Good morning. So we're in the second day of our labors here on Labor Day weekend. And we're going to continue this study and discussion of Raihai Tokuzui by Dogen. And today we have a longish session in the morning, so we'll see what my body requires and your body requires. We might take a five minute break in the middle, we'll see. So in the second half of this fascicle, if you've read ahead, and we'll go through it somewhat. Dogen goes into detail and makes some strong arguments concerning the state of Buddhism and women in Buddhism in Japan in his time.

[01:15]

This part of the fascicle was, it's only been conjoined to the overall text relatively late. It was part of the so-called 28 fascicle secret shogogenzo. which was stored at AHE, as I said yesterday, under lock and key. And the writings in that collection are things that tended to be very critical. we can see the criticism here and others are Dogen's sometimes pretty scathing critique of contemporary Zen in Japan in his time.

[02:27]

So there are all these, I don't want to get into a lot of textual stuff, but this These writings were set aside by Gion, who was the fifth abbot of Eheji. And only very few people had access to them. But really, only very few people had access to any of Dogen's writings until the late 17th, 18th, and even later centuries. is not part of what is seen as Dogen's standard edition of the Shobogenzo, which is 75 facetals, and this wasn't published until the 19th century, actually.

[03:36]

So anyway, that's just a little about the text, but I've been thinking about several of the comments and questions that came up yesterday, and I'd just like to say something to them before we plunge into the text, and this may inspire another discussion, we'll see. I've been thinking about Alexandra's question about the present relevance of studying this, and why are we studying it, what's the utility of it. I was thinking also about Helen's concern, as I got it, about this kind of at least verbal equivalence of woman, man, rock, tree, and what I think about that.

[04:53]

And then to just Jerry's noting of the the point in the first paragraph that the teacher will not be in the dark about cause and effect. Somehow seems to me that's a principle that underlies the other questions that I raised. You know, I think, I just had to think why I selected this, you know, and I was looking for something that I thought would fit our study and be interesting and useful, and I've always been struck by the power

[06:00]

of this fascicle and the clarity of Dogen's language here. I think Stan was saying this is, you can understand what he's saying, but what he's saying is also very, it's also unique, as we pointed out, as Tighan Layton was saying, and that we've never read or studied it together. So I thought maybe this is something we should do. I was looking, because it reminded me, I couldn't remember whether it was our mission statement or San Francisco Zen Center's mission statement, but I looked on the Zen Center website and says the purpose of San Francisco Zen Center is to make accessible and embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha as expressed in the Soto Zen tradition established by Dogen Zenji in the 13th century Japan and conveyed to us by Suzuki Roshi and other Buddhist teachers.

[07:14]

And when you look at the mission statement of Well, when I've been at these Soto Zen meetings, they really underscore one of the things that we do in this tradition is study Dogen. So it seems to me, just to continue that, that was their purpose. But also, I think as we came to later in the afternoon, It seems to me that the feminization of Zen and of Buddhism in general, that's been a very strong factor in Buddhism in the West. And that's something that I think we've contributed to the overall

[08:19]

discourse around Buddhism around the world. And to hear Dogen's passion and to observe how his passion did and did not bear fruit, seems to me it's relevant to our history and our practice. I happen to love to study the history, the history of what people do, the history of ideas, and I think it's important to know the history of our tradition and the history of Buddhism as closely as we can look at it, precisely because if we don't know it, then we're going to be in the dark about cause and effect. We're not going to see where certain things do or do not come from that influence us.

[09:22]

And this is not true of Buddhism, this is true of everything. So I just wanted to offer that as just a sketch of why I chose this. I don't feel defensive about it, I just thought actually this is a good question. to think about. The issue that Helen raised, did I get it relatively accurately? It was an open question. Yeah, no, it was an open question. Yeah, of a concern. I mean, some of the parts that we talked about, you did address it, and it was very clear that this was... Definitely towards the start, are women just an example of the continuum?

[10:25]

And she's saying you can learn from a stone. You can learn from a woman, even. That was a good sound. Right. OK. So I feel like I did hear your question the right way. And what I wanted to talk about, this has been an interesting and somewhat problematic question for me. I think that would be something that you can learn from a man, a woman, or a stone. You can learn from anything. That would be consistent with his teachings. That would be a different lesson than that women are elevated You know what I mean? So we're all the same. We can learn from everything. That's fine. But he's not saying what we wanted, what we were hoping he was saying. That was my point. Right.

[11:27]

Jerry? I think later on, he does say what we hope he's saying. Yes. He does talk about a man or a woman, a layman or a woman are the same if they have the understanding. So I think it sounds one way in the beginning. But as he gets through it, he actually is very clear about the gender equality. Yeah. There's two problems. One that I don't want to get too hung up on is that what Dogen expressed changed. And sometimes it seems to have turned itself inside out. So All I can say is, this is what he was saying then, in July and December of 1240. We know that. What he may have said in 1252 or 1253 might be different, and that might apply to women, although there's actually a really interesting discussion of that in Paula Arai's book, Women Living Zen.

[12:42]

which is quite good. Women Living Zen. And I'm hoping that we can get Paula to come here sometime in the next several months because she's back and forth between coasts. Anyway, I don't want to get hung up on that. I want to look at what this is. So those points of view change, but the other is just so you understand... I know you don't want to get hung up on it, but are there places in Dogen's writings where he... Let me read you what she says, okay? How do you spell her last name? A-R-A-I. So she says, Soto nuns really appreciate, in contemporary Buddhism, really appreciate Dogen.

[13:52]

In an interview with Abbess Aoyama Shindo, I learned that she begins her analysis of Dogen's attitude towards women with her understanding of his experience with his mother. Aoyama surmises that Dogen deeply felt his mother's pain at having been married off in a political struggle to raise the waning strength and status of her family, the Fujiwaras. Soto nuns have also noted texts in which Dogen mentions women. In his text Bendowa, Dogen unambiguously articulates that male and female practitioners are equal. He wrote this text soon after he returned from China, but was not solidly established yet. He was beginning to articulate his understanding of Buddhist teachings, and he was determined to teach, quote, true Buddhism. During the following decade, he wrote a number of texts that are considered the core of his philosophical writings.

[14:57]

The philosophical orientation that unfolds in these texts supports the statement that males and females are equal in practice. There's the discussion. Nonetheless, the prevailing interpretation among academics is that Dogen held egalitarian ideals in his early years, but he did not take them with him when he established his, quote, serious monastery in Echizen. they conclude that Dogen returned to a purely monastic-oriented vision, that is, not supporting lay practitioners, of Buddhist practice that did not include females. These claims are based on one sentence found in one of the fascicles included in the twelve fascicle version of Shobo Genzo,

[16:08]

shukkei kudoku, which I have always found, aside from that, a very problematic fascicle. At the end of the text it is written, it is also said that... Could you say the text again? shukkei, s-h-u-k-k-e, kudoku, k-u-d-o-k-u, and I think you'll find that in Kazutani Hashi's translation, yeah. It's good just if people, you know, At the end of the text it is written, quote, it is also said that one can attain Buddhahood in a female body, but this is not the Buddhist path of the true tradition of the Buddhist masters. This text was recorded in 1255, two years after Dogen passed away. It is commonly agreed that the date for this text is not clearly established. Dogen scholars agree that this text was revised, but nobody knows in what way or to what extent.

[17:16]

So, anyway, we don't want to get too lost in this, but what Paula O'Reilly says is that the entire supposition that Dogen's position on women changed pivots on this one sentence whose provenance is questionable. Okay? But the other thing I wanted to say relevant to Ellen's point is there was a very strong sort of an intellectual storm in Soto Zen circles in the 1980s that was called critical Buddhism. And what critical Buddhism was critiquing was, again, it's more philosophical and detailed than

[18:29]

I really have a total handle on, but it was looking at this question of original Buddhism, which is a term that you find from time to time in Dogen's writings and in other writings of that time, Hongaku, and what it what this original Buddhism, how it got spun out was everything is enlightenment and precisely the question that you're raising is the problem that arose where if a rock has the same buddha nature as a person you will very quickly run into some ethical problems in terms of how you treat things.

[19:37]

So there's this side of it, and I think this also gets to some degree to the question that Lisa was asking yesterday about acquiring enlightenment. I went through the text and there are a number of words in Japanese that seem to... 41, I think. What he said was he reinterpreted, the nirvana sutra said all beings have buddha nature. And Dogen made one shift in a character to all beings are buddha nature.

[20:51]

Is that correct? Yeah. You know, to me that's a very meaningful shift. But if you use it as an argument to equate a stone with a person, you're going to have ethical problems. If you use it as what Helen was saying, actually anything can be our teacher. And that's what Dogen is saying in the very beginning of this fascicle. That teacher may be in the form of a man or a woman, but it needs to be a person of great resolve. And then, you know, he says, you know, it will likely be a fox spirit. And later he says, you know, it can be a stone or a pillar. can find the teaching in everything.

[22:02]

This is why what Sogen Roshi says, he said, don't treat anything like an object, which means treat everything as part of oneself. So if you treat everything and everyone but everything as part of yourself, then you have the opportunity to make everything your teacher. So where's the ethical problem with that? The ethical problem with that is the way it got taken in Japanese culture. And this is what evolved in this kind of critical Buddhism position. What they were saying was the philosophical implications of that led to what ultimately you had in what was called Imperial Way Buddhism, and the whole ethic of the samurai, where it was okay to kill,

[23:21]

because you can't kill, nothing can be killed. And so if I cut off your head, I'm just converting one object into two, right? Maybe it's not one, not two. So it became a kind of unconscious philosophical foundation actually for cruelty. Attachment to emptiness. Yeah. So I think that's what they're saying is the problem. Otherwise, it's not. No, you should treat everything... That's the part of all things are Buddha nature that I really love. you know, what's the proper way to be respectful to everything that we encounter because we see it as part of ourselves.

[24:29]

And there's a difference between a rock and a person. So anyway, I just wanted to say something about that before going on because What I like about this stuff is these are live questions that we can't fully resolve. But if we open them as questions, then we are investigating. We're throwing light on the question of cause and effect, I think. Denise? This issue around the rock, the way I sense I mean, the rock can teach Buddha nature, because if you meditate on a rock, if you're tuned into the rock, you're experiencing emptiness.

[25:34]

And so that's where, if you want to say a rock has Buddha nature, whether I would say that or not, but certainly it can teach the Dharma, because it can transmit this emptiness. the sense of emptiness in the pure sense of the non-arising of thought. And it is its own essence. So in that sense, does it have Buddha nature or not? So just being a rock in its presence. As far as saying it, because I don't want to bother with saying it has buddha nature, it can certainly transmit that. Well, in the Dogon framework, it is buddha nature. Which means, if you want to look at Dogon's terms, in Dogon's terms, there's a wonderful fascicle, one of my favorites, called Zenki, or total dynamic working.

[26:43]

So a rock just in that sense, a rock as a person is an expression of the coming together of an infinite number of causes and conditions, of elements, and it manifests impermanence, and in that sense, It's not a question of equivalence, it's a question of the nature of all things. And when you're meditating on emptiness, you're looking at, you know, you're examining that. Well, I think the point is you have the same attitude towards everything, but that doesn't mean you treat them the same way. For example, at Christmas time, you don't buy everybody the same present. You might love everybody and value everybody that you're buying presents for, but you choose a... Well, sometimes you don't, but... What about secret Santa?

[27:51]

You're going to buy him all Berkley Center t-shirts, that's clear. Usually, you go around and you love this person and then you choose something that you think they'll uniquely like or enjoy or whatever. Anyway, I don't know if that helps. Right. In the same way, you know, we... We have these stones in the back garden which are memorial stones for people who have died and there's a small portion of ashes that are placed at the sort of base of the stone and we offer flowers and we sometimes pour water over the stone as an offering. This is not foolishness, this is practice. And that's where I wanted to... Yeah.

[28:56]

Because it seems to me that the critical difference in sentient beings and sentient beings is the issue of free will and the issue of volitional action. That's where ethics and morality come in, because we are agents in the chain of cause and effect in a very active, conscious way, whereas these insentient beings often are subject to cause and effect. They're interacting in some way, but not the same, because there isn't that intention in that free will. Yeah, and let's point out there is a distinction between cause and effect and karma. Right, that's the one. Which is really important to understand. Do you know what I'm talking about? No. No, okay. Karma is generally understood as volitional action.

[30:01]

So it takes a volition, it takes a will and an intention to enter the realm of karma. In a kind of sloppy way of thinking about cause and effect, sometimes everything, not here but in earlier and in other expressions of Buddhism or other spiritual, related spiritual traditions of an Indian root, sometimes everything in the realm of cause and effect is spoken of as karma, but technically in the terms as you find in the early sutras. He's talking about volitional action and then when you look at the commentaries in Pali what you see is that there are other forms of causation which are called the Niyamas.

[31:15]

So weather is a form of causation. Actually Disease is a form of causation. He enumerates them in these niyamas and karma, niyama, karma is one form of causation. It's the one that we actually have something, we have the possibility of interacting and intervening with and transforming. So isn't he talking about that I mean, when he's talking about a teacher understanding karma. Well, yeah. Cause and effect. I'd have to look at the word that he uses. He doesn't say karma, he just says cause and effect. We do, yeah. We need to understand about cause and effect as well. In the broadest sense, which is inclusive of karma. Right. I was just making the distinction between sentient beings and insentient beings.

[32:17]

Yeah, but insentient beings as much as we know, don't have volition. We don't really know. Usually we don't think of them as having volition, but they are subject to the laws of cause and effect. Everything is interconnected. And this is really, you know, we human beings are modifying the weather. Yes. Right. No question about that. There is will behind it. Right. And we are subject to the result of what we're doing. Right. I actually wrote an essay about that. That's true. but it's not like we control all the weather patterns.

[33:26]

We may be now setting off geological events by fracking, but California's earthquakes are not of karmic origin. But where we put our cities, maybe, right? So we interact with that. Anyway, yeah, we're changing the climate so there is a karmic dimension to that. The whole question of the Gaia hypothesis is an attempt to grapple with, to take our very limited human perceptions and try to say that the larger rebalancing system of which we are a part may have In some sense, what feels like will, you know. Right. We don't understand this. Right. We don't, and Liz, we could spend a long time talking about that.

[34:33]

But no, but your point is taken. Shelley? So you just said a phrase that kind of zinged with me, so I'm going to ask you. You just said a few minutes ago, before Lisa spoke up, We need, you said, we need to understand about this cause and effect. So what did you mean by that? What did I mean by that? We need to understand about this. Does anyone know what I meant by that? You said he studies history so that we're not in the dark about cause and effect. Ah. That's another, you said it again. Okay. And then you said it again this way. Right. Kind of in relation to karma too. Right. There's karma and there's cause and effect. When you were talking to Jerry about karma, you said that phrase, we need to understand about this. Yes, and what's your problem with that? It's not a problem. What is your problem? Something about that is really just tapped into something. What we're doing here.

[35:34]

Right. So what Dogen says is the teacher will not be in the dark about cause and effect. That's point one. And he says everybody can teach us about cause and effect. So is the rock a teacher? Is the stone a teacher? If you make it a teacher, it's a teacher. That's the point. That's it. Right. If you make it a teacher. What's a teacher? What's a teacher? It doesn't matter. Everything's a teacher, but it depends on you. You make it a teacher. Right. You have to make it a teacher. You know, you can walk by. There's so many things that we walk right by every day. That if we stop, and some of them are people, right? Some of them are women. Some of them are women, yes. Some of them are stones. Some of them are men.

[36:37]

To the extent to which we don't stop and pay attention to what we're encountering, we miss an opportunity to find a teacher. Now, of course, we're not going to see everything, every moment. If we did, we would be completely overwhelmed. but where we should not be unconscious. We should not just wander through the world without paying attention to what is actually creating our world. And when we do that, we're allowing that to be our teacher. And when we're doing that, then we are opening Our eyes are shining a light on cause and effect, I think.

[37:42]

That's the way I see it. So sometimes I'm walking around and I see our stone and it's like, it's not really a thing I do, it's just like the stone sort of blows through me and that's a teacher. Right. And sometimes I look at a man and I think, oh, what a sexy guy, and I make him into an object. And sometimes I do that. That's later in this fascicle. I don't know if anybody read it. He talks exactly about that. It's just this momentary thing, right? Sometimes everything's a teacher and sometimes... But it's all about where you are at that moment. We've been sitting a lot as well as studying. After lunch, it's a nice day. People are going to lie out on the lawn. Some people You know, and just, you know, you'll be lying there and you'll open your eyes and you will see an entire universe in the tangle of grass with an insect crawling through it and how it goes down to the earth.

[38:54]

You know, it's like we don't look at that every day. Some people do. Nancy does, I think. You know, but when our eyes are open, which we allow everything in and so how can we do this is right view to me right view is the view of what is the view of impermanence it's the view of what's right in front of you moment by moment and that can be near like looking at the grass that's three inches away from you, or it can be far. It can be looking across the world at where does the gasoline that we put in our car come from and where does the emissions from that car go to. But you're not going to see the gasoline all the time.

[39:55]

Sometimes you'll see where it comes from and sometimes you won't. Right. But that's why every meal we chant, innumerable labors brought us this food, we should know how it comes to us. In that meal chant we're trying to make ourselves aware of the fact of interdependence and cause and effect. That's the thrust of what we're of one of the things that we're doing here as we're sitting. So one more point before we try to get on. I was noting that the way this starts is very powerful. When one practices

[40:56]

supreme and perfect enlightenment. And I was thinking that in light of, partly in light of what Lisa was asking. But what's embedded in that is that enlightenment is an activity. It is not a state. In that sense, it's not something to be acquired. It's something that has to be acted. And that's his starting place. That's where he's starting with it. Practicing Supreme Enlightenment, Supreme and Perfect Enlightenment, the most difficult task is to get a guide and a teacher. Why is this difficult? It's difficult because of our self-centered views.

[42:07]

Of our self-centered views. If anything can be our teacher, if anyone can be our teacher, then What's in the way? Well, usually I'm in the way. So, the difficulty is just, and that's also the work of Buddhism. The work of Buddhism is uncovering. Uncovering your Buddha nature. And when you act to uncover that, then you're practicing perfect enlightenment. So I just wanted to kind of bring us back to that ground before we went on. So can I go on? So about six months after he gave the first part of this talk, he gives the second.

[43:15]

And the scholarly supposition is that there was some kind of pushback from his students on the controversial things he was saying. And so then he gets down to cases. He begins historically Furthermore, in olden times and today in Japan and China, there have been women who held the rank of emperor. Also with nuns, since olden times, they have been venerated not as individuals, they are venerated solely for their having acquired the dharma, or for their embodying the dharma. And this is historically the way an ordained person is seen, is not as a person, but actually as the one who is bearing or carrying the robe, which is true of each of us as humans, but particularly

[44:42]

that's the way, particularly in my experience in Asia, it's not that monks don't have and nuns don't have personalities, but the robe itself is respected in a way that's kind of hard for us to get in the West. We see and they're seeing function, function of rope. And that's what I think he means by having acquired the Dharma, not generated as individuals. And then he moves to, a little later in couple paragraphs further, he begins a sort of complicated narrative.

[45:49]

Furthermore, in our country there are daughters of emperors or daughters of ministers who have been appointed empress in all but name and there are empresses who have been given the title cloistered. which means that they're calm nuns. Some have shaved their heads and others have not. However, monk-like clergymen who court fame and seek advantage hasten to the gates of these women's homes and bang their heads on the footgear hoping to gain favor. The behavior of these clergymen is more vile than that of an inferior groveling before his superior.

[46:52]

And so much more so is the case of those who turn themselves into manservants and spend their years catering to noble women. I think there he's talking about, so this is his critique of the ruling class, as far as I understand. This is what it's come to. Dignity dish. Yeah. So it sounds like he's out here talking about noble women in a negative way. And again, this whole hierarchical system. I'm not so sure. I think it's, well, it could be, but he doesn't really talk much about the women.

[47:55]

He's talking about the men who carry favor with these women. That's my understanding. I think that's right. What he's saying here is, I'm not saying you should worship women. What he says is, they behave in this fashion for the sake of a vain world.

[48:58]

Why then, in order to attain supreme enlightenment, will they not pay homage to one who has acquired the dharma and hence is deserving of veneration? they say they're going in the wrong direction even though you might, and this may be answering some criticism that had come up in the intervening months, you know, are you saying we should do such and such just because these are women? And he'd say, no, you know, pay attention to the dharma. And then He gets to... Who's talking about objects? Shelley. Shelley. So... I'm working with my version of the text. Near the top of page seven.

[50:08]

Oh yeah, okay. So, moreover, profoundly ignorant people today, believing that women are lustful objects, view them thus and do not correct this way of thinking. Followers of the Buddha should not behave this way. If you despise women, believing them to be lustful objects, should not all men likewise be despised? If so, facto. If it is a matter of becoming a cause for sexual impurity, men might likewise serve as object of sexual attraction. This is what Shelley was confessing, right? I was confessing that. You were confessing that, right? If it is a matter of becoming a cause for sexual impurity, men might likewise serve as objects of sexual attraction just as women may be objects.

[51:09]

Those who are neither men nor women likewise may serve as objects. And there, if you, you know, it's really interesting, if you read the Vinaya texts, the early, so these are the kind of rules for monks and nuns that were set down in the Pali texts. There are some very precise rules about sexuality, which go beyond... In the Vinaya it is said, with a man it is two places, with a woman it is three places. But in the Vinaya, it also says, don't have sex with animals, don't have sex with holes in the ground, don't have sex with knots in trees.

[52:14]

It's very, very particular. So this is where, particularly for guys, I suppose, but it may be for women too, anything can be actually scratched that sentence. We should edit it. It's not any different. It's not any different. But that's kind of the Vinaya actually spells out Those who are neither men nor women may likewise serve as objects. Dream-like phantoms and flowers in the sky may serve as objects. Sometimes impure acts have been committed because of an image reflected in the water.

[53:15]

You wonder, was he having fun with this? You do wonder. He was letting his imagination play out here. Sometimes impure acts have been committed because of the sun in heaven, gods may serve as objects of sexual attraction, and demons may serve as objects. It is impossible to count the number of causes that might stimulate sexual lust. Although, then, you know, which sort of makes you wonder about Dogen, I suppose, but I love this next sentence. Although there are said to be 84,000 objects in the cosmos, are we to abandon all of these? Are we not to look at any of these? It's a wonderful, I think it's a wonderful expression.

[54:19]

I remembering something Lori and I talked about as she was working on an early version of Rev. Anderson's book on the precepts. And I think it's either in that book or was in the early text, he said, the precept on... Not misusing sexuality, thank you. The precept on not using sexuality is a lesser precept than the precept about violence, in the sense that, and he wasn't condoning anything, but he was saying that at least on a certain level,

[55:22]

sexuality is about turning towards each other. Now, sexuality can also be violent, that's true, and that's not what he was condoning, but he was saying, you know, just sexuality itself, even the commodification of sexuality, which includes, to some degree, it includes maybe a systemic violence, but it also includes a turning towards. Anyway, I don't want to emphasize that, but it seems I hear a small echo of that in, although there are said to be 84,000 objects in the cosmos, are we to abandon all of these? Are we not to look at any of these? So are we supposed to, and this is the difference I think between early Buddhism or so-called Inayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, the effort is not to get rid of every sexual thought, but it's to look at that.

[56:50]

what is the truly human instinct that is coming up just with the arising of that thought, rather than the attempt to get rid of it by closing your eyes. And I think he moves to that a little later, but in this next paragraph it says, since this is the case, if you despise people in the belief that they have become the objects of sexual lust, then men and women will have to despise one another. If you despise people in the belief that they have become the objects of sexual lust, then men and women will all have to despise one another. such that there will be no opportunity for anyone to cross to the other shore.

[57:58]

He's kind of noticing the projection of quality. Yeah. You know, if you look at something and it's causing you to lust. Right. You're not seeing that the lust is actually coming from where? Yeah, I think that's right. But if you follow that, if your logic then is, I've got to get rid of this. then you're going to get rid of all ability to really communicate and to be in contact with others. And if you do that, then you can't be... I think this gets back to this underlying message of not just finding a teacher, but being a teacher. If that's your attitude, that you're going to get rid of these objects, then you will have no opportunity to help others wake up, to cross to the other shore.

[59:02]

Is this place where the cause is? Right. It reminds me of the Dalai Lama talk, that story about where you put, do you put leather on your shoes? I mean, do you wear leather shoes or do you put leather all over the entire earth? Right. Right. This is really interesting because it's like, this is pretty revolutionary to say this in that historical time. When every single religion, whether it was Islam or Christianity, is all based on this, women are unclean, women need to be separated, don't let women near us. And it was based on this, this big delusion. Well, yeah, each filtered through the particular culture and particular spiritual tradition, right? Yeah. The bottom line is that women are responsible for people's reaction to them.

[60:08]

Yeah, I think the bottom line is that men are scared of women. Frankly, yes. We're scared of this lust towards women. Yeah, yeah. They say that woman has power over me because I lust after her. Right. I mean, it's hard to be a man. Yeah, you have some compassion for me, please. It's really hard to be a man. It's hard to be It's hard to be a sentient being. So furthermore, in the country of Tang China, there are ignorant monks who make a vow saying, for a long time, from life to life and generation to generation, I will not look at a woman.

[61:20]

On which teachings is this based? Is it based on the teachings of the Buddhas? Is it based on the teachings of non-Buddhists? Is it based on the teachings of Mara? What offenses are women guilty of? What virtues are men endowed with? I would really have to research this. I really think there probably are teachings on which this is based in early Buddhism. It's not that early. I mean, if you go to a Mayagiri, there are incredible constrictions on what monks are allowed to do with women. For example, when I was visiting there, the abbot's mother visited him. And he couldn't be alone with his mother. Right. He actually had, I mean, they sat on the prayer veranda. There had to be people around. So there are still incredible, well, I mean, I could give other examples, but I won't.

[62:24]

There are still incredible notions about this that are very alive today. If you go down the block, if you go down the block to the Thai temple, and you want to make a donation, if you're a woman and you want to make a donation to monks, if you're face-to-face, you need to give that donation to another person or place it on the ground so the monk can pick it up because just the electricity of feminine energy through a bill is contaminating. That's very strict Vinaya. The Thais have the strictest Vinaya around this. It's a little looser in Sri Lanka and Burma but it's

[63:28]

this thing about not being alone with a woman. We had to discuss this. Lori and with, you know, Santikaro, some of you know Santikaro Bikku, or formerly, he's now just Santikaro Upasaka, layperson, because he's married. He went to the dark side. Oh, my God. Well, that's kind of a good story. But he used to visit us, and we actually had to have discussions. Initially, we had discussions about, OK, there's going to be some times when he's alone in the house with Lori. Now, he didn't give a shit about this. But he felt it was necessary, actually, to have some discussion about it, because the Vinaya, the Thai Vinaya, is very clear about it. Yes.

[64:30]

And Maha Goswamana didn't give... He was completely free and was alone with people all the time of all genders. He used to... There was a... Well, anyway, we all know that. But he completely just... I guess it kind of shows that the... I mean, in one way, this is an expression of Dogen's enlightenment that he saw this so clearly. His enlightenment was less limited all of our enlightenments are limited by our culture and circumstances. And in some ways it's a very vivid expression of his enlightenment that he saw through this in such a unique way. At that time it was just... And Maha Goswami, who Hosanna and I both knew kind of behind the scenes, was really like that too. In terms of how he related to... If you were a practitioner, you were a practitioner and he didn't care what age you were, whether you were a laywoman or a layman, even though he was the supreme patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism.

[65:30]

We once visited him in San Francisco, Diana Winston and I, and he went in the kitchen, made tea, and gave it to her first. He was really inspiring. So anyway, yeah, there are these teachings. There's one other teaching that goes way back. I think there's a translation of it in the Great Ten Disciples. And I'm not sure, but I think I read it there by Bikubodi. No, is that Bikubodi? It's somebody else. I can't remember. Tenisaro? Famous, famous long German translator. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Anomaly or? I think it's Nayapanaka, but anyway, there's this practice, actually maybe it's in the Nidyanaka, anyway, wherever it is, sorry.

[66:35]

The practice, the Buddha was teaching his monks, and he saw that, of course, they had problems with lust, and he talked about this practice that I debate with some of the people at Spirit Rock about. times, which is basically a practice that I see is based on taking, you take the person and you dissect them into a pile of guts. Oh yeah. Teeth, hair, cuts, blood. And to be quite honest, if you really think about this, if you're an early practitioner, this would probably create aversion in early practitioners, but if you practice beyond that point, it's not going to matter, you're still going to love that person regardless of whether or not you make them into a polygast. So this is the kind of way to look at women. This was applied to their lustful thoughts. So it's a good quote practice.

[67:38]

That's in the polysutas. Anyway, that's not what's being said here. And he continues his argument. Furthermore, if you vow never to look at women, must you then abandon women when you chant, beings are boundless, I vow to free them? If you abandon them, you are not a bodhisattva. Would you call this the compassion of the Buddhas? Furthermore, if you despise people because they have committed offenses in the past, then you should despise Bodhisattvas. If you despise people because they are likely to commit offenses in the future, then you shall also despise all Bodhisattvas. If you despise people in this way, you will be forsaking everyone. How then will the Buddha Dharma be realized?

[68:39]

It's a pretty compelling argument. And then a little later, he actually, here's where he, he does, he tells a story that Tamara was bringing up yesterday about Dushan and the tea lady. What? Yes, second paragraph, page 8. He doesn't raise it. He doesn't. Oh, yes. He doesn't raise it. I'm just saying he tells the story. He doesn't have any gloss on it that makes the point that you were making. But in the next paragraph, This really fits to me.

[69:46]

So he's pursuing this question about objects. And this really makes the point of, I think, this Sojin's teaching of don't treat anything like an object. He says, when you see an object, you must learn to understand it clearly. If you learn to see it as something only to fear and flee from, you are following the teaching and practice of the Hinayana Śrāvaka. Śrāvaka is one of the classes of practitioners in early Buddhism. Śrāvaka translates as hearer, so somebody who would go to hear the Dharma. To go and hear the Dharma is already to be manifesting your way-seeking mind.

[70:50]

So that was a revered place, people who went to hear the Dharma. But as you see in most of the Mahayana texts, it's seen as limited. It's like you're just hearing, you're not really letting it in. You're following the teaching and practice of the Hinayana Shravaka. If you try to flee the East and hide in the West, the West, too, is not without objects. We know that. We live in the West, right? Even though you might think you have made good your escape, if you do not understand clearly There are objects in distant places and objects in places close at hand. Running away from them is not the path to liberation. The further away the objects, the greater the attachment to them will become.

[71:53]

As anyone knows who's had a long distance relationship. I should probably, I don't know, I think I should stop there, because this next part is really interesting. It would be good for this afternoon. This talk about restricted realms, and I think I'll have to explain that a little bit so that you understand what he's talking about. Any thoughts or questions or comments? Yeah, this one. The word contamination is interesting. Sort of viewing something as, so you're in front of a monk. A woman comes towards me. The money, the offering is contaminated. It's the whole idea of contamination.

[72:55]

And seeing it as that really is speaking so much about your own ability to receive or not, just in general. It's characterizing that. that interaction as something that's threatening to you. So it's just interesting. Instead of seeing the female object, or the stone as an object, or whatever it is, as something that's part of me, there's this moment when I see it as something that's harming me, or causing me to sin, or do something terrible. Because it's all in your own perception. It's all in a monk's perception or a nun's perception. Buddha's perception. But let's be clear. To me, this is not something that's confined to Buddhism. I would say, at the risk of overgeneralization, the quest for purity

[74:08]

seems to be the driving force of most early religions. You know, a couple of years ago, I finally read the five books of Moses, which is the core of the Hebrew scriptures. And an enormous portion of those texts are devoted to how you properly do sacrifices, and the function of those sacrifices is purification, and you find this in one after another religion, but in the kind of early redaction of that religion.

[75:18]

I haven't read any study of this, but now I'm interested. There may be an evolutionary function to that. Yes? What good did it serve the communities to keep men and women apart or create this separation? Yeah, it's hard to know and what good did these rituals or not so much the rituals themselves as the notion of purity, but I think that in our tradition there's the simultaneous, and this is what I love about Zen, is the simultaneous notion that everything is pure,

[76:25]

Hence, there's no place in the world to spit and nothing is pure. How do we hold those simultaneously in mind? How does this show the simultaneity of those realities How does that point us towards living? Ken? This has a whole bunch of issues. One is that there's an elementary medical thing here. Right. Which obviously at an early stage they picked up the fact that you could pick something through contagion even though they weren't clear about exactly what they were picking up. tragedies now, and there's some of these great themes about justice and vengeance and all these things, and one of the themes is pollution, as they call it.

[78:02]

I mean, it's like one of these eight or ten key things, and it's like something horrible happens, like in the Orestia Plato's next script kills her husband because he sacrificed their daughter in order to get to Troy. It's like one thing leads to another. And so later on, their son, Orestes, kills his mother to avenge his father. And then the rest of the trilogy is, how is he purified? wouldn't be, so they have to work that out in some way, and they work it out maybe differently than a Buddhist culture would, but somehow they have to address these conflicts, like how do you, you know, atone, or

[79:28]

Maybe the thing is that this is some bad stuff that has infected me, and how do I get it out of my system, even if it's an ethical thing? And then they start projecting and maybe saying, well, the opposite sex is the product. So maybe it's simplest that we don't. So then you debate, well, you can't totally get away, so But I think what Dogen is saying, one of the thrusts of his arguments here is that things are only impure when we make them impure, when we think them that way and when we act in such a way, therefore rendering them impure. Anyway, and that's exactly where this next section goes, so we will end here.

[80:39]

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