GK SOURCE FINAL 7/26/05 6:23 PM Page 1 25th-Anniversary Special Publication Glazer and Kalayjian, Inc. Communications Design Group Mindmapping The problem with tough problems 2030 predictions Seven types of souls and how to advertise Why tech is still the future Resonating with dolphins GK SOURCE FINAL 7/26/05 6:25 PM Page 30 G&K:: With peaceful minds, we tackle the very difficult problems and solve them with ease through our actions JizosforPeace What to do about an old war BY JAN CHOZEN BAYS In Japan, a 60th birthday is a special event. Next year through the activity of our hands and our quiet chant- This tangible expression of our desire for peace I will celebrate my 60th birthday by making a pil- ing. We could not stop this war, but we could trans- seems to have universal appeal. Panels have come in grimage to Japan, a pilgrimage of reconciliation for a form our divided hearts, our anguish over the war. from children and adults, from Dharma centers and war that was ending as I was being born. I am writ- Thich Nhat Hahn says that when just one person is a Christian Sunday schools. Now we are getting Jizo ing to invite everyone to join me in making a very little more at peace, the whole world is a little more at panels sent from Japan! Two women there have large gift, a gift of thousands of tangible prayers for peace. When outer work for peace seems blocked, made 5,000 origami Jizos! It makes me smile to think peace and for an end to nuclear destruction. then the inner work becomes most important. of Jizos winging their way cross the Pacific Ocean in In Buddhism we look at cold, hard facts, such as One Jizo for each person who died. As we make both directions. the coexistence of human life and suffering. It seems what seems like an impossible number of Jizos, the Tonen Sara O’Connor, a teacher at the that war always has been—and always will be—a enormity of the destruction of life that occurred in Milwaukee Zen Center, has taken Jizos for Peace into part of that suffering. The Buddha himself could not Japan 60 years ago begins to sink in. Our Jizos are the prisons in Wisconsin. The pieces of cloth and the stop wars, even in countries where his presence was tiny compared to the size of even a baby, but the ink pens must be approved before they are allowed vivid and his teaching was most potent. How do we prayer flags, panels, and garlands of origami Jizos inside. Many lovely panels have been created by reconcile what seems to be the inevitability of war pile up and overflow the tables. incarcerated men, including two delicate drawings with the prompting of our hearts that makes it imper- In the last year we have taken some of the Jizos by men in maximum security who were in handcuffs ative that we work for peace? for Peace prayer flags and chains of origami Jizos to and were only allowed to use the inside of a ball- This is the koan that has come alive for me as I Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to find out if people there point pen. The message they gave Tonen is, “ I’m try- have worked on a project called Jizos for Peace. The even want these offerings. Everyone we met, from ing to change. I’m struggling to grow beyond the project began with my birth, to pacifist parents, on government officials to peace activists, was surprised, killer (or rapist or child molester) I was.” Tonen will August 9, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was happy and supportive. help to bring these banners to Japan in 2005, “to dropped on Nagasaki, three days after the bombing When we first sat down to talk with the atomic show the prisoners that their messages for peace did of Hiroshima. That hundreds of thousands of people bomb survivors (hibakusha) in Nagasaki, they seemed go out, and that people were moved by them.” The died in Japan in the few days around my birth has reserved and somewhat nervous. I was a bit nervous, project gives a voice to those otherwise invisible in led, I think, in some mysterious way, to my becoming too. What if we made thousands of Jizos and nobody our society. a Zen Buddhist priest in a Japanese lineage in a wanted them? The survivors listened attentively, but The hibakusha are afraid that when they die, a monastery, dedicated to Jizo Bodhisattva. their expressions didn’t change as I explained the his- new generation will forget the devastating potential At our monastery, we make ceramic statues of tory of the Jizos for Peace Project, how I had been born of nuclear weapons. They know that the world is not Jizo, the special protector of children, women, travel- to pacifist parents on the day the bomb was dropped safe from nuclear weapons. Dirty bombs are burning ers and those caught in hellish realms. A few years on Nagasaki, and how I had come to be a teacher at a and radiating a new generation as I write. If anyone ago I decided I would take 60 of these little Jizo Zen monastery dedicated to Jizo Bodhisattva. Their would like to do some mopping-up work, to engage images to Nagasaki in August, 2005, on my birthday, eyebrows lifted as I explained that we had decided to body, heart, and mind in one much-needed practice the 60th anniversary of the bombing there. Then, I undertake a pilgrimage on the 60th anniversary of the of peace and reconciliation, please join in making saw the very moving exhibits at the Atomic Bomb bombing, to bring a Jizo for every person who died in Jizos for Peace. For information and detailed instruc- Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many were in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the first year after the tions, see www.jizosforpeace.org. memory of the thousands of children who were attack, an incredible 270,000 Jizos in all! The Jizos mobilized to work on clearing fire lanes in case of would be offered in apology for the bombing, as a Jan Bays is the co-founder, with her husband, Hogen Bays, of Great Vow bombings. They were vaporized instantly, and their memorial for the people who had died 60 years Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon, where they teach and reside. She grieving families could find nothing but fragments: a before, and as hundreds of thousands of prayers for is also a pediatrician working in the field of child abuse. school badge, a piece of a lunch box, a burnt sandal. peace in the future. It was hard to make my way through the whole of When I brought out the cloth prayer flags we the exhibits, hard to look the Japanese visitors in the had made, with images of hundreds of colorful Jizos, eye. What terrible suffering we had all caused! and uncoiled the red and white chains of origami I began to wonder if we could make and offer one Jizos, the faces of the hibakusha lit up in broad smiles Jizo for every person who died in Hiroshima and and they began to talk excitedly. They turned to Kaz, Nagasaki. I discovered that an estimated 270,000 peo- who was serving as interpreter. Jizos for Peace ple perished, either from the bombs themselves or Tears stung my eyes to see their happiness as TO HELP THE HUMAN WORLD from the effects of radiation, in the first year after the they passed our small handmade tokens from hand to Your and are welcome! atomic bombs were dropped. This included Koreans, hand around the table. I realized that we had under- donations help Chinese and prisoners of war from America and other taken something beyond imagination. Jizos for Peace European countries. How in the world could we make had become a work of reconciliation, of reparation for Join The Great Vow Zen Monastery and this huge number of Jizos? the harm our ancestors had done before we were Roshi Kaz Tanahashi in making 270,000 Kaz Tanahashi, a Japanese-American artist and even born. We were working to clean up the karma of Jizos as an offering for each person who peace activist, had an idea. We could draw many a war that ended 59 years before. I looked back at died in Nagasaki & Hiroshima 60 years Jizos on pieces of cloth and sew them together as other wars—the Vietnam War, the Gulf War. Would ago, and as prayer for world peace. prayer flags and tapestries. We began this work at a our practice call us to follow behind those wars, too, retreat on the eve of the war in Iraq. We drew and doing what we could to clean up the karma of great Call if you would like to make a donation painted, silently chanting the Jizo mantra, om ka ka amounts of suffering purposely inflicted? I realized or to participate in this wonderful project: kabi san ma ei sowa ka, and sending a prayer for peace that 50 years from now I would be dead, but someone out as each Jizo was completed. “Peace to President might need to make offerings in Iraq. It was then I felt The Great Vow Zen Monastery: Bush.” “Peace to Saddam Hussein.” ‘Peace to the sol- the project grow out from under my small vision. 503-728-0654 diers.” As we worked with our bod- ies the agitation and distress in our www.jizosforpeace.org minds and hearts gradually settled.