Zen Women - It All Comes Back to Childcare

This just in - Buddhist Geeks interviews Grace Schireson about her new book, Zen Women which tops the list for my next trip to Powell's.

Grace Shireson has been studying the women in Zen stories, koans, literature and lineage. In the interview, she notes that often the women in the stories and koans are characters (objects), when the subjects are usually the male monks. For example, she notes that there are many stories of "mere" tea ladies whose understanding surpasses the male monks, and this aspect of the situation makes it all that much more humiliating. This is where Zen gets its macho rep. Even the women are made of iron. At least Dogen laid it down in the 1200's that women who have understanding are no different and should be respected as teachers. So you'd think this would have manifested in the history of Zen practice. Of course, reality has many more dimensions.

Teacher Hui Kong, Kuang Jiao Si

But the highlight in the interview is her discovery that the value of studying women ancestors is this: The women ancestors had to figure out how to adapt traditional monastic practice to a practice more centered around home and family.

Cutest baby in China, Second Ancestor's Village

Indeed, it is already something I can observe in Sangha members around me -- that having children requires a practice that is not centered around a monastery, long retreats, or even coming to a Zendo to sit from 7:30 - 9 :30 in the evenings (hello? bedtime!). Having children kind of takes you out of the community practice game for a few years. Hopefully there's a good foundation of practice, some semblance of Sangha support, and maybe even a dog-eared copy of Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn's Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting lying around somewhere.

Grace Shireson posits that our female ancestors authenticate the value of lay practice as a viable Path to Awakening. Similarly, Zen in the West must address the needs of householders. And IMHO, childcare is at the top of that list of needs.

It looks like my karma does not include being a biological mother in this lifetime. My Path and work as a social worker and therapist has for many years included working primarily with women in crisis, and this overwhelmingly means supporting mothers. That is an area of need that appears bottomless. It looks like my own life Path is that of an allomother and a support person to mothers and parents to some degree. The child-free path does enable my husband and me to focus on and deepen our own practice in more traditional ways (retreats, monastic stays, frequent community practice and organizational participation). But how can this practice benefit those who are raising children?

When we did a two-day Sangha-building retreat last year called "Upholding the Sangha Treasure", we looked deeply into the needs of our Sangha and where to turn our attention to cultivating growth. We narrowed the list to ten things. Two of these things relate to the needs of parents and families in the Sangha; specifically having childcare available during practice periods, and creating a workgroup to focus on the needs of children and families in the Sangha, and how to meet those needs. But until we have our own physical space that can accommodate doing more than two things at a time (zazen upstairs, intro to meditation downstairs), this will remain an aspiration. But it is an aspiration that has been called into being, and one that I have a very strong intention to realize.

Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an, China

This Year's Death Poem

This life, this body

In service to this moment

Already so vast.

New Year's Eve, Zen Style

This ceremony is what helped me first feel connected to this community about five years ago, and I have not missed it since. I do love a good ceremony. On New Year's Eve, the Zen Community of Oregon and Dharma Rain Zen Center join together to create a lovely New Years' celebration. I believe they have been doing this for decades.

It begins with what is probably the best vegetarian potluck in the Pacific Northwest since Thanksgiving at Great Vow Zen Monastery. If you show up early, so many new dishes, er, people have shown up, you can have a completely different meal at seconds.

After a hearty meal and lots of chit chat, the group will split into about half or 2/3, with most going upstairs to participate in some very easy sacred circle dances. Chozen Roshi loves to lead these old dances from various cultures and countries, and always manages to weave in some Dharma teaching into all of them. Those who are not dancing are, quite gratefully I am told, washing all the dishes, pots and pans.

I enjoy the dancing, and am always amazed by how much I do. These dances are gentle and forgiving, can allow for turning inward (some can even be done with eyes closed), or focusing outward into the larger body and all of our fumbling magnificence.

The large number of dancers usually heats up the Zendo quite impressively, and the big windows get opened, and usually stay that way all evening.

The dancing transitions into the evening's program, and people are given small pieces of paper and writing implements, so as to write down anything particularly unskillful to be let go of in the coming year. There is a shifting and a quieting as the dishwashers are reassured that the coast is clear, and people can begin to come upstairs, settle down on a cushion and reflect on a few things in need of refinement.

During this time, the teachers and all the monastics go to change into their robes. The coming evening program is relatively formal, with lots of bells, a ton of bowing, and the big taiko drum! The teachers carry their sticks, wear their malas, and Kyogen even carries his fly whisk. Although it is formal, despite all the "smells and bells" I do find it very accessible.

The burning bowl is set up in front of the altar, with two of the teachers there to tend it, usually saying something about the transformational quality of practice. Chanting begins, and people are given an opportunity to step forward and burn their small paper in the fire.

There is a Fusatsu Ceremony, including the Gatha of Atonement:

All evil karma

ever committed by me

since of old

on account of my beginningless

greed anger and ignorance

born of my body, mouth, and thought

now I atone for it all.

Then we verbally and physically take refuge; recommitting to the Precepts, and offering a full body prostration after each one, to help the body absorb its vows, and to express them bodily.

We list and chant Being One with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, with bells and bows after each precept, and after each ancestor is announced. I am usually pleasantly sore in the morning from all these full prostrations.

When the precepts and honoring the ancestors are done, there is quiet as the hour approaches midnight. Participants sit in Zazen, and four people, two from each Sangha are chosen to ring the big bell and offer a bow 27 times each, bringing the total to 108 bows (I got to do this two years ago) while Southeast Portland erupts all around us into the new year.

During this time, the four teachers go through each of the rows and individually, reverently, ceremonially pour and serve each student a small cup of sparkling cider. It is a way to express humility, honor, and respect in this relationship. After all are served, there are a few words, and then it's done! "Happy New Year!"

Then I go find my husband Bansho and give him a kiss.

When we first attended this, you know what the most striking difference was? Feeling bright and clear on New Year's Day -- not hung over the next morning. Not that I used to get fall-down drunk on New Year's Eve or anything, but just staying up that late while nursing a buzz for 4-5 hours will lead to some foggy-headed late-sleeping mornings needing more recovery than anything.

This is a blessed tradition, one that I cherish, as is writing a death poem, or a poem of our deepest understanding for the year. These are shared the next day. I am working on mine for this year. Last year's was posted here.

Happy New Year!

Body as Sangha Body

I'm returning to a primary practice of body awareness. Realizing that I have an auto-immune disorder or two has gotten my attention, and so my intention is to tune in to this body.

Sitting with awareness of the body was the first meditation practice I ever learned when I sat with Julie Wester at a weekend women's retreat -- my very first meditation retreat evah. I had no idea who she was at the time, and no idea that her root teacher was Ruth Denison*, or the significance of that to a feminist looking at what appeared to be just another patriarchal religion.

Anyway, when I first started going to Sanzen, Hogen Roshi suggested I focus my meditation on the practice of body scan. I did this as a primary practice for a few years. It feels very powerful to return to it again.

It is a bit like that movie -- Fantastic Voyage. In this movie, a crew of scientists gets shunken down in a wee little submarine, and they explore inside someone's body, and well, hilarity ensues, or something. Body scan consists of paying attention to each part of the body, each particle of the body, and shining the light of awareness on it.


And yet...

As the Shusso, when sitting with the community, my role is to monitor the Zendo. To be the one who responds when someone walks in late and needs assistance. To be the one who makes sure the evening's service positions are filled, so that things run smoothly. To be the one people can go to with their questions. All of the Shusso's actions are taken with the purpose of holding the container of practice, and cultivating harmony in the Zendo and in the Sangha.


It is different to broaden my attention in this way, but recently I've begun to look at it as a similar kind of body practice -- awareness of the Sangha body.

Sanghakaya

Ven Thich Nhat Hanh writes eloquently about the Sangha body - the Sanghakaya. He likens each individual to a cell or tissue in the larger body of the Sangha, using the metaphors of nature:

The Sangha is our body. It is like the beehive is the body of the bee, the anthill is the body of the ant. And when we are able to live in that spirit, considering the Sangha as our body, most of our suffering will vanish. Taking refuge in the Sangha is not an expression of faith, it is a practice.

Joko Beck has described that in the West, we don't have the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha), as much as we have "two jewels and a rock." Sitting alone in our houses, reading Dharma books, Chozen Bays refers to this kind of practice as "take the Dharma and run."

Sangha practice-- even just talking about Sangha practice -- certainly stirs people up. I have noticed extremes of romanticizing or scorning practice with a physical community. Certainly practicing with people can be incredibly supportive as well as incredibly frustrating. It usually does not run smoothly or work out according to our ideas of how it should. But it runs, and mostly in spite of ourselves.

The body metaphor continues to be apt:

“Herein, Bhikkhus & Friends, the Bhikkhu contemplates the body from the soles of the feet upward, and from the top of the hair downward: This filthy frame with skin stretched over it, which is filled with many impurities consists of:

Head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, vomit, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestine, membrane, stomach, excrement, brain, bile, lymph, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin, tallow, spit, snot, joint-fluid, and urine.

Just as if a man with good sight would examine a sack with openings at both ends, filled with various kinds of grain; paddy, beans, sesame, on opening it would recognize its contents thus: That is paddy, this is beans, that is sesame, this is husked rice: Exactly so does the Bhikkhu investigate this body.”

When we investigate what the Sangha body is made of, it can be downright ugly, and yet, is a nothing short of a miracle.

But like Jon Kabat-Zinn has been saying to the people referred to his MBSR classes, some of whom with multiple diagnoses and many layers of suffering: "There is more right with you than there is wrong with you."

The Sangha body is impermanent and precious. It is interconnected and interpenetrating. Whole. Applying these insights in the other direction -- to the reality of this physical body -- helps me see this body in a different, larger perspective.



*Ruth Denison is a first generation female Vipassana teacher pioneered not only leading all-women retreats, but also practicing with movement and dance. Her biography, Dancing in the Dharma is a riveting story of many life chapters, including her growing up in Nazi Germany, her harrowing journey across Poland after the war, ending up in the epicenter of the counterculture in California, training with U Ba Khin, and at one point, using her training in body awareness to help Timothy Leary come down off a bad trip.

Sitting with what sucks -- I mean, what is.

Maybe my hair is ready to ordain.

Head-shaving has long been a symbol of renunciation in Buddhism. Head-shaving has been a way to physically express the cutting off of the three poisons -- greed, anger and ignorance. Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn even called hair "ignorance grass".

From Only Don't Know:

The Buddha taught that hair is ‘ignorance grass’, so cutting is necessary. If your hair is long, maybe your ignorance is long. When you have hair, you always worry how it looks … We put so much concern and time and effort into keeping this hair the way we like it. So this hair is always pulling our minds around. Being a monk or nun means cutting off all attachments and becoming a completely free person. Being attached to your hair cannot help you do this, so we cut it.

The bald spots on my head are getting larger, and a new one was just found at my last trim at the barber. Alopecia Areata is presenting me with quite a practice. Despite my ideas about myself as a pretty wash-and-go gal, ready or not, I am getting better-acquainted with these attachments to my physical presentation: Thirtysomething woman with cute, short, thick, dark, slightly graying hair.

Holding onto that idea of myself is painful when it's falling apart every moment.

For many people, hair loss is often a side-effect of chemotherapy. Something that adds insult to the injury of life-threatening illness. Mine is certainly not that severe, and even if it gets to that point, Alopecia Areata will damage only my ego, and so I try to keep that in perspective, and see it as an ally in this way.

Also:

• I should always have a full head of hair, the appearance of which loosely commensurate with my age.
• I should be able to control this body.
• I should understand why this is happening.
• Something is wrong with me.

The glue holding this self together is made up of thoughts like those.

Also revealed are my pet notions of how a Zen student "should" respond to this. Well, not just any Zen student. I would not expect others to have some miraculous calm about such an experience, but I have apparently been feeding this notion that I should welcome this teaching with instant acceptance, serenity, equanimity, and even humor or delight at the opportunity to further simplify my daily routine. Let me be clear: That's not how it's been.

There has been quite a bit of resistance to actually feeling the truth of my feelings around this; pain, embarrassment, anger, irritation, shame. And so many of these are secondary emotions; embarrassment about feeling embarrassed. Anger about feeling anger.

Lama Surya Das on renunciation:

...it doesn't necessarily imply suddenly, impulsively, dropping everyone and everything. What renunciation really means is letting go, openness, relinquishing the tight-fisted grasping. The heart of renunciation means allowing rather than controlling; letting go of the controlling and the contrived, selfish manipulation you do in order to get what you think you want. We try to see through the manipulation so that we're less invested in the fool's gold of materialism, of spiritual materialism, or anything that we believe is going to save us or make us happy for ever.

Not a pushing away, but a letting go. Not a wrenching away, but a releasing.

I've actually had that experience with Zen practice. As this life turns more toward practice, the things I used to spend time doing just fall away quite naturally and without much fanfare. Like the time I had signed up for a week-long Sesshin, which turned out to be the week that my home team, my beloved St Louis Cardinals went to (and won) the World Series. I was surprised that my reaction to missing the final games was such a non-reaction. I was surprised to be so satisfied with turning my attention to practice instead of the games. Even missing the games, I did not have any sense of missing anything. It was easy. Effortless.

Lama Surya Das again:

In Tibetan the word (renunciation) is very interesting. It means the arising of certainty, which has a highly positive valence. It doesn't mean throwing away your life, your wife, your husband, your kids, your career, your health, and flagellating yourself in various ways. It means the arising of inner certainty. For example, drinking salt water does not alleviate thirst, so when you know that, you don't have to renounce drinking salt water when you're thirsty; it just doesn't make sense so you naturally relinquish such an action. It doesn't help, so you effortlessly renounce it. When you have inner conviction and spiritual certainty, what is there to renounce?

That is why the Buddha said:

"Adopt and cultivate what is wholesome and beneficial;

Relinquish what is harmful.

Purify your heart and mind;

This is the way of enlightenment."

The way the Tibetan idea was translated from Sanskrit was not sacrifice, but more like the ridding of excess baggage. We have to pay for every kilo of excess baggage, so sloughing off the excess is not a very dire renunciation. Buddhist teachings strongly emphasize notions such as non-attachment, renunciation, simplicity. This is not because Buddhism is pessimistic, but because it's practical and realistic. Everything is passing and changing, so resistance or holding on to fleeting things and relationships is ultimately unsatisfactory. These are the first sublime truths the Buddha taught; they're just the facts of life, not some holy ontology or mythology about the beginning of the universe. These are the facts of life: If you want to suffer less, then resist less, grasp less, identify less with ephemera. It is very unsatisfying to hold on to what is ungraspable.

Yeah man, very unsatisfying. Like getting a crutch kicked out from under you.

All the while, I continue to turn my mind toward looking at this as simply what is; not struggling, but cultivating willingness to actually feel the pain of trying to hold onto something that is transient. To really be awake to how it feels to take refuge in a burning house. To sit and feel the feelings of embarrassment that are not in fact the result of hair loss, but are the result of identifying with these thoughts, this idea of a self as is "should" be.

So instead I just let myself cry, and wordlessly go through this process as it is. To open and widen beyond the tight little clutching confines of me, me, me, self, self, self. Actively receptive.

Heart-Warming

Is it the bowl that rolls around the pearl,
Or is it the pearl that rolls around the bowl?
Is it the weather that is cold,
Or is it the person that is cold?
Think neither cold nor heat.
At that moment,
Where is the self to be found?

~Capping verse from Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi

Our downtown Sangha --The Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple -- practices at the Portland Dharma Center.
This space is owned by our sister Sangha, Dharma Rain. Most of them are now up at Great Vow Zen Monastery for Rohatsu Sesshin. Including the Dharma Rain teachers and their Shusso, who are the only ones who have Transmission of How to Restart the Furnace.

The furnace is a wonky old thing; an old boiler and radiator system that clanks and rattles when it's getting going. It makes sitting with sound a lively experience, although my imagination tends to drift towards visions of seven dwarves with their shovels and pick-axes hammering and tapping away somewhere underground.

We've had a cold spell here in Portland (which means it's been below freezing for a few days in a row causing Portlanders to wring their hands and wonder if they are being punished for something), and on a bright and crisp Bodhi Day morning, the heater at the Dharma Center went off again.

The optimistic folks who were at our Tuesday morning service told me it was 56 degrees in the Zendo, and figured the furnace would kick on at some point in the day. By the time I got there Tuesday night, it was 40 degrees in the Zendo. It was only slightly warmer downstairs, as the Zendo has large drafty windows and a very high ceiling. Ordinarily, when this happens, the Heart of Wisdom Shusso is authorized to tinker with the thermostat a little, then failing that, go across the street and get Dharma Rain's Teacher or Shusso. But nobody was home there. They were all in the middle of Sesshin an hour and a half away.

What to do? I called the monastery and left a message for the Dharma Rain teacher, figuring he'd get the message in the morning, and let me know what he wanted me to do. Despite my mind's continual returning to problem-solving, that was, in fact, all that could be done there.

As people arrived for Tuesday night's sitting, I warned them of the situation, letting them know they might not want to remove so much outdoor wear just yet. We moved zabutons downstairs, and suspended the no hats rule. People wore their hats, and their scarves, socks, gloves and coats! To see a wagessa slipped on over a ski jacket -- well it was just the picture of dedication! There were a few blankets that got distributed and wrapped around people as well.

The bell rang, and the meditation period began.

Nobody left, there was no fidgeting, no complaining (at least not audibly). Just sitting. Just being with the situation as it was.

We ended the meditation period, and proceeded with the Tuesday night program, which includes some reading on a Dharma-related topic, then discussion. People got up to stretch, acquired some cups of tea (primarily as hand-warmers), and we read about the Buddha's enlightenment -- a particularly storybookish version. We took turns reading paragraphs, and for me, it was just like hearing it for the first time.

Our discussion centered around the archetypal Hero's Journey, and how aspects of this infuse our own lives, our own practice. What have our spiritual searches entailed? How have we tried the strategies of decadence and asceticism in our attempts to avoid suffering? What is the Middle Way in our lives? What temptations and distractions do we face? How do we transmute what feels like negativity coming at us into something more skillful? What does the golden bowl floating upstream mean? How do we call upon the Earth as our own witness? Is enlightenment really possible?

We ended the evening with our chanting service -- the new service position holders focusing deeply in their new roles -- and that was that.

I am left just struck by the willingness I observed. This willingness to feel our lives, this willingness to participate in something that didn't match an idea of what was supposed to happen. This willingness to hold the space for each other to just sit, in any circumstances, and look into the truth of this life.

Service

I was asked to give the talk last week (yipes!) -- the occasion was the transition of Sangha members from service positions they may have held for six months or longer into a new or different service position. An occasion of gratitude. The topic: Service.

There are so many people who actually create the container of practice. In my bumbling initial months as Shusso, I was struck by how the whole thing runs by itself. Like those spinning playground contraptions, which take some real effort to get going, but once they're going, just need a push every so often. The momentum of the energy and efforts of past Shussos, past service position holders, all the behind-the-scenes work, and the teachers' unflagging dedication was all present, is all present. So much life-energy channeled and poured into this practice community. It is humbling to think about.


So who is doing this serving? Who and what is being served? Our meal chant encourages: "May we realize the emptiness of the three wheels -- giver, receiver, and gift."

In the field of social work and in many "helping" fields, we get trapped in "helping prison." This concept is from a wonderful little book called How Can I Help, by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. In it, there are many reflections and helpers' accounts of many facets of service, and particularly professional service.

If I am a helper, and am clinging to that identity, then I need you to be the helpee. There is a clinging to a particular outcome in order for me to strengthen my identity as a competent, successful, knows-what-she's-doing helper, and this causes our interaction to have quite possibly many layers of walls between us, and to become less-dimensional. We are all set up for disappointment.

So how do we let these walls fall away, and blur the distinction of helper and helpee -- that is, without breaching certain standards of ethics and professionalism?

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas
To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to free one's body and mind
and the body and mind of others
No trace of enlightenment remains
and this traceless enlightenment continues forever.

~from the Genjokoan

In service, something much larger is happening. And our small self cannot possibly contain all that is.

I am hoping for some comments on this post. What facets of service can you articulate?