written by Sue Wong
A ceremony to commemorate lost loves: that is the way I would characterise the Jizo ceremony. Held in a forest clearing on Peter’s land yesterday, seven people attended, including a woman taking an early ferry from another island and myself visiting from Australia. Our backgrounds, if known, would have been diverse, but we had in common a desire to honour, and grieve for, a lost love.
In my own instance, my intention was to remember Harry, whom I lost only 20 weeks into my pregnancy, 14 years ago. Harry had not even been viable, and was one of the six miscarriages I have endured in my life. Fortunately I have four robust children–two of whom are now adult men–but on this day I wanted to recognise Harry, who represents the spirits of my lost children.
Peter, in his welcome to the ceremony, explained the significance of Jizo, the Buddhist protector of travellers, whether their journeys are in the physical world or the spiritual realms. In Japan, Jizo is seen as the guardian of children, particularly children who died before their parents. Typically depicted as a pilgrim-monk carrying a walking staff, Jizo represents the attributes of equanimity, benevolence, and courage. In Japanese mythology, it is said that the souls of children who die before their parents are unable to cross the mythical Sanzu River on their way to the afterlife because they had not had the chance to accumulate enough good deeds and because they made their parents suffer. It is believed that Jizo saves these souls from having to pile stones eternally on the bank of the river as penance, by hiding them from the demons in his robe.
In his explanation of Jizo (and his companion Kuan-Yin, guardian of compassion), Peter commented that oftentimes during the course of a ceremony, the one for whom we came to grieve, was not the only one that in actuality we spent the time remembering, that other losses were apt to surface and calling for our attention. And so it was in my case. As I followed the rituals of making a simple garment (shawl, scarf, shoulder bag) from the red cloth provided and decorating it with little bells and buttons, then writing an inscription on a paper banner to hang from a tree in the forest –my thoughts went to my recent ended marriage to Harry’s father. Harry was to be the son of Gary and myself. We went on to have two daughters (now 16 and 13) but lost five other tiny spirits in the process.
We followed Peter who sounded a bell as he led us in a single file procession into the forest. The bell was answered by Terry Gregory (our local bereavement counsellor and co-leader of palliative care volunteers), who sounded another bell from the rear of the procession. We arrived at an altar set up in a clearing at the boundary to Bluff Park. Eight Jizo statues stood silent vigil, still sporting the garments and tokens placed there during previous ceremonies.
Peter invited us to overlay our tributes on the existing ones, the new covering the old, a fitting reminder of the impermanence of everything, the reality of what is. He led a chant which we joined in. He then spoke the names of those we were commemorating and called each of us in turn to offer incense and pass our prepared garments and mementos over its smoke for purification and blessing. We then chose a Jizo statue each to adorn and a tree from which to hang our little banners.
Tears and memories accompanied these simple, sacred actions. My loss was Harry Wong, barely 20 weeks old, but my grief was compounded by the impending loss of my 20 year marriage. I looked up to my banner gently moving in the breeze: “To Harry. The son we didn’t have.” Each of us, in silence, remembered our loss. We named it, and we took the time out of our lives to mark it. We now have a special place to which we can return at any time, or hold in our mind’s eye; a place that honours a life we loved and lost.
PS: To conclude the ceremony, Peter gave thanks to his Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays who is spreading the Jizo ceremony through her book (below) and practice at Great Vow Zen Monastery. He explained that she’d given him the Precepts and the name Daishin (boundless heart) in 2001 and authorized him to offer this ceremony on Galiano. Peter then bowed to the memory of Raja Dashel Soule, Chozen’s grandson who, a few days ago, arrived stillborn to his parents Lapus and Noah in Pai, northern Thailand.
Read: Jan Chozen Bays. (2003). Jizo Bodhisattva: guardian of children, travelers, and other voyagers. Boston: Wisdom Press; see also http://www.zendust.org/jizo/.
Capt. Jonathan Snyder of Penticton, BC, was a member of 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He was on foot patrol when he tumbled into an open well the Afghans call a kariz. The rest of his patrol tried desperately to extract him as they radioed for help. Once out of the well, Snyder was rushed to the NATO military hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Capt. Snyder is the 86th Canadian to die in Afghanistan since 2002. source: CBC News
CBC News
From NPR: 
I must have been living under a rock. Why did it take so long, until a month ago, for me to became aware of John O’Donohue? After that, not a day seems to have gone by that I didn’t hear someone mention his name or me coming across his written words. I would have liked his company. John O’Donohue passed away unexpectedly and peacefully in his sleep in the night of January 3, 2008. 
According to the NY TIMES, Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died today in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75, had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.