I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Noticing when I was bowing, Fran's smiling face on the altar, it's very encouraging. At the same time, I wish she were here. I know that she would be interested in what I want to talk about. I feel kind of like a kid in a candy store. I've been studying at San Francisco Zen Center recently. We've had two seminars on our women ancestors, especially in Chan China, which is like the 12th century. a little bit about the Dogen's disciples, so I really don't know much about them, but at least I know that they exist, which is pretty nice in itself.

[01:03]

So this is going to be sort of more like a class, I guess. I just want to share it with you. I'm very moved to know that there were a lot, a lot of women teachers I guess, I mean, we know that, but we don't know their names, you know, we don't know much about them. We just know, well, of course there must have been, but this is beyond that. Now we're, women scholars are really researching them and we're learning more and more about them. So if it's too dense, forgive me. or you can even raise your hand and say that's, it's just, it's too, you're going too fast. What I wanted to start with though was to invoke Tara, the female Buddha who vowed to remain in the female form rather than changing form.

[02:12]

There's a theory that a woman could get maybe, maybe get up to Buddhahood in a female form, but then once she became Buddha, then she turned into a man. And Tara vowed to stay a woman. And there's a mantra that invokes her, that I'd like to chant with you and then at service, at the time of service, the Kokyo will invite us and we'll all chant it. And you chant it, first relatively high and then lower, and that's a set, so we'll chant it, we'll chant three sets, we'll actually do six times during service. Does anybody know this, maybe heard of it, Green Gulch? This is one of Wendy Johnson's favorites, and Yvonne Rand's, and they did it at City Center not too long ago. Okay, here goes. OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SVAHA OM TARE TU TARE TU TARE TU RE SVAHA Could you join me?

[03:27]

I'll just keep doing it. Join me when you feel like you can. We'll just do it a few times to bring her into the room. OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA [...] OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SVAHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SVAHA So, I imagine

[04:28]

that you know who Mahapajapati was. But just in case, she was Buddha's aunt and stepmother, the woman who raised him. And after he became a great teacher, she came to him wanting to be ordained. And she had a group of women with her, and he kept saying, no, no, the time's not right for women. And Ananda said, finally, what's with this? Can't a woman be enlightened? And he said, well, yeah. And so he ordained her and some of her followers. And so they became nuns. She was their, I don't know if they would have called it an abbess because people tended not to have monasteries in the same way that we do now, but at any rate, she was their teacher. And unfortunately, it was also true that women had a lot more roles than the men, and the most senior woman was junior to the most junior male monk.

[05:38]

But, I mean, she was there and she feels like, I don't know if her practice was anything zen-like, but she certainly feels like an ancestor to me, that she insisted on the teaching. Can you reach that? Why don't you pass them both out while we're at it? So she led a community of women and there's now a book out called the Terragata, which is a translation of its stories about these women, enlightenment stories, some of them of their own stories and some about them. There also, some of it is found in a book called Not Mixing Up Buddhism, which is an anthology of articles from a journal called Kahawai that the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii used to put out.

[06:49]

And Fran also has a couple of articles in that book, which were on the table the other night at the memorial. So I would like to chant these women's names and It's acharya. In Sanskrit that C is pronounced like a CH. Are there not enough? I actually have one more. The second one is coming around. But it looks like Maile doesn't have the first one.

[07:56]

Oops. I don't have the Japanese one. The Dyer Shonin is... And the vowels, the way we've been pronouncing them at City Center at any rate, are pretty much like Japanese vowels or like Spanish vowels. So an I would be E as in Acharya or Mita. And the A is Ah. And I think that's enough. Okay. So just the Acharyas.

[08:58]

Acharya, Mahapajapati, Acharya Amita, Acharya Yasodhara, Acharya Atisa, Acharya Upasama, Acharya Misaka, Acharya Akhema, Acharya Upalavana, Acharya Sundarinanda, Acharya Adhesi, Acharya Bhattacharya, Acharya Uttama, Acharya Bhadrakundalangesa, Acharya Nandutara, Acharya Dantika, Acharya Sakula, Acharya Siha, Acharya Dhamadhina, Acharya Ghisankothami, Acharya Vasethi, Acharya Ubiri, Acharya Bhattacharya Panchakrata, Acharya Isadasi, Acharya Vatakakalani, Acharya Mukta, Acharya Kapa,

[10:25]

Acharya Dhamma, Acharya Sita, Acharya Sumana, Acharya Vimala, Acharya Adakasi, Acharya Madhumapati, Acharya Amrapali, Acharya Anandamala, Acharya Abhirupa Nanda, Acharya Jayanti. I'm not sure. But it's pretty much that time. I just want to read you a little of the poems from Prachachara and Vijaya, whom I don't see on this list. But I didn't go back to the book, so... Patacharas poem.

[11:28]

When they plow their fields and sow seeds in the earth, when they care for their wives and children, young Brahmins find riches. But I've done everything right and followed the rule of my teacher. I'm not lazy or proud. Why haven't I found peace? Bathing my feet, I watched the bath water spill down the slope. I concentrated my mind the way you train a good horse. Then I took a lamp and went into my cell, checked the bed and sat down on it. I took a needle and pushed the wick down. When the lamp went out, my mind was freed." And that's not an uncommon experience. It's one of the classics. Bijaya, four or five times I left my cell. I had no peace of mind, no control over mind. I went to a nun and respectfully asked her questions. She taught me the Dharma, earth, water, fire, and air, the nature of perception, the four noble truths, the faculties, the powers, the seven qualities of enlightenment, and the eightfold way to the highest goal.

[12:37]

When I heard her words, I followed her advice. In the first watch of the night, I remembered I had been born before. In the middle watch of the night, the eye of heaven became clear. In the last watch of the night, I tore apart the great dark. Then I lived with joy and happiness, filling my whole body. And after seven days, I stretched out my feet, having torn apart the great dark." So these are our mothers and our aunts. And, you know, after this time, well, during this time, and up to, into the Mahayana, to the Mahayana time, there was a great emphasis on purity, on cutting off defilements. And that was particularly oppressive for women because we're often seen as not pure, that because we bleed, we just couldn't, our bodies just can't be pure.

[13:51]

and apparently there was a lot of anorexia and there was a lot of, so women, I don't know if you, there's a book, a really old Chinese text that I hope is before Mahayana was really taking hold in China, but at any rate, these women would immolate themselves In the Lotus Sutra it talks about the Medicine King Buddha, or when he was a Bodhisattva, having done this great thing, he ate all this incense and perfumed oils and then set himself on fire as an offering to the Buddha. And these women actually did do that. With Mahayana, which is our kind of branch of Buddhism, there was more of an emphasis on emptiness and insight and direct knowing and lack, so emptiness with a lack of any inherent fixed

[15:00]

characteristics and the notion that you are already Buddha and that everyone can become a Buddha, that it's not, there's not some kind of anointing or choosing that happens. So then that was more liberating for women. In Chan, of course, these ideas were important. You know that Chan is basically a Zen. It's our root in China. The emphasis there was particularly on practice, you know, what do you do, how do you live your life, rather than the form that you're born in. And the Koan tradition emphasized intuition, and that was more hospitable to women. And in the Chan time, what we were concentrating on in these seminars a lot, There were a lot of women teachers, women abbesses that were in charge of monasteries during the time from the Tang to the Sung dynasties from the 6th to the 13th century in China.

[16:13]

There are many what are called records of the lamp. There are stories and supposedly historical descriptions of the teachers in China. And some of them are more historical than others, I think. And then there are also transmission stories from Japan later on. But at any rate, these Chinese ones list 35, during that period from the 6th to the 13th century, 35 fully enlightened women teachers who had monasteries and lineages and taught the Dharma. And women during that time also went on pilgrimages. I don't know if you've studied koans at all. It's usually about men, but there are often stories about the men in China going from one teacher to another and maybe challenging that teacher or trying to

[17:17]

learn something from that teacher. Well, women did the same thing. And women studied in women's monasteries and in men's monasteries both, and were welcome in both. Apparently, China historically was less gender segregated than other Asian countries, and certainly less so than Japan. So I just want to introduce you to some of these Chinese mothers and aunts. In the 12th century there was a man teacher, his name was Dawi, and he was actually the At least, as far as we know, the initiator of this sense of using a koan, using one word from a koan to really concentrate on. You've heard a lot of Rinzai people start with Mu. Does a dog have Buddha nature?

[18:18]

Mu. And they just take Mu and work with that. started that and used it with his first Dharma heirs, first major disciple, and it was very successful. And that first disciple was a woman named Miao Dao. And that's a marvelous way. She was an abbess and a teacher. And she gave sermons and I just want to read you, give you a little taste of it. Sean is not a matter of ideas to think about. To establish ideas is to pervert the central core. The way cuts off beneficial results. To set up beneficial results as a goal is to lose the real point.

[19:23]

When listening to pure sounds and other non-worldly phrases, do not seek to apprehend the truth in ideas. Turn the receiving and responding power of the teacher around and get it into your own hands. Grab the cudgel and tongs away from the Buddhas and patriarchs and control them yourselves. Where there are Buddhas, there will be no distinction between the teacher and Buddhas as host and you as guest. Where no Buddhas are, the wind will whistle and sigh. Her mind is at peace, echoes and sounds are in harmony. As for someone like this, tell me, would you be able to handle such a person? After a long time, she said, putting on my raincoat and leaning my rain hat beyond a thousand peaks, I draw water and sprinkle the vegetables in front of the five stars. And there's more of this if you want to see it later.

[20:36]

It's a work in progress by a woman Buddhist religious studies teacher named Miriam Levering. She had a Dharma sister named Miao Tsung, marvelous cardinal meaning, who was also an abbess and a teacher. And let me just read you a little bit from one of her Dharma talks. I think, well, I'll just let it speak for itself. If on the top of the solitary peak, your eyes see the Milky Way, then you are ungrateful to the former sages. If you put on fur and wear horns or put dirt on your face and ashes on your head, as a Buddha, disguise yourself as an ordinary person so as to enter the vulgar world to save sentient beings. Then again, you conceal your own true self.

[21:38]

Between these two roads, it is very hard to choose. If you completely reveal the essence of the Dharma, completely pronounce the true imperative, it is like a sword. So long it reaches the sky, the cold and forbidding might of heaven. This way won't do, that way won't do. If you let out a hint about the way, merge with water, and mud get wet and muddy, then this is all right. That way is all right, also. Then you can set aside all other concerns and risk everything. Set to work in the tiger's lair and the demon's palace, in the market and street, you can wade into the grass to seek people. Driving away the plowman's ox and snatching away the hungry person's food, these are all nothing special. He had a female disciple named Lady Chin Guo, and he wrote a poem to her.

[22:59]

I'm trying to be working just from what the women themselves said, rather than what somebody else said about them. But this is such a great poem, I decided I had to read it anyway. So this was by Dawi about a lady, Chin Kuo, on her birthday. Among womankind, there is a great hero. Revealed in her present form, she transforms her kind by means of precepts, samadhi, and wisdom, the liberating dharmas. She suppresses greed, hatred, and delusion. Wherever she may be in their midst, she does Buddha deeds. As wind blows through the empty sky depending on nothing, the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, numerous as the Ganges sands, with different mouths but the same refrain, utter this speech. Excellent, extraordinary, rarely to be found in the world,

[24:02]

Her mind is clean and pure without distress or joy. She does not even think of being without distress or joy. Encountering a stage, she puts on a play, suiting the worldly conditions, but not becoming attached to any worldly conditions. In the sixth month, clouds of fire burned the blue sky. The sound of thunder suddenly shook the 3,000 worlds. The hot and vexatious are refined away, obtaining the cool and pure. This is that great hero's birthday celebration. I composed this poem to add to its brilliance and present it as a gift to all the women in the universe. And finally, he had another disciple named Wu Zhou as was her lay name. And this is a famous koan that's used as a teaching koan in Japan in female nunneries.

[25:06]

Wanan relied on Dawi and served as his senior monk, the head monk of the sangha hall at Dawi's monastery on Qingshan. Before Wuzhou had become a nun, She used to visit Dawi at Qingshan, and Dawi lodged her in the abbot's quarters. The senior monk, Wan'an, always objected strongly. Dawi said to him, even though she is a woman, she has great strengths. Wan'an still did not approve. Dawi then insisted that he should interview her. Wan'an reluctantly sent a message that he would do so. When Wanan came, Wuzhou said, will you make it a Dharma interview or a worldly interview? The senior monk replied, a Dharma interview. Wuzhou then said, then let your attendants depart. She went in first, then called to him, please come in. When he came past the curtain, he saw Wuzhou lying face upward on the bed without anything on at all.

[26:13]

He pointed at her and said, what kind of place is this? Wuzhou replied, all the Buddhas of the three worlds and the six patriarchs and all the great monks everywhere, they all come out from within this. Wanan said, and would you let me enter or not? Wuzhou replied, it allows horses to cross, it does not allow asses to cross. Wanan said nothing, and Wuzhou declared, the interview with the senior monk has ended. She then turned over and faced the wall. Wanan turned red and laughed. Dawei said, it is certainly not the case that the old beast did not have any insight. Wanan was ashamed. One of the nuns, this is from a Qing dynasty compilation of women practitioners, so it would also have been the 12th century, was named Kangxi.

[27:27]

She was married, but it didn't suit her, and she went back to her parents and asked if she could be a home leaver. And they said no, and so she just kind of stayed home and practiced on her own until after her parents died. And eventually she met a teacher named Shishin and became his Dharma heir. And then later on, after he had died, she went to live at the Baoning Monastery, Protected Kham Monastery, and she put up a bathhouse there, and she had a poem at the entrance. Without a thing, what are you washing? If a stack of dust arises, where does it come from? Only if you can bring along a word from Zhiyuan, may everybody be allowed to take a bath inside. Everybody says water can cleanse filth.

[28:29]

Who knows, even water is nothing but defilement. Even if you are completely ridden of water and filth, when you come here, you still have to be cleansed. And she was, it was also about her, it's a common thing that a Zen master dies either standing up or sitting in zazen. And it said of her, once she suddenly showed symptoms of an ailment, so she wrote a gata, which is also a classic. She then sat in a lotus posture and expired. So that was China. in the 12th century. In Japan, it was, our story is not so rich or certainly not known. It wasn't, the practice was not hospitable to women. And in Tendai monasteries, for example, women were just completely not allowed.

[29:32]

And Dogen's period was a little later. He was born in 1200. And by 1230, he was back in Japan and teaching. and it was a Kamakura period and it was a time of great upheaval and change and Dogen was part of that so maybe it was like the 60s or something like that and there were many teachers teaching new ways and Dogen among them and they insisted that women should be included and that women were perfectly capable of studying the Dharma and becoming enlightened. And there's a, one of his, his major work is called the Shobho Genso, as I mentioned, you know, and one of the relatively early fascicles, number 28, is about women, basically.

[30:35]

It's called acquiring the essence, it's called the Raihai Tokuzui, the acquiring, paying homage and acquiring the essence. Acquiring the essence is a reference to Bodhidharma. He had four disciples and as he was dying he was asking them to tell him their understanding of the Dharma and to the first one he said, you've acquired my skin, the second one my flesh, the third my bones, and the fourth one my marrow. And it's usually interpreted that the one Wicca that acquired his marrow was his true Dharma heir. But not in here, but the Boddhogan has another fascicle about what's the difference, you know, you acquired the Dharma and that it isn't, you shouldn't be picking and choosing among those. And one of those, one of those four disciples was a woman. The one that acquired the bones actually was a woman.

[31:37]

And in this fascicle, Dogen ridicules people that won't allow women into monasteries and people that are unable to learn from women or foxes or tiles or pebbles or anything. And I just want to read you one short quote. It's in, the complete version is in How to Raise an Ox. And there's also a book called Flowers of Emptiness which has excerpts from it. There are foolish monks in China who vow, I shall not look at a woman for countless lives to come. What dharma is this vow based on? Is it the dharma of ordinary society? Is it the Buddha dharma? A non-Buddhist dharma? The dharma of celestial beings or demons? What demerit is there in femaleness? What merit is there in maleness? There are bad men and good women. If you wish to hear the Dharma and put an end to pain and turmoil, forget about such things as male and female.

[32:43]

As long as delusions have not yet been eliminated, neither men nor women have eliminated them. When they are all eliminated and true reality is experienced, then there is no distinction of male and female. If you make a vow not to see a woman for ages and ages to come, Won't you be neglecting them when you vow? Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. If you neglect them, you are no Bodhisattva. Is this the great compassion of the Buddha? This vow is the raving of a drunkard who has drunk deeply from the wine barrel of the small vehicle. Neither humans nor celestial beings believe that this conforms to the true teachings." And it goes on in that vein. So Dogen had many female disciples, and his disciples had male disciples.

[33:50]

There is a chart that I didn't bring down that lists a lot of them. Miriam Levering gave to us when she was at City Center. And so there's a book being written about it, about them. I'm sorry to say I don't know anything about them except their names. But I thought we could chant their names as well. And soon we will know more about them. The suffix "-ni-" in Japanese means a female practitioner or female teacher. I think it's a female practitioner. I've got none. And we use daisho as a great teacher. And I don't actually know if daisho is properly applied to women in Japanese culture, but I figured we'll just use it.

[34:53]

So we could chant these women too and bring them into the room. So the daishoni. Ege ni daisho, eshi ni daisho, shogaku ni daisho, ryonen ni daisho, xīnmiǒ nǐ dài yǒu shòu, zhǒu zhēn nǐ dài yǒu shòu, xīn zhǒu nǐ éi nǎo dài yǒu dài yǒu shòu, zhǒu nǐ nǐ dài yǒu shòu, yǒu shǒu nǐ dài yǒu shòu, yǒu xīn nǐ dài yǒu shòu, éi yǒu nǐ dài yǒu shòu, sǒu nǐ nǐ dài yǒu shòu, nǐ kǎi nǐ dài yǒu shòu, SOSO NI DAYO SHO, MYOJO NI DAYO SHO, MYOZEN NI DAYO SHO, GENCHU NI DAYO SHO, HONSHO NI DAYO SHO, SOKI NI DAYO SHO, SENCHO NI DAYO SHO, RYOSO NI DAYO SHO, MYOKO NI DAYO SHO,

[36:13]

I hope that this is interesting to you. That's plenty, I'm sure. Do you have any questions or does anybody have any comments? Well, let's keep going. Both of these workshops were in the San Francisco Zen Center brochure. Michael Wenger is now the head of the study center. He used to be the president, and now he's the dean of the study center.

[37:29]

So he's been free to be more active in setting up this kind of thing. It may be that one of the women is a woman named Joan Sutherland. She's from the Diamond Sangha. Her teacher is John Tarrant in Santa Rosa. And she's thinking about coming regularly to Zen Center, maybe once a month, to teach a koan seminar, which is what she did with us part of the time. She gave us four or five koans to read, and then we chose a few of them and talked about them. keep your ear to the ground. I mean, you know, I'm going away for three months, and so I don't know how available I'll be, but I'd be happy to try to remember, you know, to let you guys know about things, and then, you know, somebody from here I would hope could teach a class like that. I am negotiating with Sandy Lachey.

[38:32]

Well, I have a lot more, and I'd be happy, anybody that wants to know more about it, I'm happy to share it. And I'm not a scholar of it, though. I'm really interested. You mentioned a book that's been published earlier, Tara? The Tara book? Taragata. Taragata? Yeah, T-H-E-R-I-G-A-T-A. Oh. And do you remember who? It's a woman, she translated, she did a lot in the Kahawai book, too. I think it's in our library. It probably is. She's from the Diamond Sangha. She's back east now, I think. Yeah. I don't know, you'll know the answer to this, but a few months ago, we were chanting Acharya here, maybe once a week or so, and then it disappeared. Do you know, Maile? About once or twice a week we were, instead of Dayo Sho, we were doing a list of acharyas here.

[39:42]

And then it kind of stopped happening. Was it in the afternoon or in the morning? I think it was in the morning. Boy, I missed it. And it was for maybe a few months and then it vanished just suddenly as it had arrived. Instead of chanting the Daya show, we were chanting Acharyas, and I thought, oh, well, this is nice. Well, I'll have to find out about that. I didn't make it up. I know I didn't make it up. Because it was very noticeable. I mean, brand new names. The first time I chanted it was at Tassajara. I was burst into tears. You know, Steve Stuckey, where I used to practice more regularly in San Rafael, chants these every morning, and also has included the women in the liturgy for quite a while. And the first time I heard it too, it was really... It felt very healing, that's how it felt.

[40:53]

It's really been a long time, hasn't it? It's so wonderful that you could bring this here today, and I hope we can keep bringing it up and finding our voices and our place in the lineage. It's really important, because it sort of has them in that balance. And I've never been one to, oh, we've got to do this, blah, blah, blah. But there is some intention there to create more of a balance. I don't really ever feel resentful, I just tend to miss names. But that might just be because I didn't know. Anyway, thank you for sharing this with us. I do have another, I'm going to see Miriam Levering next week, I think, and I thought I would ask her for a you know, a reading list or something. Because a lot of this stuff is in scholarly journals that we don't see so much.

[42:01]

They're probably in the Cal Library, and maybe we have some of it at City Center, I don't know. But it's not something that's going to be at Black Oak Books or something. Is it just women attending these seminars? It has been. It's not billed that way, but that's what's happened. except for the last one where there was women and Michael. Yeah. It's mixed. I mean, there's some way in which it's kind of nice, it's intimate, but on the other hand, it would be nice if it weren't. Well, I had not chanted it before, And I think what I felt grateful for in chanting the Acharyas was it brings up, for me, just the unrecognized side of practice, of my practice, all practice, that partly one's practice and historical practice has these great moments and these things that you can talk about, but then there's so much that just

[43:22]

a practice that's always there, but that we don't name. I think it must have been at Tassajara now. It was at Tassajara we were chanting in Chariot. But why don't we chant it here sometimes? I mean, like there it was alternated with Dayo Sho. So why couldn't we do the same thing here? We could. We just have to kind of work slowly. Yes, we have them women mentioned in the liturgy now in an echo. They slowly, slowly wear them down. Insinuating. So, anyway, I am not ready to bring them in. Okay. Well, it's interesting. These, you know, the Dogon's disciples are, you know, it's all set up. It goes from Dharma era to Dharma era as if there was just this one continuous line from Buddha to to Suzuki Roshi. And of course, it's not quite so simple as that. And there were lots of teachers.

[44:46]

They didn't just have one teacher. Somebody decided this was the principal person and worked it out that way. So that's something that I'm interested in looking at. Chanting those people, but I don't know anything about them. Are they chanting in the Zen center? We chant the Acharyas. I came over here to make trouble. Is there any burnings yet? But then the male teacher, it always means there's no male, female.

[45:48]

How do we look at that? I think that's fundamentally true. And it's also true for me in the relative world that I need the support of women in my practice, and I need to know that there's a place for me in this practice. It's encouraging for me. When I first started, read everything I could get about women, the Not Mixing Up Buddhism I read, and Lenore Friedman's book, Beings with Remarkable Women, and I don't remember what else.

[46:49]

It didn't seem like there were so many other things at that time, but at any rate, I find it very encouraging that this, that there is, it says to me that there's a place for me here. So it's just like anything else, you're holding the relative and the absolute together. How do you work with it? Mostly with the relative. I don't know, it just comes to me. It's not always in my mind. I think the sun is...

[47:44]

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