Welcome to this class. I don't know if you know, this started out to be Dolly's idea, and she's not up to helping teach it. I hope that she is able to come to some of it. So let's hold her in our hearts and our thoughts during this class. So what's wound up happening is that Grace and I are going to teach it and we kind of split it up and I'm going to teach this first one which will be an introductory and trying to put things in context. We want to talk about our women ancestors. This four weeks is going to focus on Chan women and our Chinese women ancestors. And one point we wanted to be clear about is that all of our ancestors, they're women, but they're not just ancestors for women.

[01:04]

They're ancestors for everybody. But there are stories that don't get told as much. And so it seems like a wonderful opportunity to introduce you to some people that you may not know. So I think a lot of it's going to be story time and I hope that it's enjoyable as well as useful. There's a great resource, this notebook that is living I think in the library. Linda Ruth Cutts donated it, you know, the co-abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center. She's taught women in Buddhism quite a bit at Green Gulch and this material has been accumulated in the library there and she donated it to us. So it spans the whole history from the first Buddhist women up to the present day. And there's just a wealth of material in there.

[02:09]

So before I go on, I just want to give Grace a chance to do a brief introduction as well. My interest in this arose prior to my becoming a priest. As some of you may have noticed, both in the Christian and the Jewish tradition, our role models are not quite there for us to look at for priests, for women priests. And the choices for nuns are somewhat limited. So I became interested a number of years ago and have mostly temples and historical sites where women have practiced and have also been interested in following the lineage in China. and particularly the lineage of Da Hui, which is going to be mentioned tonight, but which I will go into in more detail with some of the disciples of Da Hui.

[03:13]

It's very encouraging to notice that even though women's stories have been held back, and even though women have been forbidden access to temples, and still are to this day, their force persists and throughout the history of our tradition there are always teachers really good teachers who take on women students and there are some words left and I was particularly encouraged when I read in the history of Dao Hui and his women disciples that they stayed in the abbot's quarters because when I go to Japan to study that's where I stay in the male monastery so now I understand the reason and the historical tradition of great teachers taking on female disciples. This probably looks pretty daunting, but I'm going to read from some of it, and some of it

[04:21]

I just bring whatever books I think I might want to refer to. So the Buddha, as you know, was born apparently enlightened and his mother died soon after and he was raised by his aunt and her name was Pajapati and that means leader of great assembly and she was in fact foretold before her birth as someone who would be a leader of a great assembly and that's why she was given that name. And she actually co-married Suddhodana with her sister.

[05:23]

Suddhodana is Buddha's father, so they actually married him at the same time. You do know, maybe you don't know, just in case you don't know, people had harems, men had harems back then, including the Buddha, yes. So she raised Siddhartha and after he was enlightened he came home and he preached to his family and she and her husband were both converted. And years later Suddhodana died and she then asked to take ordination. And the tradition often is you ask three times and then the Buddha can't really refuse you. It's a big big deal to refuse. after the third time? Well, she asked three times and he refused her. and then he went off somewhere else and she cut her hair and took off her shoes and put on robes and she and her followers who numbered over a hundred and also had shaved their heads and so on.

[06:27]

They went after the Buddha and came to where he was and dusty and ragged and with bleeding feet. She went to him and she asked again three times and again he refused three times. And then Ananda took pity upon her and went to the Buddha and said, why you should ordain these women? They're obviously very sincere. And Buddha said, no. And Ananda said, but can't a woman attain enlightenment? Can't a woman attain nirvana? And Buddha said, yes. There's no reason why a woman cannot attain enlightenment. So Ananda asked a second time and Buddha said no and Ananda asked a third time and Buddha still said no. And then Ananda reminded Buddha that this was his, in effect his mother, the woman that had given her all to raise him and then he relented.

[07:33]

and he agreed to ordain women, and he made eight special rules for the women, and those rules had to do with women remaining subordinate to men, so that the most senior woman was to be ordained. subordinate to the most junior men and to rise when he came into the room and never to criticize the men and so on. The story is that the Buddha also said that this ordination would set the, you know, there's this notion of there's the good dharma and then there's the bad dharma, there's kind of the degenerate time, and he said it would shorten the time of the good dharma four or five hundred years. There's a lot of research now, modern research, textual kind of research that says it's probably apocryphal, probably a later edition. The eight rules probably were from the Buddhist time, but the 500-year remark probably was not.

[08:34]

the Buddha, but as Rita Gross points out in Buddhism After Patriarchy, where she writes about this, that's very modern research, so that the Arahal tradition has grown up with assuming that the Buddha said that, so in a way, it's only so relevant. At any rate, Mahapajapati was ordained and she was an abbess and she had hundreds of followers and she did become an arhat. She reached complete enlightenment, cut off all desires and found nirvana before she died. I want to just back up a tiny bit. Even though the tradition is that women were supposed to be subordinate and that Buddha may or may not have said that this ordination would set the Dharma back 500 years, still there's never been a question about women being able to practice or able to be enlightened.

[10:02]

So that's the bottom line. And as Rita Gross points out, that those hierarchy kind of rules just simply reflect the society. That this was not a social movement. This was actually something that fit in the society and it was about more individual liberation. So Mahapajapati's followers are known as the Theragata, the women elders, or the, theri means women elders, or women who have grown old in knowledge. And gata actually means verse or song, and there's a collection of their work in the first Buddhist women. It's a wonderful book. And these women were, a lot of them were members of the Sakya clan, whose husbands had become monks.

[11:11]

So they had been left, in effect, widows. It's also true that there was a war with the Kolya clan, from which Mahapajapati came. Maha means great, by the way. So that was part added to her name later. At any rate, there was a war with the Koyans and there were a lot of widows as a result of that. And then a number of the women that were her followers were from the Buddha's harem. and probably from Sudadana's harem, too, after he died. Because women needed to belong to somebody, and these women didn't belong to anybody. So in some ways, it was this wonderful liberation for them, but also there was a lot of anxiety. And I'm just going to read you one of the women's poems. This is Mita, she's one of the Acharyas that we chant and if you read this you'll find a lot of familiar names.

[12:21]

She was a Sakyan lay person, she was a member of the Sakya clan and some observant lay people would observe on the new moon and the full moon and sometimes on the quarter moon also days of fasting and observing a short eight list of precepts or maybe they wouldn't fast but they'd only have one meal before noon. They kind of, you know, live like a kind of a layperson's version of a monk for that day and this is what She said, to be reborn among the gods, I fasted and fasted every two weeks, day 8, 14, 15, and a special day. Now with a shaved head and Buddhist robes, I eat one meal a day. I don't long to be a god.

[13:23]

There is no fear in my heart. So I was really touched by that. To be reborn among the gods, she fasted and practiced privations and so on, did ascetic practices and so on, devotional practices. Now, when she's left home, she no longer is interested in being a god. Now she's practicing and she just has a simple life and now there's no more fear in her heart. So this time of the. elders, you know, we don't use the word Henayana anymore and Theravadin is not exactly accurate sometimes. I think scholars call it primitive Buddhism, but that always sounds so odd.

[14:25]

But these times of relatively early Buddhism after, but after the Buddha died, there was apparently a growing misogyny, actual dislike of women. And I'm distinguishing that from, I don't know if it's a word that you're familiar with, androcentrism, this notion of men assuming a superiority or a difference, and also probably women too. But misogyny is something, an active dislike. And that's when I think some of these things like the 500 years got added, that reference. And that's after these women's time. These women were pretty much the Buddha's contemporaries. But it's also true that during that time, there was a lot of resistance to their going into the homeless life because they were seen as the anchor of the home.

[15:40]

A lot of people thought that men going to be monks was pretty terrible, too. You were supposed to have a home and make children and carry on the clan and that kind of thing. So there was a lot of people who were disapproving of both men and women doing this. So now I'm going to skip forward quite a bit and come to China. Excuse me, if you have any questions, by the way, just feel free to please interrupt and ask, because I'm going through a lot, so if I go too fast, slow me down and just ask. It wasn't 2500 BC, it was about, Buddha was born about 500 BC.

[16:46]

So I'm going, no I'm not going to the Song Dynasty, I'm just going to China. Just around, probably about 500 years later, a little after the turn of the millennium into the Common Era. So these Teragata women, these probably extend just until around the end of BCE, something like that. What, Grace? I was going to say, regarding the 500 years, the best remark I heard about it was Mayuzumi Roshi's response One of his women students asked him, what do you say about how Buddha's remarks about the 500 years these women began to practice? He thought for a minute and said, it was worth it. Can I find out that thing about the higher? It's so linear, like what is 500 years later, what is then, what is now, you know?

[18:07]

It gets somewhere. And what you call it, when you bow to the person that was seeing you? But we're taught that when you bow, that's not the meaning of bowing. Well, we practice Zen, and it's really different from this. This is a very, I mean, the Zen has a lot of hierarchy too, but it's a different view, and we'll get to that. And women's status changed with Chan in China. In these older times, one of the things that was going on is that women were seen as impure. and purity and cutting off of desire was thought of as really important. And women are, we're, by definition, impure because of menstruation.

[19:08]

Now, I mean, this isn't something I'm telling you is the truth, but this is a view. And so that was, that was, commonly accepted, sure it is, sure it is, and so, but because purity was such a strongly emphasized, this is a sense of arhat practice, the kind of practice that thinks of nirvana as extinction, as cutting off desires, as opposed to bodhisattva practice where you practice in the world, you know, you find your liberation in the middle of all that blood, right? Well, yes, but that's really, anyway, that's in there.

[20:11]

In the book, in this notebook. Yes. Well, it's also true that, you know, in Native American cultures where you go, where sometimes women go off to a special hut or a place, you know, it's actually quite wonderful time for women to be together and hang out and whatever. So it isn't necessarily so horrendous. But this notion of women being impure was a big deal. I will, let's see, which order? Maybe I should, I'm going to change this order. Where'd my pen go? So I want to talk about the lives of the nuns, which is this book, which is also quite interesting. And these women are, were from, lived from the fourth to the sixth centuries of the common era. And Mahayana Buddhism had come into

[21:17]

China was there, but Chan was not really in evidence. It was just kind of beginning, not really, you know, in the sense that you could now look back and see the roots of it, but it was not something that was a known quantity at that point. And this Bodhidharma came in the early 500s, so the early part of the 6th century. And these women mostly go through the Liang Dynasty, which was Emperor Wu's dynasty. You may have heard of Emperor Wu. He's the guy that Bodhidharma said nothing holy. To whom, he said, nothing holy. Anyway, the Liang Dynasty went from 502 to 557.

[22:21]

So Bodhidharma, they say, brought Zen to China, and he died in 532. So, you know, he only had a few disciples, so it doesn't just suddenly, boom, affect the whole vast country. It took a while. Anyway, so these nuns tended to have a practice that really emphasized purity. There are a number of stories in here of women who had seriously ascetic practices. We might say that they had eating disorders. I would say they had eating disorders. And they were trying to survive on dirt and rice or something like that kind of thing. It's often said of a nun that she ate rough vegetables, and that was good.

[23:26]

And they tended to have lives of great, great devotion and often great humility. They would talk about how they would work very hard even though they were very senior and they had many followers. They often had to struggle with their family in order to enter monastic life, but not always. Sometimes they were actually even kind of given to a temple or something, but often they had to struggle with their immediate families or with their spouses in order to enter this monastic life. Sometimes they entered very young. They tended to put a lot of attention on reciting sutras, and it was a mark of great accomplishment. If you could recite like the whole Lotus Sutra, which I don't know, it's very long, the Lotus Sutra, recite it like three times in one day all the way through, or the Avatamsaka Sutra, you know?

[24:30]

Where is it? Yeah, well, yeah. I forget, somebody figured out, there was something I read about the way they figured out the... Did I blow it? No, you're still... Okay. They figured out how many words a second. It's just amazing. Any of you listen to the A's games, there's a color announcer named Ray Fossey that talks very fast, but he doesn't hold a candle to them. They often had a lot of followers, men and women both. And they had men teachers and women teachers. They were sometimes called to preach to royalty, which was a mark of great respect.

[25:33]

You know, this was in some way, in these cultures, it was a kind of a bureaucratic system. You know, you had to register with the government in order to practice, and you had to get the permission of the emperor, things like that. It's something that's just completely foreign to us, but it was just, that was just how it was, and also in Japan. So, at any rate, they didn't have difficulty doing that. And they, as I say, they were supported by loyalty, often. and had great convents or monasteries. They were abasses, some of them, and had a great number of students. Aside from these eating disorder aesthetic practices, they also had self-mutilation practices. which, I don't know, seems to me kind of big in China particularly, I don't know. The men did these things too. Some of it is patterned after a chapter in the Lotus Sutra or a story in the Lotus Sutra about Medicine King Bodhisattva who eats oils and incense and so on and then burns himself up as an offering to the Buddha.

[26:47]

So they do that or they burn off their fingers. It's appalling. And men were doing it also, but I think for women there was this notion of somehow, you know, finding purity in that way or doing something to become pure. Yes, and to purify the body in particular, I think so. We love, we are so devoted. We will do this. Yeah, and the Lotus Sutra, it's presented as just a wonderful thing for Medicine King to do. And then he burned for, I don't know, probably innumerable nayudis of kodis of kalpas, because that's how long everything in the Lotus Sutra is like that. Medicine King. And I forget which Buddha he becomes, but it might be Maitreya.

[27:50]

No, verily. Nothing holy. But there is the cutting off of all attachments, and the thing you're attached to most is your body. This was how it was justified. Yeah. But I thought the Buddha himself denounced ascetic practices, so why didn't he allow these things to happen? I think maybe that wasn't thought of as an ascetic practice. It was an offering. And also this is in the Lotus Sutra is written long after the Buddha died. So who knows? And it might, you know, the Lotus Sutra is full of so much fantastic, so many fantastic stories, it isn't necessarily, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that anybody was expected to take it literally. But these people did. And, you know, it wasn't not uncommon and, you know, Bodhidharma's first Disciple cut off his arm, they say, at any rate. That's the story. And Blanche, you know, one of the Blanche's sewing teachers cut off part of her finger in order to get permission to change teachers.

[28:59]

Was that Joseph's son? Mm-hmm. Did she take off a little of the little one? Yes, yes. There, and she went to Uchiyama, which is worth a lot actually, I think, but I don't know about cutting your finger off. Yeah. I was just wondering, we're taught now in this tradition not to think of Buddha as a god or something like that, but I mean, this understanding is very different than, I mean, you talk about this extreme devotional practice. I, well, yes and no. I don't know exactly. Probably different from how we see Buddha because we come from a tradition much influenced by the Lotus Sutra, by this notion that we are Buddha. So I'll get to that. I'm a little bit worried about, I mean I haven't gotten to Chan yet.

[30:03]

We're getting there. They also had lots of, yeah, excuse me. It's still going on in Asia. I've seen some of it at Tassajara. No, not the burning off of fingers, but the extreme asceticism. Well, the vegans, nothing. Never mind. Never mind. We won't go there. OK, they also there were lots of miracles and visions. And again, I think that was just that was the time. And also, that's something that Chan really discourages and Zen discourages. So, or at least does not encourage. You know, if you see something and you tell a teacher, they'll say, oh, that's nice. And then what else? Did you do? Did you? Are you going to need her? OK, so I want to just read a couple of these.

[31:08]

And these, you'll notice that they actually do sound rather Koan-like. So the first one is Wei Chan. She was in the Qing Jin Dynasty. Well, let's see. We can't tell. So she was 317 to 420. So her name was Deep Wisdom, Wei Zhan, of establishing Blessings Convent. Huizhong's secular name was Jun, and her family was originally from the city of Pengcheng, long a home to Buddhists. Of extraordinary countenance and high moral standards, Huizhong took as her vocation the saving of living beings from the suffering of birth and death. She found great joy in wearing her rough clothing and eating vegetarian food.

[32:09]

Once, when she was carrying rather than wearing her outer robe as she traveled over a mountain, she encountered a band of robbers. They tried to attack her with knives, but as proof of the power of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin chapter in the Flower of the Lost Scripture, otherwise known as the Lotus Sutra, which promises that help will be vouchsafed to those who call on Kuan Yin in times of distress, the robbers' hands were paralyzed. Foiled in the attempt to kill her, they wanted to take the robe she was carrying over her shoulder. Ray John laughed gaily and said to them, you wanted a lot, but what you're going to get is worth very little. And she handed over not only the robe she was carrying, but also her new lower skirt from inside the robe she was wearing. Shamed, the robbers tried to return both robes to her, but she tossed the clothing aside and went on. In the second year of the Jianyuan reign period, 344, she went south across the Yangtze River.

[33:11]

The Minister of Public Works, Ho Chung, respected her greatly and requested her to live in establishing Blessings Convent. That's one. Now, during the Liang Dynasty, Nanfang, 409 to 504, of Capital Office Convent, In the illegitimate kingdom of Gao Chang, nun, oops, she was a native of Gao Chang in the far northwest. At that time, there was a master of the law, Fa Wei, died about 500, whose vigor in the practice of religion surpassed all others. He was the chaplain for all the nuns in the kingdom of Gao Chang. Later, for she was the chaplain's spiritual friend of good discernment and influence, which I take to mean that she was at least as equal and maybe a teacher to him. Nan Feng suddenly said to Fa Wei, you, Acharya, are not yet perfect.

[34:13]

You may go to the kingdom of Kucha in Central Asia to Goldflower Monastery where you should listen to the monk, Zhe Yue, and then you will surely attain the superlative teaching. Faiyue heeded her advice and went to that monastery to see Chuiyue, who, delighted by his arrival, gave him a pint of grape wine and bid him to drink. Faiyue, startled, said, I have come to seek the superlative teaching, but instead you have offered me that which is unlawful and that which I am therefore not willing to drink. Chiriwe pushed him around and quickly ordered him to leave. Faiwe thought to himself, because I have come a long way, but have not yet come so far as to understand the purpose of this, perhaps I should not disobey, and gulped it down. Drunk, he vomited and dazed and confused, passed out, while Chiriwe took himself elsewhere. When Fa Wei regained consciousness, realizing that he had violated the monastic rule against drinking wine, in his great shame, he struck himself and in penance for what he had done, wished to take his own life.

[35:24]

As a consequence of this reflection, he attained the third fruit of Buddhist practice. In other words, he was awakened. Chi Wei returned and asked him, have you got it now? Fa Wei replied, yes, whereupon he returned to Gao Jiang. And then she has this miracle thing, she realizes he's coming before he comes and has a feast prepared for him, sends the nuns out to meet him and so on because she just knows. So she's magic. Bodhidharma, as perhaps you know, had four disciples. The second was a woman. And that's not talked about so much. And you know, there's a story about how he asks them each a question and he says, one, you got my skin, another one, my flesh and my bones and my marrow. Well, apparently she got the bones. And it's been, she's been downgraded over the years, unfortunately, but she did get the bones.

[36:31]

And she was an important teacher. The theory is that her name was preserved because she probably did have a lot of disciples. And so then they tended to keep her name alive. Her name was Tsung Cher Dashi. Maybe this is a good place to take a short break. Can we make it ten minutes? Five? Oh, it's supposed to be five? Oh, great. Could we just go on or how are you doing? Do you want to stand up or something? Okay, so now let's start up into the 600s and on, though the people that, well, I don't know, I didn't worry about it so much exactly, but at any rate, I don't want to get, we don't need to get that technical about it, when Chan started or how.

[37:50]

I'm studying the Lotus Sutra, so I'm kind of enmeshed in it, At any rate, Chan had a different view, as you may know. This is our predecessor. You know that Chan in China is Zen in Japan here. And there is a I guess I'd say an increase in emphasis, if that's possible, on the notion of emptiness and on the notion of no marks. So there's a kind of an equality and an implicit allowance of women's practice and there's less of an emphasis on purity. There's this notion of, I mean this is a Mahayana notion actually, but I think Zen kind of takes it further, that even the Buddha is empty.

[39:07]

And this notion of enlightenment, original enlightenment, in other words, that we're all already enlightened. Or as Dogen came to say, you know, we are the Buddha nature. It actually says that in the Lotus Sutra, which is much earlier, but became more popular, I think, in China later after the mid-400s. So it was easier for women to practice then. Again, as in the time of the life of the nuns, women had men students and men teachers and there was, you know, there was intermingling, although there tended to be, you know, women's monasteries and men's monasteries, but even so they did study together.

[40:09]

thing to read is in this notebook. It's an article, in the book it's called Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender. Jose Ignacio Cabezon is the editor and the article is Lin Chi, you know that's the Chinese name for Rinzai, Chan and Gender, the Rhetoric of Equality and the Rhetoric of Heroism by Miriam Levering. She's the woman that spoke here a few months ago. And she talks about this change in women's status. And the change in the language makes a difference. I mean, partly language reflects what we're thinking, but it also affects how we think and how we see things. The two people that she particularly singles out in that article are much later their contemporaries from the end of the 11th, the beginning of the 12th century, Dawei, who was in the Linchi line, and whom Grace will discuss tomorrow, and she'll talk about some of next week, excuse me, yes, and some of his students and his disciples, and Hongzhi,

[41:35]

who, 1091 to 1157, who is more in the Soto line, though he's not in our exact lineage, but he's somebody that he was, he's known as Mr. Silent Illumination. Dawei criticized him some, though they were also friends, I think. When Hung Jer died, he wrote to Dawei and asked him to take over his, the monastery, running the monastery. Dogen thought very highly of him, and Hangzhou was the abbot of Mount Diantong, which is where Ruijin was, Dogen's teacher, where Dogen studied. And he was also, he compiled koans, and he compiled the list of koans that became the Book of Serenity. He really emphasized the irrelevance of gender.

[42:40]

And in Miriam Levering's article, she has a lot of quotes, and I'm not going to read all of them, but I thought I would just read one, the kind of thing that he was saying. He describes the moment of awakening and he says, the real mark is the mark of no-mark, the real mind is the mind of no-mind, the real attainment is the no-attaining-attaining, the real activity is the no-activity-activity. In that condition, each and every existent phenomenon, Dharma, is within my power. If all marks appear in my person, all marks are beautiful. At such a moment, one does not see that there are such distinguishing marks as rich and poor, male and female, right and wrong, gain and loss. It is only because there are marks that you accept and marks that you reject that you are not able to join yourself to emptiness and experience equality with the Dharma realm of ultimate reality."

[43:44]

And he makes, there's lots of quotes like this where he says it just doesn't matter, it's completely beside the point. I think Dogen says somewhere, I can't resist this, skipping ahead to another country, it's such a great definition, he says enlightenment is when you can look at a person and not notice what they look like. Well, I was wanting to go into Miriam's article because of what it says about these people in general, but there's somebody I want to back up a little bit to talk about, Fuyo Dokai, and he was 1043 to 1118, so he was a little earlier than Dawei and Hangzhou, but they did

[44:46]

they did overlap some. Anyway, Fuyo Dōkai is one of our ancestors. The name may be familiar. When we chant the Buddhas and Ancestors, he's among the names that we chant. And he had a woman disciple, Tao Shen, and he also had a number of women granddaughters, I guess you'd say. And they are Chiran, Huiguang, and Fotong. So there are Dharma aunts. Dogen's aunties. Yes. Yes.

[45:58]

Or our great aunts. And Fuyo Dokai was much revered by Hangzhou because he he refused all recognition by the emperor. You know, the emperors would send them like purple robes. and invite them to come to the capital and teach, things like that, and offer them kind of, you know, rewards. And he would turn it down. He actually got, he was exiled for a while because he wouldn't accept these things. And the Hangzhou really admired him a lot. There's not that much known about most of these women, but there is a story about Weiguang. She did accept Where is she? I hate to try to find it in there. Oh, here it is. This is in the book.

[47:04]

This chart may not be, and if you want a copy of it, you can have it. What this is, is disciples from Tozan. so that this is our lineage over here, and these women are over here. But what the hell, you know? Often it's an aunt or an uncle is your best teacher, and you're closer to them than you are to your own parents in some ways. OK, so Hue Guang. This is in the Kaho'i Koans, and it's in this material here. the great teacher of pure wisdom, Weiguang. She was the abbess of the Miaoyi nunnery in the eastern capital. She came from a fan family of Zhengdu. In the early 1100s, when vestments were presented to various Chan elders in the palace, Weiguang was among them, which tells you that she was a very well-respected

[48:05]

teacher, and she probably had a lot of students. They didn't do that for just anybody, and I'm sure they didn't do it for women unless they were pretty well respected. At any rate, Huiguang was among them. The emperor commanded them to preach in turn. Huiguang was the last. She ascended the seat, and after the questions and answers were over, so there's like a shousan, She looked over the assembly and said, if it's a matter of talking about Chan and the way, well, these great Chan masters have already explained it all. At this point, what would you have me say? Haven't you heard how an ancient worthy said myriad words and explanations are just to make you be ever clear and free from ignorance? Since it is so, ultimately, how is it? And she covered her head with her robe. And then she was silent.

[49:08]

She was silent. And after a good while, she said, a patch robe covering my head, myriad concerns cease. At this point, I don't understand anything at all. Which is actually kind of bragging, yes, but hey. So I wanted to talk about two women ancestors. One of them, I'm named after her, one of my names. This is my, this is a iron woman. norman gave me this when i was just so it's it's traditional if you see she's so with someone who is not your route teacher then uh... to uh... have they give you two for them to give you a uh... iraq soon and uh... he gave me this towards the end of the practice period what he talked about iron grindstone lou during the practice period he lectured on the blue cliff record and that was one of the references of course one of them was to the fact that we

[50:22]

Since I sprained my ankle, we drove the wake-up bell. It was sort of an iron horse. So I have a special love for Iron Grindstone Lou. She's in two cases in the Blue Cliff record. In case 17, she's mentioned in the poem. And then in case 24, she's directly in it. The title of case 24 is Guishan and Iron Grindstone Lu. So she's right in the middle of it. So I'm going to read it and talk about it a little bit, but I cannot. do it justice in the time we have remaining. So if it's completely mystifying, please ask and I'll see what I can do. Though I would suggest to you that a wonderful thing to do would be to, if it grabs you in some way, just keep reading it and sit with it for a while, see what happens.

[51:25]

Case 24. Guishan and Iron Grindstone Liu Pointer, stand on the summit of the highest peak, and demons and outsiders cannot know you. Walk on the bottom of the deepest sea, and even the Buddha's eye cannot catch sight of you. Even if your eyes are like shooting stars and your intellect is like flashing lightning, still you won't avoid being like the spirit tortoise, dragging his tail, leaving traces. At this point, what is proper? To test, I'm citing this. Look. Iron grindstone Lou arrived at Guishan. Guishan said, old buffalo, so you've come. The grindstone said, tomorrow there's a great communal feast on Taishan. Are you going to go, teacher? Guishan relaxed his body and lay down. The grindstone immediately left.

[52:29]

I'm going to go through this and I'm going to come back. The nun, Iron Grindstone Lou, Lou was her family name, Iron Grindstone or grinding mill, Iron Grinding Stone because was like a stone struck spark, like a lightning flash. Hesitate and you lose your body and your life. She was known as she would grind people down to Dharma dust in Dharma combat. She was a very tough woman. In the path of meditation, if you get to the most essential place, where are there so many things? This meeting of adepts is like seeing horns on the other side of a wall and immediately knowing there's an ox, like seeing smoke on the other side of a mountain and immediately knowing there's a fire. When pushed, they move. When pressed, they turn about. Earlier, Guishan had said, after I die, I'll go down the mountain to an almsgiver's house and be a water buffalo.

[53:41]

so that he had referred, he thought of it, he called himself a water buffalo. Iron Grindstone Lu had studied for a long time. Her active edge was sharp and dangerous. People called her Iron Grindstone Lu. She built a hut a few miles from Gui Mountain. You know that Shan means mountain, so it means that he's Gui from, or he's named after his mountain. His name's called Guishan. One day she went to call on Guishan. When he saw her coming, he said, old buffalo, so you've come. The grindstone said, tomorrow there's a great communal feast on Mount Tai. Are you going to go, teacher? And then that's when he relaxed his body and lay down, whereupon grindstone left. All of you look. Throughout, they seem to be conversing. But this is not Chan, neither is it Dao.

[54:44]

Can it be understood by calling it unconcerned? Guishan is over 600 miles from Mount Tai. How, then, did Iron Grindstone Liu want to have Guishan go to the feast? Tell me, what was her meaning? This old lady understands Guishan's conversation. Fiber coming, thread going, one letting go, one gathering in. They answer back to each other like two mirrors reflecting each other without any reflection image to be seen. Action to action. They compliment each other. Phrase to phrase, they accord. People these days can be poked three times and not turn their heads. But this old lady couldn't be fooled one little bit. By no means is this an emotional view based on mundane truth. Like a bright mirror on its stand, like a bright jewel in the palm of the hand, when a foreigner comes, a foreigner is reflected. When a native comes, a native is reflected.

[55:46]

It's that she knows there is something transcendent. That's why she acts like this. Right now, you are content to understand this as unconcerned. Master Yan of Wuzhou said, don't fake having concerns as not having concerns. Time and time again, concern is born of unconcern. If you can immerse yourself in this and penetrate through, you will see that Guishan and Iron Grindstone Liu acting in this way is the same sort as ordinary people's conversation. People are often hindered by the words. That's why they don't understand. Only an intimate acquaintance can understand them thoroughly. So do you see that that's what it's, that's what it's, it's about intimacy, this story. I mean, in some sense, I suppose it doesn't even matter. This is a story about a Chan woman, and we can figure it out. But at any rate, I understand it to be about intimacy, that they talk to each other with a wonderful ease.

[56:55]

And he calls her old buffalo. He calls her in a way that's an old female buffalo. So that he's equating her with himself. I mean, this story about him is famous, that he said that he would be a water buffalo and he would be reincarnated as a water buffalo, basically. and he would be found with writing on his side. But at any rate, so he's known, so he's calling her his mate or his female equivalent, that's right. And he's demonstrating affection but also ease in this, you know, and he's her teacher. But he's kind of in that, you know, raising her up. There's an equality there. And then she just, you know, she's like, she says, oh, there's this picnic, you know, at Mount Tai.

[58:02]

Tai Shan is a mountain sacred to Manjushri. But the festival apparently is not, it's not like a deep religious festival. It would have been like a more lighthearted than that. And of course she knows that he's not going to go in reality. She's just asking him. And he just turned over and went to sleep. And then she left. You know, no residue. That's the thing, that's the reference in the pointer to the turtle. This turtle, apparently, it's smart enough to, it goes and lays its eggs, and it's smart enough to cover up its tracks by swishing its tail along the sand to cover up its footprints. But then the tail leaves the residue.

[59:05]

But these two, there isn't any. There's nothing. And there's that kind of intimacy and ease that they just, they understand each other. And she's an old cow, but maybe she's also, she's sort of like an old shoe, you know? They're like old shoes for one another. And there's a real, there's a real, And also he says, you know, he says, old Buffalo, so you've come. You know, which is a welcoming thing to say. Does anybody have any comments on this or any questions about it? She was apparently much feared. She was in case 17. Where is it? And when she set up a hut on Mount Gray, people from all over couldn't cope with her.

[60:39]

And it says somewhere else that she was like a bomb about to go off. You never knew when she might get you, yes. I think so. I imagine so. The, you know, the other story in Case 17 is not, is not so clear cut. It's more with an equal also. One day, Tsu-Hu came proudly to call on her and he asked, You're Iron Grindstone Liu, aren't you? And she said, I don't presume. And he asked, ìDo you turn to the left or turn to the right?î And she said, ìDonít tip over, teacher.î And he struck her while her words were still in the air.

[61:49]

So, you know, she doesnít come across as so terrible there, you know. She didnít hit him. Of course, the commentary says maybe she should have. But she was seen as a teacher, I think so. She's one of the few women that's actually named in these koans. You know, there's the last class I'm going to talk about the tea ladies. You know, there's lots and lots of women in these koans, but they're not usually named. You know, they're the tea ladies, or the lady that was at the crossroads, or whatever. And they point the way, and they wake people up, and they challenge folks. Probably they had names, but they don't get named here. But she does get named and described at some length. So is this clear or is it so obscure that there's nothing to ask about it?

[63:01]

Okay. And the other one that I wanted to talk about is I can't pronounce this right. It's Moshon, M-O-S-H-A-N, but the way that Miriam pronounces it is not that. It's like Moshon, I think, but I'm not clear about it. And she's described by Yuan Wu. He's the commentator in the, you know, in this, the Blue Cliff record, there's lots of different levels of commentary and he's the one that's, he does, he did the pointers and he did a lot of the commentaries and the interlineations on the verses, those are his.

[64:01]

And he wrote about Mo Shan. She was a contemporary of Linji's, of Rinzai's. She had many students, including men. And there was a man, a monk named Quan Chi, who went to visit her. And he kind of said, I'm going to go expose this woman. And if she's a real master, I'm going to study with her. But if she's not, I'm going to destroy her. I'm just going to take care of this person. And he went to her and challenged her and he was very kind of rude. He didn't bow to her or anything. And he asked an attendant to call her to the Dharma Hall and she came and he was kind of rude and he challenged her. She responded well, and I didn't want to I'm going to tell a different story actually that story is a little bit complicated to Explain and it was it turned on some puns on her name and I

[65:25]

and the mountain and so on. But at any rate, she bested him. And he acknowledged that she was a teacher. And then, after losing that first challenge, he asked her, what is the person who lives on this mountain, Mo Shan, which again, Shan is mountain and she was named after the mountain, right? So Mo Shan is both she and the name of the mountain, okay? What is this person that lives on this mountain like? And she replied, she has neither male distinguishing marks nor female distinguishing marks. Quan Ju pressed the question. If she is so enlightened, why doesn't she use her power as a bodhisattva to transform herself into a masculine form?

[66:31]

You know, that was a traditional thing, that a woman might get right up there, and then when she became a Buddha, she'd change into a man. That was Tara's vow that she was going to become a Buddha in a female body. Even in the Lotus Sutra, that's often, the Lotus Sutra is cited as one of the few sutras that says that women can be enlightened, but the story is the eight-year-old daughter of the Naga king, and she is said to be enlightened. and is called before the assembly and appears and demonstrates great magical powers and enlightenment. probably Sharaputra, I don't know who, but I think it's Sharaputra says, but how could she be a Buddha? Don't you know a woman's body is foul or something like that? And she says, well, I'm going to be a Buddha and I'm really already there.

[67:36]

And then she transforms into a male body and goes off to her Buddha land. So that was the, That was the usual thing, but now in Chan, there's this notion of marks. You know, the marks of a Buddha, there's 32 marks of a Buddha, or a mark is like a distinguishing characteristic. And so marks are empty. That's what Hang Gio was talking about. There's nothing substantial in any of it. So she says, she has neither the male distinguishing mark nor the female distinguishing mark. And Quancher says, if she's so enlightened, why doesn't she use her power as a bodhisattva? One of the powers of a bodhisattva is to be able to change into different shapes. So why doesn't she use her power as a bodhisattva to transform herself into a masculine form?

[68:37]

The nun Möshan Liaozhan replied, she's not a goddess, which is a reference to the Virmalakirti Sutra perhaps, you know, the goddess comes and makes, Sariputra's the butt of a lot of jokes, and he gets it in that sutra too, she changes with him and makes him into a woman, he's very upset. Okay, she's not a goddess, she's not a ghost, what should she become? So Mao Shan wins this exchange and demonstrates that she really is truly enlightened and shows him that the form doesn't matter. And he actually went on to study with her for years and took care of the garden. And then he went on later to study with Lin Chi. And when he was a teacher himself, he would say that he was equally helped and equally enlightened by the two of them, he said. And he would say, I got half a scoop from Lin Chi and half a scoop from Mother Mo.

[69:44]

So that's... Enough for tonight. Do you have any questions about any of it? Yeah. So these women, a lot of the women you talked about, you said on a lot of students, do they ever show up in any of the litany of the church? It's very rare. It's very rare. Lou does. Iron Grindstone Lou is in one of them. But it's virtually not at all. And it's not clear why. You know, partly what happens is that women just kind of slip off the charts. And, you know, maybe somebody later on just kind of writes, there's a lot of stuff that happened with, you know, there was a lot of polemics that went on and continues to go on, I'm sorry to say. And so people got written out. And that, I think, happens to women more than to men.

[70:52]

And so that's what happened. And I also, I have this theory, which is maybe just wishful thinking, but that there's probably, translating the documents about women is not the highest priority. And that maybe there's a lot of material in the women's monasteries that still exist. in China that just hasn't been translated. So we'll see. Because from we know enough to know, it seems to me it's kind of logical that there's a lot of material out there or that there was a lot of material. And also, we'll be talking about more of it. There's a good deal about Dawei's disciples. And he, more than a hundred, spoke about women and talked about how there was no difference. But he didn't actively promote women and talk about particular women the way Dawei did.

[71:56]

And Grace will talk about that. next week, there in the Linji lineage. But in China, there wasn't such a great distinction. Like I said, Hangzhi wrote to Awei and said, could you take care of my monastery? And so on. And the monasteries weren't even Chan, particularly. They were Buddhist, and sometimes there was a Chan person in head of it, and sometimes there was somebody else. So we don't have to make the kind of distinctions that we tend to make here these days between Rinzai and Soto. We can have these women. And you think about all the stories that we tell, and you hear lectures and so on. And people are always using examples from the Blue Cliff Record and so on. And most of those people are Rinzai rather than Soto anyway. It doesn't matter. So unless there's something else, I want to turn it over to Grace so she can say a little bit about next week. Yes, ma'am. I want to say a little bit about the lineage.

[73:01]

The lineage is essentially a male vice. And the women teachers, at the time of about the year 1000, there were women. Previously in the Tang Dynasty and in about the year 1000, there were women teachers. But of the biographies that were compiled, there were 950 monks biographies written and one woman, who I think was Mo. And by the time Da Hui came, his two were first show up in his lineage chart, or the stories were there. The stories showed up around the year maybe 1100, 1200. By then, there were getting up to 16 lineage holders. But subsequent rewritings of the biographies of eminent monks and nuns deleted them. Yes.

[74:05]

Yeah. In that particular year. And it's known that around that time, that we're talking about thousands, you know, maybe 90,000 monks and, you know, 12,000 nuns. I mean, it was about 15% women. So they were there in big numbers. And their writings tended to be saved more as poems, you know, and as literary. And they were excluded specifically. In fact, at the time when Chinese men invented this idea of a lineage. This was particularly to go man to man without the need of any women. You know, they could now reproduce. And in the Confucian ideology, this was great. You know, this was carrying on the family so they could do it without women. So this was purposeful of excluding the women. But the women, so the women were purposely not part of the lineage.

[75:07]

And as things got bad politically for women, then they could practice less. So that's always been the case. But we do have these, now that we have a women's movement, and I think women tend to get pretty excited because when they look back historically, you can see times when women had power and then times when they were pushed aside. And let's say we don't want it to happen again. So we want to make a lot of it. But now that we have the women's movement and women scholars, now they're really digging for the women teachers. And that's why we now are finding, oh, here's some words and here's some sermons. And they're really focusing on it. And those are the ones that I'll be presenting. And so that you have a chance to go over it in detail. There's quite a bit of reading, but just consider that you can keep these and reread them, but I wanted to get them out. These are reprints. Yes, please.

[76:09]

Just pass the pile. Wait a sec. Let's make sure that we've got them. So here, this goes with this and that. So these are different things? Yeah, there's two articles. One is images of women in the Chan and the other is Da Hui and his female disciple Miao Dao. And then this is an overview which takes care of 2500 years of women in Buddhism, but it's a really excellent overview. Yeah. So it's not that we'll discuss all of this in great detail, but I thought you would like to have something that you could refer to yourself and study. I think I just want to say that also some of this stuff, the women's work, there's like there's fragments, you know, or there's references to it, which is the way with a lot of the literature. Yeah, but we do have several, several sermons that were given by both of the Dao Hui's disciples, Miao Tzung and Miao Dao, and several sermons and the stories of their lives and the koans that they studied and what they said, what their teacher said.

[77:31]

And so that's very rich. Oh, yes. We also have a syllabus, but the copier died. I think it's either out of paper or has a jam. So if anyone has some facility, they might want to make more copies. And those of you who don't come to Zen Center on a daily basis can, you know, be the ones to take the first copies. There's about half as many as we need. And the rest we'll put out here later for those who come by on a daily basis. How do you usually end classes? Or do you want to do the Refugees and Colleagues? There are a lot of people here that know it. So let's just do it and join in. It's the same thing repeated three times. So the second time you start, you initiate each line of the Dutian, which I assume means the second time.

[78:32]

So we'll just do it, okay? So join me if you know it, and join in soon. If you don't, you'll get it.

[78:46]

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