Good morning. When I usually see someone walk in with a pile of books, I think, oh no, it's one of those lectures. But I'm only going to use them a little bit, so rest easy. Before I start, I'd like to mention something that I think those of us who come on Saturdays often don't get a chance to do. Monday morning talks, which to me are one of the great gifts that we offer here, the Sangha, and those are the beginners, the way-seeking mind talks, where people talk about where their lives are now, or how they came here, that the traditional talk is sort of how you came here, and it may start before you were born, or it may start, you know, a year ago.

[01:10]

But if you can get up on Monday morning, Zazen is at five. I never make it at that time, but I try as often as possible to make it by 5.40. It's a great opportunity to feel closer to our Sangha and to get more comfortable here. And it's always a gift. At least that's my experience that people give those talks. Today I'd like to talk about two things. that in a way to me are the same and run in sort of contrapuntal themes. So it's hard for me to talk about them in a linear fashion, but I'll try to make as much sense of them as I can for you.

[02:11]

The first is the role of images and the role for me personally of images in Buddhism. And the other is women. And my experience and the experiences of others as women or a woman in Buddhism, especially as it relates to Buddhism. It's very hard for me to separate these two. Because of, I guess I think also of the relationship of what we call role models and images. And somehow, whether they're poetic images or historical images, they get sort of confused for me in my mind. Maybe not confused, but they blend.

[03:18]

When I, what made me think about talking about women here on a Saturday was that we have women's sessions now, one-day sittings, and often the theme there is something to do with women. But it's very seldom that we talk in that way here on Saturdays for Dharma talks. But when we think of how, of the interconnectedness of all of us, it seems that it's all right to give this kind of talk here today. And if you don't think so, let me know, but you won't convince me. About 20 some years ago, Edward Konza talked here.

[04:30]

He was teaching at the university then. And Edward Konza, probably at that point, was the great translator into English. He was German originally, left Germany, grew up, then was in England, and came here to speak on Buddhism. He didn't particularly like Zen. He thought it was sort of fundamentalist, and he didn't go for fundamentalist religions. And he often, in his talks, put it down. But Suzuki Roshi asked us, all of us who could, to go and listen to those, let him lecture. And at some point, I did get to hear him speak, at Cal, but one of the things that stands out for me in his speaking, and I keep remembering more than anything else, more than his translations and more of his teaching on the Sutras, is his saying that Buddhism in the West was going to have to come to deal with two forces in the Western world.

[05:48]

And this was going to be the big challenge was to succeed and grow here. One was democracy and lending and resolving the issue between a patriarchal form and democracy. And the other was women. And I think we've been working on it for a long time, 25, 26 years. And I'm not sure where we are, but things change. That's one thing we all know. We've been around Buddhism at all. I would like to do something that is hard, one of the hardest things for me, and that is to chant something. Some of you have heard it at Tassajara. And before I do, I am going to just read a little tiny bit about the translation from Buddhist wisdom books by Edward Kansa.

[06:52]

The invocation, and this is the invocation, relates to the invocation we did at Tassajara when the Diamond Sutra was read. I've got to say a little bit about what it sounded like because everybody would read part of the Diamond Sutra because it was too long to read the whole thing. So you'd hear all these murmurs of voices so everybody would choose their part and read and it would go on in this sort of lovely muttering of togetherness. And some of us only read the parts we could memorize because it was so dark in the zendo that with my eyes I couldn't read from the book. But anyway, then as time would come, the person would start the introduction with the voices still going on, would start softly blending with all the sounds, and then the voice then would get louder as the voices fell away.

[08:04]

And to me, it was just really beautiful. Anyway, the way this begins as homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. And Kansa said the word Bhagavati, which I have rendered as lovely, can also be translated as lady. Arya is not only holy, but also noble, and is an attribute of Buddhas and of those of their disciples who have definitely turned away from this world to the world of spirit. It is difficult to say about this invocation much that is of use to the general reader. Its repetition should help us to raise our minds in reverence to the perfection of wisdom as the mother of the Buddhas, as our guide through the world, and as the embodiment of perfect purity. And then it goes on to say something about devotion may be enriched by the use of images

[09:13]

And if you will, what I would like to do is to, I'm not very good at chanting, but to chant this, and if at the end you would join me in all Buddhas, I would appreciate that. ♪ Homage to the perfection of wisdom ♪ ♪ The lovely, the holy ♪ ♪ The perfection of wisdom gives light ♪ Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light, and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion.

[10:18]

She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own being, of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, the Lords, sets in motion the wheel of Dharma. All Buddhas, ten directions, three times. Maha Sattva, wisdom beyond wisdom.

[11:21]

Some of you know, a lot of you know that one of the things that I am very much involved in is clay. And it's been a great gift to me to be able to make some of the images and some of the things that are used in the Zendel. And in recent years, I've gone back to one of my original practices, which is making sculpture. Recently, I've made the Prajnaparamita, which is now sitting on the altar. And I don't know whether it will sit there for a long time. We may find a different image to replace her because there is a committee to choose the image. But in the meantime, she is there representing the perfection of wisdom. And one of the things which you cannot see from the front, but it's carved on the back, is the lotus, which is in three forms, the full-blown lotus blossom, the bud, and the seed.

[13:01]

And this represents transiency, but the continuity of life. It's also said by some to represent the three Buddhas, the past, present, and the future. but it's there. Also a little different than the usual figure of Prajnaparamita, there's a little representation of the muddy water that the Lotus Throne sits in, to go with our chanting of the muddy water. One of the things, ideas that always appeal to me, in some of the iconography of Buddhism is that in Buddhism, the wisdom beyond wisdom is a woman, and compassion is represented by Avalokiteshvara originally, the male figure, as opposed to the way these things are usually thought of in the Western world, where compassion is the woman.

[14:09]

and wisdom is the man. Of course, we do have that in Buddhism, too, because as we move into China, Avalokiteshvara becomes the goddess of mercy, or Kuan Yin becomes female. We have here Kuan Yin that was made for us by Jack Van Allen. I couldn't remember his first name. I want to say Allen Van Jack. Anyway, Jaclyn Allen, and we have here Kuan Yin. And of course we have Manjusri, who's in a way very male because he has the sword as the representative of wisdom to cut through delusion. So it goes both ways. And how we separate those seems to me that they're inseparable, that compassion and wisdom go hand in hand. Somebody said to me recently, and that person is here, that often for women, we emphasize the compassionate role so much that we forget the wisdom part of it and where the moving back from being a mother or a wife or a friend or the giving person

[15:33]

ends or has to be tempered and defined by wisdom. This person does therapy and I take it that a lot of it is with women and she talked about people and women who were so giving and so compassionate that they tended to destroy themselves And I hope I'm not misquoting. She can correct me later if she feels like it. Besides Prajnaparamita, the other figure in Buddhism who means an awful lot to me is Jesus. who is represented as a male and a monk.

[16:35]

He's about the only bodhisattva who is represented in monk's garb rather than in riches and jewelry. And he has a lot to do. One of his roles is as the bodhisattva of early child deaths, of protection of children. And early childhood deaths can be babies that are born, can be lives that are lost in abortion or in miscarriage. And in many parts of the world, Abortion is still the main type, the major type of birth control, the major way in which women have to make those decisions about their own body.

[17:49]

I know this is true still in most of the countries as Western as Israel, where There is socialized medicine, but the socialized medicine does not move toward preventive medicine. So birth control is not very widespread, especially among... and birth control information is practically only given out in the kibbutzim, because of the pressure by orthodox groups. So that, again, this leads to abortion, especially among Eastern European, Eastern, Middle Eastern Jews, being primarily that of abortion. And we know that in Japan, abortion is still a major kind of, type of birth control, and

[19:00]

Jizo images have become more and more popular. The first time I heard about Jizo was from Yoshimura Sensei, who was one of the Japanese priests who came from Japan to help Suzuki Roshi when he started. And he gave a lecture at Berkeley then, and he talked about infanticide, And I tend to get teary when I even think about this lecture because, you know, to me, infanticide up until that point had been a barbaric, you know, just totally barbaric custom. How could anyone do that? And when he spoke about it, there may be some people here who were here for that lecture, he spoke about the choice of having your own Living children die from lack of food.

[20:05]

Your children who have grown that you have raised are having to get rid of a baby that was just born. It introduced me to a lot of humility about my ideas of how smart and how wise and how understanding the Western world was. Or is, for that matter. Anyway, Giselle... We have Giselle Ficker out in the back there. And... Right now I'm making a much larger Jizo figure that's going to go in a meditation garden in Marin. And it's been a very interesting experience for me because every time I make a figure, I have to think about what the way this figure looks like represents.

[21:18]

And it changes as it happens. The Jizo I'm making now, instead of having the figure of the Bodhisattva there, the shelter which shelters him, is becoming an integral part of the shelter. So he himself is the shelter for the children. One of the stories... sort of signal me as time goes on because I tend to go on. And I'd like to leave some time for discussion. One of the things, especially in the north, where there was a lot of famine, a lot of flood, a lot of drought, where there were rivers that flooded in the north of Japan I'm talking about now, that, and I've never been to Japan, but that are often seen are representations of Jizo, which are just three stones piled on each other in the fields.

[22:32]

And they might have a little red bib, which sort of relates to our robes, or a toy, sometimes a rattle, or a baby's bottle in front of them. The three stones piled on each other also represented Stupa, which represents Buddha at the same time. I've been told that in places where there are many Jizo images right now, in Japan, that there are so many toys and bibs and things piled up. and that people sometimes come to these temples and actually throw things over the walls. Anyway, the other part of this... So many things in Buddhism go, it turns in two directions.

[23:44]

because there are ceremonies that we do for lost children, for unborn children, for early children that May Lee does, that I've been able to work with Yvonne Rand in doing. And I brought this along in case anybody is interested in that. I don't think there would be time, but in the back of Mind of Clover, there is the ceremony that Akin Roshi and the Diamond Sangha does for lost children. And there's a section of this that is very interesting to me because one of the conundrums that we've got caught in in this country, I think, is to denying that a fetus is a life. for legal to support legality of abortion.

[24:49]

So we keep denying that this is a life. And yet, I think that most people who have gone through abortions or miscarriages know intimately and have an intimate feeling of what they've lost. So, There is also a section in Mind of Clover, in the section on saving life, or the first precept in here, that many of you may have read. Anyway, what happens in this mythology around Jizo is he is a bodhisattva and he carries a staff with six rings, which represents his ability to travel and to all the different realms of existence. And he goes down into the lower realms to save people.

[25:50]

But at the same time, down in one of these realms, which is sort of the entrance, are sitting these children that are lost. And one of the things they do down there is to pile up Rocks, and why are they piling up rocks? It has two purposes. One, and it depends the story you hear. One is to climb out of this realm, but the hungry ghosts come and knock it down. But the other is to help their parents climb out of these realms. So we have, again, this turning back and forth. of the saved and the being saved, which I find very touching. I've always had... I came to this practice with very mixed feelings about altars and images because my... and about women in...

[27:05]

the zendo and things about the idea of having women sashins at first really grated on me because my traditional religious background is in a fairly orthodox traditional Jewish family. My father was not Jewish, he became converted to Judaism, was not Jewish by birth. So my memory of synagogue, of going to synagogue, was sitting in the women's section up there, sort of in the back rows and looking down at the men doing things. And I had a real reserve, mixed feeling about the idea of having women's sessions. And also, I mean, I was raised to believe that all images that were involved in religion were Idols, pagan idols. I mean, I was told very early by my grandmother that a Christmas tree was an idol that represented the Trinity and that's what they had these, you know, better be careful about those.

[28:18]

So, it's taken me a long trip to find that one of a major part of my practice now is in teaching about images, about helping other people make images, and to be able to make some images myself. Now, finding that the practice of making them in itself for me is a devotional practice, which I've always felt is the hardest part for me. I've envied people who I feel have a very strong devotional practice and it's been hard to find that part in myself. How are we doing on time? You have ten minutes. I have ten minutes including discussion. I'm going to do this very quickly then.

[29:29]

I'm going to mention as quickly as I and a couple of things that people might like to read or might know about. One of my favorite people in Buddhism is, I always have trouble saying her name, is Pashupati. who was the sister to Maya, Buddha's mother, and also married Buddha's father at the same time as Maya did. And she basically, as you know, Maya died soon after Buddha was born, and she basically raised Buddha, was his stepmother as well as his aunt. You know, we all know the story about how he was protected by his father and how his father didn't want him to become a religious leader and kept him from going out into the world.

[30:43]

And as soon as he somehow saw a bit of suffering, he immediately wanted to cure it. Well, my feeling is that we know about his father, but here's this woman who raised him. And what of her teaching opened his eyes and led him to want to stop this suffering in the world as soon as he's seen it, though he had been raised in this very sheltered atmosphere. So anyway, Pajapati has become a great character for me. And one of the things that happened was she led a group of women became a leader of many women in that time, in Buddha's time. There was war between some tribes, so many men were lost, but also many men were going off to follow religious leaders, such as the Buddha, and becoming home leavers.

[31:50]

And she asked first three times for the Buddha to allow her to start this order of nuns, so to speak, And he refused. And we hear often that it was a non-disintervention that then led him to say, oh yes, you can do this. But the part that I didn't know until very late on was that he left and then she led a group of women. And they say 500, but 500 often just means a lot. You don't know what that means in real numbers. 500 women on a march, a walk of over 150 miles to ask him again. And he again refused, and then Ananda intervened and spoke to him in terms of, how can you refuse this woman when she stands there with bleeding feet?

[32:58]

So while we have to give Ananda some credit, there were 150 women who took some action there to move to this. There's more about that. Five minutes? Five minutes. Okay, I'm going to read this and then this will take. This is from a book called Not Mixing Up Buddhism and there is an article by our friend Tribe in here. And I'm just going to read this poem and then Take less than a minute. Once a monk on pilgrimage met a woman living in a hut. The monk asked, do you have any disciples? And the woman said, yes. And the monk said, where are they? And she said, the mountains, rivers, and earth, the plants and trees are all my disciples. The monk said, are you a nun? And she said, what do you see me as? He said, a lay person. The woman in the hut said, you can't be a monk. And the monk said, you shouldn't mix up Buddhism.

[34:01]

And she said, I'm not mixing up Buddhism. And the monk said, aren't you mixing up Buddhism this way? And she said, you're a man, I'm a woman. Where has there ever been any mix up? Anyway, have you any comments or questions? Yes. Well, I am rather fond of images too. I mean, I guess people who are painters or ceramics or whatever, we can't name them quite. Okay. We like them. But, you know, there is the tradition that Buddha actually said no images, no representations. And I think for the reasons that are, you know, the tendency that people have and to make mistakes that way.

[35:05]

So, how do you feel about that? He said no images, but at the same time, the first images of Buddha were the stupas, which he asked to be built, and it is true that it wasn't until long after, what, five, six, seven hundred years after his death that images of the Buddha became common. And it's a complicated issue. But there's a lot of interesting things to read about. I'm sorry, I forgot the name of the monk who came and gave a class here, a friend of yours. Yeah, Reverend Piazzolo has a very interesting small article on it, and we have a copy of it in the Zender Library, and I think it's interesting to read, but there isn't really a lot of time to go into that, but it's certainly an interesting question.

[36:21]

Yes? You said that initially the idea of separate men's and women's I don't like it very much. And I don't think rubbed it the wrong way. I had reservations. I had mixed feelings. But I had a very strong feeling that if people wanted to do it, they should be able to do it. But I didn't feel at that time that it had anything special to do with me. It wasn't something that I felt I needed or wanted. And since then, when I've gone to women's sittings, It's very important to me when I do go. There is a comfort. It's comfortable in a way that I cannot explain. It's sort of another coming home sort of feeling.

[37:26]

And suddenly to hear all, especially at that point when you hear all those women's voices together chanting, to me that's, when I heard it the first time, I don't know, it was just something special. And of course now we've had, I believe, one men's sitting, and we have men's groups, and I believe we have lesbian groups meeting, and we have Zen Shabbat, And we're not quite as afraid of moving in diverse ways as we were, what, three, four years ago? Yes. Certainly, I agree that any group of people who like to have a session, it's very nice to have it. But coming soon is a men's session, and I've been thinking about it. And I do not see why I should join a men-only session when life is not men-only. But you have spoken about your feelings about attending a women's session.

[38:33]

And I'd like a little more elaboration so that I could understand better. Why should there be an adversary-type position? I don't think there is an adversary-type position at all. I think at one time there was the feeling that by being separate that it would leave some people out. And I think we came to get a different idea of what consensus was and how we could do things separately. I don't know if that answered, I don't feel like I've answered your question, but Jen is sitting here with the clapper and there's one more thing that I need to go back to that I forgot, which for me in a way is what brought me to this, talk and that I forgot. And I will be outside and perhaps we can talk about it and perhaps some of the people who are doing Men Says Sheen could speak, you could speak with them?

[39:36]

Yeah, it's part of my announcements. Okay. This book, Reviving Ophelia, has meant a great deal to me and It sort of changed my idea about JISO too and what the loss of young children are. Because so many of us have gone through a lot of agony with our grandchildren or children going through adolescence. But especially for female adolescents now, we are losing them. We are losing who they were before they became adolescents to their idea of what they have to be to succeed in this society. To the fact that having a mate is the most important thing in the world. To be thin, to be beautiful is the most important thing in the world.

[40:39]

And They are caught between the spoken values of the society and often the values of their parents, and the reality of the fact that one in five women are raped, the realities of the media that they're fed every day. Many parents who still find it difficult to talk to their children, embarrassing to talk to their children openly about sex, but find that their children just have to flick on the TV to learn much more about sex than they ever knew themselves. And sex often in which the woman is an object of consumption, as any other part of our society often is. Anyway, one of the things that brought me to this talk was thinking, this is a great book.

[41:42]

And this woman knows something about Buddhism because she knows about interconnectedness. She knows about meditation and centering. And she also knows about change and how everything changes, but how often we are afraid to admit that everything changes and to cling to the past. Anyway, reviving Ophelia, it's just on paperback, it's on the bestseller list, amazingly. Anyway, it's time.

[42:18]

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