I bow to trace the truth of the Tatagata's words. Well, Happy New Year. I'm very happy. December 26th, I had a surgery on my knee, which was due to an exercise where my leg slipped out when I was stretching. But it's kind of like cosmetic surgery for people who do Zazen. And then I had a knee lift. that they fixed up my knee in a way that will probably make my zazen a little easier. I had already established a habit of sitting on a mountain of cushions, and I'm hoping that it will make getting up and down off the tan and sitting a little less noticeable. And actually, I think people worry a little bit about wrecking their knees as well as they should during Zazen.

[01:01]

But in my case, since I used to ride motorcycles and horses, probably a Zazen injury was best for me to keep me in my place. So actually, I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to walk in, you know, since the surgery was the 26th of December, which is a little more than a week ago. But it's very nice to be able to appreciate something about our modern technology, you know, because it does so much damage to everything it touches. I would have suffered with this hardship, I'm sure they would have called it water on the knee or some descriptive thing, for my whole life, unless the technology was available. So it's nice to appreciate what we can. But also, it's very important to appreciate and expose ourselves in times where we are definitely not the master of our fate. And actually we never are, but, you know, we kind of think that we are.

[02:06]

And not only that, our practice offers us some possibility certainly to be the master of circumstances and conditions so that we We don't make things worse when we're between a rock and a hard place. Actually, that's what I saw when I was in my dentist's office. I was looking up while he was working on my mouth, and there was a rock in a hard place, and he said, you are here. But I think that we're there pretty much of the time and how we tolerate being there is a very important aspect of our practice. And today I wanted to talk about women's practice in particular through this scroll by Rengetsu Ni, a Buddhist nun, and it's a little bit faint from this distance. But I will tell you what it says, and I also will thank Jerry for helping me tell you what it says.

[03:10]

I bought it in Japan recently, and through my limited Japanese, I came to learn that it was a New Year's poem. And it was on special paper, it has skull flecks, because it is New Year's paper. And so as I was talking about the meaning, I went through syllable by syllable with the art dealer, who's very reliable, about what it said and what it meant. But neither of us could overcome the language difficulties, which Jerry sensibly overcame, because it's a poem about listening to the first sounds of a baby bird. And she said to me, well, how can it be in New Year's? How can it happen in New Year's when it's a poem about a baby bird? So I guess we could have the same sense of the first sound of the saw as well.

[04:15]

Somehow it doesn't sound as sweet to me. It's my first sitting here trying to talk over it. So, anyway, as I remembered, you know, these conversations that went back and forth between me and the art dealer about what the meaning of the poem was and how it had to do with New Year's, there was a move that, as she said this to me later, and I said, no, no, it's a New Year's poem, it's a New Year's poem, sticking to the literal discussion we'd had. And then I remembered, after she spoke to me about it, this one little thing he'd done, which is a characteristic movement in Japanese, which means, you are so full of crap. You are so wrong, but I would never be rude enough to say so, and it's this. And he had made this motion several times when I had said to him, this is a New Year's poem, right?

[05:17]

It's about New Year's. And he would say, this is complicated, musakashii, and tip his head to the side. And so after she said to me, how could a baby bird be seen in New Year's? I said, oh, that's what he meant. So I'm going to read the poem to you before I start really talking about the subject of the talk. Upon hearing the first bush warbler of spring, amid the plum blossoms, I hear the first burst of a song. Too young yet to give a full-throated performance. Still, what a joy. And what I wanted to talk about was how there is a balance in our practice between submitting and following the way and making it your own. And in order to make it your own, at least from my perspective, one has to have a very strong human connection.

[06:21]

And for myself, in wishing to be ordained, there was something that was missing for me, which was, well, what is a nun anyway? And what did they do anyway? And as much as I loved and truly do love the practice itself, the human connection to women was completely absent. And I must say, What a lovely, what a joy. Not yet full-throated. I must acknowledge Susan Green. Susan Green was a Sangha member here for many years and actually has a lot to do with my getting this scroll and also my giving it to BCC. When Susan Green, she was my size, which I'm 5'10", 5'10 and a half, but she outweighed me quite substantially, and she also had broken down a door, I think, of her house or somebody's house once, so she was a very powerful woman.

[07:31]

But when she gave her way-seeking mind talk here, She wept the entire time, and the one thing that I remember was such severe physical abuse, her father pulled her fingernails out. So it was very moving. And one woman, Susan Green, asked, why aren't there any female images on the altar? Well, it would only be Susan Green who would ask that. The rest of us are going along, making it our own by submitting and just enjoying what's there. But she would be the one to raise the question. And when she raised it, it kind of was like, oh, So I became interested in, well, what was their practice? And was there a practice? And what does it mean? And what does it represent? I mean, in our time now in America, fortunately, there's really no division and really, I think, very little if no discrimination against women.

[08:41]

So we're very happy about that. But this aspect That's missing. The feminine side of the practice has been noted by others. I mean, Akin Roshi made a statement about how we really needed to wipe the samurai accretion from our practice. And in order to do that, there's not just the taking away, there's bringing forth what needs to come forth from the other side. So it's important, I think, so my experience in Japan was to go to women's temples, just to see, and I was overwhelmed by the sweetness, which I never experienced at any of the large male-dominated temples that I'd been to. There was this kind of sweetness, almost a singsong quality and beauty. And recently, on one of my trips,

[09:43]

I lured Hoitsu Suzuki's wife, Chitose-san, to come with me to Kyoto for traveling and visiting these temples. And she is a wonderful example of women's practice and sort of had been a temple slave, although she loved it and was very accomplished in flower arranging and other things, but she gave up her interest really to serve the sangha, and that's the life of a a priest's wife, and one which my husband feels very well for me. Very dedicated. But anyway, she hadn't been to Kyoto, I think, since she'd been a schoolgirl, which was just incomprehensible. And so she could justify it because she was studying haiku, and she could create some haiku on our trip. But we went to one temple, Kodai-ji, which was Hideyoshi's widow, Nene, her temple that she established.

[10:49]

And now it's, I think, run by men, but it was built during her lifetime. And Chitose-san, who is very accomplished in viewing temples as a Soto Zen wife, was very much knocked over by by the different feeling at this temple. And to the best of my understanding between her English and my Japanese, her expression for it was that it just met you where you were. There was nothing grand about it. It was just perfectly beautiful and very ordinary in a certain sense and not overwhelming. So this surprised her. The grandeur and majesty of the temples in Japan is very awe-inspiring, but the quiet beauty was something else.

[11:51]

And so I wanted to talk a little bit about Rengetsu's life, which I think will help you understand a little bit more about the sound of the bush warbler. I'll give you the exact years. She was born in 1791 and she was the daughter of a geisha and a samurai and illegitimate, so to speak. And she was, an adoption was arranged in the home of a Pure Land priest. Some of you know that. Yes, the Pure Land school Does it turn off? It's on. Okay. So she was an illegitimate child who was adopted in the home of a Pure Land priest.

[13:10]

And some of you know the Pure Land school are the ones that chant rather than meditate. And they have some wonderful beliefs in the Promised Land. in the Pure Land, the Western Paradise. But the state of mindfulness that they engender with the chant is very familiar to us. But in her lifetime she did study both Zen and the esoteric school of Buddhism, which is Shingon. In any case, she was very well educated by the priest, and also in martial arts, and in art, and calligraphy, and poetry, and she served in, you know, as women in her class did, in the imperial, to serve the imperial family in some way, and then she was returned to an arranged marriage as a teenager.

[14:15]

and it was a very unhappy marriage and there's some suggestion that her husband was drunk and abusive and however that I think she separated from that husband I think that she had two or three children in that marriage and separated from that husband and he died after that. So after that marriage she married again and This time she was very happily married, but again, her husband died. And by the time the second husband died, I think she had given birth to either four or five children, and all but one of them had died, which was not an uncommon experience during that era. So she moved back to Chionji, I think a small temple within Chionji which was the head temple of the Pure Land sect with her adopted father and she lived there and when he died

[15:23]

She had no place to go because as a woman she would not be allowed to serve as the priest at the temple, sub-temple she was living in. And so she faced, I think she still had one child. She faced the difficulty of making a living as a single woman. in a time when that was very hard. So she thought about her options and she was actually very skilled at the game of Go. And some of you may know the game of Go with the black and white stones. is to chess, what chess is to checkers. It's an extremely complex game. But she was also, we can know by this decision, a very practical woman because she didn't feel that her male students would like losing to her. So she decided that she could not be a goat teacher, but instead decided to become a potter.

[16:38]

And she had a little hovel, and she would go and haul her clay herself. And so she began doing this, and her work was extraordinary. And little by little, she built up quite a reputation and she moved around quite a lot. She also lost the last child sometime after she left the temple. That child also died. So she was a woman who suffered extreme hardship in finding her way. not becoming embittered or defeated. So I think this is a very important something to know about her. Even though we're instructed not to pick and choose in studying the way, in Japanese, I think it's in one of Buchiyama's books, maybe in Refining Your Life, there's an expression which is

[17:48]

We don't confuse miso and kuso. Miso is this soup paste, which is kind of brown, thick, and very smelly. And kuso is shit. So it's very important that if something requires a different approach. We don't blindly adhere to some concept of non-discriminating mind, but we really pay attention. So the reason I wanted to talk about Ren Getsu's life was in my own finding my way as a nun or a priest, I became aware of what looked like trouble, you know, discriminating mind, the difference between men and women's practice. But then again, we have to know the difference between miso and kuso. So, as some of you may know, the difficulty and the discrimination actually was not initiated by the women according to history.

[19:00]

According to history, it is said that the Buddha refused three times to establish a woman's order, even though it was to be led by his aunt Mahapajapati. And when he was asked the last time by Ananda, and he refused, Ananda asked him the question, is it true that women can become enlightened as men? And he said, yeah, okay, we'll have a woman's order, or words like that in Pali. And so, Rengetsu's life and her way represent a long tradition of difficulty for women in this practice. For example, as late as the early 1900s, Soto-shu, which is the sect that we derive our practices from, dedicated 180,000 yen a year per monk and 600 yen per year per nun.

[20:05]

So the women had a harder time just staying alive. And this was my conclusion to part of why it is that when the practice was brought to us from Japan, even though there were Japanese nuns and even in China, though there were Chinese nuns, in fact, in the year 1021, There were 61,240 nuns by census in China. You would think that one of them had had something to say. And that it would be worthy of note within the records and teachings that have been passed on to us. And more recently, those records of the nuns, both in the Sung dynasty in 1021 and so on, and the Ming dynasty are being translated.

[21:13]

And they have been deleted from official records. And of course, the women's lineage is not part of the patriarchy or the patriarchal lineage that we chant. So, even though there were female Dharma heirs, but it's not entirely clear what all the factors were, and I'm not that interested in all of the factors, but really in understanding what were the qualities that these women developed that were there. therefore absent from the teachings that have been presented to us. For example, when I was looking for the rengetsu that I have at home, before I bought this one, I bought one here in America. But when I was looking for it, I found that Bodhidharma on the back wall, which I also loved, over there.

[22:16]

And it says, externally, cut off all relationships. Internally, do not stir the mind. When your self resembles a solid wall, you can enter the way of Zen. So it has that wonderful ferocious mastery quality of the practice that has been brought to us. And this song of the baby bush warbler has not been heard so much in our practice. So that's the part that really interests me. In fact, recently I was reading an account of Maizumi Roshi's teaching a couple of his disciples. And in particular, Daido, Lory, who is now Daido Roshi, when he was a student one day he came in to Maezumi's room to have his doksan and he said, I have transcended life and death in Zazen.

[23:18]

And Maezumi Roshi leapt up, put his arms around Daido's neck and began to strangle him. And he continued strangling him. And from Daido's perspective, you know, he really struggled. And finally he took his fist and punched Maezumi in the face. At which point Maezumi said to him, so you've transcended life and death, have you? But it would be hard to imagine Maezumi having that same teaching available for his female students. And so how it is that women enter and transcend life and death is a different matter and a different teaching in certain ways. The Soto Zen nuns, for example the same ones who got the 600 yen as compared to the 180,000 have a wonderful expression which is the symbol of their teaching and their practice is the plum blossom In Japan, the plum blossoms come out very early in spring and often there's still snow

[24:44]

And so they need to be rather hardy. If we're going to see any plums, that's the same about the nuns. So the expression is strong enough to be gentle even in adverse conditions. And this is their teaching. So in trying to understand Rengetsu, I'd like to share a little more of what I think her poems illustrate about what has been lost from the nuns' teaching. First of all, there's the loveliness. really bringing out the beauty. And I think that the one monk who I think does that so well is Ryokan in his poetry. It's very beautiful and gentle and defeated, which is what we could say about the nun's work.

[25:46]

So, in illustrating the loveliness... Yes. Defeated. defeated in a sense, imagine what it would be like now as a woman to not be able to go to Tassajara to practice, or to not be able to practice at Berkeley Zen Center, or to not be able to practice at San Francisco Zen Center. Since the women's order was separate, it was the exceptional teacher that would allow women to enter the going concern monasteries of the day. So in terms of the loveliness, evening plum blossoms. As the night advances, the fragrance of the blossoms perfumes both the sleeves of my black robe and the recesses of my heart. Upon hearing the bells at Yoshimizu, the echo of the bell at Yoshimizu, I am here too, in a black robe set against the white mist.

[27:12]

Early summer water. The blossoms have fallen. The fetters of my heart have also loosened, and it has become summer. A rivulet murmurs, cool and clear. Change of garments. I'll be changing into my summer robes today, but my heart is still stained with the color of spring blossoms. I noticed that also in her poetry there's a lot of reference to clothes. In her case, robes, more so than I've seen in some of the poetry by the men. Another quality which shows up not only in Rengetsu, but in most of the women that I have studied, is the love of nature, which also shows up quite well in Ryokan's poetry. Plum blossoms. Eagerly awaiting the bush warblers, the lovely plum trees along my garden wall burst into bloom.

[28:34]

You know, there's something I need to say too about the bush warbler. The bush warbler is always associated with these plum blossoms of spring and is a symbol of endurance and renewal. And the bush warbler itself has a particular sound. I'm not a bird mimic, but the sound of the bush warbler is supposed to be like Hokyo-ko, which Hokyo-ko are the Japanese words for the Lotus Sutra. So this is why the bush warbler has been such a powerful image. So let's look at some of the aspects of failing without bitterness. This is actually the scroll that I... I own this scroll with this poem and it's one of her favorites.

[29:37]

It's called, A Trip During Cherry Blossom Season. And when, I don't know if any of you have been to Japan during cherry blossom season, but it's a big happening and families will travel hundreds of miles to sit under the tree that their family has sat under for every generation. and watching the blossoms fall is watching the impermanence of life even through the many generations. So people are thronging in trains and inns and in this particular time, Rengetsu was traveling but did not have enough stature to secure a place at an inn. More important people were placed there, so she slept outside. A trip during cherry blossom season. No place at the inn. But I find consolation sleeping beneath the hazy moon and the cherry blossoms.

[30:42]

And actually, this is the first poem of hers that I saw that tipped me off. Hey, there are ladies here. As a nun gazing at the deep colors of autumn, clad in black robes, I should have no attractions to the shapes and scents of this world. But how can I keep my vows gazing at today's crimson maple leaves? So the qualities that the nuns bring forth and their life conditions, I think, are very important for us practicing in America today. First of all, they had very little ability to be supported by the institution, which is true for most of our practices, even those of us that are priests. So they had to find a way

[31:57]

to earn a living and bring their practice to their life occupation. The other thing is that they had virtually no possibility of being recognized for their accomplishment in Zen, which means that they just practiced for the sake of practice itself, which I think is very true for most of us who will not be recognized as Zen masters. And they also help us to understand the ways that those who have been excluded need to continue finding their way, making it their own way, without bitterness. So maybe now that you have, I have one more actually.

[33:01]

The other thing is that, which is something I think is important for women, is that they really, all of the nuns whose writing I've read refer to the other nuns because it was such a rare thing and there's a lot of friendship between the nuns because there's some scarcity to practitioners. So here is hers for the young nuns that she sees. Seeing young nuns on their begging rounds. First steps to the long path to truth. Please do not dream your lives away. Walk on to the end." And the last one, which I'll try to read without weeping too much, is for her children. Where's that chainsaw when I need it?

[34:15]

This is written at Sakurai Village is dedicated and there was a very important samurai meeting prior to a battle at Sakurai Village in which a lord and his son knew that they would not return alive from this. So he said goodbye to his son, and so the village has a very strong sentiment of the parting and loss of the beloved. At Sakurai Village, to my beloved children, my final message. Flowers blooming with all their heart. in lovely Sakurai village So This is all of our fate and the importance of blooming completely Whatever the conditions of your life

[35:36]

And this is the essential teaching of the nuns. So, do you have questions? Well, I'd like to thank you for your grace, especially in Susan's role, and also your scholarship into the poems, and your deep appreciation of the wife. I wanted to touch on the thing you mentioned Aiken. what we've done with our chance.

[36:54]

among the practices of Buddhism, this one has that same kind of quality. It doesn't have to have that repressive or aggressive or bellicose Well, thanks for bringing that up. I think it's a good point to look at. I wanted to go over that quote from Meikin Roshi, who wasn't actually talking about the warrior ship in the war making that the Zen Roshis had supported. But solemn faces and overemphasis on great determination and endurance reflect our samurai inheritance, an accretion on the Buddhadharma that should be wiped away." So I think that exactly what you say.

[38:23]

All of the emphasis, as I described in my Zumi so clearly, on this force and power of the practice is what first meets the eye in this darkness and it certainly will continue to have dominance and we don't want to throw it away but we could bring forward the teaching of the nuts. And we could bring forward some balance that gives us not just pushing aside but something else. And I think it's most relevant to our life in America today. Yeah. Ross? Thank you, Grace. I think this understood your reference to Maizumi Roshi and that story with Daido Roshi. Did you... Yes. Did you say that Maipi Roshi didn't have a teaching available to him in order to... No.

[39:26]

No, actually I only told part of that story, so let me tell it again. So after Daito walked out of the room, still alive, he had bruises on his neck and he ran into Genpo. who now has a Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City. And Genpo said, looked at his neck and said, I see you've been talking to Roshi about transcending life and death. And so what I think is, what I surmised from that, since my teacher hasn't done that to me yet, and I would be very surprised if he did, that that was something that he was clearly comfortable with Daido and Genpo, but I didn't know if he would be comfortable with it with Chozen. And I didn't say he didn't have any teachings available, but really that there's different teachings that are appropriate in both cases.

[40:27]

In the case of men, I think, as a psychologist, the prominent ego defense that presents itself in Zen practice is that of competence and mastery, and so submission is very important. But in the case of women, this tendency to submit and blend in is an ego problem because the teachers can really appreciate it too much, the women serving them. And so bringing out women's independence and strength requires a different approach. So I think that's, I don't know how Maizumi taught women and there weren't examples so much available. We do know he had sex with some of his female students. And so I don't know what all else he did to help. Paul, did you want to say something? Yeah. It seems to me that this thing that Amai Hiroshi was calling samurai accretion predates Zen in Japan and Chan.

[41:31]

I can even argue that the Buddha himself sitting for seven days determined not to get up until he was enlightened as the same. Yeah, it does. And as we know in sports, I mean, I see Zazen as sport, I mean, especially with sports injuries now. We all generally see men and women performing the same sport together on the same team. So this is a new adventure that we have in America. I noticed when I went And I have stayed in male monasteries in Japan as well as female. The hours are different and the women need more sleep and I assume they need more sleep because they get more sleep. They don't get up until 6 or 5 and the men are getting up at 2.30 and they do different things. if we're competing essentially in the same sport, physically we won't necessarily have the same stamina.

[42:48]

And we may, but we may not. And different qualities will come forth. Alan? Something about what you just said reminded me that was part of the in the Theravada tradition, the status is radically different. The women's order as such, in Theravada, was allowed to die. And yet nuns' practice throughout And the men take the full Vinaya and women only take nine precepts.

[43:58]

And lately it's been revived through Mahayana. But the story, what was really interesting was what they did all day. And it was an astonishing experience for the monks because they discovered that the nuns did all the things that they did. Plus, they did the cooking and washing. For the monks. Yeah. But what was really amazing was for the monks to see monks understand that the disconnect was so vast in that patriarchal lineage.

[45:06]

I'm not a scholar of Buddhism by any means. No, neither am I. Yes, you are. But I'm a bit wary of the overlay of Western feminist principles as a way to that might just replicate dualistic thinking and it could be that some of these masculine elements are attractive to feminist principles as an incorporative element. I also come from a Rinzai tradition, which is even more accentuated in many ways that you describe. But I also come from a ballet tradition, which is very strict in terms of those practices that attract female fluidity and all of these kind of essentialized qualities. But I would hate for us to err on those extreme sides of the question.

[46:11]

Right. In fact, the comment I made after the quote by Akin Roshi is, yes, it is important to acknowledge the enduring gentleness of women's practice, but we should also acknowledge, you know, that they can kick some booty too, you know, and that's not my point. My point is that when they were doing all the washing and ironing for the monks, and when they were doing the same practice they hardly had any time to write down their teaching and therefore their teaching has been lost to us. And there are both nuns like Rangetsu who emphasize the lovely and the living in these harsh conditions with equanimity. But there are also nuns like Sozen Nakazawa, who lived in Japan, who used that stick as much as any of the male Rinzai training monasteries.

[47:11]

And there are also some nuns in the Ming Dynasty who are known for this same. The point is that the writings have been lost.

[47:19]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ