Warabe Jizo

An: Ahh, morning is breaking. Light but not yet enlightenment. The fresh fragrance of moss. Yes, I am surrounded by moss, even buried in it. I shouldn’t care, but this garden at Sanzen-in is cozier than many a previous incarnation. Did I do something right? Am I purified of an evil desire? But the goal is to be released of all desire, and I do so desire to stay comfortable in this shaded bed of moss. My moss, my most precious moss.

Ko: I could have stayed half-asleep if it weren’t for the ant that’s walking across my nose.

An: Ah? So that sentient but slightly insensitive creature has introduced a dissonance in your consciousness. Yet to feel contempt or anger would be contrary to Right Resolve. We are one with Nature; you are one with the ant.

Ko: I am One with the ant, but there is dissonance, you say. So are we One, or am I confused?

An: Here you go again, analyzing, trying to understand. Analysis is for control freaks, take life as it comes, don’t crave to understand, don’t change life, let life change you… Ahhh, Teacher would not be happy with our progress today. We are… I am… what am I? We are still so far from the Right View. I must go back, ba-a-a-ak…

Zzzz

WHACK, WHACK!

Ko: Ouch! Honorable Teacher, we dozed off, but why can I feel this pain on my shoulders? I don’t even have shoulders any more, hardly. And while I’m at it, Right Livelihood means renouncing weapons – does that include your bamboo whipping pole?

WHACK!

Teacher: Ko, my worst student. What did I tell you about Right Speech?

An: Teacher was right.

Ko: It’s hard not to be right when you have both the sutras and the rod. I’d like to hear his Right Speech when I’m holding the stick.

An: Let us reflect. Let us turn off all anger, all negativity. Turn it a-a-all off-f-f.

Ko: Chatter is distracting me, and not the chatter of birds. 

An: Ah, visitors with North Face hoodies approach, stopping for selfies in front of the jizo. Do we look cute?

Ko: Don’t ask us to pose, dummies, we’re made of stone.

An: Is it my face they like, or the composite of a granite statue on a green moss carpet with a cedar trunk in the background? I must be cute, that’s why they come to us, not to the other jizo.

Ko: I just wish they wouldn’t put a Pokemon next to me before taking the shot. Have they no pity?

An: I’ve seen those hoodies before. Yes, and not so long ago. I wanted one, or two or three, but what I wanted even more was Right Mindfulness. It was in a crowded university cafeteria, yes, I remember. I was surrounded by Nike, by Timberland, by comfortable brands all cloned by the same corporate machines. I was engrossed in my mandarin orange, or should I say immersed in it, or perhaps lost in it, or maybe just lost. My consciousness, my self, if indeed it is mine, was in that peel and what it enclosed. I wiped it off. I wiped it again. Released from all preconceived notions of fruit, relying solely on inspired intuition, I applied pressure from both thumbs to split it open, then I split the halves, but not perfectly, because nothing is perfect except imperfection. Ahhh, no rushed temptation to devour it, a moment was needed to contemplate. Stringy fibers still covered the sections.  My ears may have been told that there is no need to remove them, that in fact much of the nutrition is precisely in the fibers, but nonetheless a series of movements of hands and fingers lifted them off surface, one by one as mind united with fiber and fiber with mind intermediated only by unconscious appendages of the body, my temporary abode. The peel, still in one piece, becomes a tidy receptacle for the fibers, once I consume every section, savoring each one in all its individuality and cosmic reality. Zen and the Art of Mandarin Consumption. This was bliss, like the patch of moss I now crave.

Ko: Aha, gotcha. Surely craving, even craving a blissful temple garden, can be contrary to Right Conduct? Needn’t you be released from such material desires?

An: The teachers of the sutras may have different views on that. If anyone is out of place it is you, I would say. Always a complaint, never at peace.

Ko: And yet, if I hadn’t been here that woman’s prayers might have gone unanswered. I made someone happy that day. Do you forget?

An: A constant flow of pilgrims and tourists, and your mind cannot let go of that nameless, voiceless woman.

Ko: She needed no voice. The pebbles crunching on the path beneath her feet called my attention to her, while compost plugged your ears, and your inward-turned eyes saw but a vacuous void. She spoke not a word, I saw no tear on her cheek, but I could feel her pain. It was the same woman that called 911 for me when I was hit, the same unknown woman that showed up at my funeral and tried to console my mother. She came to this garden and left without taking a single photo, she just wanted to petition the jizo. And hers was not the typical entreaty, like a parent wanting their child to get into Pinnacle University, or a lottery ticket owner hoping to be buried in bullion. This woman’s neighbor was moving to a new area so that their bullied child could get a fresh start at a different school. A fresh chance to gain confidence, another chance to make friends, a chance to have a future to look forward to. Her neighbor’s child. There was no pestering or insisting, she didn’t give an interminable list of reasons why, in justice, she deserved to be heard. The woman simply folded her hands as if to say, ‘Please.’ And I said, ‘Granted.’ Nothing has ever made me feel that good.

An: A bothersome bore you are. Well, before you search for answers to that riddle, I suggest you prepare an answer to our Teacher’s last lesson.

WHACK!

Listen and learn, my disciples. On rainy days a monk was known to stand at the edge of a pond and stare at the surface. His disciple asked the reason, and he answered, “To see the sun.”

Ko: Huh??

An: The answer is in Nature, the answer is in my mind, the answer defies both black and white. Teacher will not ask us to explain it, he will see that we are ready for the next one. Meditation is the way.

Ko: The way to what?

An: Happiness.

Ko: What is happiness?

An: Absence of suffering.

Ko: Is that all?

An: Your mind is trapped in a fretful whirlpool. Leave it. Levitate above it. Meditate. What better place than this? Moss can be so comfortable, so conducive to flat brain waves. Ahhhh. Like staring at a mandarin orange, slowly, endlessly. Or hoodies, if you spin them around and fill the hood with popcorn, right under your chin, while you sink your anaesthetized buttocks into a sofa, your eye-lids half covering the pupils that are directed, unfocused, toward a large-screen monitor.

Ko: Just as they now face scores of selfie-seekers.

An: Admittedly. You see, we jizo are born cute, perfect photo-fodder.

Ko: How can we have been destined for this?

An: It is enough to be here. In that we carry on noble traditions. A jizo brings a smile to people who find it hard to smile, a jizo shows compassion. A jizo is a protector for children who were never born. These children cannot cross the Sanzu river in the afterlife because they never did works of merit and because they make their parents suffer pain. They are condemned to piling rocks on the banks of the river, to help their parents accrue merit, but a demon destroys their work every night. We jizo protect them from this demon. 

Ko: “Accrue merit”? Do we achieve nirvana because we earned it? Or does it come to us, unmerited?

An: There are things you must accept unquestioningly, as I must accept being stuck with you.

Ko: Forgive me, I lack training. What else should a jizo know, now that we’re stuck together, and you know so much?

An: In some traditions, people pray to jizo for a successful birth, or for peace for a woman who has lost a child; or for travelers, or the sick, or firefighters. So many are in need of mercy.”

WHACK!

Ko: Mercy!

An: Teacher, may I speak?

Teacher: Speak, if you have something worth saying. But remember that there are many ways of speaking, and many ways of listening.

An: Teacher, I thought I was brought to Sanzen-in to be released from the noise of college lectures. To have the joy of meditating your riddles. To shed so much of my vanity, my carnal desires, my inner confusion. But the busloads of visitors to this temple stress me more than taking tests on Meynard Keynes and Karl Marx, more than my suffering myriads of illicit fantasies. Can I find the mindfulness I seek on the paths of this garden?”

Ko: Teacher, I need to know the meaning of all this. I need the key that would motivate me to seek more. Is there any transcendence in hollowness?

Teacher: Both of you: take a deep breath.

Ko: Yeah? Well, you can hold your breath, Teacher, while I get some mouthwash for you. I’m not even going to try figuring that one out. Is he saying I’m full of hot air? Is he telling me my brain has halitosis?

An: He’s telling you to chill out. Be patient. And since you prefer mindless activity to mindfulness, you can tend to this torrent of visitors while I do my zazen. Whatever you do, be rhythmical, so I’m not distracted.

Ko: Seven hundred eighty-eight, seven hundred eighty-nine, seven hundred ninety…

Ko: One thousand two hundred and thirty-two, one thousand two hundred and thirty-three, one thousand two hundred and thirty-four – An, do you get tired doing zazen? Just asking.

An: Ahhh. How many hours did Siddhartha Gautauma spend in lotus position? And you have interrupted my session.

Ko: Teachers of the sutras may have different views of that.

An: I know my view of that. Would that you were easier to teach.

Ko: Well, take a look at this man that just entered the garden, and give me some enlightenment. I need to hear from you while you still have some brain waves.

An: I see a man in his early twenties, his left ear pierced, his hair shaven just above the ears while on top it is set in a wild, frizzy style, and dyed in an unnatural blue color. Ah, but his karma is a long one, one that connects with many other lives, with many students, especially, with… yes, he is connected to my last life! We went to the same temple for training in the summer! He taught me to put bubble wrap on my shoulders, beneath the yukata, to soften the teacher’s disciplining as we sat seiza on the tatami! He smuggled sake into the precinct when all they were feeding us was tofu! He told me how to get credit for college courses I never attended! To think that I could be his jizo!

Ko: And what is his prayer? What pain is he hiding? What do you feel?

An: Don’t disturb my peace with talk of pain. But wait! What is my devotee doing? He’s going up the wrong path! He’s seeking solace from some other jizo! How could he be such a stray soul? How could his mind be so dark?

Ko: So, the peace-loving jizo is flustered.

An: Some visitors disgust me. I just want naraka for them. And I want to choose their naraka.

Ko: Mercy me.

An: There is a naraka, a hell, an icy place so cold that blisters form all over the skin. Dwellers stay for the time it takes to empty a whole barrel of sesame seeds when but one is removed every century. There is a hell where the cold makes the teeth chatter, hu, hu, hu, and another where the frozen body cracks open so the internal organs can also freeze and crack. In a naraka 70,000 miles in every direction the damned are sliced into pieces and molten iron is poured over them. There is also a hell where guards impale inhabitants with fiery spears until their orifices pour forth flames.

Ko: I think I would rather be in a college lecture room.

An: I imagine most sutra teachers would agree.

Ko: While you were doing zazen, An, the nameless woman came again.

An: What is with you and that woman? You are obsessed, if not possessed.

Ko: She came with the family she prayed for: Father, mother, and fourteen-year-old daughter. They came just to say thank you.

An: Good teachers of the sutras have spoken of gratitude.

Ko: The bonze at my funeral did, too.

An: At my funeral the bonze only chanted sutras.

Ko: That used to be the case for everyone, but at mine the bonze shared his thoughts on gratitude. He reflected on how many chickens the deceased had consumed in his long lifetime, and on how grateful we should be to chickens.

An: You were not grateful to hear that, I sense.

Ko: I just wondered, to whom can we be grateful for life itself?

An: The teachers take many views on that. The Buddha did not deny spirit and God, he kept silent. We are learning about the life we experience. Isn't this enough? Do you need Life with a capital "L"? Life as a personal being, or as a truth?

Ko: I should keep silent, you say? I will say that I am grateful now for this life as a jizo, and for the lessons of that good woman. My experience tells me, though, that my heart connects, that this is good, and that I am called to go out and beyond.

An: Your heart could be your downfall, Ko.

Ko: Teacher, I am grateful for the lessons we suffer. I have learned that all things are impermanent. Even the pain of your rod goes away.

WHACK!

[Soliloquy]

Ko: I am grateful for nightfall. Visitors stay home, and even Teacher leaves us to our exercises. And yet I cannot clear my thoughts enough to do zazen. An has his path, I have mine; we are joined near the head, but not at the heart.

An said I may be possessed, but it is not a demonic possession. He said I am in a whirlpool, but it isn’t pulling me down, it is spinning me onward. My rest must not be an absence of anything, but a fullness. I do not seek a release but a union. Was that woman not united in heart and will with her neighbor? Was I not united when I made their petition my own? Is this not what kept me listening to one thousand two hundred and thirty-four others?

When the woman’s neighbor looked at us, she said her mother always liked moss. Wasn’t her mother present to her as she said that? And what presence do I sense, constantly, as I carry out my role in this garden?

Ko: Teacher, may I speak?

Teacher: Speak, if you need to, but we have needs that we know of and needs of the unknown.

Ko: A teacher, not of our sutras, said, “Once one loves, hardship disappears: if hardship remains, then one loves one’s hardship.” The sutras speak of pity, as a stepping-stone to nirvana and absence of pain, but what is love?

Teacher: You have more to ask, restless one.

Ko: Teacher, I hated my college lectures, but I started to listen to them so I could share my notes with a friend in the hospital. And the classes became more interesting. What does that mean?

Teacher: You have not yet said everything. Speak!

Ko: Teacher, have you ever been in a moss garden? Don’t give me another riddle, come get your hands dirty. There is a meaning to all this, I can feel it, even in the pain that the visitors bring me. Why should I seek an escape? And Teacher, why do you always seem so indifferent to what goes on here?

Teacher: Ko, my best pupil, much progress you have made. Now let me ask: Why do you think I never visit your garden? Who do think that woman was, the one that made you reflect on selflessness?