In Place 28

The young-old monk, watcher
over infants and mad crones,
gets a late spring offering —
handful of vinca blossoms





Jizo once greeted visitors to the homestead, but lost his head more than once as water hoses were hauled around the garden. In his new location at the hut he is a hermit, but has never left off his practice. The stone behind him was raised from the dry creek bed the preceding summer.

Firmly based on steadiness, it can't be surpassed.
A shining window below the green pines --
jade palaces or vermilion towers can't compare with it.

-- Shitou, "Song of the Grass-Roof Hut" in Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (1924-33) reprinted in Hongzhi, Cultivating the Empty Field, 2000, tr. Leighton and Yi Wu

 

In Place 11

By her door she sets a young friend,

monkish, said to represent

one who vowed to watch over

mad old wet hens and others




 

This is Kshitigarbha, called in Japanese Jizo. He is said to take an interest in those who obviously need watching over, such as old fools. Does he? Maybe so:

...ontologically everything is interdependent and empty of independent existence. Dōgen pushes this logic to assert that “All beings are Buddhanature.” This deliberate reconfiguration of the Nirvana Sūtra teaching that “All sentient beings have Buddha-nature” highlights Dōgen’s more  thoroughgoing nondualistic understanding, for Dōgen’s articulation does not distinguish between sentient and nonsentient beings nor does it allow for some beings to have Buddha-nature and others not. Buddha-nature is not an object one can have, in the same way one cannot have a dog or a self, for everything is empty of independent existence.

Paula Arai, "The Zen of Rags" -- in which she muses on cleaning-rags as Buddhas ...