Good morning, everyone. I have the great pleasure to introduce our Dharma sister, Jerry Oliva, the speaker today. Jerry Oliva's Dharma name is Tse Tse Ik U Shin, which translates as Pure Spring Nourishing Heart. Jerry defies her chronological years, certainly because she has such curiosity, she's fig-like in her engagement in the world and saying yes to most everything that is asked of her, which is part of our practice here of just saying yes and doing so much. She's a retired physician and health education, health educator from UCSF. She was a Shuso and continues to be a Shuso, or former head student of BCC, and she's in the process of receiving Dharma transmission from Sojin Roshi, our abbot here. She's ahead of the 20s and 30s Dharma group, which is a group of 20s and 30-year-old students of

[01:05]

Zen who meet with Jerry on a regular basis to talk about practice and keep our Dharma going for another generation. She also facilitates the Wednesday night group, which is a drop-in group that encourages people to come in on Wednesday evenings for Zazen and Dharma study with Jerry. That's been going on for many, many years now. She's on our health committee, so she and Dr. Monkayo look over our mental and physical health and well-being of our temple. If you have any questions about that, Jerry's one of the point people. And she's going to be going on pilgrimage to India next month to explore the ancient footsteps of the Buddha. And last but not least, she's married to Paul Farber, her husband, or domestic partner. I'm not quite sure what the term is these days. But anyway, they are united in love and harmony. That was a little much. So, this has not been, it has not been an easy process for me to

[02:23]

give this talk today. Sojin Roshi asked me to give a talk on Jizo Bodhisattva because we're doing a Jizo ceremony for loved ones who have been lost this afternoon here. And I think the reason why was the first thing that came to my mind as I started thinking about giving a talk was, why me? Why is Jizo? Why Jizo? Why am I doing this ceremony? And I started thinking, somehow Jizo's creeped into my life. I have, if you go into my front door, on the front table on one side is Avalokiteshvara and on the other side is Jizo. If you go

[03:23]

into my sitting room on my altar, there are a host of Jizo figures. And I noticed that they had started to creep into the bedroom. There were two on my dresser now. So, why is this, what is this about? And it was interesting, I was using, looking into Jan Chosen Bayes, she's a co-abbot of the Great Bell Monastery in Oregon. And she is one of the people who's really revived Jizo as a Bodhisattva to honor in this country. And I realized, well, isn't that interesting? I just, I had gone through the book before, years, over the years, but I kind of read the introduction, which sometimes I skip. And of course, I did know that Jan was a pediatrician as well. But it just, and I remembered meeting her and we talked about

[04:23]

being pediatricians and we talked about working in child abuse and child sexual abuse. And her first, so I started, and I had started thinking, well, why am I, why has this been so gripping for me? And I think it's important for us to relate to these Bodhisattvas in these archives in a personal way. We can't really access them unless we open to them. So, these pictures started to arise for me and I think part of my reticence is that I'm not sure how I'm going to respond to sharing the pictures. I remember when I was an intern at Boston City Hospital and I was alone. I always worked at city hospitals and we were always short-staffed and it was hard to get the attendings and often the first person on call was the intern or the junior resident. And I got called to the delivery room because a woman had given birth to her first child. It was a nine-pound

[05:31]

baby and the baby wouldn't breathe. It looked like a normal baby. It had nice color. It was a big baby. There had been no problems in the pregnancy and so I took the baby in an incubator back to the nursery and in those days we didn't really have the equipment that we have now. We had a little tube to intubate the baby, but we didn't have the ambu bags that were the right size for the baby, you know, those big bags they used to resuscitate. Now, you know, you're supposed to have the little ones, but this was a city hospital. We didn't always have that. We certainly didn't have respirators for baby-sized respirators. They were new and only the really big private hospitals had them. So I spent my night with the baby and trying to use this ambu bag and the baby would look pink and

[06:35]

look really good and then when I would stop, the baby would stop breathing again. And finally after I don't know how many hours, I think I called an attending or something and they said, well, there's really nothing you can do. So I had to let the baby die and stay with the baby and then I had to go talk to the mother who was a Latino woman, didn't speak a lot of English. I spoke some Spanish. She had totally unexpected, it was totally unexpected for her because her pregnancy had been normal. She'd had other children. So it was watching death, being with death, and not really being able to do much about it. I took an elective that year at Sloan Kettering in pediatric oncology and these thoughts

[07:38]

started coming back to me as I was thinking about Jizo Bodhisattva. And there was a little girl in the ward who was about 13 who had ovarian cancer and it was very unusual and it was metastatic and she had been at Sloan Kettering so she could get experimental drugs and they tried everything. Her parents were devastated. They were there all the time. And again, the interns were the ones around because the attendings just swooped in in the morning and said hello and then left. So the interns ended up having to be companions and we got all kinds of responsibilities. I was asked somehow to talk to the parents about stopping resuscitation and had to be with them and share their grief and their loss.

[08:41]

So I then went to Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which was another really poor place, and they didn't have any really equipment for little babies, premature babies, and I was in, again, a call to a delivery and one of the nurses said to me, this baby's too small. And I said, well, but it's alive. It's crying. And she said, well, we don't really do anything for them. We just wrap them up in a blanket and put them in an incubator and put them on the side. And then if they live, that's good. And if they don't, they don't. And for a young doctor with a lot of, I don't know what, inspiration or aspiration to save people, I went back and checked the baby and I remember one baby and it was three and a half

[09:54]

pounds. Now those are considered big babies because we have all these respirators and things, but in those days they had no way to help. Anyway, this one baby was such a joy to me because it made it. I would go periodically and be with it, and then it made it through the night, and then apparently it was probably a small for gestational age baby. It was more developed than its weight indicated, and so it had enough respiratory power to live. So these were kind of experiences that I had when I was really on the front lines. But there were other experiences, too, I remember during that time. I was still very open. One of the things that happens when you do in the helping profession sometimes is you start to shut down a bit. You don't have anybody to really talk to. Now they're doing more case conferencing, they're recognizing that

[10:56]

a little bit more, but you don't have anybody to talk to. There certainly aren't any alters. I would sometimes go to churches and sit in them. And I remember one time another experience I had because I was in, but this time I was in New York in the South Bronx. Horrible. I mean, it was during the Fort Apache, the Bronx time when Bronx looked like a devastation. And every day it was awful. Every day there was suffering. Every day you didn't know what was coming. And I took a bus trip to go visit a friend of mine in Connecticut, and the bus rode through the Bronx and Harlem. And I remember crying the whole way on the bus because of all of the suffering. So I guess I could say I shoved a lot of it.

[12:03]

You know, you just have to survive. You're taught to survive. There's no way to... You don't try not to lose your compassion, but something sometimes happens where you... Just to be a helper, and it doesn't have to be a doctor helper. You know, so many of you do helping things. Sometimes if you don't have the support of, say, a spiritual practice, then you are left with this poor human not being able to handle these kind of situations and being alone. So I kind of put a lot of that aside. There's one other thing that I will actually say in that early part of my life. I was very much involved in political stuff and got involved in the women's movement during the abortion battles. And at one point,

[13:12]

when abortion just became legal, there weren't any doctors that knew how to do abortions. And I think people who were here during my Shuso period remember that I talked about this, but I felt like because I was a doctor, I had an obligation to learn. Even though as a pediatrician, I went to San Francisco General Hospital and got trained in how to do abortions. And for about a year, I guess, I did abortions. I believe very strongly in, and still do, in reproductive rights and people's right to choose. But as a pediatrician, it wasn't exactly the right gig for me, if you will. It was very painful eventually. I never stopped believing that it was an option that should be open to everyone, but I did discover that it was something that I really couldn't do. I really had a hard time with it. I couldn't separate myself from the thing. And again, I still, at that point, had not developed a kind of spiritual practice.

[14:20]

I hung on to Catholicism in that I went into churches periodically, sat, and just tried to be with it, and tried to manage trying to keep compassionate and open at the same time, needing to go on. So I kind of, after a while, forgot about all that. And then one day, Rebecca Mayeno, who was a priest here and a sculptor who made that clay figure, had a sculpture workshop. She used to do sculpture workshops on certain days, and we were all invited to come and make our clay figures. And you could do whatever you wanted, but she started the workshop with a slideshow. And in the slideshow, she showed various Buddhist statues, and she showed some statues of Jizo. I had never heard of Jizo. And I remember seeing this picture of this kind of bald, childlike figure

[15:30]

with a halo and little children at his feet in the slideshow. But I had fully intended to make a Buddha, a sitting Buddha, for my altar at home. But as I worked the clay, it turned into a Jizo. And it was a very powerful experience. I was totally engaged in making the Jizo statue. And then it came time for me to add the baby at the bottom. And it was very powerful for me to do that. I have this statue, by the way. I brought it today, but I'm going to put it out later. I may put it out somewhere where people can see it later. And that statue has stayed with me.

[16:34]

And that statue, that experience of Jizo, opened me to this possibility of some way to have support, to actually feel the pain and allow the pain to come in and to be healed, the suffering to just be felt with some support, even though it was a statue. But the process of creating it was very important to me, the process of using my hands to form the clay and just letting whatever came up through my hands, not my mind. Because I had no idea how to do it. I mean, I just saw the picture and I did it. So I think for me, the idea of Jizo brings to me the idea of the importance of ritual and ceremony in healing.

[17:55]

No matter how old societies are, they make up rituals, they make up figures, they make up figures that represent aspects of the human psyche or the human spirit. They use these spirits as a way to be a bridge for them to some more transcendent place, to be able to be with them in some communal way, where they come together and transcend the pain and suffering of the hell realms. And so I think I began to kind of recognize that even though if you give yourself to ritual without judgment, it doesn't really matter what the ritual is. Every religion, every spiritual practice, every primitive community has ritual.

[19:02]

And the power of it is the communal nature of it. We join together. We all recognize the suffering. We all recognize the mystery or the unexplicable mystery of life and death. And we're able to be with that together and somehow transcend and heal by actually being able to be with them, be in that realm of both the suffering realm and the transcendent realm and actually hold it. And then something happens or doesn't, but sometimes something happens. And as we go through these rituals together, we kind of are just joining as one in the same motions as this happens. So you can see why this wasn't an easy thing for me. So Jizo Bodhisattva, the original name of...

[20:07]

This is going to be a big change here, but I'm going to try to keep it real even when I talk about Jizo Bodhisattva in terms of legends and Dharma. Jizo is known by many names, but the original name in India was Kishta Garbha. In Sanskrit, Kishta means earth, Kishti, Kishti means earth and Garbha means womb. So Jizo can be translated as earth womb or earth stone or earth storehouse Bodhisattva. And they reflect the Jizo qualities of caring for those who are vulnerable and supporting anyone in any of the realms, but particularly the hell realms. This was really interesting to me. The first mention of Jizo really wasn't the mention of Jizo, but the early arrival of a Jizo-like figure comes from an early Pali Sutta.

[21:16]

And I'll just read that actually. When the future Buddha sat upon his meditation seat, vowing not to move until he was enlightened, Mara, the hell one, was distressed. He sent armies of terrifying beings to attack the Buddha, who remained unafraid and unmoved. The light radiating from the Buddha shivered the swords and denied the battle axes. As arrows and weapons fell to the ground, they turned into flowers. Mara, dismayed, questioned how he could be defeated by the Buddha. He asked his fleeing troops to bear witness that he, Mara, had been kind and generous. They respond that he, Mara, that he should ask about the Buddha. And he, what proof has he given of his generosity? What sacrifices has he made? Who will bear witness to his kindness? Whereupon a voice came out of the earth and it said, I bear witness to his generosity.

[22:20]

Mara was struck dumb with astonishment. The voice continued, yes, I, the earth, the mother of all beings, will bear witness to his generosity. A hundred times, a thousand times in the course of his previous existence, his hands, his eyes, his head, his whole body have been at the service of others. And in the course of this existence, which will be the last, he will destroy old age, sickness and death. As he excels you in strength, Mara, even so does he surpass you in generosity. And the evil one saw a woman of great beauty emerge from the earth. Up to her waist, she bowed before the hero and clasping her hand, she said, Oh, most holy of men, I bear witness to your generosity. And she disappeared. And Mara, the evil one, wept because she had been defeated. So this was the original appearance of an earth like Bodhisattva or goddess that came and was originally derived from a Hindu, a Hindu fertility goddess.

[23:28]

But that was the first seed of the Bodhisattva, of the earth store Bodhisattva. But Jizo was not very popular in India, but only became really well known and revered in China and Japan, along with the Mahayana teachings with the Bodhisattva archetype. And Bodhisattva is the being who awakens to the, awakens to ultimate reality and nirvana. But instead of ascending into heaven, stays on earth to help those who are suffering. So that archetype came with the Mahayana sutras and a number of those sutras mentioned the earth store Bodhisattva. So one of the earliest mentions of the earth and so the earth store Bodhisattva then took on its own life when it got to China and Japan.

[24:30]

And the way that myth and legend happens, there was a Jizo for everyone. So the original mention of Jizo was in an old sutra called the Sutra of Ten Kings, and it's called the legend of the Sino-Kawara Riverbank. So when people, the legend is that when people died, they came to this riverbank and they needed to get ashore. And all of them wanted to get ashore to the other side, ashore to the heaven, to the heaven place. And there was a woman on the side of the shore that took their clothes off of them and a man who put their clothes on a tree. And there was a tree branch and depending upon what the clothes weighed, this indicated the evil karma or positive karma.

[25:40]

So if your trees weighed down the branches, if your trees didn't weigh down the branches, you could cross over a bridge. Yeah, the clothes, they put the clothes and then the branch. And if your trees, so you could cross a bridge if you were good and you're fine, you're going off to either a positive rebirth or heaven. And if you were not so good, then you had to cross a narrow fjord and cross over the river, but it wasn't so bad. And if you had really bad action in your life, you had to go across the most treacherous place with waves and so forth. But in the story, and then you had to go through these 10 kings and go through all these stages of trials to just see how bad you were and which hell and which realm you would end up in.

[26:51]

But the legend is that right outside the gates of hell stands Jizo Bodhisattva. And Jizo Bodhisattva's job is to be the defense attorney at the court, and he argues for mercy. And he has the power to release those imprisoned in wooden shackles, give thirsty drink, and argue for the leniency if he can find even one deed of kindness in a person's life. Pretty good. So this was the first really appearance of Jizo Bodhisattva. And you can see that he would have a lot of appeal because here is somebody who can save you even after you're dead. There's another early story called the Transformation Text on Mulin or Moggallana.

[27:55]

Moggallana was a disciple of Buddha. It's a text on Mulin saving his mother. In this story, Mulin searches for his deceased parents to discover their fate. He finds his father in heaven, but his mother apparently had acquired, this is what it says, an unhealthy appetite for meat, roasting a live goat and eating the family dog. For this, he was reborn in hell. And when he starts searching the underworld, he meets Jizo who advises him to look in hell. It tells him where in hell he can find her. And Mulin starts arguing with the Buddha and praying to the Buddha for the release of his mother. By this time, his mother ends up in a situation where she's a hungry ghost with a big belly, a thin neck, and a hanging skin.

[29:05]

And when he tries to send her food, the food is like flaming coals in her throat. So she is in fact a hungry ghost. But Mulin won't give up. He continues to beseech Jizo Bodhisattva. And with his intercession, the Buddha then says, OK, if you make a big feast after the summer retreat, then maybe I might be able to help you out with your mother. And this is the Oban, this is the hungry ghost ceremony that we do here in Tsujiki. There's a big harvest ceremony and it's the hungry ghost ceremony and that is thought to have come out of this story of Mulan and his mom that was eventually able to ascend to heaven because Mulin was such a devout practitioner and made offerings and brought food for the monks.

[30:08]

This is a theme in some of these Jizo stories that you can be a substitute. So if you are willing as the son or the daughter or the mother to take on the suffering and the karma of your relative and pay homage, then maybe that might have some effect and you might actually mitigate the evil consequences. So that's a really, really kind of powerful theme. There are a lot of other stories from the other. The major sutra that has a lot of stuff on Jizo is the Sutra of the Vows of the Earth Stone Bodhisattva. And there, again, there comes this other story and aspect of the Buddha of the Jizo Bodhisattva and the first mention of the idea of transformation bodies.

[31:22]

The sutra describes the realms of existence and it talks of basically Jizo's promise to work unceasingly to go to whatever realms are necessary to save those who are suffering. And in this sutra, there are lots of different manifestations of Jizo, so it's not a Jizo. It's people who manifest as Jizo in their lives in order to save other beings. So in one of these stories, there's a little young boy who recognizes the radiant light of the beauty of the Buddha and wants to be a Buddha and wants to radiate that light and Buddha says, well, here's what you have to do. So he goes and he becomes a person who's helping and devotes his life to helping and to paying homage to Buddha.

[32:30]

In another story, there are two kings in neighboring kingdoms. They're wonderful kings. They give a lot of money to the temple. They honor the Buddha, but their citizens are really terrible. The citizens have fallen into decay and evil doings. So they go to the Buddha for help and he said, well, you've got to take care of this. And so they then work unceasingly to be models for their people and teach their people and do what's needed until their citizens then start to become wholesome. And so they both are then turned into Jizo because they've completely devoted their life to saving all of the beings in their communities. There's also a story in there about two women.

[33:31]

So Jizo does appear as men or women in lots of different forms. And these women are called the Bright Eyes and Sacred Daughter. They were both young women and their mothers ended up in the hell realm. Both of them sold their possessions to make offerings to the Buddha and prayed for their mothers to be released from suffering. During meditation, Sacred Daughter saw her mother's fate. She saw hundreds of thousands and millions of men and women rising and sinking in the water, being mauled and devoured by beasts. The Sacred Daughter was calm and fearless because of the power of remembering the Buddha. The Buddha told them due to their steadfast practice, their mothers had been released from hell. Even though the mothers were released, the girls couldn't forget the horror that they had seen. And so they devoted their lives to saving others.

[34:32]

And so Buddha, again, they were transformed into Earth Stone Buddha. So this whole idea of transformation bodies. So Jizo can appear as a man or woman in the body of a god, a dragon, a spirit or a ghost. He may appear as mountain, forest, streams, as rivers, lakes, fountains or well, all in order to benefit all beings. Or he said, or he may appear in the body of a heavenly king, a Brahma king, a wheel-turning king, a layman, a king of the country, a prime minister. So basically this transformation happens in response to what the need is. Anyone can transform basically into, anyone can transform into a Jizo if they live according to the ways of a Bodhisattva, if they practice as a Bodhisattva.

[35:41]

So these... And this even extends to not only... So basically a Jizo arises to meet the needs of a situation, just like we can arise differently to meet the needs of a situation. If in our heart our intention is to save all beings, then we look at each situation as an opportunity or we try to look at every situation as an opportunity to pay attention, really engage with the situation, really engage with the other being and become whatever it is that's needed. We become what's needed. So the other aspect of this is what they call, what's the name? The substitute Jizo.

[36:47]

Jizo. Jizo in some legends actually takes the place of a suffering person to actually do what needs to be done to save that person. So there are a lot of names of Buddhas. Wood chopping Buddha, water Buddha. I think I have a list of them here. Ask the sky for rain Buddha. Wash his feet after helping peasants in the rice paddies, Jizo. Warrior Jizo. Jizo who gets his feet muddy helping in the fields. Jizo who prolongs life and provides many beings. Jizo who leads horses and cattle. Stomach wrapper Jizo who protects women during pregnancy. Jizo who protects harvest from fire. Jewel holding Jizo. So you can see Jizo is basically worshipped, especially all over Japan, very widely worshipped all over Japan.

[37:51]

And it's like a Jizo for all occasions. There are Jizos many, many places and they take the character of what's needed. So it's very interesting, isn't it? So different from Judeo-Christian where you have kind of a fixed identity. And we have this saint for this thing and that saint for that thing. Jizo is kind of an all-purpose saint. The all-purpose Bodhisattva. It doesn't matter whatever's wrong, whatever. You can go to Jizo. You can honor Jizo. You can make an offering to Jizo. If your feet are wet. There's all these legends about the old woman who can't chop the wood and she's freezing and she makes an offering to Jizo. And then she wakes up and she sees that her statue is gone. And then the pile of wood appears in the yard. You know, that kind of thing. Jizo who takes the place of a boy who's being abused by his stepmother.

[38:53]

She wants to pour boiling water on him. And all of a sudden the boy disappears and is found with a wonderful figure outside. And when his father comes home, he finds the boy being held by this wonderful Bodhisattva. And then when he looks in the house, in the kettle, there's a Buddha statue boiling in the kettle. And the father gets what happened and saves the kid. So there are all these men. Wonderful. You can imagine how populous would be. There's somebody for everybody. And so it's interesting too, though, in Japan that they had Jizo. Jizo even was a war guardian. You know, of course, there's a lot of suffering in war and people, warriors are dying.

[39:55]

They're being sent out to die. So it's not that that's not an OK thing, but it just he manifests however he needs to manifest at the time. So that's a wonderful Bodhisattva to think about having in your life, a Bodhisattva who can be there. And it doesn't even matter how small, but it's just make an offering, make an offering. So the other aspect of the Jizo that had come into popularity was the water baby Jizo. It was the Jizo who helped women who had abortions, because in Japan there were a lot of abortions at one point. And a lot of suffering. And that water baby Jizo was the first Jizo that came to this country.

[40:58]

That's the first Jizo people discovered in this country. People had lost children. People had lost children through miscarriage or abortion, but still wanted to honor that loss. I'm almost done. So how do we then work with Jizo Bodhisattva? Jizo Bodhisattva is a kind of able to transform, able to substitute, able to arise to the needs. And one way to work with Jizo Bodhisattva is always, you know, we think of these Bodhisattvas as archetypes. So it's an archetype for us to aspire to. How do we become Jizo? How do we manifest Jizo in our lives? And also, how can we honor Jizo in our own lives, in our own needs, in our own suffering?

[42:01]

So there are a lot of ways of doing that. And one of the parts, you know, the parts of the ceremony have to do with chanting the mantra of Jizo. And also taking refuge in Jizo, the way we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, we can take refuge. I take refuge in the Earth, Earth Store Bodhisattva. I take refuge in the Earth, and you repeat that. So we can make a vow. A lot of Earth Store stories end with the Jizo's all making vows. I vow not to rest until the suffering of all beings is taken care of. I vow not to rest until all beings are free from hell realms, that kind of thing. So that's part of the ritual in the ceremony. So we chant a mantra, we recite the name of Jizo Bodhisattva, we make a vow to save all beings.

[43:08]

Jizo's vows are, only after the hells are empty will I become a Buddha. And only after all beings are taken across to enlightenment will I myself realize Bodhi. So we can call on Jizo Bodhisattva in any circumstance. Is there anything else I wanted to say? So we do these ceremonies for Jizo once a year here. And these ceremonies really, again, I would say we intend them to represent the transformational body of Jizo. Jizo is available to anyone. So it can be a personal thing, it can be a concern about what's going on in a community,

[44:15]

an aching over a death that maybe isn't in your family, but a death that's happened that really is causing suffering, and how can you find support and sustenance in dealing with those kinds of things in your life. And for somebody like me, I'm surrounding myself with, as it gets more intense, I think I'll probably, in the next month, I'll probably buy a lot more Jizo's to put around. But always, the other thing about Jizo not to forget, and why Jizo can do this, is that Jizo, I'm just saying what Ross said about me, but Jizo was originally looked like a very, one of these austere Bodhisattvas with robes and gleaming things and whatever. But as Jizo became part of Japan's fabric of Japan's life and became popular in Japan and also here,

[45:19]

Jizo's become much more of a childlike. Because only with kind of that childlike openness and beginner's mind can you actually continue to meet each situation without carrying that situation with you. And it doesn't take magical powers. It takes the openness and acceptance of a child, of a beginner's mind, to be able to actually live out the Jizo archetype. So I don't know if we have any questions, but if anybody wants to ask something. Yes, Peter. Jerry, thank you very much. I was particularly moved by your description of your earlier days as a physician. And I imagine those as almost a continual experience of loss, for which you really don't have time to breathe until the next one comes along. And I'm wondering, from where you sit now, how do you imagine yourself being in that situation?

[46:21]

And how would you engage with Jizo as a way to work with that? Well, I think that ritual and ceremony matter. I think that what I've done, for example, when I was in priest training. We had priest training for three years with Grace Shearson and Steve Stuckey and Lou Richmond and Darlene Cohen. During those three years, Darlene and Steve Stuckey died and several other people in our group died. And we had bonded into such a very strong group. And we honored them. We actively brought them in. When Darlene died, we brought her colorful robe and her scarves.

[47:24]

We talked to her. We made offerings. We honored. We chanted to her. We all got pictures, and we put them on our altars at home. I mean, it's not running away from it. But ritual and community and community ceremony help us to be able to bear it and actually honor the person and go through the grieving process and really allow us and support us in going through the grieving process. That's what I do now. Yes? I was so struck when you were telling those stories. And you had the recourse of going and sitting somewhere and just sitting with it and feeling it. And I noticed that you never used the word grieve as you were telling them. And I experienced that. I had a picture of this young woman who was holding on very tight not to dissolve and almost afraid to grieve because when you stopped.

[48:27]

And I'm remembering, and maybe I'm just projecting too, I'm just remembering a part of my life before I learned to grieve. And I actually had to find out that I would die if I let go. And I didn't grieve. And I was so relieved when you told the story of being on the bus and just weeping. Thank God, thank God she finally got to cry. So I was thinking of grieving as just this really essential part. And to some extent, I think ceremony helps us give ourselves motivation. And have some sense of... But I also find that I need to grieve, just to grieve, separate from going through a ceremony, that I do the ceremony with much more peace and acceptance if I have been able to let go. And in the second half, when you're talking about Jisho, I realize that you've named for me finally something I have been looking for in Buddhism

[49:30]

to account for what I experience as intercessory prayer, which simply happens with me, that I know someone who needs help, and that it's beyond me, it's not a thing I can do to help. And a prayer just rushes through. And I realize that it's like sending that up, we do that. But the idea that there is... The idea of a Bodhisattva you can appeal to, and sort of send a prayer there and say, send down your compassion, help in ways that I can't imagine how to help. And I'm really glad to know there is something like that in Buddhist practice. Thank you. Yes? You and Judy Fleischman are going to be hosting, or conducting a Jisho ceremony today from 1 to 3, right? And people can participate in some way, is that true? Yes. How is it that people can participate? They can just show up.

[50:33]

Show up. Do they give you names or anything like that? We ask that people think of someone that they want to pay respects to and honor. And yes, and they can bring a token, or we do an arts and crafts session where people make something as a representation that they want to... a representation of the lost person. Phalani? Well, I say this every time you speak, to invite you to Jisho, 32 years ago, when I gave birth to my son Hassan, and that lotus birth, and you stood there and accepted it, where somebody else, a nurse at the hospital, had a real problem with that. And I thank you again. Oh, that, yeah, I was... I don't know how that happened. But I mean, I know I was in the capacity of doctor, but I don't remember how. I guess I was asked to attend the birth by the obstetrician or something.

[51:34]

Yeah. Yes, and I came to your house, too, after that, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think there were some pediatricians in the Women's Health Collective at Berkeley, not pediatricians but doctors, who, because some people were doing home births, we were concerned that they were doing home births with midwives who at the time weren't so well-trained. And we didn't know what was going to happen, if anything happened to the baby, so they asked some of us to attend certain births if there was any problem. Yeah, and somehow I found out about that. I don't know how. And showed up. Yeah. Yes, and we actually have some remembrances for Nancy as part of the ceremony.

[52:37]

Yeah. And it was very much the water baby, right? So until today, that's what I thought Jiso was. I didn't know all those other incarnations. And I think that's really important, because I think the reason, the way Jiso came in, I think was through Yvonne Rand, and Suzuki Roshi told Yvonne Rand about the water baby ceremony, because there was some context for it at San Francisco Zen Center, and they did a water baby ceremony. So she started to do water baby ceremonies, and I think originally. And Jiso's new in this country. I mean, really, we don't hear about him or her that much.

[53:42]

And the same thing happened in Japan. It came in as one thing, and then Jiso morphed into, because that particular Bodhisattva archetype is by definition a changing one. It's not a fixed identity. It's a malleable response to whatever. It's still very important. Yes, it's still that way, but also there's a lot of Jiso's at gates. There are like six Jiso's at the gates of certain ceremonies that represent the six realms, and there are Jiso's at crossroads for travelers. And Jiso has become much more, what would you call it, mainstreamed than just one specific. And I think in this country, we're interested in that.

[54:43]

Yeah? Yeah. On the day that Hiroshima was bombed, I made a vow that on the 60th birthday, the sangha would go to Japan to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and make offerings of one Jiso image, an offering for each person to die in the city. And so that monastery, that sangha took that on, and people from all over the world, many different communities, Buddhists and non-Buddhists, crafted these panels of Jiso and the person's name and where they were from and if they had any peace message. And the project was called Jiso's for Peace, and they had a Jiso pilgrimage to those places.

[55:46]

So there are many ways. And if anybody's interested in all the nitty-gritty of Jiso, obviously Jan Chosen Bey's book. I don't know, do we sell it, Jiso Bodhisattva? But she hand-subscribes, she writes a note on all the books. It's quite amazing. She's quite an amazing person. Okay.

[56:13]

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