throw away their lives lusting after things,

  Never able to satisfy their desires,

  Failing into deep despair and torturing themselves.

  Even if they get what they want,

  How long will they be able to enjoy it?

  For one heavenly pleasure they suffer ten torments of hell.

  Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.

  Such people are like monkeys

  Frantically grasping for the moon in the water

  And then falling into a whirlpool.

  How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.

  Ryōkan

  The Buddha taught that all living beings dwell in six different realms of existence. There are six rings on the staff carried by Jizo Bodhisattva, one for each of these six realms. The jingling of the rings, a constant sound whenever the pilgrim walks, is a reminder that we carry the six realms with us at all times. Jizo is a bodhisattva who has the ability to move freely through the six realms and assist those who are suffering. In Japan six statues of Jizo (Roku Jizo), one for each realm, often stand at the entrances to cemeteries. Their benign countenances bring ease to those who are anxious about the fate of a loved one who has died and entered that Great Unknown.

  The origin of the six realms is “the five destinations,” a teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha said that all life was in motion, ceaselessly moving among these five realms: hell, animal, hungry ghost, human, and gods. The sixth—the realm of the angry titans called asuras—was inserted between the human and god realms hundreds of years after the Buddha lived.

  The Buddha described the experience in each realm through the simile of a hot, weary traveler. The hell realm, he said, is as painful as a traveler who has been scorched and exhausted by hot weather, is weary, hot, and thirsty and who falls into a deep charcoal pit full of glowing coals. Those in the animal realms are as miserable as a hot, exhausted man who falls into a deep cesspool filled with excrement. The realm of ghosts is like a tired man who is able to sit under a tree on rocky ground but in only a little shade.

  The human realm, he said, is like the pleasant sensations experienced by a hot, weary traveler who can sit on smooth ground in deep shade. The god realm is extremely pleasant, like the experience of a man in a closed, windowless, and barred room in a mansion, lying on a couch spread with rugs, blankets, sheets, many crimson pillows, and a coverlet of deerskin.

  Four of six modern stone Jizos near Okayama.

  Nirvana (release from the six realms), the Buddha said, is like the man who plunges into a pond with transparently clear, cool water, with smooth banks for getting in and out. In bathing and drinking the water, all his distress is relieved and he feels delight.

  It is important to know about the six realms not only because they are the environment in which Jizo Bodhisattva travels and works, but also because we travel through each of the six realms on our spiritual quest. The six realms are the geography of our very life. It is not an odd and ancient Buddhist cosmology but a vivid and accurate description of the moment-to-moment experience we call “my life.” It tells us why and how we and others suffer. It can guide us out of a blind groping in dark and twisted passageways toward the bright light and fresh air of freedom.

  Each of these six realms, even the very pleasant existence called the realm of the gods, can be a trap. Notice that the Buddha described the room of the gods like a comfortable cell, but one that is closed and barred. There is only the appearance of freedom in the more pleasant realms, that of humans and gods. It is like wandering within a huge maze. Ultimately the experience in each realm is impermanent and unsatisfactory.

  Buddhists do not believe in a higher authority that sentences a human to the realms of ceaseless suffering like the hungry ghost or hell realms. Nor do the six realms represent a ladder that we climb straight up to heaven. We move in a fluid, cyclic way from one realm to another, propelled by our actions, speech, thoughts, and their effects. The internal mechanism of our life’s unwinding is the law of cause and effect. We will move endlessly among these realms, as long as our activity arises from ignorance.

  Zen Master Hakuin once awakened a samurai to this truth. The samurai had come to ask for—or maybe demand—an explanation of heaven and hell. Hakuin taunted him, “What’s the matter? Are you frightened of hell? A sniveling coward like you is not worth teaching!” The furious samurai swung his sword but Hakuin stepped aside and exclaimed, “Here open
the gates of hell!” The samurai halted and then sheathed his sword. Hakuin said calmly, “Here open the gates of heaven.”

  The Buddha taught that nirvana exists above and separate from all of these six realms. In the same way that our action and reaction creates the “path and the way” to a hellish consequence, it is our own action that ultimately releases us from the realms of suffering and puts us on the path to nirvana. Only by destroying the things that stain and fetter the mind can a person realize the original clarity, freedom, and unbounded expanse of the True Mind that is our birthright.

  Most beings are caught in transmigrating the six realms. Bodhisattvas are not. They have awakened, seen the emptiness of these realms, and are free of them. Jizo and Kannon are the bodhisattvas who are able to travel freely among the six realms. They have chosen to return to the six dream worlds, nightmarish and pleasant, to help others awaken. With clarity and compassion they see the suffering of each realm and the cause of that suffering. They are able to stand at the intersections between the realms and help those who are unable to move out of misery and unhappiness by their own power. Jizo Bodhisattva has taken a specific vow not to rest, to enter nirvana, until all those suffering in the hell realms have been rescued and brought to awakening.

  Beings in the lower realms—hell, ghosts, and animals—obviously need assistance. We humans are sympathetic and are drawn to help those in the “lower” realms. We do work in prisons, with abused children, in war zones, and in animal shelters. But beings in the “higher” realms—the titans and gods—are in as much, if not more, need of help. Their pleasant living conditions disguise their suffering from themselves and others. Their very fame and wealth can cause other, less fortunate people to feel jealousy, which is the entry door into the titan realm, or to feel anger, which is the conduit into the hellish realms.