Jizo: The First Bodhisattva of Finance

Jizo’s shaved head, monk robes and Mona Lisa smile is a familiar sight in Japan – if there were a Bodhisattva popularity contest in Japan, he would win hands down.

You’ll find Jizo, the Buddhist “patron saint” of children, travelers, pilgrims, and expectant mothers, nestled in roadside shrines and cemeteries, often wearing a red bib and cap, toys at his feet.

Jizo protects everyone in need but is especially beloved by mothers for keeping the spirits of children safe from demons. Mothers who have lost their children – born, unborn, aborted, miscarried, or stillborn – cherish him, and their gifts of clothes and toys are acts of devotion.

He is the perfect guide when you’re stuck, confused, or in an emotional shitstorm – that is, when you feel unsafe. To feel safe, you must receive compassion, acceptance, and love. That is, you need to feel protected.

You need protection for the parts of you that are:

dead

stillborn

childlike

lost

weary

yearning to be born

Jizo acknowledges, accepts, and protects all of you, even the parts you hate and reject – all those dead bits, the yet-to-be-born pieces, and the parts that have left home and not returned.

It’s only when you feel safe that you can let yourself see the whole truth and, from that clarity, take effective action, whether it’s about “money stuff” or “stuff stuff.”

Change requires an open mind – one that is relaxed, curious, and playful. When you are in a fight or flight, fawn or freeze mode, your brain is focused on survival. You get tunnel vision, your thinking is more rigid and black and white, and you default to old patterns. 

You need safety before you can risk learning something new or changing old patterns. That safety comes from having no self-judgment, from surrendering to and completely accepting reality.

This holds true for your “money stuff” as well. You can only accept your money reality with neutrality when you release shame, fear, and anger.  

What do I mean by neutrality?

Neutrality feels like knowing that the Sun rises in the East, the Earth has only one moon, and Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain.

Those realities are easy to accept.

And you can feel the same way about harsh money realities:

your mother left your brother more money

you were defrauded

you toiled for years, making less money than the person next to you 

you fell for the latest get-rich-quick scheme

your business failed 

You can still love and accept yourself despite bad financial decisions, good decisions gone bad, or being done wrong.

You were just humaning and doing your best.

 It can be hard to let go of resentment, shame, and guilt. These feelings contain wisdom (they point us to where growth lives), and they need to be felt. But you'll have trouble taking action when you’re wallowing in them. 

And all the money tips in the world don’t matter if you won’t do squat with them.

When you feel all the feels and hate on yourself, you create a civil war within. You become locked in stasis, your inner selves at each other’s throat, sure that their way is the only way to survive. 

So much energy gets trapped in that internal war – energy that could be unleashed into pursuing a solution, moving forward, and flowing. Instead, you spin round in stuckness, the tug of one being offset by the other.

To move forward, you must bring all of you into alignment, make peace with your warring factions, release grievances, make amends, and let go of shame and hate. 

You need courage to start a journey. You worry about bandits in the forest, blisters gone septic, pissed-off dragons, death and dismemberment, or just plain vanilla failure. You’re unsure you’ll be able to cope with the challenges ahead.

To have courage, you need to love the self that brought you here and trust that you’ll have your own back, no matter the outcome. 

I find that Jizo helps me find self-acceptance. And when I am ready to see and accept reality as it is, from a neutral place, I can take the next step, which is getting inner and outer clarity.  

Clarity is Manjusri’s jam. The Second Bodhisattva of Finance stars in next week’s money mash note. See you then.