a conference on feminism and Buddhism. And she bumped into a friend from the Diamond Sangha who was there for a conference on Christianity and Buddhism. And a friend from the Diamond Sangha was visiting his family, so we'd have a chai at the Diamond Sangha. I was like, I'm going to be here too. Susan has been very kind to come and talk with us some about what's been happening at the Diamond Sangha in the realm of feminism and Buddhism. Thank you very much for being here. I've got a handout, and I didn't realize there'd be so many people. So if you could share them, maybe three or four to a copy, I won't be referring to them right away, but I will be getting to it in a while. When I get to that, I'll read it aloud too in case

[01:05]

people end up without copies. OK. OK.

[02:18]

I'm going to begin by reading a bit of the talk that I gave at Naropa. I do this partly because I'm shy. And after that, I'm hoping that we can have quite an open discussion. What I want to do is really to help address issues that your sangha has that have come up for people here. And I thought I'd do that by just introducing some of the areas that we've touched on in integrating feminism and Buddhism in our own sangha. A few days before leaving Honolulu, I was speaking with a woman who has been working with Kahawai, the journal that I and Michelle and sometimes David and others helped put out. And she's fairly new to the practice in our sangha. She had been speaking to me about an experience that she had had while sitting in meditation and the conflict that had arisen for her as a woman sympathetic

[03:20]

to feminism. She described herself as sitting one day in meditation and experiencing her body as being like an empty shell. The form of the shell was the form of Shakyamuni Buddha. Her immediate sense was that it didn't matter that the Buddha was a man. Afterwards, it led her to wonder how she could want to advocate women role models. How could she integrate her experience in meditation and her feminism? I felt as though in sharing this with me that she was touching at the heart of something that we're attempting to address in our work and practice in the Diamond Sangha. While recognizing that words don't convey the fact, we say in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. We use these words, form and emptiness, as metaphors for our experience of the world. My friend Sarah, who had sat in meditation

[04:21]

and as a beginning student, had experienced herself as being the Buddha, was expressing what we might call the empty world, the world of no form, no categories, no man, no woman. Questions come up for her when she steps away from her meditation seat and carries that into the world that we would call the world of form, of colors, of categories, of distinctions and of thinking. Most of us in this room are people who have experience of meditation and so it isn't hard for us to understand these concepts of form and emptiness. A characteristic of Zen in present practice as well as in history has been dialogue or interaction as a teaching device. And so in speaking of the world of form and emptiness, I would be probably told to wash my mouth out if I spoke this way and instead I would be presenting it. And so I might ask, what is this?

[05:25]

And in doing that, I'm asking you to show me the world of no form, the world in which Sarah sits, my friend back in Honolulu, and realizes that she is the Buddha. This isn't something esoteric. It's something that we realize in our practice and that we all understand to some degree, even if only a little bit. There is a koan from the recent issue of Kahawai, a series that Thomas Cleary sent us, the first of three we've now received. The koan is called, A Woman Living in a Hut. In that koan, a monk approaches a woman hermit and asks her, do you have any followers? She said, yes. The monk said, where are they? She said, the mountains, rivers, and earth, the plants and trees are all my followers. The monk asked, are you a nun? She said, what do you see me as? The monk said, a lay person.

[06:30]

She said, you can't be a monk. The monk said, you shouldn't mix up Buddhism. She said, I'm not mixing up Buddhism. The monk said, aren't you mixing up Buddhism this way? She said, you're a man, I'm a woman, where has there ever been any mix-up? This woman has clearly experienced her own emptiness and the emptiness of all things, so she can quite clearly express the fact, you're a man, I'm a woman, or the table, the chair, the mountains, the rivers, the cool summer day in San Francisco. There's a kind of idealism among meditators, the belief that meditation has nothing to do with the world of form, and that the Buddha Tao can somehow be quarantined so that ideas and isms, or emotions, or the relationship between the sexes somehow don't touch it. There are variants on this idea. For example, some people feel that emotions are okay,

[07:32]

but isms are not okay. But either way, the identifying characteristic of this view is a desire for separation between practice and life, a desire for sanctuary, a longing to rest in the empty world. And then we say that such a person has died, but has not yet come back to life. As Blanche said, I've just come from a four-day symposium that was held at Naropa Institute, and there I was very impressed with the number of the women that I met, women coming not only from Tibetan practice, but from Theravadan and Zen practice, from Minnesota and Texas and San Francisco, as well as Colorado. And what struck me about the women that I met from Naropa itself was that many of them had been very strong feminists in the past, but had given up their feminism in coming to practice.

[08:33]

And so, for example, we had two of the women that I got to know fairly well who were organizers of the conference. One, whose name was Judith, was the organizer and director of a rape crisis center here, I think in San Francisco, for three years. This was a number of years ago, 10 years ago. And she initially was working with women who had been raped, and did that in counseling for a several-year period, and realized eventually that she needed to work with the rapists themselves, and so began going into prisons and working with rapists. And what she realized in that experience of working in the prisons with the rapists was that her own aggression toward the rapists was no different, really, than the aggression of the rapists toward the women that they were raping. And so, from that experience, turning to practice, Marilyn was another very impressive woman with a very strong background in feminism, who had been active in the early days in New York,

[09:34]

in the mid and late 60s, in the kind of emergence of the feminist movement again. And she was one of the editors of Off Our Backs, one of the first feminist publications. And what she found was that in the rather dogmatic collectivity that grew up at that time, where no expertise was allowed, no division of labor was allowed within the collective, that eventually the whole thing self-destructed. And from that experience, turned to Buddhism, and also, it seemed to me, a rather hierarchical form of Buddhism in Trimpa's situation in Boulder. But what I found was that the women, though these particular women gave up their feminism

[10:36]

for personal reasons, that it was also encouraged by the teacher that feminism be given up, and that this conference represented the beginning, or like the tip of an iceberg of a kind of reemergence or integration for women in that sangha, for bringing together these disparate sides of themselves, or two halves of themselves. So that was really wonderful for them. Our own experience in the Diamond Sangha, though, has been very different, because women like myself, who have come to the practice with a very strong background in feminism, have been encouraged, rather than the opposite, in our feminism. We've had about five years of experience in the Diamond Sangha in consciously integrating feminism into the practice, and this effort has reached into many dimensions of the practice. We proceeded on the intuition that Zen and feminism

[11:37]

are very much alike. Both begin not with theory, but with experience. Both speak of liberation, and that liberation extends in the best sense, and is available and relevant to both men and women. The liberation that is spoken of in both Zen and in feminism means embodying the teaching. It means expression in ordinary, everyday life. It means in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the workplace, and in our relationships with each other. And finally, both imply a respect and a gratitude for all life. Buddhism teaching us the way to realize our true nature, and therefore the nature of all beings. And feminism by helping women to become women and men to become men. As in that koan, you're a man, I'm a woman. Feminism helps us to realize that. What I want to do then is to look at some of the ways that we've tried to integrate feminism and Buddhism

[12:41]

in the various aspects of the practice in the Diamond Sangha. And what I thought I'd do is to speak about two of the very earliest things that we did, and then more or less list a whole lot of other areas that we've touched. And then I hope that people maybe could find from that list, or even from your own experience here, what's most current or relevant in your Sangha. And we can talk about those things. Because I found it in Naropa that I could have talked for about four hours. And I want to touch on what's most relevant for people here. So, one of the first things, and this was about five years ago that we did, was we began to look at the sutras that we chanted. It was a natural place for us to begin because it happens that Eken Roshi and a number of people in our Sangha are very interested in language.

[13:43]

We have a couple of poets, or a number of poets, a number of writers, people who are just very interested in language and poetry. And so, this, you know, turning to sutras as a place to begin was really, the impetus for this came from one or two women. It wasn't a kind of general Sangha movement by any means, but just a couple of women who were disturbed by the sexist language in the sutras. So, if people have a look at what I've passed out, we do a very, we have very little ritual, and we don't do a whole lot of sutras in our Sangha. We do about 15 minutes of chanting a day in morning service and in evening service at the end of Zazen. And then two times a week we have a half-hour sutra service. Now, in that half-hour service, we do ten sutras.

[14:45]

That was a collection put together by Eken Roshi. And of those, there's some like the purification, like the four vows, that have no gender references at all. And so, any kind of changes are not applicable to those. But two that I have here that we've worked a great deal with are Hakuin Zenji, Song of Zazen, and Todai Zenji, Bodhisattva's Vow. And I've put at the beginning, with Hakuin, we have three versions of that. And the one at the beginning is the earliest version. And then you'll see a middle version and a most recent version, the version we now have. How are people with, there are a lot of people that have these. As much as you can, if you could share around.

[15:47]

Also, can everybody hear me? People in the back hear me okay? It's okay? You'll see that in the first version, in the second stanza, we have like a man in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor. And then, down in the fifth stanza, the man who tries it only once will find his guilt swept clean. His evil way is completely gone. The pure land itself, not far. The man who hears the truth but once and listens with a grateful heart, accepting it, praising it, gains blessings without end. But the man who turns within himself and proves his own self-nature, self-nature that is no nature, goes far beyond mere cleverness. He knows effect and cause are one, not two, not three. The path runs straight. With form of formlessness as form, going and coming, he never moves. With thought of thoughtlessness as thought,

[17:00]

he hears the law in song and dance. So, you can see that lots of mans and he's in that. And then, we have a kind of intermediate version. I think this is really interesting because we have like a man in the midst of water crying out in thirst. And then, down at the fifth stanza, we've made it to the person who tries Zazen but once, sweeps all his ancient vice away. So, you see, we have a problem still. The person who hears this truth and then still more the one who turns within and proves his own self-nature. He knows effect and cause are one, not two, and so on. His song and dance are the voice of the law. And so, in working with this, and often it's been Akinroshi working in conjunction with women who are concerned about this. We have a pretty nice version now of this particular sutra. Feeling still, the poetry of the original is very difficult to capture

[18:06]

and I don't think yet that that's been accomplished. But we have, How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar. Like someone in the midst of water crying out in thirst, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor. And down again to the fifth stanza, Those who try Zazen even once wipe away beginningless crimes. Where are all the dark paths then? The pure land itself is near. Those who hear this truth even once and listen with a grateful heart. And so on. So, we've really improved that so that we aren't speaking of only men. And likewise, in Tore Zenji, Do you folks do these two sutras at all? Or you're not familiar with them? We have in Tore Zenji,

[19:07]

the original version we did was one in which patriarchs and Zen masters appear. This was a kind of, you know, phrases that we found problematic for a long time and have worked that out fairly well now, I think. We have in the old version, This realization made our patriarchs and virtuous Zen masters extend tender care with the heart of worshipping. And then further down we have the same problem with men and he and him. Who can be ungrateful or not respectful even to senseless things, not to speak of men. Even though someone may be a fool, be warm and compassionate to him. If by any chance he should turn against us, become a sworn enemy and abuse and persecute us, we should sincerely bow down with humble language in reverent belief that he is the merciful avatar of Buddha. So in our new version, we now use, instead of patriarchs and Zen masters,

[20:09]

we use either founding teachers or great ancestors. Founding teachers being the one that we've used for the last few years and recently we've been turning to ancestors or great ancestors. This realization made our founding teachers and virtuous Zen leaders extend tender care and so forth. And then, who can be ungrateful or not respectful even to senseless things, not to speak of people. And if by any chance such a person should turn against us, become a sworn enemy and abuse and persecute us, we should sincerely bow down with humble language in reverent belief that he or she is the merciful avatar of Buddha. So those are two sutras in which we've done a lot of work. And our sutra service is one that I don't think would offend feminists any longer. With this exception, if you turn to the next page,

[21:10]

we have, and I believe you do also, a dedication in which we recite the lineage of our teachers. And this is problematic for some feminists because, of course, there are no women in the lineage. And I myself have not come up with any true solution to this yet. But I've been thinking about it a great deal. And in the research and just the material that we've been collecting, I've begun to find some women that we could appropriately plug into our lineage. Myosin is one. I've been working for the last two years on a translation of the Theragatha, which is the songs of the sisters, the original nuns in the Buddha Sangha. And some of those women could very easily serve as founding matriarchs.

[22:15]

Another issue, though, to consider is whether that's even something that we want to look into, a kind of comparable lineage of women teachers. You know, in Zen, there are many, you know, Bodhidharma is a semi-legendary person. Zen invented the idea of lineage, though it was not there in Theravadan Buddhism. And, I don't know, it's just something to look at. So this is one thing that I haven't got any solutions to at the moment. Besides working with sutra changes, and besides just the sutras, we've done a lot more with language in Cohen's study and in Rosho's own presentation of Taisho. And I can talk about that some later. But I wanted to mention that another initial thing that we did was the formation of a women's group.

[23:22]

This began about three years ago. And I think it was another really appropriate, very natural, there was no issue that it grew up around, but just we have a very small sangha, and we just thought it would be nice for the women to get together. So we began meeting on a weekly or twice-a-month basis for a period of about two years. And one of the first things that we did as a women's group, and that was really a wonderful experience, was sharing our stories of how we came to the practice. And I'd just like to tell a few of the stories, because they were very moving to me when I first heard them. There was a woman named Nelly who had grown up in Oklahoma, and she had been raised to be a concert pianist. And at the age of about 18 or 19, she dropped out of being a concert pianist and set up a rock and roll band.

[24:28]

This was in the 60s. And, you know, traveled all around the Midwest, taking a lot of acid and rocking out. And from one experience that she had had on acid, which was very powerful for her, felt the continual need to come to some understanding of that particular experience, and this eventually led her to Zen practice in Hawaii. Another woman came to practice also in an unusual way. She had, as a child, her mother had left her family and three daughters to go off with another man. And when, as an adult, when the three girls had grown up, the mother returned to the family as she was dying. And was present with her daughters at the time of her death,

[25:29]

and this death was a very powerful experience, a precious experience. And out of this, my friend began to go to graveyards, and from there going to sit outside the zendo, not entering into the zendo, but sitting out in the dark at night undetected in the garden, before eventually entering into the zendo and joining the practice. And I myself came to the practice from hiking in the mountains, not one to the other, but I looked very earnestly in Christianity for a practice and a method of practice, and could not find that either with Carmelites or with Trappists, so it was heading in the right direction. And so eventually I took to the mountains by myself for a period of a year and hiked the Appalachian Trail.

[26:32]

This was some ten years ago. And in hiking really came to some understanding of meditation without even knowing practically what the word meditation was, and so that became a source for my own practice. What was wonderful in the sharing of women's stories was a sense that the earnestness and sincerity and the great doubt that we heard about, from Hakuin or from Dogen or from many of the Great Zen teachers, was not something that was unique to those teachers but was in our own midst. And so it was really very inspiring for the women to share these stories. In subsequent times together we were also able, though there wasn't much anger or whatever in our sangha, but there was a sense in the times with the women meeting together that we were able, as a group, to identify issues of concern for us.

[27:32]

And this came sometimes in the women's group and also sometimes in Kahawai, the journal that grew out of the women's group that was started by several of the women that were part of that group. So over time, through the group and through Kahawai, we have been able to identify what we as women felt were important issues of concern. And what was really marvelous for us is that we had so much support from Roshi in doing this. It would have been a much harder situation if our teacher had not been as supportive as Aitken Roshi has been of raising these issues and looking into different ways we can approach these issues. So some of the different areas that we've touched down into

[28:33]

are sexual stereotyping in work roles, leadership in the dojo and the whole question of leadership, male leadership, female leadership, the use of the Kiyosaku style and presentation of it, Koan study, which is an important aspect of our own practice. We've given women's orientations, or a woman's orientation to be correct, and are open to the possibility of doing that again. We've advertised all women's orientations and had an all-women's group. We've done role-reversal skits at a talent show one night using Koan material and acting out parts, which were great fun. We've also addressed issues of abortion, child care,

[29:36]

and are hoping in the spring issue of Kaha Wai to address childbirth. So I could talk about any of these areas or touch on them or go into some detail on them, but what I'd like to hear is maybe from that list or from anything that is an issue in your sangha to talk about those things in dialogue form. One of the things that's been an issue that I've sort of struggled with,

[30:46]

and a lot of women that I've talked to have struggled with, is the issue of leadership here at Sensei. And a lot of women want to see other women in that position and having somehow been a lot of difficulty managing to support that. The thing that's interesting to me about it is that it stays sort of mysterious why there aren't a lot of women in leadership positions. Hi. It's strange, isn't it? It is a bit mysterious. The way we've dealt with that is, you know, our situation is very small,

[31:48]

and so it's less mysterious because it's very small. And if you hang around a shorter period of time, you begin to see all the workings. When I say small, our whole sangha of actively sitting people is probably about a hundred people. And this is on two islands, on Maui and Honolulu. And everybody knows everybody quite well. You know, even a hundred might be too large. Like 36 is how many people we'd have at a retreat. And so we know each other quite well. And it's pretty equal men and women, though in the earlier days, I'm speaking of five years ago or more, our center, and I don't know if this is true, but a lot of Zen centers seem to attract a lot more men. And so it was disproportionate, the number of men to the number of women. And we definitely had, inheriting this from Yamada Roshi's zendo, a situation where in our zendo we have four leadership positions in retreats

[32:52]

and in normal evening times when Roshi is present, when we have dog-san. And so that's an Ino, a Tanto, a Jikijitsu, and a Jisha. And in Kamakura, those positions are always men. Still to this day, those four positions are always men. And what we asked about three years ago, if we could always have half of those people be women. And, you know, it didn't seem to be so hard that that could happen. And almost immediately, and since that time, we have always had, it wouldn't necessarily be two and two, sometimes there'd be three women and sometimes there'd only be one. But we do have now a situation where the visible leadership in the meditation hall is half women. And, you know, it seems, maybe you could say more about...

[33:53]

Ours is a lay situation too, and so I don't know if that affects... Is your situation as much a monastic set-up in the sense that people are living in? No. Is that situation, even though people are lay people here, most of the people who live in the community are supported by the community, work in the community. When you say work in the community, you mean work for Zen Center? Work for Zen Center. And so that's how, and then they have a stipend. Right, right. And it sounds like your community, most people are... There's two people that are supported with room and board, and those are the house managers of both centers. And we have no other people supported by them. No, he's not even supported by them. He supports himself. How does he do that? Well, he used to work, and now he's living off. He's retired. So that's one thing that's somewhat different.

[34:55]

But I don't know. But it's a great thing. Traditionally, the Ino and the Kancho people have always been priests. And you can hear that they were priests. Well, actually, the Ino and the Kancho were both lay people. I'm going to bring up some issues. Leslie is back. The thing is that I've seen a lot, and I'd like to hear other people's views on it, because I don't know whether it's my interpretation, but a lot of times I've seen women get into leadership positions, and then their position seems to lose some oomph. Is that other people's experience? Go ahead.

[36:01]

I have a very different view of leadership. At that time, it seemed to me that there was a need for, like, assistant jobs, things that needed to be done. So I ended up doing my sort of work, and I found that in that kind of position, I ended up having to take up two responsibilities. Now, this is a whole new area. I like to nap. You know, it's mostly one of those things. For 13 years, I have been, I suppose, in my home, where there's somebody on the dojo. Are you speaking of in your home, or are you speaking of in the dojo? Well, I'm speaking of in the dojo. Uh-huh. It feels like the responsibility is something that you have to take up.

[37:28]

It's not supported by other people. It just goes back. I mean, it's more than just a position of responsibility. It's a personal position. And I don't know if you will get in that kind of role. So what you're suggesting is that, if it's possible that here women have been given positions of authority, and if they seem to have lost oomph, it's because perhaps the women haven't been supported in those positions? Is that something I'm hearing from you, perhaps? I wonder if that's a general experience. Do other people experience that? It's not my experience. This may be related, although I have no idea who you're referring to. But one thing I realize is that this has been discussed with me, and then I see evidence of efforts to get women more and more senior,

[38:34]

sort of, so that they can catch up with a larger number of men who are senior, for whatever reason. But among the officers, the only woman I ever know is the one in Charlotte, the president's secretary. But anyway, it seems like the only officer that ever is a woman is the secretary. We have that problem, too. This is like corporate officers, right? Yvonne was the president's secretary. Yes, I'm the token woman. Here we have the secretary. President Truman. She's the chairman of the board. And she was a president. Anyway, we always have a woman secretary. Well, let me put it this way. Why didn't we ever have a man secretary? And, or, a woman president of MSN, or a woman treasurer of MSN, or treasurer of MSN. Actually, so these aren't just open case. It doesn't sound as though it's well known.

[39:36]

They're very visible, though. You see, it makes a big difference. You know those types of things. That part of, you know, what you didn't know about Yvonne is part of that. I don't know what Yvonne is doing there, so I'm not aware of it either. But someone who is visible is the secretary. Everyone knows who the secretary is, at least in the building. So I think that you're making a good point. You know it's pretty visible. Well, I don't know. Two out of three are women. Right, but I mean in general, other than the past few years. I think one of the, one of the things that, there are two things that I see. There are two things that I've noticed. One, I think, is, as you mentioned, some years ago, there was a preponderance of men. Which has changed pretty much, I think.

[40:37]

This Sangha is also about men. But since some years ago, the Sangha was predominantly men, there are more senior students. There's just a preponderance of senior students who are men. But the other thing I've noticed, and that's something I think that we're trying to address ourselves to now in discussions here at Zen Center, is that there are also women who come to some level of seniority and it doesn't work for them. And they, you know, there have been just quite a number of women who have become fairly senior and find that something about the practice, as it is now in Zen Center, is not working for them. What that is, I don't think we've been able to identify or to find some way of making this practice work for women as they become more senior. I think I'm in a different situation.

[41:40]

I've raised my family. They're at home. I've had a professional life. And I'm finished with it. I've been a householder, and I'm finished with it. So it puts me in a little different situation. It's easier for this situation to work for me than it is for younger women. Excuse me, are you talking about women who are priests? Priests or older students, or laywomen, either one. Both single and married? Both single and married. So I think that's something we have to address to find out. I mean, many of the issues that are brought up I don't find them to be my personal experience, but I see that my personal situation is very different than most of the other women here. I'd like to point out the bright side of this story.

[42:41]

In China and Japan, women and men were always separated. That's one thing. Also in Japan, we don't have matriarchs because somehow women don't practice. The role is determined. Women are wives. They raise children. When I came here, what was most impressive to me was that women were practicing. Housewives were sitting. That was just amazing. This is actually the first time in history that probably women and men are practicing together and women with children are practicing. Also, we have been using the word

[43:48]

ancestors. Somehow we are not limiting the future leaders not to just patriarchs, but women. That's well said. That's an important point. We're trying to use the words ancestors too. All good. There are so many topics to talk about here. I think partially in the issue of leadership and women in leadership that often we don't have so much experience with leadership as it's been defined in masculine terms, which is primarily the way it's been defined, which is valid, but it's from one perception of the world. I think as women, often we don't know yet the fullness of what the female experience is because it's so often been defined as opposite of what's masculine. These categories get us in a lot of trouble, men and women. We limit ourselves by our ideas

[44:51]

of what's masculine and feminine. I think there's a style of leadership that women have that might be different that doesn't necessarily fit or can't be just plugged into a structure that's come out of a masculine perception and hierarchical structure. So I think there's much we don't know yet and there's a great deal of our own experience that has to be explored and documented to have this emerge. The history of Zenza actually validates or shows what Shania said. I remember years ago when I first came to Zenza and basically much before we were developed the way we are now there was Yvonne, there was Avalokiteshvara, and Roshi and Rev who were among you three. And if you wanted to do some sort of practice question like how many dogs and birds you should go to or what job or whatever, you went to see Roshi. And if you wanted a cat, a stray cat to live with

[45:51]

or if there was a child who needed help or something like that or some personal problem, you made some distinction between personal and practice. You went to Yvonne. And so Yvonne's practice in this way seemed to be invisible. She was always shoring up somebody or finding kitty litter. Many people were dependent on her but nobody ever said, well, she's giving practice a stress test. Her practice still is invisible. So she tended to do the invisible practice and men tended to do the visible. They had the actual job. I think it's less so. We touched on this issue of what would a woman's style of leadership be

[46:53]

at the conference at Naropa a little bit. One of the talks was hierarchy and power and it was one of the most electric talks of the conference. And what happened was that it was so electric that we had to move it from the main auditorium into a side room. What resulted was, and it was mostly women, is that it was a woman who gave the address and it was a big podium, very high up in a very big auditorium. We were all in rows. And we moved it and we almost naturally fell into a circle. And what we adopted, it wasn't my suggestion, but a suggestion of another woman who had heard about the style that we use in the Diamond Sangha for circle time, for sharing time, where we go around the room, each person speaking in turn before interaction happens or any interruption happens. And that's what we used

[47:55]

so that each person could speak. And that seemed to be very natural for us as women, as a style of interaction. And it was also for that reason that I wanted to set up the room this way tonight. Go ahead. I think it's a very complicated issue, the whole thing. But the question that I see, one of the questions that comes up to me is possibility. And if you're a woman, the possibility of having a child is intimately what women do, and especially women who may not practice it together. And having a child means that you have to devote, and when you think of a child, it's not having to devote an enormous amount of energy and attention to that child. So if you're having children

[48:57]

or going through a child, there'll be times in your life where you have to take out time from what you're doing. You stop being secretary for six months, you stop doing things. And that question, I feel like that question is very much a part of a woman's body of experience. And it's hard to see how you can make an uncommitted gesture to just practicing, just including everyone, when you may be taking, there may be one person, there may be, I don't really know how to articulate it so well, but I've had a sense of it for a time, I've watched women, and I feel like it's a question that they have. The question of what can you do? I think it has something to do with what Blanche was saying about women reach a certain point in practicing and it just doesn't work. So perhaps are you saying that one of the reasons possibly that women reach a certain point is that those women have children and they have kind of a dual commitment to practice and to raising children?

[49:58]

In my experience, the women who are doing it, I don't know how to actually say this, but my experience is that women with children, as they say, do very well. And women who try to practice without including that aspect of their lives, after a time, don't do so well. It's like not taking care of that part of yourself and then suddenly, ten years down the road, ten years after that, suddenly you find out that what you want to do is have a child. And it's important to you, but assessing that, I don't know what I'm talking about. I think it's important that you guys... Yeah, I want to say something that's not directly related to that. This is maybe a little bit of my personal story. When I came to Zen Center, I had a lot of ambition. It was very masculine ambition that I had been...

[51:02]

I'm getting a little... This is kind of heavy. What are you talking about? Okay. Maybe we can come back to it. I would really like to talk about it. I'm kind of emotional about it. So I'm going to get to it. I'm telling you this because in person I'm so emotional about it. Laughter Anyway, I was sort of raised to be a man about my family.

[52:11]

So when I came to the Zen Center, I still had, that was my teaching. I was brought up. And what was real interesting when I came to the Zen Center was I knew how to fit in perfectly. My training had been perfect at the Zen Center. Laughter I knew all the ways to make it at the Zen Center in terms of hierarchy. And becoming, you know, having a leadership position or something. I mean, that didn't happen to me right away. But I thought, I'll just stay here a while and I'll move in to where I want to move in. And it was a very subconscious thinking that was going on there. But because I'd just been trained to do that wherever I went. But at Zen Center, I could see I fit right in. And it would work. My training would work. And then I went through.

[53:13]

Well, you change when you practice. Laughter A lot of changes. A whole lot of changes. By the time that I got to R, I began to be interested in trying to find out what it was to be a woman. And I remember talking to people about it. It was like this abstract thing. But I wasn't quite as blind to be a woman. Laughter I got interested in finding out about it. Laughter And part of that was I was beginning to be interested in having a child. And not knowing why or exactly either. It was all very kind of mysterious. And actually, so practice in a sense, I don't know, maybe if I'd done other things in my life, I would have been led in the same direction. But it seemed to open up for me to discover what being a woman was for me.

[54:18]

And so actually, I feel that sometimes that's what happens to women who become a Zen Center visit. A lot of us have been trained the way I was trained. Or in some way had that kind of influence in our lives up until we come here. And then we start exploring ourselves and our true feelings and all the myriad of feelings that we have. And so for me, the ambition to have positions and leadership positions to take on responsibility began to sort of fizzle out over a period of years. And I began to want to explore other things in the hopes that at some point I could come back to taking on authority and leadership. Understanding what it was to be a woman to do that. So, of course, getting married and being pregnant for me was part of that. Now for some other women it isn't. I don't mean that for every woman that that's part of what it is to be a woman.

[55:22]

And so I feel like what I'm going through now is just further practice of training for eventually being able to have some kind of responsibility within the practice. But it takes a long time because I have to, you know, growing up as a woman in this society, you have to find out what it means to be a man and then to be a woman. It's very complex. And then practice just makes it even more complex. It's not so automatic. You just get completely blown apart. It takes a long time, at least for me. And I have to do many different things, I feel, before I can take on authority and responsibility and work with other people in that way. And one other thing I'd like to mention is in relation to what Ron said about

[56:28]

if women do choose to have children at the center, one thing I really feel very strongly about is that having children or having a family is also practice and I don't see the separation. And I feel like sometimes it's often talked of as a separation. And for me, I feel completely convinced there's no separation. And it's just not even an issue for me personally, but it is an issue, I think, for the whole sangha to deal with. I think for some people, perhaps they see it as separation. And for me it's just, you know, it's no separation. How to do it, you know, each woman has to explore that for themselves, too. I wanted to add one thought I had to what you said,

[57:31]

which was that this whole issue of feeling like you've been raised to be like a man and discovering your woman's side in practice is something that is my own experience, too. And I've spoken about this with some other friends in the sangha. And, for example, one man who's been around for many years, Stephen, said that he himself felt like he was raised to be a man as well and that through practice he found his woman's side. Speaking to a woman named Margo, and sure, this is too simplistic, but Margo was a very feminine kind of woman and really was raised to be a very feminine kind of woman. And she found, through practice, she was much more able to be in touch with a kind of more aggressive, direct side. And so maybe, as I say, this is too simplistic, but finding the sides that we have not found in ourselves

[58:32]

has been one of my experiences in practice. Yeah, I can certainly see that with you, Grace. Yeah, but I just wanted to mention that, too, with men. Men finding their masculine or feminine sides, too. Yeah. Go ahead. Some people have pointed out to me that men seem to really enjoy taking a position in the hierarchy and staying right in that spot. For example, it's part of our education menu, but men, for example, are happy to play third base, baseball team, or second base, and so on, and they're very happy to stay right in that position. A shortstop moves around quite a bit, but still a shortstop generally stays in the field most of the time. Whereas women, it seems like women enjoy staying in third base, and there are more women in third base than she might.

[59:36]

A third base person, she might. Yeah. She's really helpful, especially. Somehow women aren't so interested in making the third base look like third base, and aren't so interested in making third base look like the union where it's happening. They seem to be a little bit willing to just help out all over the field, which works in a way that doesn't work in a way. And as a result, if a woman is willing to just pop out all over the field, probably third base will be the weakest position. It will be completely safe. You're not taking care of business. How do you see that applying in leadership or here? Well, I'm going to just point out an example of a secretary talking to a kitty litter. It's not official that a secretary has jobs. So if a secretary is talking to a kitty litter, instead of answering a correspondence,

[60:41]

then it's a compassionate act. But it doesn't really shore up that position called secretary. It doesn't make secretary a high profile. It doesn't get the attention of that position. Men like to stay right in the position they are. I like that. I think that's because men really like to get the position. The position should be coverage, extension. That would make the secretary more interested in popping out. But the hierarchy is then, because then the secretary does not have to hold above the traditional hierarchy. It's not hopeless because when a man gets in a position, if he really stays in a position and becomes really attached to it and loves it, then the tendency of the whole institution is to draw the man out to cover all over the place. One who fully fulfills and has high profile, then is requested to go cover all over the place and is pulled away from the area of high life.

[61:45]

It would encourage them to be more feminine side. So the man, from taking the position in the hierarchy, is forced to take a more feminine, overall, pervasive, compassionate role. Whereas for a woman, for a man, it's like if you start with what you like, then you get forced into what you don't know. From a position of strength, a position of what you're used to, a woman gets forced into the hierarchy and it's not satisfying to her. She may not be able to wait up until she gets her chance to be wide and compassionate throughout the whole organization. And it's a certain difference. Part of the problem, I think, is when a woman has trouble staying in a position, is if they have to wait long enough until people force them up into their more wide and compassionate function. Sometimes it takes years. Or maybe what the community needs to do more with women is to push them into the more limit setting.

[62:46]

But it also sounds like then the women, I mean, they're still at a disadvantage because they have to start out doing what they don't like and what they're not good at. And then get into what's more comfortable rather than, I mean, it doesn't have to be the way that what Rev just described. That's not where they started out. They started out maybe in a low profile. So then when a woman comes into a position of authority in Zen Center, then it would maybe, it's sort of ludicrous because not everybody's exactly like that. Then the community might be asked to address that, their leadership in terms of what they need and begin to support them, that woman in leadership, to do what's unknown to her and to help her do that. Because it happens automatically, it sounds like, for men. Yeah, they pick up on the supportive cues of staying in place. The same observations are made in offices.

[64:01]

Women generally help out older men, stay right in their job and don't help out other people so much. And there's a rise in the Zen hierarchy because you know right where they are. So it's a system that promotes that kind of staying in position. On the other hand, in Zen, people don't like it if you stay in position too much. Like in Zen Center, some people work in such and such an area, and people in other areas say, would you help out? But they don't want to help out because that makes their area look not so good. But then other people in Zen say, you can't do that, you can't help out old people, you can't help them here, it's a force in the world. So there's a balancing to that. I've seen a lot of women in the way, they're very compassionate and very helpful, but they don't help with staying in position. I think it might be people would give them cues, give them strokes for staying in position rather than strokes for running all over the place, then it might be more comfortable to stay there.

[65:04]

Once they really got on with it, they didn't force them into the Zen world too. They like it as much as men do. Probably. Maybe it's more fundamental than that. Whatever. I'd like to say something. I've only been here two months. I come from Amsterdam and I'm a feminist there. And I've only been here now two weeks because I went to Mount Shasta Abbey, where there's a woman, Alice, and several women Roshis, and I was impressed there because in the whole system I didn't see any special role taken of a man or a woman. That made me think, I always thought feminism was very vowing and very male, and to me that made it very interesting. That was very important to me. Also, in the reasons why I first turned to Zen, having looked at Christianity and Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism and Theravadan Buddhism,

[66:09]

I felt as though in Zen I found women Roshi and a recognition that women have the same capacity within the practice. To build along what Brad was saying, it seems as though that's accepting, and what you were saying too, Marsha, it seems as though that's accepting the hierarchical structure and talking about moving women into that and then how they function within that. But I still think the question is another step back in terms of the very structure itself. I think the structure itself helps create the separation that you've spoken of between practice and family life, and that in fact the structure has to change. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I've thought about this, and as a mother in practice I have some concern with it, though I don't live in the community. I live outside the community in the beach. It seems as though some of the work structure

[67:13]

might possibly be changed in order to accommodate family in such a way that it doesn't force the distinction. I don't want to get too lost in specifics, but it's just a question of the structure itself. I watched this book and watched the narrative, and I still remember it when I read it. And I guess I left practice when it became clear to me that it was going in their direction, and it felt to me at the time that there was not going to be a place for me to grow in the practice

[68:19]

and to fulfill my purpose in the community, and have children in the community. It seems, my experience is, that the problems that Jim's having, the experience that we're talking about now, the current experience, it's not so different than what I was feeling six or seven years ago back when I came here. When I think of the kids growing up and becoming formalized, the problems of a woman in a hierarchical situation are the same, I think, as the problems of women working in a corporate structure. And what happens here, under the sort of magnifying glass of practice where we see ourselves very potentially in this area, it's just a sort of magnified version of what happened in the rest of the country. The Japanese traditional structure,

[69:19]

it isn't so different in form, in a way, than the corporate structure. If you want to get ahead, and you want to move up in its hierarchy, you have to do a lot of hours, and follow certain matters, and if you take time out to have children, that is good, it's sort of something separate, and there is some problem with it, in that just the time and energy of it is so great that it's very hard for me to deal with it. And it's not surprising, then, that this form has generated these problems that you have to solve them, because they're the same problems that we're struggling with in our culture. We have a lot of children in the camp, men and women, and the corporate executives in the camp, can't they really do it all at once? And it seems like somehow, one can come out of this movement, some people feel,

[70:21]

we have to be able to do it all now. And it seems to feel terrible if we can't somehow juggle it all, and be a mother and a wife, and now on top of that, you know, this too, and this too, that I think the fact is that most of us can't do it all at once. And that if you reach a point in your life, in this particular structure, where you want to be more of a householder, and you feel like you have a very strong family, you start to come out of it. That's not the only direction. In Berkeley, what we're doing is consciously trying to develop a form of government.

[71:21]

And Berkeley has been much more than like what we used to be. We're trying to look to the future. We're trying to develop a form of governing ourselves in a way that is somehow true to the heritage of the lineage of the teaching path in that side of the current structure. And yet, true, leaving more space for us to develop as American women in a way that we don't see as being open with our work. Thank you. Did you want to speak? There are a couple of things that come to my mind

[72:24]

within the discussion. One, which has always been a pretty major question for me in the time that I've been practicing, is and it relates to people when you bring up the question of family life and how that relates to practice and how that relates to family. I remember when I first became acquainted with Buddhism and started reading up on it and found out that essentially this tradition was founded by a man whose initial religious act was to run away from his family. And I never thought that was the case. My first experience was as a child being in a family which was in some sense preserved by a man my father knew as a religiously motivated person I didn't feel that that those things were mixed. That there's some kind of abstract truth and it's impossible for me to just relate it to the people that he's living with. I don't know, it's not something I have an answer to

[73:24]

but it's something that certainly I've been practicing here for some time. It's turning in my head that as I find the size of the practice it's fundamental to the life of the people living there. But a good deal of the rest of Buddhism that we've heard of some of it almost proves to be stunted. And it relates to some people. And another thing that just I just realized as I was listening to the last person talking it's related to some of the other things I've been hearing people say and also the people speaking to their women which is appropriate. But it occurred to me that it's interesting how in conversations between more and more of the question of hierarchy and position and power and status and things like that and I realized that I personally don't find a whole lot of things to lose.

[74:24]

I've been practicing here for quite some time and as people I don't have any positions here at all and I've never really felt I lack people speaking to me. Which isn't to say that I mean it just struck me I realized that that was so and that it never occurred to me that I wanted to rise in the structure. I don't care if I ever rise in the structure. And it just struck me as interesting that questions of shouldn't so arise in a persistent manner like it's something people may be interested in. I'm not I'm less and less interested in hierarchy, but it's such a big defense center, at least for me when I think because maybe also when I was taught a full lecture

[75:27]

and it's just natural that's the way it goes down. I've never talked about marriage it was always I was going to be a successful business woman so I've just sort of been natural and a lot of people do that and I've had to recently sort of pull back from that because I wasn't able to do it fully and I had to start asking myself why being a business woman and one thing I've noticed about hierarchy because we have it it seems like we have to address ourselves to that person we can't talk about anything at least some of us have to address ourselves it requires a certain momentum or it seems to require a certain momentum and to keep up hierarchy when I'm working and men can easily give themselves

[76:29]

to that because they're thinking about having children by themselves so there's a certain anxiety with women that it has been and I felt that an anxiety of letting go you know you get into that momentum and then there's the stop and you feel like you're starting to slide back and eventually you see other aspects to that and you begin to see maybe there are other priorities and that's a whole different process because you start looking at things more deeply but anyway I think it's interesting that kind of momentum that it's easier for men to maintain than it is for women when she lets it go what else

[77:29]

I think there's a lot of people going through that now and that's leading us to be able to look for other ways thank you I see a few hands is what you were going to say relevant to that or shall we come back to it why don't you wait a second go ahead I have two rather technical questions I would like you to talk about two rather technical issues and one the use of the Kusaku and I would like you to clarify what you mean by the issue in the presentation of poems would people like to hear about that right now let's finish this and I'll speak to that

[78:30]

you and you I have recently attended a conference which included mostly it was a very highly Christian group but very interestingly it's more on the mystical side and everybody knows medieval fantasy science literature and such and one of the things that was involved in the group was feminism and they constructed and do run in Berkeley at this time the idea of presenting in more Christian form maybe it's more pagan form actually since I observed it but more Christian idea than Buddhist certainly they don't know what Buddhism is a mass for the mother now this is a very

[79:30]

feminist idea but what they did in looking from maybe a more monastic view or a more religious view what they did actually was masculinate everything they thought they were bringing out as being feminine the mother turned into some vision of very masculine abstractions in this particular connection in their imagination they thought that they were discussing something feminine but in fact they had created a monster right after that there was the masculine point of view which the lady who headed this one her husband put on this next one and it's a Catholic mass excuse me

[80:32]

I'm not very good at Christian saints Saint Serapion and they had pulled out a text from this and they did a beautiful feminine mass it had all the traditional ideas of course this is done in costume you don't get all the things put together quite correctly all the time they did their best to put together what would have been the mass of this saint that was supposedly done so many ages ago and it's not done now and their idea of a mass these men was a very religiously feminine example of of what they were imagining at that time they had delicate white cloths draping the table

[81:34]

instead of bright colored and such and you see the difference there vast distinction they reversed the roles terribly without knowing it and I don't know exactly that this has too much bearing exactly on things that have been said in sort of a very immediate sense here but it sort of has a it just came to my mind quite vividly when people were talking about like what's done in the outside world I worked in the outside world for a long time and what's done in the inside world and you know our hierarchy and such there's give and take in everything believe me well I was just wondering it seems to me that a lot of the men who maybe

[82:34]

came to Zen Center when they were young so they've been here for a while sort of plugged right in to the scene that was happening that was more what they were trained for so they could more easily plug in it seems like a lot of them are now pulling back and questioning I mean it's sort of same side of the reverse of what's happening with the women is that they're pulling back my god you know here I've done this thing for six or eight or ten years and become a priest and is this really what I want to do you know it seems yeah but I think she's right I wasn't noticing it was happening with men too about the same seniority they're wanting to explore their family life you know the men who are married who are having children are wanting to figure that out they don't want to be so plugged in to the sort of track and I think we also need to work to give them the space

[83:35]

so that they can take that time away so that we're not have some idea of them always being the good third baseman you know that they can do a job half time or whatever it takes for them to work out that it's typical of the monastic lineage in which the whole structure is based on somebody saying I'm putting everything aside to do this practice I'm not going to have a personal life and then now here we are a bunch of lay people together and we're saying well we want to try and have a personal life and we still want to try and somehow use the forms of a monastic life you know at what point are we bastardizing both forms of being and at what point are we really integrating them

[84:36]

and I just, you know, it's sort of like taking Marlboro out of the country or something it's really a sorting problem where's the Buddhism in your personal life and where's the how do you are people interested in, there's so many questions I don't know, do people want to hear about we could spend all night on this subject but I think it might be nice do people here use request, is Kiyosaku I understand, this is my demonstration model now is Kiyosaku voluntary here or is it given when you knew it's voluntary when you knew it's voluntary we used to in our Sangha give it only not voluntary and so it was up to the discretion of the Tantra

[85:36]

to give the Kiyosaku and this is not entirely the influence of the women in the Sangha I think it was primarily Roshi's decision but I think it came in part from the impetus of some women particularly feeling that they didn't like the Kiyosaku in the dojo at all there's at least one woman who will not though she's capable of being Tantra does not wish to be Tantra because she doesn't like the idea of the stick only the Tantra is the Tantra is the person who, or our dojo who walks the stick, is that not true here no everybody walks the stick not everybody so when you meant voluntary did you mean receiving it? receiving it the Tantra is the person who walks the stick in our dojo so here many people walk it anybody walks it all the students men and women

[86:37]

in our dojo it is kind of the position of authority and also the Tantra has often been in a man and so this is one of the positions that we felt it was really important to see a woman in that position but as I say it's also been questioned by some women and one woman in particular though she could be a Tantra has not chosen to be Tantra so one of the changes that we now have is that for us the Kiyosaku is only voluntary so I suppose you do the same thing you ask for it, is that correct? sometimes it's given it's given, right in our dojo now it's never given without being requested what do you do with people that are sleeping? we let them sleep that doesn't always happen I don't know how appropriate this is

[87:38]

do you do the ritual that we do of walking the Kiyosaku in the morning to open the dojo we have a very cute ritual in our Sangha the major one is that in the morning we walk the Kiyosaku to open the dojo this has always been an interesting ritual for me because it seems very phallic I'll demonstrate this is the altar so the first bow is to the Buddha and then the Kinshusei is in the middle and the second bow is to the Dorma and then the third bow is to the Sangha and in the morning the stick is down and you walk the stick around the perimeter of the room and that this ritual

[88:41]

then the stick is up on the return and that means that the dojo is then open to practice at the end of the day the only ritual that we do is the same ritual only in reverse so we walk and then the stick is down and the dojo is closed for practice so I haven't a clue what we can do with our ritual but that is our ritual

[89:25]

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