Sassafras Yoga

I love this. This week was my Dad’s Death Day. I have said for a long time that it feels like the relationship doesn’t end, it just transforms. They walk through a door where we can’t follow, but we still come and sit outside it sometimes, knowing no one comes back through. How sweet, this tradition of a wise, brave figure who just sits with us there.

May your own little altars and rituals bring you peace, no matter what you may be grieving.

If you spend much time around Japanese Buddhism, eventually you will encounter Jizō. He may appear as a small stone monk beside a road, along a mountain path, near the entrance to a temple, or among the graves in a cemetery. Often the figure is simple and almost childlike, sometimes wearing a red bib or knitted cap and sometimes surrounded by flowers, toys, pinwheels, or small towers of stones. To someone unfamiliar with the tradition, these figures can seem mysterious. In Japan, however, Jizō is one of the most beloved bodhisattvas in Buddhist life.

Jizō is the Japanese name for Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, an important figure in Mahayana Buddhism who became especially prominent throughout East Asia. Although he is sometimes casually called “Jizō Buddha” in the West, Jizō is technically a bodhisattva: a being whose path is devoted to awakening and to the liberation of others. He is traditionally depicted as a simple monk with a shaved head, carrying a pilgrim’s staff and a wish-fulfilling jewel. There is very little grandeur in the image. Jizō looks less like a heavenly ruler than someone prepared to walk a long road beside you.

That image reflects what Jizō represents. In Buddhist tradition, he is associated with beings traveling through the six realms of existence and is especially known for going into the places where suffering is most intense. Over centuries he became a protector of travelers, children, the dying and the dead. Rather than remaining safely removed from suffering, Jizō is imagined as entering it. His compassion is not dependent on the situation improving first.

This is one reason Jizō became so closely connected with death and grief in Japan. He came to be especially associated with children who had died, including children lost through miscarriage, stillbirth and, in later Japanese practice, abortion. One well-known body of folklore places deceased children at Sai no Kawara, a rocky riverbank between worlds, where they pile stones into small towers. In these stories, Jizō comes to comfort and protect them, sometimes sheltering them within the folds of his robe. It is a religious image, not a historical description of what happens after death, but its emotional meaning is unmistakable: even here, in a place of terrible loss, the child is not abandoned.

The small hats, bibs, toys and stones left around Jizō statues grow out of this world of devotion and remembrance. They give physical form to something almost everyone who has grieved understands. When someone dies, our love for that person does not necessarily die with them. The relationship changes, sometimes painfully and completely, but the impulse to care may remain. Human beings everywhere have developed rituals to give that love expression. We light candles, visit graves, keep photographs, cook a favorite meal, say a name aloud, tell stories, scatter ashes, make altars, or return to places that mattered.

This may help explain why Jizō has found such resonance beyond Japan. Traditional Jizō practices have been adapted within Western Zen communities, hospice work and end-of-life care because the questions they address are not particularly Eastern or Western. What do we do when someone we love dies? What do we do when there is nothing left to fix? How do we remain present with suffering when we cannot change the outcome? How do we continue loving without pretending that death has not occurred?

The late Zen teacher Yvonne Rand was one of the people who recognized how powerfully Jizō practice could speak to these questions in the West. After encountering Jizō through her own experiences of death and mourning and later studying Jizō practices in Japan, she helped develop memorial ceremonies for people grieving miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths and the deaths of children. Her work is one example of how an ancient Buddhist form can cross cultural boundaries without losing its central insight: grief sometimes needs a ritual, a place and something for the hands to do when the heart is carrying more than words can hold.

Contemporary grief research has also moved closer to something traditions like Jizō have long expressed. Older Western theories of mourning often emphasized detachment from the dead and eventually “moving on.” More recent bereavement research recognizes what psychologists call continuing bonds: the possibility that our relationship with someone who has died may continue in a changed form. Remembering, speaking to the deceased, maintaining rituals or carrying forward something important about their life need not mean denying the reality of death. Mourning can involve learning how to live with a relationship that has been transformed rather than simply erased.

But Jizō is not important only when someone dies. His larger teaching concerns our relationship with suffering itself. Sooner or later every human being enters territory that cannot be controlled. Someone becomes ill. A parent grows old. A relationship ends. A friend receives a frightening diagnosis. A child is suffering. We lose a job, a home, a dream, a sense of who we thought we were. There are moments when advice becomes inadequate because there is no clever solution to offer.

Jizō represents another possibility: accompaniment. Can we remain beside another person without immediately trying to repair their pain? Can we listen when there is nothing useful to say? Can we enter someone else’s difficult territory without making their suffering about our own discomfort? And when we ourselves are grieving, frightened or lost, can we learn not to abandon ourselves?

Seen this way, Jizō is more than a figure from Buddhist mythology or Japanese religious history. He represents a capacity that can be cultivated by anyone: the willingness to stay close to suffering without demanding that it immediately become something else. Sometimes we need someone to offer that kind of presence to us. Sometimes another person needs it from us. Sometimes the practice is simply discovering that compassion can include the person sitting inside our own skin.

This does not mean passively accepting suffering that can be changed. Buddhism has never required indifference to injustice, illness or harm. When something can be helped, we help. Jizō becomes especially meaningful at the boundary where our power runs out—where medicine cannot cure, explanations cannot satisfy, the past cannot be changed, or the dead cannot be brought home. Compassion still has something to do there.

Perhaps that is why the image of the little stone monk has endured for so many centuries. Jizō does not promise that the road will be easy, that everyone we love will remain with us, or that spiritual practice will protect us from grief. He represents something quieter and perhaps more useful: the possibility that wherever the road leads, compassion can travel with us.

Jizō does not teach us how to avoid the difficult places. He teaches us how not to abandon one another when we arrive there.

Further Readings:

Jan Chozen Bays — Jizo Bodhisattva: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers
https://www.shambhala.com/jizo-bodhisattva.html
This is probably the best single book to recommend. It covers Jizō’s history, symbolism, pilgrimage tradition, relationship to children and death, and contemporary practice.

The Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Sutra — Fo Guang Shan International Translation Center
https://www.fgsitc.org/the-original-vows-of-ksitigarbha-bodhisattva-sutra/
This is the primary scripture. Chapter 7, “Benefiting the Living and the Deceased,” is especially relevant to the post we wrote.

Yvonne Rand — “Jizo Ceremony”
https://inquiringmind.com/article/2702_13_rand/
This is the short piece where Rand describes her first encounter with Jizō after a friend’s death and the development of her memorial ceremonies.

Yvonne Rand — Selected Articles
https://yvonnerand.org/selected-articles/
This page includes both “Jizo Ceremony” and “The Buddha’s Way and Abortion: Loss, Grief, and Resolution,” which explores grief, loss, abortion, and the role of Jizō ceremony in more depth.

The best way keep a body at a survivably cool temperature is to not overheat it in the first place! Let’s do our best to SLOW DOWN, and stay cool in this extreme weather.

And did you know? Our climate is great for a few natural remedies. Mint, tulsi, and hibiscus all thrive in the garden or pot, and they are great, gentle options for cooling down!

Are 'cooling herbs' your secret weapon in the next heat wave? A broken car AC and soaring L.A. summer temperatures sent one writer on a search for cooling remedies and tonics. Here is what happened at Venice's herb-filled Anima Mundi Apothecary.

For Pontotoc Wellness Center yogis—Brandy learned about a community need for diapers. All sizes. If you would like to contribute, please bring some to the Wellness Center when you come to class! 

I have to attend a mandatory training tomorrow 7/31 before Gentle Yoga. We WILL have class. I might be a little late.

Monica will substitute this Thursday 6:30 PM and Friday 9:00 AM yoga Pontotoc Wellness Center!

Reminder that y’all are in Monica’s capable hands this week Pontotoc Wellness Center yogis! ❤️🙏

Yoga SUB 🧘
Come stretch with Monica

Monica will teach Slow Flow Yoga 5/28 and Gentle Yoga 5/29 at Pontotoc Wellness Center. Y’all go breathe and stretch!

Pontotoc Wellness Center has ALL👏THE👏 PROPS 👏 so everyone can get that safe, supported, strong, stable STRETCH! Need a chair? We got those too.

Try Slow Flow Yoga Thursdays at 6: 30 p.m. and Gentle Yoga Fridays at 9:00 a.m.

Extra special thanks to Gentle Yoga students for showing off your favorite props!

Shared with permission, ShewanaThorn Jeff Ashe, Linda, Cynthia, and Sherry. 

Happening Now: Ripley Walmart

Ice Storm Damage Assessment We are evaluating the financial impact of the recent ice storm on our local agricultural producers for a report to the Department of Agriculture. Your responses will help us present accurate information as we request financial assistance on your behalf. While you may choose to remain confidential, p...