Resting on Jizo's chest

Breathe…
Notice any tension you might feel. Don’t judge it. Just be aware of tight places.
Inhale deeply.  On the exhalation, notice if there is pain anywhere.

Don’t make assumptions about it, please. Just see and feel.  Notice the quality of the tension.
Hot? Cold? Sharp? Dull? A color? An image?
Again, notice your belly rise on an inhalation, as you exhale and your belly falls, invite the pain to speak.
Be patient.
It may be shy or unused to being heard as anything other than physical pain.
As you continue to focus on your breathing, deeply and evenly, imagine the pain as the little Chibi at the top of this page, dancing around Jizo’s body. Imagine this as non-verbal fear, sadness; whatever emotion comes from your tightness, tension or pain.
Just notice it and wonder.  Inhale again, deeply. On the exhalation, picture Chibi entering Jizo’s jacket and peeking out: safe.  See Jizo’s smile once Chibi comes to rest.  Let it in.

We often seek safety in the most unsafe places, for instance, in the approval of others.
Now, rest in Jizo’s robes.  Nothing to be, nothing to do.  Just for the moment.  Just for this moment.

While the world is barely recovered from the pressure of the perfect holiday season, I am noticing chocolate everywhere.  Red boxes full of expressions of love and, allegedly, blasts of seratonin.

Rather than have Valentine’s Day on February 14th, change things up by celebrating now.  Take pause, breathe deep and give yourself a Valentine of “I love me so very much.”  Then do it again tomorrow.  And the next day.  And on and on.  Don’t stop.

Practice “Random Acts of Valentine Love” by telling someone you love them today.  Or, if that’s too scary, tell them you like them.  You don’t need a Significant Other to do this: this holiday is notorious for engendering sad feelings of being left out of the Very Special Circle of Couplehood.  Bring a friend a little something, like a bunch of daisies.  Send a card that says “I care” or write it on a post-it note and place it where they will be happy to see it.

This is a Valentine we can put some soulful muscle into.  Call it a Moment-by-Moment Valentine.  Bring Jizo into the equation, as the guardian of the moment, protecting you so that you may face the anxiety of staying present to the intimate Now.

Gosh, I wonder if there is only one Valentine’s Day a year because it is so intense to express love.

Oh, gosh, but I wish the phrase Happy Holidays were not so loaded with tension and expectations.  As you read this, you may be buzzing on sugar, experiencing pressure from inside and out, surrounded by speedy messages that drive us to the “give-me syndrome”.  We may have family and friends who expect us to be happy just because “it’s the holidays!!”  All the while, we slide toward the New Year with too much adrenaline and as sense that our regular routine has vanished until some time after January 1, 2012.  And ten we will make our resolutions.

Adrenaline, The Ride, Nice, France 11.11

Remember last years’ resolutions?  Are there patterns here that you cannot seem to change?  Maybe, as you read this, you could take a breath and pay attention to this moment.  Gently set an intention for moment-by-moment mindfulness.  This is a resolution that gets written now in early December and lived, however imperfectly, without waiting for January.

What I hear are expectations that we have the perfect holiday.  Expectations that are potential disappointments and they are undergoing their gestation as I write this.

So, let’s take pause, choose something to change now, not four weeks from now.  Just for this precious moment.  Pay attention and ask yourself what is important to you.  Notice the societal pull, the thousands of ads everywhere for all the things we need to give and receive.  I read once that there were five primary ways of loving and that giving gifts was on the list.  The other four were giving of our time, giving service, touching and using our words to express love.  Can we give these to ourselves as well as to others?  Can we substitute loving-kindness for the stress of having the perfect holiday season?

May the spirit of Jizo, the guardian, guide you through the upcoming weeks, helping you to maintain your center as you surf the waves of the Season.

Jizo holds the infant self safely

If we could be still, in a quiet place, for even three minutes each morning, we might begin to hear our innermost selves.  These states of being live beneath the mask/persona we have developed in order to be loved.  We wear a psychological suit, unconsciously, in order to be accepted by those around us.

In the stillness we may recognize unpleasant things.  Awful resentments.  Fears.  Trauma.  Hurt feelings.  Longings!  Oh my god, longing is so painful.  Wishing things were different.  The pain between what we Wish and what Is.

Only in stillness can we begin to know these things.  This place needs to be safe.  It may be found in a therapist’s office, a meditation center, a religious commuity, a quiet place in your home.  This is where Jizo comes in.  As the protector, Jizo is the Earth Womb — a place for us to face groundlessness with equanimity.  Jizo is the earth we stand on that nothing outside of us can take from us.  Embracing the existence of an inner force that allows us to be emotionally and psychologically safe is a basic necessity for becoming conscious.  We do not get it the first time we consider a force of inner safety.  We begin to get it when we begin to accept that nothing outside of us is permanent, that nothing can insure that we will always maintain our balance.  So long as we depend upon the impermanent, we have an underlying anxiety that whatever we have we will eventually lose.  This may take a long time to trust.  I am not asking you to have blind faith; I am inviting you to consider a untapped safety within you.

So, for now, breathe and rest in the idea that there is a calm waiting to be experienced.  From there we can take other steps, like making decisions to change, finding consistent practices that take us to a centered place, a Safe Place.

A Jizo kind of place.  On the inside.

Do you ever wonder who you might be today if, when you were very young, the adults around you had encouraged you to be authentic with them and yourself? What would life be like if had been acceptable to feel anxious, or cry because we felt we needed to, no matter how annoyed our parents were? Who would we be if we had not felt that we had to put on a ‘face’ that would be acceptable?

The first step in coming into psychological safety is finding someone we can admit our experiences to, whether they are perfectly remembered or not. A place where the Show Starring You As the Perfect Person!! has been cancelled.  You know that show?  The one where you slide down the moon and into someone’s embrace (or the perfect job) (um, with the perfect body) …and everything is Great?

Who We Really Are

The pain we feel is usually the gap between that show and how we Really Are.  …and many of us live in lives that do not encourage us to express, much less know, who we are, deep down in our unacceptable selves.  Oftentimes, we do not even know that we are not connected to ourselves, we only know we are not comfortable in our skin, our bodies, our work, our relationships.

In order to deconstruct What We Think We Know is a daunting path. But when you see the statistics on depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, eating disorders, divorce; we have to question the construct of the Dream of Happiness.

For now, I only encourage you to wonder:  in what does your contentment lie? What are you hiding? If you could change, what would you change?  Who are you hiding from and why?  Who would you be if you were promised acceptance for how you really are?

Only wonder. Be curious. Don’t sweat the answer. It may not be safe yet. It will be one day — but while the ego perceives that you could be endangered or disapproved of by changing, it may feel as if you are small and helpless beneath the persona you have worn.  One thing is for sure:  curiosity is not going to kill the cat.

Beggar's Kitten, "Bella," Montparnasse 2011

Today in my meditation, I was gazing at my Jizo and he was gazing back.  The thought drifted through my mind that money is not money.  Money is not money.  Money is not money.  It flowed through my mind, once, twice…  I took a deep breath and as I exhaled, I heard Money is Perceived Safety.  Money is perceived Worth.  Money is what most people worry about.  Money is an anxiety delivery vehicle.

Money and Anxiety

Money is an Anxiety Delivery Vehicle; it is a carrier of our feelings, predominantly fearful ones.

As many Americans have a troubled relationship to their money, they have a troubling relationship to anxieties around feeling safe in their lives.  They are afraid to be authentic and, thus, imperfect. They are often afraid to make mistakes. They are often afraid that what they do is not good enough. They are often looking outside themselves for something to soothe the anxiety.

Stepping Stone to Another Way of Seeing, 2006

If we step outside the fear of financial insecurity and wonder what gives us value, then we must turn inward.  What if we turn inward and experience emptiness or fear?  What if we are too afraid to turn and face ourselves? This is more common than most of us would like to admit.

Now Jizo Therapy comes into play.  Jizo is the residing inner resource of safety that lies dormant with each of us, awaiting our moments of stillness so that we may awaken. Upon awakening, things become more simple.  We come to know we are not what we strive to appear to be on the outside but that we are held safely, deeply, within ourselves in a place of lovingkindness, that enables us to embrace ourselves as we are In Total, not shoving away or disowning those aspects that would bring us shame.

Jizo Therapy

What is the treatment goal of Jizo Therapy?  Freedom.  How do we find it?  Sometimes through the revelation that we are already worthy; we need only wake up to it for this one precious moment.  That moment may be found in our willingness of be still for short periods of time, using compassionate Buddhist mindfulness, in order to awaken.

Moment of Silence 2011

Enlightenment is to be awake.  When we sit in meditation, we begin to hear our thoughts, feel our feelings with greater clarity.  As we observe our minds with compassion, we are able to distinguish between what is our personal ego and what is the ineffable part of us that is connected to all sentient beings.  We may begin to recognize when the ego engages and when it is at rest.

Upon his enlightenment, the Buddha said that he had “met the builder and broken the ridgepole”; that he “would not build that house again.”  That house is the ego’s domain where we experience craving, dissatisfaction, hatred, projection — the desire to be anywhere but the present moment.

Becoming Enlightened

As we become enlightened, we can feel the ego kick into gear, trying to protect us from things we do not need to be protected from.  We learn to face fearful and anxiety-producing moments.  The house we lived in (ourselves) prior to meditation is now a different, more contented house; the Self-House we were meant to be before we were placed on the conveyor belt of bigger, better, more, not enough and conditional love.

Kyoto Jizo, 2006

Jizo Bodhisattva has so many names, often more than one in each country where he is revered.

In Sanskrit, his name is Ksitigarbha.  In Chinese he is often called Dìzàng, Dìzàng Wáng Púsà, Ti Tsang. In Japanese he is also Ojizo Bosatsu and Ojizo-sama, in Tibetan he is Sai Nyingpo, in Korean he is called Ji Jang.

The list goes on. For one Jizo workshop his name translated as “Earth Treasure Store Bodhisattva.”  I have heard his Sanskrit name translated as “Earth Womb” — rather like our Mother Earth.  The imagery holds true:  Jizo’s mission is to protect us, to remain on earth until all beings are finished suffering. I am still amazed that I ever found Jizo — first in Kyoto and then while hiking on Miyajima Island, off Hiroshima.

When I mention his name, most people have never heard of him and even after they know who he is, it seems he gets called Cheeso and other awkward terms.  I call him Jizo because I discovered him in Japan and because it is the easiest name to pronounce, thus make him available to more people.  Most folks don’t want to hear about something they can barely pronounce.

I taught psychological theory in a graduate program for a dozen years. As I taught, I learned. I became aware of the mechanisms of the ego, a sadly misunderstood part of us that is the executive function of our minds, navigating between our infantile cravings (id) and our (often guilty) conscience, derived from parents and society (superego). These three functions are unconscious; we don’t know where they are or what they’re doing.

If we are content with our lives, we can kick back and not give any thought to our psychodynamics. If, however, we are anxious, depressed, empty, exhausted, lonely, struggling in our relationships…then eventually we have to take a deliberate and mindful journey to recognize and learn to work with our inner lives.

We are surprised by how difficult it is to get and stay conscious. We may try meditation; but we quit. We go to yoga and may wind up just working-out.  Inconsistency is the ego’s way of avoiding change. why? because change is a journey into the unknown. …and what is anxiety if not fear of the unknown.

Ego Management

Ego management to trying to catch a fish in a river with your bare hands while blindfolded. Our ego uses defenses like denial, projection and the Great American Past-time:  narcotization. We temporarily avoid feelings and insight with any distraction: food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, unhealthy relationships.

If I could give you three steps for ego management they might go like this:  First, we come to realize that the ego, well-intentioned as it may be, has created problems that are worse than our real problems.  While we are busy being defended, our feelings are still there and unresolved. Our solutions to pain only worsen the pain. we aim for change but “it doesn’t work.”

The second step is to seek within ourselves for something greater than the ego, something “trans-personal,” into which we begin to place the care of our ego, much like we would hand over a screaming child to a capable caregiver.  Each morning on awakening, we set our sights on these two steps, being powerless over our ego’s defenses and the willingness to believe that there is something larger than the ego that can help.

The third step is the same in nearly every spiritual philosophy:  We ask this inner force to help us so that we may help others. This force is the antithesis of fear and anxiety.

Jizo Bodhisattva

During decades of seeking a trustworthy inner resource, I discovered the Jizo Bodhisattva. Jizo is revered in Buddhism as the protector of all those who suffer.  Which brings us full circle.  If the ego perceives suffering as something to defend against, then placing the ego into the care of Jizo may begin to ameliorate unproductive suffering.

The talisman I created is meant to be worn to aid in mindfulness; being awake to each moment in our lives.  If we can stay as mindful as possible, allowing the talisman to re-mind us often through the day, then we may face what we are avoiding and thus grow.

Jizo holding a sapphire, opening the throat to have a true voice

Jizo Listening: In 17 Brush Strokes

When we have a thought, do we respond to it as though it were true? Do we believe that our feelings tell us what is true about the world?

Two big buzzwords these days are Emotional Dysregulation. It assumes that normal is, say, in the range of middle C, within an octave either higher or lower in pitch. If you fly up and down the keyboard, triggered throughout the day, scattered on the mind’s 88 piano keys then you often need help to keep you closer to center.

Buddhism for Today

Many of the major universities and medical centers are experimenting with “neural Buddhism” – the practice of mindfulness to help us maintain equilibrium more efficiently. Mindfulness is like yoga without the asana or posture. In mindfulness we learn to focus our attention on our breathing. From there, we try to take our attention into other things. We practice, every day, developing the capacity to observe our emotions, thoughts and physical symptoms with a return to our center, to our breath.
Early in my work, I practiced mindfully washing my hands. I did not look in the mirror at what I was seeing. I purposefully kept my gaze on my hands, watching the soap lather up between my fingers, I felt the warm water running between my fingers. over my palms, as they went through motions I had done mindlessly, thousands of time. Why put our focus on something so ordinary? To train the mind. If we can pay attention to washing our hands, we have a place to start: we can begin to develop the skills necessary to look at our thoughts, at our assumptions, at our experiences.

Mindfulness is a Daily Practice

This morning, I mindfully made breakfast for my dogs. I realized that I was applying twice as much pressure to the knife and fork as was needed. I watched the ingredients mixing together, Gently. My hands softened, I felt my face soften, I felt…content.
It was not a 90 minute yoga class, or a ten day silent retreat. Yet it had a powerful and sublime impact on the rest of my day and how I then proceeded through driving in traffic with a gentle touch, how I dialed the phone with a lighter gesture.
Start with sitting for three minutes and breathing, just breathing and noticing your thoughts, your sensations. At the end of five minutes, stop and notice how you feel.

Do it again the next day. Notice resistance. Do it anyway. Keep a log. Notice that it takes 90 consecutive days to create a new pathway in our experience. Notice that change comes in increments. Notice how you quit when your expectations are unreasonable as to what mindfulness and meditation are.

If you quit, start again the next day, without judgement. If you cannot be consistent then congratulations, you have met your ego face-to-face.