What are the division bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva? How are they given birth? The phrase division bodies, also called transformation bodies, refers to the thousands of millions of ways in which Earth Store Bodhisattva transforms in order to fulfill his/her vow, which is to “cross over” all beings trapped in hellish realms. These division bodies do not exist independently. They arise in response to need. When someone is suffering and cries out even silently for help, a transformation body is born because of that request. How many transformation bodies are there? As many beings as there beings right now who are in distress and asking for help, that is, right now, the number of transformation bodies.
This has important implications. First, if we are in need of spiritual help, we should ask for it. Our asking is the cause for the arising of division bodies. If we don’t ask, not only are we stuck in our own pride, but we are blocking the arising of bodhisattvas like Jizo.
We all have had the experience of being transformed by becoming aware of someone’s vulnerability and suffering. We are often not aware of their plight until they ask for help. Consider this difference. If a friend or partner snaps, “Turn off the TV! You never do a lick of work around here!”, we might be transformed, but not into a bodhisattva, into a demon! If they say instead, “My mother just called to say she’s coming over and the house is a mess. Please, could you help me clean for awhile?”, we might transform into a bodhisattva.
When we attack someone we risk creating demon bodies. When we ask for help we can give birth to the heart and mind of a bodhisattva in someone else. We are the very cause for the creation of bodhisattvas and their offerings of incense and flowers, and also fruit, soup, cookies, pulled up weeds, and clean floors.
This is an aspect of sangha, the co-creation of enlightened beings. Perhaps we are practicing with the idea that we would like to be a bodhisattva. However, if we only practice by ourselves we are blocking our own transformation into bodhisattvas. This is because we are keeping ourselves isolated from those who might ask for help in ways that might be difficult. Also we are blocking the transformation of others who could respond to us with compassion if we were willing to be vulnerable, to ask for, and to accept their help. Sangha, the community, means not to hoard our spiritual practice. Sangha means the human being-bodies, the raw material out of which bodhisattvas are created. The needs of those sangha bodies are the means by which this creation occurs. When we see others who enter the path and begin to enjoy its fruits, our hearts should jump with joy. The path of practice bears fruit not in isolation but in interaction with others.
The sutras talk about lifetimes of practice together in which we appear and interact in all possible roles. We all have been or will be birthed and cared for by all other beings. We are all aspects of the One Great Life that continually appears and disappears according to cause and effect. What we call one lifetime is a constant flickering, now student, now teacher, now parent, now child, now male, now female, now born, now dying.
Nothing is continuous. Everything is part of that great flickering of light and darkness. Even our awareness is not continuous. It too is impermanent. Many people think that the purpose of Buddhist practice is to be completely aware at all times. This is a misapprehension. Awareness is also subject to cause and effect. We are not trying to hold onto a particular state, but to be responsive to the needs of the ever-changing moment.
This is an aspect of the division bodies of Kshitigarbha. When we can rest quietly in the huge humming dynamo of the energy of all existence, we are completely available, as Jizo Bodhisattva is, to respond to each need that comes forward. With nothing extra in the way, the response is mathematically appropriate to that need. After the response occurs, no traces are left. The amount of energy that is available for this kind of functioning is beyond our comprehension. So too is the mysterious precision of the response to each situation. When we have released ourselves as the center of the universe, then we are released to fulfill our function to heal the suffering of the human world. Then each moment of our life is a division body, arising in response to the need that appears before us.
This is why we say “emptiness.” Emptiness means that nothing is fixed. At its core everything is fluid, potential. What we seek has nothing to do with any kind of permanence, security, continuity or final state to be reached. If it did it would become static and die. It would not then be the “deathless” that the Buddha spoke about. If it did become static, it could not be transformed into the myriad bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva or even into our own particular body.
We are familiar with this assembling of the myriad division bodies into one great body. This is our zazen. When we can rest with body still and mind open, all the division bodies assemble in one place, right here. That is who we all are, division bodies of the One. That is what each grass blade, each yellow or red or brown tree leaf is, one of ten thousand million division bodies of the one body. It is this assemblage that makes up our life.
In response to our suffering, Jizo Bodhisattva transforms into many forms: a man, a woman, a god, a king, or a stream. This means that whatever we will pay attention to that can relieve our suffering, Jizo Bodhisattva will transform into. A man who has had a difficult mother might be better able to hear the Dharma from a male teacher. A woman who was abused by her father in childhood might only be able to be open and inspired by a woman teacher. A Vietnam veteran might distrust all humans and find peace only living alone in the creases and folds of the huge mountain torso and forest pelt of the Earth Store Bodhisattva body. In any of us a turbid, peevish state of mind can arise. We can go to the sanctuary of a forest to breathe in the fresh air exhaled by the damp-earth and flow-ing-stream transformation bodies. Jizo transforms into whatever resuscitation equipment the parts of the One Body require to find relief from distress.
One person might listen to the Dharma spoken by a splendid king. Others might be open only to a monk, or a spirit that appears in a vision, or a person now dead who appears in a vivid dream with a message. Maybe we will only listen carefully to a teacher who can startle us by reading minds or making watches appear out of thin air, or who manifests as a ten-foot golden Buddha.
We can ask who has appeared to liberate us. But a more important question is, whom have we been born to liberate? For we are all division bodies born in response to urgent need, to heal the human world. Can we be awakened enough to hear those who call to us, to know where our place of healing activity is—home, temple, school, lab, store, shop, garden or office? For suffering has to be actively and repeatedly abandoned, in every situation in which it manifests. It does not disappear completely in one magic instant as we sit in the meditation hall.
In the sutra the ten thousand million forms of Jizo return to a single form. This did not just happen in the past, it happens all the time. Right now where is that form? That one form is the storehouse of all forms of human benevolence, supreme optimism, and unflagging effort to save all beings. Do you know where to find it?
The Vow of Earth Store Bodhisattva
The four people in the sutra who eventually became Earth Store Bodhisattva were able to do so because of the power of their vows. Each had a different motive. The young boy wanted a beautiful shining golden body like the Buddha. The kings wished to help their subjects. The young daughters were compelled by the sight of their mothers’ intense pain. When we began spiritual practice our motives were like the boy’s. We wanted to be healthy, to reduce stress, to become enlightened. Our motives were, in retrospect, self-centered.
That’s okay. The Dharma accepts any motive. The fire of practice will burn out the impurities eventually. In fact, it is not until we truly begin practice that we realize how self-centered we are and how much harm we have caused. We vow to do better. The body of selfishness divides, giving rise to a body of practice.
Once we have gained some benefit from practice we, like the two kings, want to help others. Our self-focused vision has expanded and we become aware of how thos
e we care for—our parents, friends, and children—are suffering. Only great love-like the love expressed as the filial piety of the two daughters in the sutra—can motivate us to exert ourselves strenuously on behalf of another person. The ante is upped. Practice becomes more and more essential. The consequences of not practicing become more dire, affecting not only us but all those we love. Body of practice buds off a body of unselfishness.
She saw hundreds of thousands and millions of men and women rising and sinking in the water, being mauled and devoured by beasts . . . sharp sword-like teeth protruded from their mouths . . . myriad horrifying shapes at which none would dare look. The [Sacred Daughter] was calm and fearless because of the power of remembering the Buddha.
As we work to help a few, the capacity of our hearts and minds expands. We become aware, like the Sacred Daughter, of all the beings in the churning sea of samsara. Our televisions transport us to the churning sea of suffering: a child blown apart by a land mine from a forgotten war, the parents of a mentally ill child who has shot teachers and classmates, the wife of a man who has jumped from a bridge. It is common at this point for people who are opening to the truth of the immensity of human suffering to become very distressed if that misery overwhelms them and they cannot “remember the Buddha.”
Many students encounter this deep distress at a certain point in their practice. Often they come to an interview during a retreat weeping and trying not to weep, afraid that if they enter the grief they will not be able to stop crying, ever. They want to know what is wrong. Nothing is wrong. The floor has collapsed out of the small compartment called “my personal room of suffering” and they have fallen, or at least dipped, into the sea of the suffering of all beings. They are hearing with the ears of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, she who hears the cries of the world and responds, and their response is to cry with her eyes, her tears. These tears fill her vase and are transformed into the life-giving elixir of immortality that pours out of her vase to heal the world. This transformation does not occur by itself. It is a distillation that occurs in the huge cauldron of spiritual life cooked over the fire of intense practice. It distills out of us whatever prevents us from functioning as the transformation bodies of Avalokiteshvara and Earth Store Bodhisattva.
In the sutra the millions of division bodies unite to form the one body of Earth Store Bodhisattva. Weeping with pity for those who suffer, he tells the Buddha not to worry about the seemingly impossible task of saving all suffering beings. He renews his vow to divide his body as often and in as many places as necessary to save all beings in these terrible realms and to work for endless kalpas (eons) to liberate anyone who had done even a dust mote’s worth of good.
The Buddha says that he is worried about what will happen to human beings after he dies. He compares humans, who are tossed about throughout time by their desires and actions, to fish swimming in a long stream through nets. They are caught in the net, struggle, and perhaps escape briefly, but because of their ignorance and confusion they are inevitably trapped again. The Buddha thanks Earth Store Bodhisattva for his strong and ancient vow and his willingness to undertake this task “to heal the human world.”
Our Vows
Jizo Bodhisattva has vowed to cross all living beings out of places of suffering. He is called the king of vows because he has promised to work unceasingly in the time between the death of the last Buddha, Shakyamuni, until the next Buddha appears in the world to teach. Hearing about this great vow we should ask, do I also have a vow?
“Vow” means an aspiration that is not limited or obscured by the details of the energy movement of any one lifetime, or anyone’s lifetime, but is able to act through them. It propels us forward on the path even when we become discouraged. The vow operates not only within our life but through those beings and circumstances that flow toward us and challenge us.
It is important to clarify our vow and state it daily. Until we know our life direction all decisions are difficult and we are anxious, thinking endlessly about what to do with our life. Once we know our life direction and can state it in a vow, all other decisions are simplified. For example, if our vow is to awaken ourselves and also others, then in a given situation we can ask, will this action, this thought, these spoken words, help in that awakening or not? If not, then don’t carry them out. Many of our chants contain vows. We have recited the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows or the Three Refuges hundreds of times. Even if we do not fully understand these vows, we have given voice to them. It is too late to take them back. They are our life.
This sutra tells us that we are human beings, we are men and women, we are division bodies of the One Body of Compassion. We are Earth Store Bodhisattva; we are becoming Earth Store Bodhisattva. “Are” means one of the countless division bodies called forth by need. “Becoming” means to clear away all that obscures our full experience of this One That Is Many. This occurs through the power of atonement, our vows, and our wholehearted practice.
Why Doesn’t Earth Store Bodhisattva Become Discouraged?
In the sutra King Yama asks Earth Store Bodhisattva how he can work continuously using hundreds of thousands of expedient means to cross over hundreds of thousands of beings and not show the least fatigue or weariness. He also asks, if Earth Store Bodhisattva has worked in this tireless way for so long using all his powers, why do living beings continue to fall back into suffering? Earth Store Bodhisattva replies that living beings are stubborn and obstinate, difficult to tame. They have bad habits that make their life a revolving door in and out of abodes of suffering. Kshitigarbha does not become discouraged because he sees erring human beings as bewildered travelers who have lost the way home.
Are There Any Benefits to the Suffering We Call Hells?
To cruel stepparents Earth Store Bodhisattva speaks of the retribution of being flogged in future lives; to those who net and trap young animals he speaks of the retribution of separation of flesh from bone; . . . to those who defile the pure conduct of others and purposely slander the Sangha he speaks of an eternity in the animal realm; to those who scald, bum, behead, cut or otherwise harm animals he speaks of repayment in kind.
When Shakyamuni Buddha spoke about hell he said simply that it is physical and mental misery that we have no means to escape from. What of the terrifying descriptions of the kinds of retribution and endless realms of suffering in hell such as appear in the Earth Store Bodhisattva Sutra? These were added after the time of the Buddha, designed to make people aware of the implacable and inexorable nature of cause and effect, action and reaction. Cause and effect should not be underestimated. Its workings are marvelous, the fabric woven and rewoven moment by moment on the jade loom of our lives. Cause and effect operate like all the laws of physics. If we can truly see that there is only one body with many manifestations, we will understand how everything works.
We all pay lip service to karma. But if we actually experienced it fully—that whatever we do to hurt someone would be returned immediately to us several fold—how quickly would we change how we act? Pain is a demanding and efficient teacher.
I have seen hundreds of people impelled into practice by acute suffering such as the death of a partner or friend. Very few remain in practice when the suffering eases a bit. My most vivid spiritual lessons have emerged in times of distress and unhappiness. At those times I was paying close attention. It has taken me many years to learn to practice steadily regardless of my mood, whether I feel sick, happy, or tired, or how much time I think I do or don’t have for practice. Our suffering bears fruit if it compels us into and returns us to spiritual practice.
At that time the World Honored One stretched forth his golden-colored arm and rubbed the crown of all the division bodies of Earth Store Bodhisattva and said, “I teach and transform obstinate living beings such as these within the evil worlds of the five turbidities, causing their minds to be regulated and subdued, to renounce the deviant and return to the proper.
The Buddha rubs the heads of those destined
for enlightenment. It is a prediction of Buddhahood. He then tells of the job of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, to help people who are unhappy because of their agitated and turbid minds. “Turbidity” refers to a condition of murkiness or lack of clarity that occurs when things, like mud and water, are mixed together. Our ordinary minds are turbid. That is the state we call small mind. We could also call it turbid mind.
Sesshin, the name for an intensive silent retreat in Zen practice, literally means to settle the mind. Our minds often run like a hamster in a wheel, around and around in the same circle of worries. Zazen is the way to rest the mind so that the restless swirling activity that creates turbidity gradually ceases. In sesshin there is a change in our state of mind. It undergoes a transition from cloudy and agitated mind to simple, calmer mind activity, to a more powerful one-pointed mind, and finally to clear mind. When the mind settles, like mud to the bottom of a pond, we can perceive the characteristics of pure transparent Mind separate from the dark, heavy, murky aspects of depression, anxiety, and self-obsession.
This is why the Zen tradition emphasizes seated meditation. We don’t add much to it because each thing that is added gives the mind something to grab on to and embellish—usually at length. Zazen by itself will eventually do the settling. Just like a glass of muddy water, if we can just sit still long enough the turbidity will clear. But to just sit with no expectation, no entertainment, is very hard to do. Zazen acts slowly because it acts deeply and completely. To keep from becoming impatient and giving up on practice we embellish this slow process with chanting, eating meditation, Dharma talks, and sanzen. We are distracted a bit while zazen does its work, purifying karma and dissolving obstructions.
Is There a Way out of Suffering?
If there were no way out of suffering there would be no reason to continue to live. Buddhism is sometimes said to be pessimistic because the first truth of the Buddha is that suffering exists. But the Buddha also taught the way out of suffering. The first step on the path consists of looking suffering square in the eye and investigating it. When we do this we find what the Buddha found, that we suffer because:
Jizo Bodhisattva Page 24
