Good morning. You people back there in chairs seem kind of far away. If you have any inclination at all, please bring your chairs closer. I'm going to be talking about things on the altar and things over here that are, there's small print involved. I sat on a chair for a long time myself, not here, but in other places. I feel like you're kind of in the back of the bus. So find a spot. Also, we may be, I hope, we're going to have a lively discussion that goes on a while. So if your knees are talking to you, please feel free to do something about that.

[01:01]

When I began thinking about this year's women's sitting, I recalled a meeting that happened shortly after last year's sitting. At that meeting, there was a discussion that produced pretty clear guidelines for what people wanted for women's sittings going forward. more broadly, to have a little more in the mix of how the Dharma is shared here. And there was an affirmation of the strong practice and the wisdom among the women here in the community at BCC. And that's irrespective of wardrobe, whether wearing an okesa, a green rakasu, a blue rakasu, or no rakasu.

[02:14]

A real affirmation of what's here in the community of women. And a desire to hear from each other. to do that in a manner that is less hierarchical and more horizontal and conversational and collaborative in manner. Somebody said, I think for many of the people there, that what she wanted was ongoing, maturing discussions about the Dharma. having that more in the mix with lectures. And that brought to mind a statement that I've seen attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh a whole lot, but I couldn't track it down to him.

[03:17]

So I don't know if he really said this or not, but a whole lot of people think he did, which is that the next Buddha is the Sangha. The next Buddha is the Sangha. So Buddha, awakening mind, increasingly manifesting as collective, connective, collaborative, and relational in nature. So I, you can see I I played with the altar a little bit here. And one of the things that I'd like to call your attention to right now is the little statue over there on the left. It's in front of Kuan Yin, K'un Zang, Avalokiteshvara. What we usually have, the statue of that bodhisattva that we usually have there is quite tiny.

[04:22]

And this is a much more robust rendering. And Tamar has that on her altar. And she couldn't be here today, but she sent that along in her stead. So anyway, in front of that, there's a little statue that's quite colorful. And it's a group of women. It's a bunch. And I received that as a gift. When I got it, I did what I remember doing as a little girl and what I've seen so many kids do when they get a doll. I turned it over and I looked under the skirt. I don't know why so many of us do that. It's not just me. And what I found is that that statue is a single hollow sort of bell and the heads are all stuck in with little pegs into holes in the top.

[05:32]

So it's one body with lots of heads. Kind of like the statues, it reminds me a lot actually, of the statues, we don't have any like this here, but probably a lot of you have seen them, they're statues of Quan Yin or and they have a thousand arms and eleven heads. And the eleven heads are stacked up on one another and they also go from side to side and they're looking in all directions. So, one body but one mind is not enough. One set of eyes is not enough to see where help is needed. One set of ears is not enough to hear the cries of the world. I thought I'd put that on the altar. It's a little bit hard to see, but feel free to come up closer later if you want to.

[06:38]

Over here is another rendering of a group of women. This is a Women Ancestors document. community room for a long time. The national organization, the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, strongly encouraged by our own Grace Shearson, is doing a lot recently to include the women ancestors. We chant them here on a regular basis. That's not done everywhere. to begin to develop Women Ancestors documents, and this is one of them, and this is the one I like a lot. It has a red circle around the outside. In the Patriarchal Ancestors document that we have that's quite common, there's a red line.

[07:47]

It's the blood line, the blood vein, and it kind of meanders from one name to the next. I like to think that some of those names are actually kind of undercover women, but I don't know if that's true. This one is a circle. It's round and it's red, I think, also to signify blood. The roundness makes me think of a womb. And the blood, not so much the bloodline of person to person as the blood that during our fertile years we returned to the earth every month. So then there are the names of women ancestors radiating out. They're not all the women ancestors, but they're the ones we're coming to know.

[08:49]

And then inside, in red letters, There's two archetypes, two bodhisattvas that are usually thought of as female. Prajnaparamita, the mother of all the Buddhas, the perfection of wisdom, and Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. And then inside that, a black Enso of emptiness. I really like having the real women's names available to us. Grace Chisholm, who is in our lineage here, has a wonderful book probably many of you have read, Zen Women, and she quotes a late 20th century Japanese woman Zen student as asking about female Zen teachers and being told

[09:55]

quote, simply that there were none. So we're really fortunate to have these names. And I find them really inspiring and encouraging. Encouraging, making courage. So this morning, I'd like to focus on the real women, both these real women and the real women in this room, our wisdom. And then this afternoon at tea to work a bit more with the archetypal images. I want to start out by telling the story of Mahapajapati, the first woman ancestor. Her story is as much a part of the foundational story as all the other parts that we know much better that have to do with Shaki Mooney.

[11:01]

How historical this story is, how much of it really happened in some way that a historian can verify. That's not well known and probably doesn't matter that much. It's the foundational story that we have. The story starts out with the baby Buddha, the Buddha being born and then his mother dies when he's just a few days old. And then Pajapati, who's his mother's sister, his aunt, nurses him as a baby and raises him with her own children. He grows up in the palace and he leaves, sneaks out of the palace, sees the four sights, the old person, the sick person, the dead person, and the monk.

[12:12]

And then later he leaves his wife and baby to seek enlightenment, to try to understand suffering. And he sits under the Bodhi tree, and after sitting strongly through the temptations of Mara, he realizes enlightenment. And he goes off to teach, goes wandering. And that's when Mahapajapati's story begins in earnest. I think it's a really important story, and it's not an easy story. It's a story that is kind of problematic in some ways, but I think it's important for us to really pay attention to the whole thing.

[13:15]

and find the nourishment that's in it. So Prajapati goes to the Buddha and she says, I want to be part of the Sangha. I want to go forth. I want to follow you and be ordained along with your son and so many of the other men in the household. And he says, no. He says, don't ask Kajapati. It's not going to happen. So she withdraws from that encounter. And she's a respected woman in her community. And other women come to her for advice and counsel. And there are a lot of women whose husbands and sons and brothers, whose menfolks have taken to the road with the Buddha and they're kind of out there.

[14:27]

And they say, we want to do this too. So with a goodly number of those women, she comes back to the Buddha and she says, here we are. Look, there's a lot of us. We want to follow you. We want to be on the path towards realization and enlightenment. We want to be admitted to the Sangha." And he says, No. Nope. Not going to happen. Don't ask. Not going to happen. So she steps back. they all step back. Shakyamuni takes off on the road to teach, to spread the Dharma with the Sangha of monks that go with him. And a group of women around Pajapati grows and it's said to be 500 and that just really means a whole heck of a lot.

[15:39]

They decide to try again. But this time, what they do is they shave their heads and they put on robes. They ordain themselves. They validate themselves. They are confident in their ability. And they set off to Ask one more time. Ask Shakyamuni one more time. And they have to go a long way. And by the time they get there, they're all dusty and dirty. Their feet are bleeding. They're tired and they're really a mess. But they're determined. And Pajapati asks Shakyamuni again. And again, he says, no.

[16:45]

He says, no, I'm not going to do that. That's not going to happen. Don't ask. So she steps back. And this time, she's in tears. And Ananda steps forward. And he says, oh my goodness, what's troubling you so much? She tells him about it. He says, I'll see if I can help. But she can't ask again. three requests and that's it at that time in that culture. So he figures he'll give it a try. And he asks the Buddha, he asks Shakyamuni, look, there they are. They've come a long way. They're really determined. Will you ordain them? He says, no. No, I'm not going to do that. And Ananda tries again. He says, look, look at them.

[17:48]

They really want to do this. Shakyamuni says, no, no, that's not what we're doing here. And then Ananda figures, well, he's only got one more chance. He better come in from a different angle. So he says, well then. is a situation that women can't achieve enlightenment like men, that they're just not as capable. And Shakyamuni says, well, you know, no, that's not true. Women are as capable of achieving enlightenment as men. And Ananda says, well then look, you owe her. She nursed you at her breast. She raised you. You owe her. And he says, oh, all right, I'll talk to her.

[18:50]

So she comes in and he says, OK, Pajapati, here's the deal. I'll ordain you and all those women, but you have to accept the eight special rules. And the eight special rules are that Every woman, no matter how senior, is subordinate to every male monk, no matter how junior. And they can't ordain any more women without the participation and the approval of the male Sangha. So they can't be self-perpetuating. That's the deal. And it's not a very good deal. But she takes it. And the Pali scriptures say that she takes it with gratitude.

[19:52]

And when I read that, I thought, what? I can see she was going to take the deal, but with gratitude? And then I remembered the story about how a monk receives in their begging bowl whatever comes and accepts it and uses it as nourishment. And there's a story about, you know, a leper's thumb dropping in there. And the monk receives it with gratitude and is nourished by it. And I think that Pajapati received the meal with gratitude and was nourished by it. And I think we can be nourished by it too, even though it has come down through a very long time.

[20:59]

still hindering some women in the Dharma in the Theravada and Tibetan lineages in particular who have had difficulty receiving full ordination and have had to go to Taiwan to do that, fairly recently. It's a story of real limitations and real people and real life And we really know about how that all works. I think it's inspiring. It's encouraging. Because it's about doing the possible. And that's what we have to do. saying, supposedly from an International Buddhist Association, which is, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and do the possible.

[22:08]

That's what I've had to do my whole life, and I would imagine that's true for you. We haven't been like a prince in the palace who's given everything. We've lived in a world with real limitations and I think that that self-validating, self-authorizing action of Mahapajapati is very important for us. I just read a an article in Buddha Dharma magazine that maybe some of you have read. It's about a big national conference of Buddhist teachers. It happened in Garrison, New York, not too long ago. And they said that, it said in this article, that here's this huge group of the most prominent, or some of the most prominent, or much of the most prominent,

[23:22]

Buddhist teachers in North America. And it was still the case that the men talked a lot more than the women. And they had to take special measures to begin to equalize it. And I think that we have a responsibility to the first woman teacher, Mahapajapati, who did the possible, who took the step that could be taken, to take the next step, to take responsibility for showing up and stepping up and making our offering. It's our turn. It's our turn to illuminate and communicate the Dharma as we experience it within the bodies and lives that are its vehicle for us as women, and to validate ourselves and each other as carriers of wisdom.

[24:37]

Femaleness has, for a long time, been associated with conceit and compassion. I've been looking at images. There are thousands of different, many different images of Kanzeon Kwan Yin in female form. There's only one of Prajnaparamita, this one that Rebecca has rendered for us. It comes from a relief sculpture in Bali of Prajnaparamita, the mother of all the Buddhas, transcendent wisdom. There's only one. For those of you who don't know about Rebecca, she was a woman priest here at BCC. She was an artist. She died a year or so ago, and you'll see a number of her sculptures around the grounds.

[25:41]

There's one out in the garden behind the Zango and there in other places, and she made this one of Prajnaparamita. And usually that sits under the main Buddha statue here. I kind of moved her over here. And put a female Buddha there in the middle. I'll talk more about that later. It's time for us to see and be seen within the forms and its deepest understandings. So what do we see from where we sit? What's our wisdom offering as wise women, or at any rate, wise women in training? I used to say wise old women, but you know, these young women, they got a lot of wisdom.

[26:45]

Wise young women in training. we have within ourselves, within each other, within our community, a reservoir of insight and understanding and real-time, real-life realization through the practice of life in female bodies. And that insight and understanding and wisdom and real-life, real-time realization. It's not unknown. It's at least not fully expressed. And we can do something about that. There are some aspects, I think, of what we may have to share that are more clearly related to our femaleness. For example, Marie has spoken of Mama Zen.

[27:49]

what it's like to practice with a baby, with young kids, the implications of that for the balance between formal practice and the nitty-gritty, rubber-hits-the-road practice of daily life. We might also explore how the experiences of pregnancy and birth and child raising shine a light on the three marks of existence. Anatta, nothing separate, no separate self-identity, no enduring self-identity, nothing separate. Anicca, impermanence, all that arises passes away. And dukkha, or nirvana, it all depends. That experience of one day there's just me inside my skin and then I check in later and that's not really how it is anymore.

[28:57]

And I check in later yet, and somebody else's heart is beating inside my skin. Not one, not two. And then that kid pops out and runs off. But still, a body awareness. Not two, not one. then there are differing attitudes toward the body and how that informs the physical shape of our Zendo practice. One woman was quoted as saying that if she were designing a practice, she'd have all of us sitting in a circle facing each other. I don't know if that's particularly female or not, but when I been sitting with women in jail, that's what we do, because it feels right to them and it feels right to me.

[30:28]

I think Trungpa had people sit that way too though, so maybe that's not a gendered thing, I don't know. And I heard that in a recent Thursday evening discussion, there was some, the The subject was opened up about how the physical rigor and toughness that our Sashim practice in particular calls for felt to some people that had a kind of a male flavor. Again, I don't know if everybody feels that way. Maybe that's gendered, maybe it's not. What I notice in sanghas that are led by women is that there's not so much of that. That there is a sense of the preciousness of these bodies and the wisdom of caring for these precious bodies.

[31:40]

Have a different feel. And again, the whole gender thing, can get awfully, it's an icy thing, but it exists. There are different orientations to being in relationship, to the relative place of relationship in a person's awareness in their life. and their priorities. So it might bear some examination how this may be expressed in taking refuge in the Sangha and supporting harmony in the community. Differing ways of processing language and communication, how that might bear on the practice of silence.

[32:48]

which can be such a feast. It's often said that our practice is body practice. How does this female body reach the Dharma to me? and a desire for ongoing, maturing conversations about the Dharma has been expressed. So I'm wondering what areas, what subjects would people like to open up? And what forms might be skillful and congenial? So, as people in training to be wise persons, what's up for you?

[34:01]

What's your offering? And what do you need? I want to open it up. Now, we have plenty of time. Oh my goodness, I don't know what happened to the clock. Forty minutes. To hear from us all. And I'd like to use a kind of a hybrid form of council format and then open discussion. Marge Piercy has a wonderful poem called Councils. And she says, every woman needs to speak at least once. every man needs to speak not more than twice. So to make sure that everyone speaks at least once. And I say that as an introvert who often waits to speak.

[35:07]

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