National Advisory Board. Most recently, she's freshly here from a trip to Japan where she helped carry the JISOs for Peace panels that many of us were involved with making to Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Welcome to TOA. Thank you, Andrea, and good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be here this morning. And as Andrea said, I recently returned from the Jesus for Peace pilgrimage. I wonder how many of you made panels or other things that we took. Quite a few. And I know that Ellen and Sue Osher and others here took a lot of leadership in making a banner with those panels, which I saw in Japan. It made its way to Hiroshima. I also wonder how many people are here for the first time this morning.

[01:17]

There are a few. Okay. So I'll try to explain things that you might not, words that you might not have heard before. And yeah, so that you can have a context for some of the things that I'll be saying. I think this will work. So I'd like to talk about Jizo Bodhisattva and some of the qualities of Jizo Bodhisattva and illustrate those qualities with stories from the pilgrimage. which I hope will give you a feeling for what we did. First of all, a bodhisattva is an awakened being and there are a number of bodhisattvas that embody particular qualities that can sustain us in our lives.

[02:24]

Bodhisattva quite closely related to Jizo and also both Jizo and Southern Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or Kanon, which is the Bodhisattva of compassion, are deeply revered in Japan and many other Buddhist countries. So Jizo Bodhisattva is an awakened being who has a few particular roles. Jizo watches over travelers. Jizo protects women and children, is a guardian of people who've died, and aids those who are ill. And Jizo is also known as the Earth Store Bodhisattva, a protector of the Earth. So some of the qualities of Jizo which I'd like to talk about are that Jizo has unquenchable optimism.

[03:32]

And along with that, unflagging energy and takes responsibility for people who are ailing or in pain, even those who've died. Jizo also has great benevolence. And the last quality I'll talk about is Jizo's engagement in life. And I'll tell a story for each one. So in terms of Jizo's unquenchable optimism, I think that's connected with Jizo's vow to help beings who are grieving or suffering or in pain. And on Jizo Bodhisattva and Quan Yin or Avalokiteshvara also appear in many manifestations. With Jizo, Jizo's manifestations are called the many division bodies of Jizo, so that Jizo can appear in many places at the same time.

[04:41]

And I think that many people, probably many people in the world today are manifestations of Jizo Bodhisattva. including quite a few people in this room, maybe everyone. So as you hear about some of these qualities of Jizo, you might think about how they relate to people you know, people in your family, your friends, people in the Sangha. In terms of great vow, the person whose idea that Jizo's for peace pilgrimage person who originated or came up with this idea is a person named Chosen Bays. She's a Zen teacher, and her monastery in Oregon is called Great Vow Monastery. She was born 60 years ago, the day the US bombed Nagasaki on August 9th, and her parents were pacifists.

[05:48]

So as a young person, she grew up feeling a great connection to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And her family actually traveled to Japan when she was 14 and she visited. Nagasaki, and I think that in part led to her decision both to become a pediatrician, she became a pediatrician, still works as a pediatrician, and to become a Zen student and then a Zen teacher. Rose of Gizo is a protector of parents and children, particularly children who die before they're born through miscarriage or abortion. And at Chosen Bayes Monastery, Great Vow, they make Gizo statues. Some of you may have seen them. Some of them are very small, about this big. They're made of ceramics. And she also makes larger ones about this big, like they're garden Jizo's.

[06:53]

Jizo often has a staff. with six rings that jingles when Jizo walks. And that's so that any creatures in the way would hear the sound and not get stepped on. And the six rings are symbolic of the six realms of existence, which include the human realm, the animal realm, the hell realm. There are three other realms. And Jizo enters into all of them and tries to help people who are in the or the souls of people, the spirits of people in the hell realm. So anyway, Chozen thought a lot about her 60th birthday. The 60th birthday is a special birthday in Japan. And she initially thought she wanted to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with 60 images of Jizo. She thought she'd bring 60 Jizo statues. But then, in consultation with other people, including Kaz Tanahashi, who some of you know.

[08:02]

He lives in Berkeley and has been a peace activist much of his life, as well as a calligrapher and a scholar. Kaz encouraged her to think larger. So she thought of, or together they came up with the idea of bringing 270,000 Jizos You know, it's quite a bit larger than 60. And you might wonder why 270,000. That's the number of people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the first year after the bombing. And that might seem like an incredible or maybe impossible thing to pull off, but Chosin had made this vow and The people in her monastery supported it, and there are many young students who live there at Great Vow Monastery, and everybody got involved in making Jizo panels.

[09:03]

The idea they had, which I think was so successful, and which many of you participated in, was to make small cloth rectangular panels, and each one had a message for peace, A number of Jizos, which could either be drawn or stamped, they produce Jizo stamps. And it's pretty easy to draw a Jizo. Jizo looks like a monk, the head and body covered in robes, so you don't have to be too skilled at drawing. And some of the Jizos were holding children and some were sitting and others were standing. And anyway, you could have a lot of Jizo images on one banner and then people were asked to sign their name, where they lived, and their age, and write the total number of Jizo's on the panel. And then many places that worked together on this project turned the, sewed the panels into banners or quilts.

[10:10]

And there was a quilt from Berkeley Zen Center that had all the panels on it. So the This idea spread and people all over the country in practice centers, in schools, in prisons were making Jizo panels. They also had the idea of making origami Jizos. In Japan, particularly in Hiroshima, you see lots of chains of paper cranes, and I'll say a little more about why paper cranes later. We brought over chains of origami Jizo's. They're about this big. I can show you what an origami Jizo looks like. And in the end, there were, well, here it is.

[11:13]

I don't know if you can see it. I've learned how to make these. It's really fun to make them, just one piece of origami paper. So that's Jizo out of origami. In the end, before leaving, the folks at Great Vow had received over 370,000 Jizo images. Many more came while we were still in Japan. People in Japan were making them, too. And Chosen Base thought there might have been almost half a million Jizo images. So I'll just say briefly what—anyway, I think that quality of unquenchable optimism and working with a vow, I think, is is exemplified by what happened with this vow that Chosonbe took to bring these Jizos to Japan.

[12:18]

So just briefly, where the Jizos went. We went to Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. And we visited many temples. And each time we visited a temple, we would bring Jizo banners to give as gifts. And some of the single panels were hemmed and ribbon tied on the top so that they were like prayer flags. And we were able to tie them around the necks of some of the Jizo statues and temples that we visited. Jizos often have little red bibs and sometimes even little red caps that they wear, that people make for them. So it wasn't so unusual to tie these prayer flags around the Jizos. We also left them at altars in the Peace Park at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly the chains of origami Jizos. And we visited nursing homes in Nagasaki.

[13:21]

One nursing home I went to had 450 residents, many of whom were survivors who are now in their 80s or older. Many of them were in a common area with the staff and Chosen gave a little talk and then we handed a Jizo banner and an origami Jizo and we also had some clay Jizos. one to each resident and left enough for the residents who weren't there. We also gave them out on streetcars when we were traveling on streetcars in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and started conversations with people. And in Nagasaki, a couple of people from the group had gone ahead and created an exhibit at a peace museum of many, many banners. And there were two temples, one where we stayed and another one up the road with exhibits. And these were well-advertised in Nagasaki, so lots of people came to see them.

[14:26]

And we left one of the exhibits there. It's going to travel around Japan. With some of the extra panels that didn't go to Japan, some of them were sent to Los Alamos, to the Nevada test site. and I think also to Lawrence Livermore Lab, all the places where demonstrations were held on the 6th of August. So I want to go on and talk about the other qualities of Jizo. In terms of the unflagging effort and Jizo's taking responsibility for those who are in pain, I'd like to tell you about a doctor whose name was Nagai. Takahata, Nagai Takashi, and they called him Dr. Nagai, who lived in Nagasaki. He served in the Japanese military and was working in Nagasaki at a hospital very close to the epicenter when the bomb was dropped.

[15:32]

And he was before A few months before the bombing, he had already been diagnosed as having leukemia because his specialty was radiology, and he was doing a lot of x-rays, because tuberculosis was a problem in Japan during the war. and he didn't have adequate protection from the x-ray equipment. So he already had leukemia and he was injured at the time of the bombing. He had been given three years to live at that point. He survived the bombing, as did a few of the staff of the hospital, a few doctors and nurses. The hospital was destroyed. And he immediately started working with the surviving doctors and nurses to help others who were wounded. And the little team from the hospital went to the hills where wounded people were brought and started treating people as best they could.

[16:37]

And because he was a radiologist, he kind of realized that people were suffering from radiation sickness, which, you know, the nature of the weapons that were used was not disclosed to the Japanese. They didn't really understand. Most people didn't understand why they were so sick. And later on, he also developed radiation sickness. And a few months after the bombing, he collapsed and survived, but he had to stay in bed for the remaining few years of his life. And he used that time to write books, do calligraphy, and paint. his works were published and he received royalties for some of his books. And one of the first things he did with money he received was to buy a thousand cherry trees for the city of Nagasaki.

[17:39]

And he had them planted near schools and in parks and trying to bring beauty back to the city. He also started a library for children I had a wonderful name, let's see if I can find it. The Bookcase, Our Bookcase, it was called Our Bookcase because children lost all their books in the war. And he paid for the renovation of some public schools and hospitals. His wife was killed in the bombing and his two children who had been out of the city lived with him during the last years of his life. So the library that he founded is now a museum dedicated to his life and I was able to visit and meet his grandson who is now the director of the museum. So Dr. Nagai, he became the first honorary citizen of Nagasaki City.

[18:40]

And I'd like to just read a few of his words. One of his books has been translated into English. It's called The Bells of Nagasaki, and I recommend it if you have a chance to read it. It's about his experiences in the first year after the war. Another thing about him that was pretty remarkable is that he saw that Japan's militarism contributed to what happened. in the war, including the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And this is what he said about peace. The explosion of a single atomic bomb over Nagasaki typed a period at the end of the long sentence of war. I want the peace that returned at that moment and that we enjoy today to last eternally. No more atomic bombs after Nagasaki. Nagasaki, period. Peace begins from Nagasaki.

[19:43]

These cries are on everyone's lips. Abandon war. Stop war before anything else. Avoid war. To maintain peace, it is necessary to present the bare truth to the people of the world. This is my motivation in taking up a pencil and beginning to write, describing the scenes of that last day of Nagasaki without any embellishments or subtractions." And he did the calligraphy for May Peace Prevail on thousands of postcards and sent them to world leaders. And he did what he could for peace while he while he survived and his writing and that little museum remain as a way of educating people about his life. So that was, I thought, a great example of Jizo Bodhisattva's unflagging effort

[20:54]

In terms of Jizo's benevolence, I'd like to tell a story of the Angry Jizo. This is a children's book that I got at the Hiroshima Peace Museum. And it starts out, there are many Jizos in neighborhood shrines where you could find them walking around cities, little altars. with a Jizo image and they always had fresh flowers. You could tell people took care of these shrines and stopped to bow and appreciate Jizo. And there was such a shrine in Hiroshima with a Jizo, or actually this Jizo stood on a corner. He had a round face and always looked as if he were smiling. And one day a little girl passed near the stone Jizo and she said, Jizo-san is smiling. And she smiled back.

[21:55]

And gently spreading her blue skirt, she skipped away. And on another day, an old man passed by the Jizo statue and rubbed Jizo's head and said, Jizo, you're lucky you don't know war. And then the story goes on to tell about the day the bomb was dropped and the Jizo statue fell over and the head, his body was buried in the ashes and just his head was visible above the ashes. And he saw people going by who were burned and had tattered clothing. And then there was a great fire which died away. And then he saw this I'll just read this part. A piece of ragged, burnt cloth blew toward him from far away.

[23:00]

When he looked carefully, he saw that it wasn't cloth, but a badly burnt little girl. She was barefoot. Her clothes had all burned, and she was wrapped only in rags, a few patches of light blue remaining here and there. It was the little girl who had passed him, saying, Jisosan is smiling. And the little girl begged for water, and there was no water to be had. And so Jizo's face, he began to change. And at that moment, a tear dropped from the stone Jizo's glaring eyes. The tear became a round ball and rolled across the sand. One after another, tears fell from his eyes, rolled down to the little girl, and fell into her open mouth. The tears continued to fall. The little girl drank greedily the water of the stone Jizo's tears, letting it run down her mouth and throat. After she had drunk for a long time, the little girl looked up at the Jizo.

[24:04]

Then she said, Mommy, and smiled slightly. And then the little girl stopped moving. And at that moment, the Jizo's face started to quiver and began to crumble until it was just grains of sand. And then sometime later, an old man was walking in the neighborhood and somehow found the stone jizo, turned it right side up, put a round stone on its head. And then over time, the expression on the jizo's face became a very angry expression, and people would walk by and say, look at that angry jizo. Which seemed, you know, and you think Jizo usually has a smiling face, but that was really an appropriate response. And Jizo's benevolence of all, Jizo could give this little girl very little, but the tears.

[25:06]

were a response to her need. And in that story, I read many stories by survivors and also fictional stories of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time of the bombing and afterwards. I think that story just really captures some of the horror of it. So the last quality of Jizo I want to talk about, and I know I'm short of time, but is Jizo's engagement in life. And on Hiroshima day, I was walking in the Peace Park, and I ran into two high school girls who stopped me and asked me if I spoke English. I said yes, and they asked me if I knew the story of Sadako, and the Thousand Cranes. And I did know this story, but I said no because I could tell they wanted to tell me this story. So does anyone here not know this story?

[26:12]

Okay, well, I'll tell it very briefly. Sadako was a little girl in Hiroshima who was two years old when the bomb was dropped. And she survived and continued in school and was very friendly and well-liked. And she was a great athlete. She was a runner. and very fast runner. And when she was about 11, she was diagnosed with leukemia. And at first, she continued to be able to go to school and run. But she got more and more sick. And she heard that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you would not die. So she and her friends folded paper cranes, and she did reach the number of a thousand paper cranes, but she died anyway. So that, I think, is the origin of why schoolchildren in Japan fold thousands of paper cranes, and they bring these long chains of cranes to the Peace Park in Hiroshima.

[27:13]

There's a children's monument there with an image of Sadako on the side and a paper crane on the top. It's very, very beautiful. So these two high school students told me they were in a peace club in their high school, and after reading me this story, they asked me to write my response to it on a big piece of paper, and I could see that many other people had done the same thing. And then I gave them, we carried gifts with us, so I'll show you what some of the things were, and they gave me this fan that they had made. It was very, very hot and humid, so everybody was walking around with the fan. And this says peace on the front, and on the back it has a picture of a favorite summer dessert And Japan, it's especially, well, I think everywhere in Japan, it's shaved ice with, often they have on top of it a syrup made with matcha, green tea.

[28:13]

This one looks like it's strawberry. And so I found that many, I met many young people. There were some other high school students at a Greenpeace table protesting a nuclear power plant in Japan. And that engagement of life of not only the survivors who are, there are many survivors who have become peace educators, but the young people who are committed to carrying on their work after the survivors pass on. So, One, I have some photos that I was able to print on my computer and at tea, I'll have them with me if you want to see the high school girls and some of the Jizo panels and how they, where they ended up in Japan.

[29:16]

I think what I'd like to do is close with a chant that we. Some of us in the group sang and then I think there might be just a couple of minutes for some questions. And if you would like to talk with me during tea, I'll be staying and I would love to answer any further questions or talk more about things I didn't have a chance to mention. Just a few words about this chant. There's a kind of singing It's called Baika or Goeka that is done in Japan. The texts are Buddhist texts and it's usually done by lay people. And somebody from Soto Shu, his name is Yuji-san, has been coming to Green Gulch to teach this chanting. But the people from Great Bao knew this chant as well and the words are,

[30:20]

I take refuge in Jizo, great Bodhisattva. So those of us who knew it would chant it. There were times when we were invited to meals at various temples, and Chosen Beis would give a talk, the abbot would give a little talk, and then we would sing. So it's usually done with two instruments, one of which is a bell. I only have the bell, and this is really a wind bell, the official kind of bell, but it will work. So it goes like this. I'll sing it twice. Ji, oh. Na, mu, ji, zo. Da, i, bo, za, tsu. Chi So Chi So Dai Po Za Tsu Na Mu Chi So

[31:45]

Dai-bo-sa-tsu Nam-mu-ji-so Dai-bo-sa-tsu So, are there any questions, comments? Yes? Just a comment. I've also heard Jizo called the Earth womb Bodhisattva. Yes. It is really nice and I think that both connects with the earth, Mother Earth in a way, and also with Jizo's

[32:53]

role as protector of mothers and children. Any other thoughts? Yes? Is Nagasaki still contaminated? No, but you'd be amazed probably to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. Hiroshima has a population of about a million people, with many more people than at the time of the bombing. And it's full of high-rises and shopping arcades. And if it weren't for the Peace Park and the Peace Museum and this one building that remains, from the time of the bombing, that's a skeleton, the dome on the top, you may have seen pictures of it. You really, it would be hard to know that the bomb had been dropped there. And that's why I think it's so important for the, both cities have peace parks and peace museums.

[33:57]

The one in Nagasaki is really beautiful. And there's a remembrance hall for people who've died, who died in the bombing It has a lot of water in it, a place where you can meditate. But otherwise, the cities are very modern and full of life. Anything else? Okay. Beings are numberless.

[34:35]

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