Jizo Bodhisattva

by Jan Chozen Bays

  Another Zen stick is the kyosaku or “awakening stick.” It is one to three feet long, shaped with a thin flat blade at one end. During long sesshin the monitors in the meditation hall may strike blows with the kyosaku on the shoulders of those who are meditating. The short stinging pain can be useful to end drowsiness and to help with back, shoulder, or neck pain. Its best use is to bring the wandering mind abruptly back into the body and into the present moment.

  The awakening stick is used not just to bring us out of a dull and drowsy mind state, but to bring us out of the pervasive dreaminess that substitutes during most of our lives for being truly alive. When the mind is quiet and aware, empty but taut, a sudden sensation of any kind can bring reality out of hiding. Sound, color, pain can open the door to awakening if the conditions are right. During a certain period in China, Zen masters used sticks like another mouth. A blow could means approval or disapproval. It could encourage or discipline. Although modern people are afraid of or repulsed by the use of a stick, for Zen students of the time, a worse fate than being struck could be not to be hit.

  One thousand years ago there lived a monk named Tōzan. He was an ardent spiritual seeker who traveled thousands of miles on foot, from one end of China to the other, an unimaginably difficult journey one thousand years ago, to study with Zen Master Unmon. When Tōzan finally arrived he had dokusan, private interview, with the revered master he hoped could help him become enlightened. But Tōzan’s answers to Unmon’s questions were so dull that after a few minutes’ conversation Unmon dismissed Tōzan, exclaiming, “I spare you sixty blows!” Tōzan’s answers were so poor that he did not even deserve a good whack with the master’s stick. This so dismayed Tōzan that he sat all night in an agony of questioning. His pride was shattered and with it all his prior realizations, his hope of showing Unmon anything. Whatever was in the way began to move. The next day, Tōzan humbly returned to question Unmon again. Maybe he was very alert, expecting sixty real blows to rain down at any moment. Instead Unmon scolded him, “You rice bag!” This reply opened the mind door completely. Tōzan was enlightened by no stick.

  The fourth Zen staff is the shippei, a stick about three feet long, with a curve at one end, like half of a Japanese archery bow. Thus it is called the “broken bow.” It can be wound with wisteria vine, and is used in ceremonies such as shuso hossen, Dharma combat with the head monk at the end of Ango, an intensive training period. That the shippei is a broken weapon tells us that the Dharma is used not to injure another but to pierce through to the truth at the heart of the other. It is a bow that shoots the two arrows that meet in midair. These two arrows are the innate perfection and harmony of the One and the rich diversity and confusion of the many. The arrows meet at the point of space and instant of time called just now, my life, just now, your life. Yamada Roshi calls the shippei the arm of the Buddha.

  The last Zen stick is the shujo or shakujo, the walking staff, six or seven feet long, usually roughly fashioned from a sturdy branch or small tree from the forest around the temple. The shakujo is given now at the time of transmission and is a symbol of the authority of the (new) master to teach the Dharma. Yamada Roshi called the shakujo the Buddha’s leg. It is the staff that was carried on pilgrimages and is the staff carried by Jizo Bodhisattva. On the end is a capital made of metal, often pewter, hung with rings. In China the staff was called the “Wind and Water Holding Pewter.” Wind and Water was the name for a wandering monk. The staff is the emblem of the lineage, the past Buddha, and the ancestors who walk the path before us. Chinese monks pledged to propagate the Dharma by touching the staff at the time of ordination. For a time in China the staff had a metal spade on the bottom. Monks used this small shovel to bury dead animals they encountered as they traveled. Rings on the top of the staff and above the spade rang as the tool was used, scaring away beetles and worms in the ground so that the monk did not violate the precept of nonkilling.

  The staff in the koan about Bashō is the shakujo. A walking staff had very practical uses in ancient times. The daily alms rounds from forest hut to village and back, sometimes in the dark, could be treacherous. It would be easy to wander off the path, fall in a hole, a ditch, a swamp or a stream, or even fall off a cliff. Travel to other countries can make Americans aware of how they are shielded from the reality of how fragile life is. In India night walking can be very hazardous. There are large piles of garbage, dog packs, excrement, sheer drops with no guard rails, and dangerous snakes and animals. Even in Japan, a modern and prosperous country, in most towns the streets are narrow, there are no sidewalks, the road is flanked by open ditches and sewers, and huge trucks barrel along inches from you when you walk along.

  In America our roads and sidewalks are so well maintained and lighted that we rarely walk on a path that is dark and dangerous. Only the people are. When an accident does happen, we are taken by surprise. The surprise can pierce through the veil of dreams that muffles the sharp and aching perfection of our life. Once startled awake we have, briefly, a choice—find a way to stay awake or yield to the overwhelming temptation to go back to sleep. One Zen student in his early twenties was rock-climbing on sunny day with a girlfriend on a rock face near Portland. Suddenly she slipped over an edge and fell eighty feet. In an instant, the illusion of life’s security and permanence was shattered. At that moment, he awoke and began his spiritual quest. After a lapse back into the sleep of addiction, he is now firmly on the path of Dharma practice.

  The comfort of a staff is described in Psalm 23 in the Old Testament. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for. . . thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” The rod and staff were tools shepherds used to rescue sheep who had strayed and fallen over cliffs or into crevasses. There is a common misunderstanding of the Old Testament admonition “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” The rod was used to guide and rescue, not to beat.

  The Staff in Our Lives

  The koan Bashō’s Staff asks us to find such a staff in our lives, steady, upright, a continual and trustworthy source of support. To find what can be such a source of support and what cannot, it is useful to ponder, “What is it in my life that supports me?”

  Answers might include my job, my health and bodily strength, my clever mind, my wonderful family, my loving partner. The next question asks how permanent each of these supports are. Are any of these lifetime guaranteed?

  When we look objectively, we find that no external, physical, or material source of support is permanent. I might have a job with benefits now, but I could lose it or my ability to do it. My health and bodily strength are unlikely to improve; they will most certainly ebb away. My clever mind plays tricks on me. It is already becoming forgetful, “losing nouns,” as my eighty-one-year-old mother puts it. My wonderful family, if I had one, is dying off one by one. My loving partner is also a frail human being. A virus, a moment’s inattention on the freeway, a clot in an artery in the heart, a change in brain chemistry, a sexy young thing could take them away at any time.

  This self, a heap of five elements collected in one place, is held together by cause and effect. One small change—in the electrical circuits, in the sodium or potassium ions in the cells—and this temporary warm place here that is called me, or that temporary warm place there that is called you will grow quickly cold and the five elements will become unbound again.

  What then is our support in the midst of all this gathering together and falling apart? At the center of all this coming and going, what is its support? What is its essence? Anything? Nothing?

  There is a koan “Hide yourself in a pillar.” It could be, “Hide yourself in Jizo’s staff.” Usually we are self-conscious, half-naked, shivering little mice. We feel totally exposed. Where to hide? Where to feel safe? We search for security in vain. Using strategies to camouflage the self will never make us feel safe because the problem lies underneath the decoration and insulation. It is a fundamental structural problem. Answering this koan requires taking
apart the defective structure we have so carefully built. Only then can we see what its real foundation is: that staff, that pillar, that straight and upright and continually affirming and destroying thing that is the core of all existence. Only as we let go of the idea of that pitiful little self are we able to experience that which is huge, solid, steady, immovable. True security comes not from hiding in the futile strategies of self, but in surrendering, taking full refuge in that which supports all.

  When someone meets us in openness, when we are able to experience that nakedness for even a brief time, then we want more. That hunger is good, but how we try to satisfy it usually is not. Most often that moment of openness and complete vulnerability happens with a lover or a spiritual teacher.

  Then we make the mistake of thinking that they did it for us. They can save us from all of our greediness, ugliness, self-deceit, and pitiful, silly manipulations. We cling tightly to the wrong supports. We are like a drowning person who panics and clutches the person who is trying to save them. Both are dragged down and die.

  This is one aspect of Bashō’s staff. If you think you have a staff in the form of a young healthy body, a clever mind, a lover, a parent, a master, who will be a permanent support, fine, here, try it! How long does it relieve suffering? How permanent a support is it? If you think you’ve attained some understanding, passed some koans, had some insights, here, try it! Try it out on the freeway in a traffic jam when you’re late for an important appointment. Try it out when your father dies. Try it out when your boss gets angry at you for something you didn’t do or don’t understand.

  There is another koan, “A wooden Jizo bums, a metal Jizo melts, a clay Jizo shatters.” Where then do you find your indestructible Jizo Bodhisattva? Your permanent place of refuge? Your equanimity and happiness? This is Bashō’s challenge. If you think you have a staff, it will be taken away from you. Everything is changing and impermanent. The only thing we can rely upon is the truth of Dharma, which is based upon the very fact of impermanence.

  Next Bashō says, “If you have no staff, I’ll take it away from you.” If you think samadhi, emptiness, equanimity, no attachment, no self is your support, fine, try it! Really try it. All supports removed. No teacher, no friends, no lover, no Buddha, Dharma, sangha. Try it in an earthquake, a famine, when attacked by a rapist or robber, in a war, faced with the suffering of millions of beings. Then how does that cold emptiness, that placid unmoving function? How then does the memory of a wonderful experience of quiet mind that you had a week ago, even a second ago, serve you or others? Not at all!

  Going beyond artificial, temporary supports, going beyond the emptiness that is at their core and is the field of their activity, how then does it function, that great staff?

  Master Mumon’s comment says, “When the bridge is out. . . .” What does that mean? One of the five bridges in Portland will be out for two years for repairs. People were already upset when it had been closed for only two weeks. Upset at what? The inconvenience. Having to change just a little. Having to be awake just a little and remember to drive a new way to work, not mindlessly as we usually do, arriving at work unable to recall whether any of the stoplights we went through were red or green.

  What kind of staff helps us traverse the river of our irritation and anger, anger that the bridge is out, anger at change and impermanence, anger at our anger? What staff helps us cross to the other side?

  It is the staff of our practice. Everyone has had even a tiny experience of this. A moment of suffering, irritation, boredom, panic, anger is transformed by the still mind into awareness of a moment in which the touch of a breeze brings exquisite pleasure. A quiet mind turns the tea for washing the eating bowls into fragrant pools. Our practice transforms a bewildering and frightening life journey with irritating and threatening people all around, into an adventure with interesting characters, fellow travelers, who make up a sangha. It opens our eyes so the little dots of color on the rug shine like jewels. It breaks down large boulders that obstruct us into pebbles and paving for a smoother path. It makes the earth and all our lives “wholesome everywhere.” Through our zazen, all activity—everything—is enhanced, made fresh, comes to life. This is so.

  Master Mumon says, “T he depths and shallows of the world are all in its grasp.” Usually our minds skip along quite shallowly, flitting from memories of the past to fantasies about the future, all mixed in with bits of the present. When we go into a retreat and meditate for a day or so, we realize how shallow our ordinary mind activity is. After three to five days we are able to experience the deep, clear quiet depths of our mind, depths that are usually hidden from us. It is from those depths that our true wisdom, insight into things as they are, comes. The end to our suffering will come as we learn to use not just the small human and conditioned aspects of the mind that we have developed since childhood, but also to enter at will the bottomless clear vast Mind that was ours from before our birth.

  Master Suiryuzan once said to his monks, “Living on the mountain for thirty years, how much vigor I have received from this staff of mine!” What kind of staff actually gives us energy?

  Our deflector shields take energy to maintain. As these drop, more energy is available to us. Not only that, but when the barriers go down, energy from other sources can flow in. When we take a breath, we take it in. When we need to pee, we pee it out. Functioning freely it is our life that “supports the heavens and sustains the earth.”

  “Call it a staff and you enter hell like an arrow.” If we call it a staff, if we grab onto it, counting ten retreats to put in our spiritual bank account, ten koans to add to our Zen merit badges, we destroy it completely. We enter hell as fast as an arrow. Grabbing at anything, including the “thusness” of this moment, starts an equal and opposite reaction that will take this very thing away from us. Why is it an equal and opposite reaction? Simple physics. The Dharma is a physical truth. An equal and opposite reaction occurs because it is only One thing! It is all happening in One Body, our body.

  Where is the staff of Jizo Bodhisattva? It is also our spine, erect in the noble posture of the Buddha. It is body, breath, and mind, aligned in one straight line, all supporting the activity of that Great Body/Mind. We sit here in between. Why do we sit erect in zazen? To make our spine the staff that holds heaven and earth apart, providing a space between for human activity, for enlightenment, to occur.

  It is our work to make Jizo’s staff thoroughly our own, to awaken completely to that Great Mind beyond naming which functions within us no matter whether we are aware of it or not, no matter whether we are awake or asleep and dreaming. It is our job to make it so much a part of our functioning that it becomes us. No longer is it we who are practicing but it is the practice that practices as us. Crossing the stream, the staff touches down for a moment, then lifts up, moves to the next spot, and down. Useless if it stayed in one spot, it is an aid in its movement, not a hindrance in its stuckness. Functioning dynamically just as needed, the staff is nothing but up, down, up, down, now, now, now.

  It is Jizo’s staff of Dharma truth that keeps us upright and balanced on the spiritual journey. We can use the staff to cross rivers of impermanence and suffering that almost overwhelm us. We can walk the dark paths one step, one moment at a time. We can use the staff to take the measure of phenomena and to find for ourselves what is shallow, false, and crumbling, and what is deep, solid, stable, and true. If we can wield that staff freely, picking it up to use it, putting it down completely, using it to support others, then all will find their way home.

  chapter nine

  The Cintamani Jewel

  The whole Universe in the ten directions is one bright pearl. How could we not love the bright pearl? Its colors and light, as they are, are endless.

  Zen Master Dōgen

  Jizo Bodhisattva carries the cintamani jewel in his left hand. Mani is a Sanskrit word for jewel, precious stone, or specifically a pearl. The cintamani is the jewel that fulfills all wishes. In paintings or stat
ues of Jizo Bodhisattva the jewel can be shown as a single large luminous jewel, as a cluster of three jewels, or as one large gem with three tiers. The cintamani is shown also as a colored jewel, a pearl, or a transparent globe. There may be a halo of flames around the jewel. This indicates the warm and brilliant light that radiates from the jewel and illuminates the deepest reaches of hell. To see this light brings hope and comfort to those who strike out and harm each other in the dark cave of ignorance.

  The three jewels or three-tiered gem are symbols of the “Three Treasures”: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. As the Buddha began teaching, people listened to him, heard the truth of what he said, and asked how to become his disciples. He told them to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. This meant to trust in the Enlightened One as a spiritual guide; to follow the Dharma, his teaching of existential truth and the precepts he laid out for living a virtuous life; and to join or support the Sangha, which was the community of those who followed the Buddha.

  The Three Treasures have acquired a wider meaning over the intervening two and a half millennia. The Buddha treasure now embraces the historical Buddha who lived and taught twenty-five hundred years ago, any fully enlightened being, and enlightened nature itself. The Dharma treasure includes all those who teach as well as all the teachings that lead to enlightenment. Because humans have been enlightened by anything—the sound of a stone striking bamboo, the sight of a peach blossom, a drop of water touching the skin—all things can be said to be dharmas. The Sangha treasure includes the original followers of the Buddha in India, all ordained Buddhist monks and nuns, and in the widest sense, the community of practitioners around the world who have taken refuge in the Three Treasures. Sangha also indicates the harmony between the Buddha and the Dharma, or the harmony of unformed original nature with its countless appearances in space and time.