Myriad Jizos

Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin.  This sesshin is also focused on Jizo Bodhisattva.  It's a kinder, gentler sesshin, in that there is a great deal of outdoor meditation.  There is a large meadow, and a generous woods, and everyone grabs a little 3'x3' section of tarp and heads out with their cushion to a spot for most of the meditation periods.

Except for the one block of meditation after the lunch break when we were making ceramic Jizo statues for the Jizo garden.

The taller ones are the main molded ceramic Jizos made at the Monastery.  Articles of clothing are made for them during Jizo ceremonies to honor children who have died.  

One of the amazing Japanese Jizos at the entrance of the Jizo Garden

There are many kinds of Jizos all along the trails and tucked away in the Jizo Garden.  

Chozen Roshi would talk about Jizo in her Dharma talks, and then we'd go make them.  I had no idea we would be doing crafts at sesshin.

She spoke about Jizo's "division bodies" or "transformation bodies".  Whenever there is a need, and a person calls out for Jizo to help them,  Jizo comes to their aid in whatever form is needed for that person.

"...When someone is suffering and cries out even silently for help, a transformation body is born because of that request.  How many transformation bodies are there?  As many beings as there are right now who are in distress and asking for help, that is, right now, the number of transformation bodies.  

This has important implications... If we are in need of spiritual help, we should ask for it.  Our asking is the causefor the arising of division bodies.  If we don't ask, not only are we stuck in our own pride, but we are blocking the arising of bodhisattvas like Jizo.  

We all have had the experience of being transformed by becoming aware of someone's vulnerability and suffering.  We are often not aware of their plight until they ask for help." 

So our ceramic Jizos are little division bodies, being made for the garden and everyone who comes through there.  Each day, more little "division bodies" would be created.  I loved to go and visit them on the breaks as they dried in the sun.  Some of them were bisque fired, glazed and completed by the end of the week.  Some were left from last year, and other people glazed those and put them out in the Jizo garden, dedicating them to someone or something.

This is my overwhelming favorite.  Clearly a division body -- a Jizo called into being by and for parents with tantruming children.    The person who made this later shared that her whole sesshin was spent struggling with her own tantruming child mind.

I don't know who made the Kitty Jizo with Mice.  But wow.  

Some pieces from last year that were bisque fired but did not get to be glazed.  

Some Jizos from a previous retreat in which people carved Jizos from stone.  

The Path.  It is like an Easter egg hunt out there in the Jizo garden.

 Here are some of the ones that got finished during the week and placed in the garden:

Dormant

It seems reflective of the season. My practice feels dormant. At least the contemplative part. And I suspect this is just fine.

"Don't judge your practice." Zen Teacher Hogen Bays repeats this often, in many different forms. Over and over, he reminds us that we are not in any position to gauge what is going on, how we are doing, or what is happening.

Nevertheless, there is a sense of superficiality, of busyness in the mind, of easily distracted Zazen.

Okay, so compared to what? Compared to last spring and summer -- the experience of intensive Zen practice in the midst of a yearlong Sabbatical with regular sesshin, being inactive as a social worker, working on a koan and sweating an impending Hossan ceremony.

Now things are different. I am gainfully employed in the world again, and facing outward quite a bit more. Our Sangha has just purchased a church that will be the Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple. With such a change on the horizon, being a part of many of our Sangha's transition plans is a high-energy, high-people-contact endeavor.

I still sit, I still practice, I still enjoy being at the Zen Center twice a week. It's practice without much drama. Not sure what the fuel is. It seems a little quieter, and cleaner-burning than some earlier practice that seemed all about having eye on how I am doing, and how I am received by others.

I don't know if that makes sense.

Chozen Roshi talks about how our Zen practice has a natural rhythm with more passive times to incorporate periods of intense practice. Using the example of non-practicing spouses of serious practitioners, she says sometimes these latent periods can last lifetimes.

The last few sesshin, I have come away without a Zen adventure ("Zenventure?"), but instead just saying, "Something happened. I have no idea what it was."

I guess this is just another flavor of practice.