Jizo Bodhisattva

by Jan Chozen Bays

  Who Is Not a Bodhisattva?

  The Dharma, the law underlying the workings of the universe, is quite scientific, mathematically and physically precise. Our bodies and minds are like clay on a potter’s wheel. Our bodies are formed from oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and trace metals. These elements coalesce for a while into a body that moves and makes noise at both ends. Then it collapses, “dies,” and falls apart. What then? The elements are recycled to form new existences. How old is the oxygen in us? The sodium? Where did the calcium in our bones come from? We say, oh, from the milk I drink. Before that? From the grass the cow ate. Before that? From the soil? Before that? Trace any small portion of us back and it has been part of countless other lives.

  Our minds form the same way, from bits and pieces of thought energy, created by electrical and chemical signals in neurons. Certain patterns of electrical signals-thought-emotion are imprinted by heredity. Then the environment adds its shaping and we become more or less polite, feel more or less shame, anger, and joy.

  But all these thoughts and emotions are just energy, coalesced for awhile, moving, and making noise. When we collapse and die, they also disperse. Like the carbon and calcium elements, the thought and emotion elements are still operating in the chain of cause and effect after we die. Thus we can ask the same questions we asked about the body elements. How old is the anger in us? How old is the jealousy, the joy? How many countless lives has it been a part of?

  We are like clay formed into pots of different shapes and functions. When the pots wear out, they disintegrate into shards, into grains and eventually into clay again. They are picked up and kneaded again, then reformed into pots. If this happens over and over for millions of years, there is not one particle of “them” that is not “me.” All parts belonged at one time and will belong again to what we call someone or something else. The Tibetans say that all beings have been or will be our mother and should be thus revered.

  This is the reason a bodhisattva works to awaken all “other” beings before him- or herself: because all “other” beings are not other. Saving them is literally saving oneself. Saving oneself is literally saving others. “Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking,” the sutra says. It is impossible to get anywhere by oneself because oneself is ONE SELF.

  When we fall into thinking that we alone are practicing or that becoming enlightened is a race against others, we are like a person in a boat who believes that if they row faster they will beat the person on the plank seat in front of them to the other shore.

  All energies are us. Any energy can be strengthened and enhanced. Any energy can be tamed and brought under control, if we have the tools and the determination to do the work. What are the tools? The tools of practice. What gives us the determination? Looking behind us at our wake and seeing what happens when we don’t apply these tools with determination and vigor.

  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 Buddha teaches that all energies make up who we are. We have a choice of what we do or do not cultivate, nourish, and act upon. We become free when we know what action, word, or thought will bear bitter fruit and we don’t carry it out. This also means that we can cultivate the energies that enable human beings to become bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are not metal or wooden statues to be worshiped. They are living qualities that we all aspire to embody fully.

  After the brothers of St. John visited me that bright day in Alaska, our retreats moved along in harmony. In one lodge sixty-five youth kept vigil through the night in front of the Blessed Sacrament, learning to find God in the silence of their hearts and minds. In twos they came, sitting before the altar for thirty minutes, then slipping out into the dark cold night to the cabins to quietly awaken the next pair to come and keep watch. In the lodge next door twenty-five adults sat in hours of silent meditation in a room with the small white Buddha in front of a window that opened to huge white mountains, opening themselves to the Great Truth in the silence of their minds and hearts.

  A messenger arrived. The brothers had run out of incense. Could we lend them some for Mass? As we sat a little later I smiled to think of Japanese incense swinging in the Catholic censer in the lodge next door. During a break the teens spilled out onto the frozen lake to play ice hockey. Only one girl played with all the boys and a young priest as they slid around in their shoes. The other girls stood in a little clump on the shore and watched. The large Samoan boy stood immobile on the ice, roughly in the middle of the playing area, happily watching the others surge back and forth, parting around him. He told me later it was his first experience with ice. And maybe not yet to be trusted, I thought, the miracle of walking on a huge expanse of water, albeit currently frozen.

  I had gone down to the shore in my black-and-white Zen robes to watch the game. “Sister, sister, come play with us!” the boys shouted. I tied up the sleeves of my black Japanese robes and slid out to join them. In a bit I looked behind to find all the girls had joined the game. Afterward the girl who had been the only girl in the game at the start came up to ask to have her photo taken with me. I’m not sure she knew I was a Zen priest, not a Catholic sister. What seemed to matter was that I was a visibly religious women, a player in the sacred game. It surprised and pleased me that perhaps just my appearing in robes inspired the girls to take themselves more seriously in the one great game that matters, spiritual inquiry and deep practice.

  At the weekend’s close the two groups joined in a large circle to sing a hymn and offer prayers for peace and understanding. The weekend taught me again that there is only one Truth. If not, it could not be the Truth. We only use different words to try to speak of it, and different rituals to celebrate our joy in being able to experience it. Who at the retreat was a bodhisattva? The Catholic brothers so open to our Zen ritual? The lay leaders who had respect for the spiritual potential of the teens? The Buddhist adults who loaned their incense and sang a Taizé hymn? The Catholic youth who urged the American Zen teacher out onto the ice? Or the “sister” who led the way for the girls to join the game? If we encourage and delight each other as we travel together on the only journey that really matters, who then is not a bodhisattva?

  How Jizo Came to the West

  As this book is being written, Jizo Bodhisattva is found in a few places of Buddhist practice in the West. He appears in mandalas and teachings of esoteric schools of Buddhism, and is revered by the Jodo school. Recently Jizo has begun to fill a small but unique spiritual niche in America, honored as the central figure in ceremonies of remembrance for children who have died, in particular those lost through miscarriage and abortion. The first documented Jizo ceremony was held in this country thirty years ago at Tassajara Zen Center by Suzuki Roshi and a woman who is now a Zen teacher, Yvonne Jikai Rand. The ceremony is now held by the Zen Community of Oregon where I teach, and has spread through a network of second-generation American Zen teachers to several other Zen centers in this country.

  This is Yvonne’s story of the first Jizo ceremony:

  I was introduced to the Jizo ceremony by my root teacher Suzuki Roshi. A dear friend of mine had died in the late 60s in a terrible train crash in Japan where he had been ordained and was studying as a Zen monk. I went to Suzuki Roshi to ask him to help me with my grief for my friend and also to deal with all of the belongings my friend had left with me before departing for Asia. Suzuki Roshi invited me to bring my friend’s “leavings” to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. In the rock garden that Suzuki Roshi had made there, he set a stone figure of Jizo on top of a boulder. He made a circle of rocks for a fire, and he and I piled up all of my friend’s belongings that were appropriate to bum in a pile in the midst of the circle. Suzuki Roshi did a simple Buddhist funeral ceremony and then he and I burned everything. When the fire was out I placed the ashes in a hole in the garden and closed it with a stone. We used the Jizo figure as a marker. In his characteristi
cally indirect way Suzuki Roshi taught me about Jizo through this ceremony.

  Beginning in the early 1970s women began coming to me and asking for help with their grief following abortions and miscarriages. In one of the first ceremonies I walked with the woman to Muir Beach, a small beach on the north coast of California. There we searched and collected three particular stones. We climbed the hill overlooking the beach and found a place to pile the stones, one on top of another, to make a kind of Jizo figure. The woman placed a small bib she had sewn from a piece of red cloth on the figure and I offered a short funeral ceremony. Over the next several years I found myself doing other ceremonies like this. As women talked to each other about how these rites had provided solace for them, others began coming to me also asking for help. At the end of the Retreats for Women that I did, I began to offer to do the ceremony for anyone from the retreat who wanted to participate. For several years I did the ceremony for small groups of women, and then gradually began to do them including men as well.

  At the second Conference for Celebrating Women in Buddhism, I put out a notice offering the ceremony on a Sunday morning at 9:00 A.M. I announced the ceremony for anyone who had experienced an abortion, a miscarriage, or who had a child die before it was grown. I set up a small wooden shrine with a stone Jizo in it in a secluded patio behind a meeting room. I waited to see who would come. To my surprise thirty-seven women gathered in the meeting room, sitting in a circle. For three hours they sat and sewed and one by one spoke about what had brought them to this gathering. The first woman who spoke was in her sixties. She spoke hesitantly at first about an abortion she had as a very young woman. She had never spoken of that experience before. Her speaking took the group deep and after her speaking everyone spoke, one by one. Her courage opened deep wells of sorrow. The entire spectrum of personal experience and political opinion about abortion was present that morning in that circle. Everyone listened. The container held what was common to each person in the group, their grief and sadness. After that experience I vowed to offer the ceremony as often as possible.

  Later I learned from Robert Aitken Roshi that this funeral or memorial ceremony was done in Japan. There it is known as Mizuko Jizo Ceremony or water-baby ceremony. On a trip to Japan in the early 1990s, I undertook a Jizo pilgrimage. I traveled by train all over the country, getting off to investigate any place that looked to be a likely Jizo site. I went to Tokyo to a temple where there was a crematorium built by a Buddhist nun who gathered the remains of aborted fetuses from four Tokyo hospitals. The nun cremated the fetuses and performed services for them, then buried the ashes in an old cemetery. I visited Jizo sites in Kyoto including Nembutsu-ji, where hundreds of old Jizo gravestones have been gathered from forgotten grave sites to make a small forest of Jizos. At Obon festival in the fall the site is illuminated by thousands of candles. At many Jizo temples and cemeteries I sat for hours, watching who came and what they did. I saw temples where the Jizo ceremony had been commercialized, an exploitation of people’s fears and guilt to provide a source of income to support a failing temple. I saw temples where priests were quietly offering much-needed services and spiritual counseling.

  I also walked for some days along the traditional pilgrimage route between Jizo temples on Shikoku Island. I sat for a long time one afternoon at a cemetery in Kyoto that was filled with Jizos where I meditated on the juxtaposition of happy children playing in the temple kindergarten just a few feet away from hundreds of Jizo statues for dead fetuses and babies. As I left, the day had gone to evening and rain. I saw a shop across from the temple gates with many Jizos in the window. When I crossed the street to look more closely at the figures, I discovered that in my pilgrim mind I had mistaken shelves of tennis shoes for rows of Jizos. I realize now how odd it must have been for the Japanese to see an American woman, shaved headed and in robes, out walking alone as a pilgrim. But I was so consumed with Jizo that I did not see the difficulty until after I returned home in California.

  I came back from Japan with a renewed determination to offer the Jizo ceremony in America without allowing it to become commercialized. I do not charge for the ceremony, but I do accept donations. During that pilgrimage I also learned about the many other practices that can enhance the mizuko ceremony, including offering a book for written remembrances or prayers or messages that can be written and left anonymously. I saw the benefit of providing a quiet place for a cup of tea and quiet after the ceremony.

  I have found that even people who are unacquainted with Jizo can see his image and understand that he is an expression of compassion. I feel strongly that the Jizo ceremony is much needed in the United States. It is needed both to help individuals who grieve, often for many years after an abortion or a miscarriage or after the loss of a baby, and also to help those with conflicting views regarding abortion find a way to work together in peace with the pain that surrounds this controversial and difficult issue. I have found that the ceremony helps caregivers as well.

  If we wish to learn more about the origins of Jizo Bodhisattva and the mizuko ceremony, we must return, as Yvonne Rand did, to Japan.

  chapter two

  Jizo in Japan

  When I see

  The misery

  Of those in this world

  Their sadness

  Becomes mine.

  Oh that my monk’s robe

  Were wide enough

  To gather up all

  The suffering people

  In this floating world.

  Nothing makes me

  More happy than

  The vow To save everyone.

  after Ryōkan

  In Japan Jizo Bodhisattva is a beloved bodhisattva, omnipresent and accessible. The other bodhisattvas sometimes have a fierce aspect and are housed in dark niches on altars at a distance from the people in the temples. Peering through a wire screen or wooden grate in the darkness of an old temple you catch a gleam of gold or a glimpse of a graceful arm or torso. In contrast, Jizo Bodhisattva resides in the open, among the people. His face is serene and gentle, with a hint of a smile. Even in city neighborhoods he can be found in small shrines every few blocks. The cities have grown up around him and the old altar houses that shelter him are sometimes notched into telephone poles or squeezed into a niche between modern buildings.

  Jizo’s presence helps maintain the palpable sense of orderliness and safety in the little neighborhoods that make up even the larger cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. One or two blocks off a busy commercial street you can enter a neighborhood that feels like a small village. A policeman notes your entry and exit from his ward, nodding politely from his small glass enclosed box as you pass. Mothers pedal bicycles serenely through heavy traffic with one or two children balancing in front or back seats. There is no graffiti. Vending machines are everywhere, with $30 bottles of whiskey behind intact glass. Children as young as three or four years play in groups, darting about, chattering happily. No adults seem anxious for their safety. No child whines or shrieks. No one yells at the children or smacks them. There is a palpable sense that everyone is watching over the children and the visitors . . . and Jizo Bodhisattva watches over all.

  Jizo Bodhisattva is accessible. He can be found out among the activities of everyday life, at country crossroads, beside village paths, in many small altars on city street corners. These altars are maintained by people in the neighborhood. In the same way that everyone takes responsibility for the bit of street in front of their shops or houses, sweeping or washing it each morning, they also care for “their” Jizo. They keep the little altars clean and make offerings, a piece of candy, a golden tangerine, a few flowers in a washed jam jar, or even a cup of sake. In the larger shrines the offerings include children’s clothing and sandals or shoes because Jizo travels far to comfort those who need his help.

  If you need to ask Jizo for help, you probably won’t have to go more than a few blocks. You could even duck into one of his temples during an errand or over lunch hour downtown. In Kyoto t
here are several small Jizo temples just off busy commercial streets. A steady stream of people enter these tiny oases all day long. There are grandmothers less than five feet tall, bent almost in two by the years, in their dark dresses or kimonos, pushing the strollers old people in Japan use to get around. There are business people in suits and parents carrying infants or holding children by the hand.

  Jizo statue at the Kugi Nuki Temple in Kyoto. The brocade-covered baton at the base is used to stroke the statue in areas where a person is in pain. The fingers, cintamani jewel and lacquer covering the statue have been worn away by the countless touch-prayers of those seeking relief of suffering.

  Entering the temple courtyard they take water from a stone trough in a bamboo dipper to rinse hands and mouth in ritual of purification. Parents help the smaller children. Then they light and offer a candle or stick of incense, ringing a bell to attract Jizo Bodhisattva’s attention. They may circumambulate the Jizo image or pour water over it. Some stand, palms pressed together, whispering earnest prayers.

  The Jizo Who Pulls Out Nails

  One busy temple in Kyoto is the Kugi Nuki or Nail Pulling Jizo Temple. You enter through a passage lined with red lanterns. It opens into a courtyard with an ancient twisted pine and a small carpet-covered and roofed dais where old people sit and talk quietly. In the course of a Jizo pilgrimage we visited this temple and sat for a while on the platform to watch what was proper to do here. We saw that after praying to the large half-hidden image on the main altar many people move to a smaller image with a large brocade-covered baton on its lap. They strike a bell and use the baton to touch the statue and then stroke their own bodies in the same areas, those afflicted by pain or disease. Elderly people most often touch the head, the neck, the shoulders, the stomach, and the legs. This Jizo is unusual, made of bare wood with large open glass eyes. His face has the look of a Western saint, patient and life-worn. The fingers of his right hand are half gone and his cintamani jewel has been reduced to a small mound in his palm. If you look closely, you find this Jizo was originally covered with red lacquer, now worn away by the countless strokes of the brocade baton in the hands of those who suffer. (In Japan a statue that is called a Jizo and revered as Jizo may have begun its life as another deity. This statue, for example, is actually of one of the Buddha’s disciples, Pindola.)