Why Buddha Touched the Earth

Rough draft about the Buddhist notion of Hell, and Jizo. I want to add a bit more about Jizo, need to research a bit more.

Mahayana Buddhism never met an idea, a myth or a metaphor, that it didn't like. While the Buddha used the Hindu concept of re-incarnation as a teaching tool, he didn't have much to say about the afterlife. It wasn't relevant to his primary mission, relieving human suffering; and notions of a afterlife don't mesh all that well with the ideas of anatman and sunyatta, "no-self" and "emptyness". If the "self" is an illusion, if "I" am just a character in the story my mind is telling, what is there to be reborn?

But In the centuries after the Buddha's death, Mahayana teachers and adherents began to include and adapt their culture's notions of reincarnation into higher and lower realms. After a while, the view evolved that there were six paths of reincarnation to which a person might be subjected. One might be reborn into a hell, as a "hungry ghost", as an animal, as a human, as a "titan" (or "wrathful demigod"), or in the pleasure realms of the gods.

The hell realms are varied and vast. The Ksitigarbha Sutra describes many of them. It important to note, though, that even damnation is seen as temporary. The sentence might be millions of years, but it is not eternal. (The Buddhist "hells" might therefore be compared to the Christian notion of Purgatory.)

The notion of "hungry ghosts" doesn't have much of a parallel in Western mythology - which is a shame, as it well-illustrates the situation of many of us in contemporary society. They are an excellent personification of the way in which unfulfillable desires lead to suffering. You can never get enough of what you don't really want and need in the first place.

Like all metaphysical speculation, stories of an afterlife are outside the prime concern of Buddhism to release suffering. But as metaphors and teaching tools, they do a fine job, as the following Zen story illustrates:

"And this," said the master, "is heaven."

Of course a hell requires various demons to administer punishments, and judges to decide upon them. But the most interesting character associated with hell - at least in Japanese Buddhism - is the bodhisattva who redeems the dammed, Jizo.

I hadn't heard much about Jizo until I came to Japan. Which turns out to be quite ironic...

For about 15 years, I've had a Buddhist wall hanging that I bought in the parking lot at a Grateful Dead show. I was told that the characters in an upper corner read "Earth Buddha", which I though was pretty cool. When I gained a little bit of knowledge about kanji, I tried looking them up. Four characters: the first is indeed "earth", the last two were "bodhisattva" (or "bosatsu" in their Japanese reading). The second character, though, I couldn't quite figure out. Still, "earth (mumble) bodhisattva" was cool.

The first time I came to Japan, my friend Eric pointed out some figures of Jizo Bosatsu, told me how Jizo was a bodhisattva associated with the protection of children. More recently I learned that he is seen as a savior of all those suffering on the paths of rebirth, especially those reborn in hell realms.

Today I was doing some more reading about him; I learned that he is portrayed carrying a staff that he uses to pry open the gates of hell, and a gem that lights the way.

Hey, I thought, the guy in my painting has a staff and a gem. Then I take a look at the kanji for his name, which means "Earth-Store" Bodhisattva. Yep, I've had Jizo hanging on my wall all these years and not known it. (Seated depictions like the one I have are rare in Japanese art, where he's almost always shown standing, often in a walking, stepping forward pose, so I don't feel too bad for not recognizing him.)

Jizo, or Ksitigarba in Sanskrit, was never that big in Indian Buddhism. She/he made a bit of a name for himself in China, but it's in Japan that he made it big. (It seems there was a gender change along the way, similar to what happened with the male Avolokitesvara becoming the female Kwan Yin in China, but going the opposite way. The depiction in my painting is rather androgynous, while Japanese depictions are definitely male.) Statues of Jizo are all over the place here; he is seen as a protector of children and of travelers.

More that that, though, Jizo is the protector and redeemer of those in the hell realms. Jizo's great vow is that he will not enter Nirvana so long as any being is in hell - an "I am not free so long as any man is enslaved" sort of sentiment.

In the mythology of Mahayana Buddhism, no sentient being will be thrown away, no one is left behind. With bodhisattvas like Jizo guiding us, we all make it to enlightenment, though it might take billions of years.