Good morning. So we're in the middle of the spring practice period. And we've been talking about the archetypal bodhisattva figures as examples and models for our own practice. And today I want to talk about Jizo Bodhisattva. Jizo is the Japanese name, Dzong in Chinese, Kshitigarbha in Sanskrit. So these major Bodhisattva figures are examples of and approaches and strategies for Bodhisattva practice that have passed through various cultures. These are the ones most popular in East Asia. Jizo is less important, maybe doctrinally and philosophically than the others that we're looking at, but is one of the most popular.

[01:12]

particularly in Japan and China, may be second only to Kannon or Kanzeon. His name means Earth Matrix or Earth Womb Bodhisattva. So this is the Bodhisattva of the Earth. He's not associated, he appears in many of the sutras as one of the many bodhisattvas that are named amongst the assembly, but he's not really important in any of the sutras, except there's a sutra of the past vows of this bodhisattva, which was translated into Chinese around the 7th century. So he does appear in Indian and Tibetan sutras, but wasn't particularly noted there, but started becoming very popular in China and even more in Japan. always appears as a shaved head monk.

[02:20]

Sometimes in, I think in Korea, and maybe occasionally in China, he has a monk's head covering, but usually he appears as a shaved head monk. And there's a few images of him on the altar. One standing image, a couple standing images to my left, one carrying two children, which is common because he's associated with children. He's a protector of women and children. The card on the right is one of my favorite Buddhist images in Japan. If you're sitting further back, you can come look at them later. Often he carries a monk's staff and a wish-fulfilling gem. This is another bodhisattva sometimes carrying this, but this is a jewel to just grant the wishes of anything that anybody wants.

[03:24]

It's just to give whatever people want. And this staff is, a monk's staff is used when the monks are walking, and the monks in India would be, except during the monsoon season, just traveling around, begging. But this monk's staff has six rings on it. that Jizo carries, and that's partly to warn away small animals so that he doesn't step on them, and also to warn away predators, but it also is an image of the six realms that Jizo appears in. So Jizo's Paramitas, his transcendent practices, particularly involve vow as one of them. He vows to be present in all six realms, and particularly he's known for being in the hell realms. and in the space in between the realms.

[04:27]

So these six realms are the worldly realms that we can, according to old Buddhist cosmology, that one can transmigrate into from life to life. But they can also be understood as kind of psychological realms that we might experience. Jesus, other, Particular practices, transcendent practices, bodhisattva practices include ethical conduct, because he always appears as a monk and he, in the sutra about his past vows, he lectures on ethical conduct. Also powers, because he does have the power to help beings. But also great effort. So there are stories about him. which these folk tales we could think of as mythology or something, but they show how people see these different bodhisattvas. And Jizo makes great efforts.

[05:29]

these six realms. So just to say that like the Bodhisattva teachings themselves, we can understand these as, we can understand the Bodhisattvas as beings in the world who we can call on. And that's how they're understood popularly. People in, common people in East Asia traditionally have called on these Bodhisattvas for help. but in terms of looking at them the way we're doing in this practice period we can see these as kind of archetypal psychological aspects of practice that we can recognize in ourselves so the point of looking at these bodhisattvas is to see aspects of our own practice so Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of insider wisdom, is the one who sees clearly into what's happening right now, who has wisdom and sees very clearly.

[06:36]

And then the other bodhisattvas, including Jizo, many of them are kind of complements to that, expressing this wisdom and insight in the world in helpful ways. So the bodhisattva of compassion, Kanon, who Aisin has already spoken of, and Samantabhadra, who we'll be talking about more, sits on an elephant and takes on problems in the world, and Maitreya, who I spoke about before, and who expresses loving-kindness in the world. does this in an interesting way. Jizo witnesses to and provides comfort through witnessing to beings in very difficult places. But he's in all six realms. So Jizo, again, is very popular in Even in big urban cosmopolitan cities in Japan now, you'll often see a stone Jizo by the side of the road, or sometimes six Jizos, because he's in all six of the realms.

[07:46]

It's very common. Very popular figure. The six realms, just to list them, is the heavenly realm. So this is... not nirvana, it's still a worldly realm, and eventually if you're born into one of these heavenly realms, they're very pleasant, they're wonderful, you have everything you want, but eventually that ends. And one can transmigrate between these different realms, so a heavenly being, you know at some point their sojourn in heaven after maybe thousands of years will end they might look and see that they have a gray hair and that's tragic because then their life in the heavenly realm is over and if they resist that and if they get really upset they may end up in an animal realm or even a hungry ghost or hell realm it's possible so one can move between these realms there's the heavenly realm there's the

[08:50]

The Asura realm, sometimes called the Titan realm, or the angry god realms, these are very powerful beings who are very ambitious and long, long before he entered politics, I thought of Donald Trump in this category. Very powerful beings who are, you know, want more power. But they still, they are very, they arrived at this, in this state because of somehow doing good enough works to become powerful. Then there's the human realm where we are. most of the time. My teacher once characterized the human realm as a kind of constant state of vague nausea. So you know things we it's it's the best realm to be in if you if you want to practice Buddhism because you we're We we are We are You know things are sort of okay. We you know we can manage.

[09:53]

It's not one of the terrible realms, but also we you know are we can witness and we are available to seeing suffering. So it's a place where we can awaken to the Buddhist teaching. So those three realms are, there's those three realms. Then there's the animal realm, which is just, you know, the beastly realm of eat or be eaten. And although, you know, some animals live very wonderful, you know, domesticated lives where they're treated better than some humans. Then we get to the hungry ghosts and hell realms. The hungry ghost realm is very sad. Those are beings who are never satisfied, and we do a ceremony for them every autumn. And then there are the hell realms. And so part of what Jizo has vowed is to be present even in the hell realms, to witness two beings in the hell realms, to be helpful if he can.

[10:56]

And there are depictions in medieval Japanese Buddhist lore of beings in the hell realms that are very much like Dante's Inferno and just all kinds of Hieronymus Bosch pictures. They're just, you know, very terrible places where beings suffer great, great agonies. So, but the other side of all this is that even though we are, you know, in the human realm, psychologically there are human beings who are maybe in very pleasant heavenly realms, you know, who live in rich suburbs and have wonderful, you know, pleasant lives. There are human beings who are in hellish realms. or in hungry ghost realms, and so forth. And sometimes some of us may feel like we're in some hellish realm.

[11:59]

That's possible. But then we come back to our human state. So these are also psychological teachings. So some examples of stories about hell from the Japanese tradition. There's a story about the great Japanese Rinzai teacher, Hakuin, who initiated the Rinzai koan system. He was a really dynamic, wonderful teacher. His paintings are great, too. He lived in the 17th century in Japan. He was once approached by a samurai warrior who asked him to explain heaven and hell to him. Hakuen looked up at the samurai and asked disdainfully, how could a stupid, oafish, ignoramus like you possibly understand such things?

[13:00]

The samurai started to draw his sword. And back then, samurai had the right to just kill anybody they wanted to who were below samurai status. And Hakuen said, oh, so you have a sword. It's probably as dull as your head. In a rage, the proud warrior pulled out his sword, intending to cut off Hakuen's head. And Hakuen stated calmly, this is the gateway to hell. The startled samurai stopped. And appreciating Hakuen's cool demeanor, he sheathed his sword. Hakuen said softly, this is the gateway to heaven. So that's one story. There's also a fable describing a room in hell in which a bunch of angry, emaciated people sit around a banquet table. On the round banquet table is piled a wonderful feast with many platters of the most delicious smelling food that one can imagine. However, strapped to the forearms of the famished people sitting around this table in hell are four-foot-long forks and spoons, so no matter how they try, they cannot get any food into their mouths.

[14:12]

Heaven, on the other hand, is a room in which jovial, well-fed people sit around a banquet table that is piled high with a wonderful feast with many platters of the most delicious-smelling foods that one can imagine. strapped to the forearms of the happy people sitting around this table in heaven are four-foot-long forks and spoons. And the people are feeding one another across the table. So anyway, we can, we can look at heaven and hell in various ways. Um, not necessarily as fixed, these are, none of these are fixed destinies. the great Chan master Zhaozhou, Joshu in Japanese, maybe the greatest Zen master of all time. There's so many koans about him. He's the one who said moo about whether a dog had a buddha nature. He also once said yes. But anyway, there's probably more stories about him than any other Zen master.

[15:16]

Maybe he's the greatest Zen master of all time just because he lived to be 120. And that's historically true. But anyway, one time a student came to him. Maybe that was when he was really ill and maybe about to die. And the student said, where are you going to go when you die? And Haakon said, straight to hell. And the student said, but you're such a great Zen master, how come you're going to hell? And he said, but somebody has to be there to help when you get there. So anyway, these are stories about heaven and hell, and the point is that Jizo goes, is in all the realms, and he vows to stay present in all the realms. I think part of his vow maybe is that he'll be there until Maitreya, the next Buddha, comes. Anyway, so there are various stories about Jizo, but part of it is that he's, you know, connected to the earth and down to earth. So there's also, even though he appears always as a male monk, so some of the bodhisattvas have many forms, particularly Kannon appears in many, many, many different forms because Kannon,

[16:31]

in her compassion listens to the differences, uses skillful means by listening to the differences of different beings and applying skillful means to those differences and so appears in many, many different forms to help different kinds of beings. Jizo always appears as a male monk. And there's a large, the large picture in the kitchen, in the library side of the kitchen, is of Jizo. So we have images of him around, and as I said, there's a few on the altar today. But in the Sutra of the Past Vows of Jizo Bodhisattva, There's a story that's really interesting about a mother and daughter. So in this story, so some of you may know the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.

[17:35]

Persephone is, Demeter is the, I think the goddess of the, of the harvest, and Persephone is her daughter, and Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, the king of the underworld, and Demeter has to go down to save Persephone, her daughter. This is sort of the reverse of that. There's two different stories like this in the same sutra of the past vows of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva. In both stories, Jizo, in a past life, is the daughter of a woman destined for hell after death. So, for various reasons, when the mother dies, the daughter knows that the mother is going to hell. In one case, the mother had been very skeptical and ridiculed spiritual practice. In another one, the Mother had liked eating animal flesh.

[18:37]

Anyway, there are various reasons. In both cases, the mother makes this, the daughter makes this vow to go and save the mother, and to go down into the hell realms and save the mother after she dies. In one case, she practices, she meditates deeply with arduous bone-breaking intensity so that she dies and goes down to hell. And there, because of her vow, She saves not only the mother, but all the other beings in hell at the time. So in both of these stories, this story of the daughter saving the mother. So it's interesting that this Jizo, who appears as a male monk, has this background of this relationship between mother and daughter, which is really interesting relationship often. And maybe because of that, Jizo is often seen as a protector of women and of children.

[19:41]

So the little ceramic image on the far left of the altar as I look at it, Jizo is holding one child and another child is kind of holding onto his robes. Chozen Bay, this was an image made by Chozen Bays at Great Vow Monastery in Oregon, and they do a mantra to Jizo as part of their everyday practice. There's a ceremony that was started in Japan, I believe. Maybe it exists in China, but it's become popular in American Buddhism, which Mizuko ceremony, it means literally water baby ceremony, but it's for children who've died, but also for aborted fetuses. So in Japan, abortions are more common than

[20:42]

America, and now there are people who are trying to make those illegal, and even make contraception illegal, but anyway, this is a ceremony to honor the pain of abortion, to honor the fetuses, and this is a ceremony that's being done now in, particularly in California, but I think throughout Americans then. So, there are many aspects of this of Jisobodhisattva that have to do with helping, witnessing to beings in difficult situations. And beings in what's called liminal states, states in between, states in the afterlife. So between, so Jizo is there as a guide to children who've died, for example, and to help beings into the next life.

[21:45]

So there's a kind of shamanic aspect to Jizo and the shamanic tradition which… is actually in many indigenous traditions in Asia and Native America and also in Europe is about going down into the earth often for healing. So Jizo has that side of looking down into the earth and working in the earth. And there's a lot of folklore about Jizo that kind of echoes that aspect. So, again, these stories are ways of seeing how people have thought of Jizo popularly. We don't have to take them literally. You can if you want. Jizo statues are said popularly to aid laborers.

[22:54]

When I was going out to translate with Shohaku Okamura and his temple was out in a farm village west of Kyoto. And when you go by the fields, often you see along the fields these Jizo statues or the six Jizo statues. So Jizo is kind of, said to aid laborers. He's a kind of worker bodhisattva. He takes on down-to-earth manual work and helps farmers, especially when needed. There's a story of a hard-pressed farmer praying to Jesus for help during a difficult harvest. Upon awakening the next morning, The farmer found a critical part of his task finished, and the lower legs of the neighborhood stone jizo were all muddied, apparently from working the fields. Some of the stories in which Jesus substitutes for others, which is a kind of common mode amongst the Bodhisattva folklore, that the Bodhisattvas will take the place of someone in trouble.

[24:03]

Some of them are rather amusing. Mount Koya is one of the great sacred mountains in Japan. It's the sacred mountain of the Shingon school, the Vajrayana school, south of Kyoto. It's a wonderful place with a big cemetery, but many, many sub-temples. Kukai, or Kobo Daishi, founded it, the great ninth century Buddhist founder. One time in a temple there, the abbot told a laborer that he must arise very early and shovel away the snow before a Jizo image that was carved by the school's great founder, Kukai. So Kukai also carved many wonderful statues. There's some in Kyoto, too. And he said that the laborer had to shovel the snow away because Jizo, this Jizo statue, rose early every morning and went out to save suffering beings. So it happened that one morning the servant gruffly expressed the wish that just once Jizo might shovel the snow for himself.

[25:07]

The next morning, servant woke up and found the snow was already cleared from the garden and snowy footprints were on the veranda to the Jizo hall leading back to the room where the image was housed. So, you know, there's all these kind of stories about Jizo that are part of the popular imagination. There are others of Jizo helping common people. And in the book I talk about associated figures like Kokuzo or Akasha Garba, who's the space womb Bodhisattva, kind of a pair with Jizo. But he's the Bodhisattva of space as opposed to earth and is particularly a favorite of Mountain Aesthetics, which is another mode of Japanese Bodhisattva practice. Anyway, so if we think about this kind of practice in terms of what it represents in terms of

[26:26]

potential practice that we might do as practitioners, people who go and witness to difficult realms, chaplains, hospice workers, social workers, people who go into prison to guide prisoners in meditation, people who work in rehab facilities. That's kind of Jizo realm of Bodhisattva work, helping helping those in difficult situations. I mentioned for some of these bodhisattvas some of the exemplars that I talked about and for all of them you know you might think of people in your own life who who represent the energies of these particular bodhisattvas but I want to mention A few from, for GISA particularly, well I mentioned Elie Wiesel who was an inmate at Auschwitz and ten years after

[27:36]

Holocaust, he survived, he started writing about it and he talked about how the people who were there kept saying that whoever survived had to witness to this. He also helped talk about other human rights horrors. So just to witness two difficult situations, I think of also Toni Morrison, a wonderful writer, who talked about the struggles of African-Americans, and particularly her book Beloved, which talks about mothers and daughters. and also passing between realms is a wonderful example of kind of Jizo energy. But I wanted to particularly mention Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, who was one of the first people who started to do Buddhist-Catholic dialogue, especially amongst monastics.

[28:50]

And he really explains very clearly why Jizo is always depicted as a monk. He doesn't have to be, but Merton talks about the archetypal monk as a marginal person. So we could think of other kinds of people who are marginal, what he calls marginal people. outside of the mundane world of society. So I'm just gonna read a little bit of what Thomas Merton says about this, and it really fits how Jizo is in the margins, how Jizo passes between the different realms and witnesses to them. For Merton, Mung is, quote, a marginal person who withdraws deliberately to the margin of society, seeking to deepen the essence of human experience in himself and for all people. He says that monks are intentionally irrelevant. An interesting way of thinking about our practice, being intentionally irrelevant.

[30:04]

He says the marginal person accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition. an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fate of death, by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people who live in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life. the office of the monk or the marginal person, the meditative person, or the poet, is to go beyond death, even in this life, to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death, and to be, therefore, a witness to life. So this role of witnessing as a marginal person. To be part of our practice is to turn away from the regular values of society. We turn and face the wall. And in a practice place like this, where we're in the middle of the city, we go back out and we engage the city.

[31:10]

But we have the experience of turning away from the usual values of the world. So like Jizo, the ideal monk crosses back and forth over the border between life and death, returning to the liminal transitional spaces. remaining clear and observant of the fundamental meaning of whatever they experience. Merton clarifies the essential humility of the monk. And, well, we could say the meditative person, we could say the marginal person. Monks are not better than ordinary people in the world. Monks do not possess an unusual capacity to love others greatly. They understand that our capacity for love is limited. It has to be completed with the capacity to be loved, to accept love from others, to want to be loved by others, to admit our loneliness, and to live with our loneliness, because everybody is lonely." So in this humility of the archetypal monk is the humble aspect of Jizo, the earth womb bodhisattva, down to earth, concerned with common people.

[32:19]

So even though Jizo is not important philosophically, that kind of gives a sense of why Jizo is very beloved by people generally in Japan and China and Korea. So that's a little bit about Jizo, Bodhisattva, a different mode of contrast to Manjushri, a different mode of compassion. So questions, comments, responses, about this bodhisattva. Yes, Michael. uh... uh... uh...

[33:30]

Yeah, so just show, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, Cicero is there as a worker, you know, as a common person. Common not in a, we think of that maybe as a negative, but to really be, you know, salt of the earth or something. Joshua, who Michael mentioned, is Joshua Pat Phelan at Chapel Hill, where Michael used to practice.

[35:04]

And yeah, to want to be somewhere else, that's kind of like Hungry Ghost or Hell Realm, yeah. Thank you. Aisha? I was having sort of a similar thought, but Jizo sounds very accessible. Right. In a way that's different from Kannon, who I always think of as being somewhere hearing the cries of the world, but Jizo feels like he's sort of sitting there on the bench next to you. Right. And maybe really just able to just sort of sit there. Yeah. Just witnessing. So there are also these stories. So these stories of Jizo helping out is the aspect of powers, of actually being able to help and assist people. But the stronger images of just being there, witnessing difficulties with people. So we have a number of people in our Sangha who are doing or studying to do chaplain work or hospice work, and that's very much this Jizo energy.

[36:07]

And there's a lot of Zen people now in this country doing chaplain work, which is just witnessing to illness, to people who are aging or who are getting ready to die, and just, and there's not, often, sometimes, there's not much to do, but to be present and witness together with. It's very powerful. So, the story of Elie Wiesel, the story of Toni Morrison, that Toni Morrison tells about witnessing two hellish realms. Other comments? Yes. hospital setting, especially with the suffering involved, that there's different levels of that. I mean, usually a chaplain will come in and say a few words instead. Yeah, there was a time when I was having great difficulty in my practice when I spent some time in a nursing home just hanging out and that really helped me.

[37:57]

Yes, Bill. for setting the so-called human conscience. Well, yeah, the thing about those six realms is they are not permanent.

[39:36]

They may last a very long time, but it's not eternal damnation. It's not eternal bliss in heaven. So that's very different from what, you know, the Western idea of heaven and hell. Yes, Jerry. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Yeah, I was thinking LGBTQ people, for example, have been marginal and are now expanding our idea of

[40:56]

you know, what sexuality is. But yeah, there are lots of people in our society who are considered marginal. So, you know, the list that Merton has, meditative people, poets, monks, you know, we could expand that and think of all the people who are marginalized in our society. And yeah, there's a way in which contemplative meditative practice is is they're drawn to or can be drawn to. And yeah, and that's how society actually can grow by realizing, by expanding. But also, it's not about the marginal people, monks, necessarily trying to change the society, although we might want to. That's maybe more the realm of Samantabhadra. We might want to change harm that's happening due to social systems.

[42:03]

But also, Well, I don't know where I'm going with that exactly, but that just to witness, the GIZO part is just to witness to how people are damaged by being marginalized. Yeah. Good. Yes. [...] It's not necessarily so much changing things, but it's actually much easier to observe society from the margins. That's right.

[43:06]

And so you can observe it and then reflect it back so that the people who are in it can see it. Yeah, that's part of what Thomas Merton's saying, that the people, the meditative, marginal people, the poets, see what's really happening because they're not caught up in the values of the mainstream. Yes, Phyllis. Yes. Thank you. Yes, all of you and everybody listening to this and everybody who's, what? that we don't give ourselves enough credit, that everybody who is, that it takes courage to actually stop and face the wall, face ourselves, look at, you know, sit upright or whatever, to do spiritual practice, to look at

[44:27]

What is our life? How do we want to live? Society, the mainstream, whatever we want to call it, fills us with all these distractions so we won't look at what's real and what's important. And to actually stop and take on, how do we really want to live? It takes courage to do that. Thank you, Phyllis.

[44:56]

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