I vow to taste the truth and vow to target those worst. I don't know everybody. I know some of them. I don't know everybody. Okay, well the class that you've all signed up for is called, for want of a better title, Women in Buddhism. And I just want to, I hope to do for the six, we meet six times. And there's actually a vast amount of material I'm finding. And so I really had to pare it down to six distinct classes and not do certain aspects that I'm really drawn to. But this is what it looks like and I actually have some Xeroxes and things to hand out,

[01:04]

but I wanted to know how many people were in the class before I Xeroxed certain things. So that's one reason to get an accurate count. So the first class today, some words of introduction, some letting you know how I, what my relationship is to the subject, to the material personally and as a practice, why it's important. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. And also to have you participate in some way. Those of you who took the class before, we did, the first class we had some, people told some stories. And so I have to do that tonight too. And then next week I wanted to talk about the Buddhist time and the first ordination of nuns and the founding of the Buddhist order of nuns.

[02:04]

And there's a lot of material around that. So we'll just see where we get. The meeting after that, I hope to assign various subjects for you to report on briefly. There's a list of women arhats that there's little biographies about them that nobody hears about too often. We don't chant their names, we don't tell their stories. So I thought each person could take one of these women and do a little research and then report. That's one idea, this is sort of a tentative. And then the meeting after that, I really wanted to focus on the teachings of Buddhism that directly relate to gender issues, I guess is how I would put it.

[03:09]

Certain teachings of emptiness and Buddha nature and Tathagatagarbha, certain things that are within the Buddhist teaching that counteract some further, some, let's say, teachings that look like men and women are not equal in terms of their spiritual life. So I wanted to get at some of those and bring them out. So that's the fourth class. And then the fifth class, I hope to touch on spirituality and sexuality and some issues around that and how they go together or don't go together. We'll see how this works. And then the last class, I hope to talk about some of the female Buddha figures, Tara and Quan Yin,

[04:18]

Prajnaparamita and some of the Tibetan figures as practice energies. So that's, now this is not talking about, well, these are the things that I will try to get in. Dogen's view of women, which I really want to, there's an article that we studied the last time we taught the class, I taught the class, which is directly from our lineage, Dogen's, what he says about women, which is pretty interesting. Also there's a new book out about Chinese women nuns in the 5th and 6th century, a little biography. And then there's the whole Tibetan, a huge amount of material on Tibetan practices of using feminine imagery, which I'm not particularly familiar with, but there's a lot out there right now about that. So these are some things that I'm choosing not to bring up, but we'll see when we weave some things in.

[05:25]

This is tentative. Okay. So the last time I taught this, it was a class of all women. And I feel like there's a number of men who chose to take this class, so I feel that the people who were drawn to the class, men and women, it's a self-selecting group, nobody had to take the class, are interested in the subject, perhaps because they don't know so much about it, or they want to, or for whatever reason. And I'm really glad that it's a mixed class. I think there is a tendency, there was a tendency the last time to, you know, lots of feeling when you look at this material and kind of unearth some things, a lot of strong feelings came up and a lot of anger.

[06:30]

And I feel like to have men and women together will help kind of balance some of the things that people say. And I'm also interested in hearing from both men and women about some of this material. So why is it that I'm interested in this study? Basically, I find this material is very rich for me personally as a practice issue. It's not, I mean, I'm interested historically and about what happened in ancient times. But the reason I'm really drawn to it is because it's a practice issue for me. It has to do with studying myself.

[07:32]

So I just wanted to read this koan that I'm sure a number of you have heard before. This is this book called Not Mixing Up Buddhism, Essays on Women in Buddhist Practice. This is an old book. This is from the 80s, put out by, I got it in 87. This was put together by the group that worked with Akin Roshi in Hawaii. And they call themselves the Ka-Wai, which means a little stream that, I think it means a little streamlet. And just like a stream that goes by rocks and it eventually carves out rivers and canyons and so forth. They worked on gathering, well they had a little newsletter that went out for women in Buddhism. And Akin Roshi asked Tom Cleary, the renowned translator, to find if he had come upon any koans that had women as the main protagonist or character.

[08:39]

Which he did, and I have a handout of that which I'll give you of these koans. Because often in, you know the koans, you all know about koans, the public cases. For the most part it's male monks, it's a folklore with men mostly, but there are a few with women. Anyway, this is one of these koans. This is from the Tang Dynasty. And it doesn't say what collection it's in, and I haven't been able to find it in the Mumonkan, the Blue Cliff Record, or the Book of Serenity. So, it's translated by Thomas Cleary. So the koan says, once a monk went to call on Mi-Hu. I'm not sure who that is, it must be a teacher at that time. On the way he met a woman living in a hut. The monk asked, do you have any disciples? She said, yes.

[09:43]

The monk asked, where are they? She said, the mountains, rivers, and earth. The plants and trees are all my disciples. The monk asked, are you a nun? She said, what do you see me as? The monk said, a layperson. 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. He 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? So this is called not mixing up Buddhism. So for whatever reason, I found this very inspiring. So the monk basically wants to kind of place her.

[10:44]

He comes upon her and says, do you have any disciples? Are you a recognized teacher? Are you somebody I should kind of pay homage to, or who are you? And she says, yeah, she's got disciples. The mountains, the earth, the flowers, everything are her disciples. He asks where they are. And then he wants to kind of peg her further. Are you a nun? And then she kind of throws her back at him. Well, what do you see me as? And he sees her as a layperson. And then he's categorizing her over and over. Are you a nun? She says, you can't be a monk, meaning one who's seeking a way. And then he says, you shouldn't mix up Buddhism, which I think is kind of like in the commentary. It's like he's a little bit off balance, so he kind of lashes out. Well, you shouldn't be mixing up Buddhism. She says, I'm not mixing up Buddhism. He said, aren't you mixing up Buddhism this way?

[11:45]

And she says, you're a man, I'm a woman. Where has there ever been any mix-up? So I think that's why I'm drawn to this material. In studying myself, there are certain aspects of my particular psychophysical stream which cannot be denied. And that I'm a woman, that I'm female, that this life is in a female body. And to try and disregard that or think or kind of jump to emptiness without thoroughly understanding what that means for me, what that means for my practice, what that means for my relationships, what that means for my inner image of myself and my capacities and how society views me and all that.

[12:46]

If I skip over that, I think there's trouble. And for each person, man or woman, there are, to understand this dimension of your ego, gender, sexual identity is part of our ego workings. So to have a thorough understanding of that can only help with untangling the tangle. So we live in a culture that is, for the most part, male-centered.

[13:50]

If you look at a variety of institutions of business, education, politics and so forth, there's a kind of male dominance. And for me, growing up, and this is what I hope we can talk about a little bit tonight, I was taught very early that women were not capable in certain areas. For example, I told this story before, but I remember one night at the dinner table, my dad saying, there's not one good woman chef, there's not one good woman writer, there's not one good woman artist. He just went down the line. And I remember thinking, geez, he can't be right.

[14:50]

But I couldn't just name, I wasn't able to just say, well, what about this one? How about Emily Dickinson? It was like, well, I guess he must know, he's my dad. So this kind of acculturation, this kind of teaching that we get, both male and female receive this as it takes a toll. This begins to work on you very thoroughly about your inner, how you view yourself. So one is put often in a submissive role, and to break out of that or to go against that is very risky. If you step out of that for a woman, you incur a lot of, well, it can be a lot of aggression, or words that are difficult to hear,

[15:58]

or physical things, it can be manifested violence. So one learns very early to kind of stay in your place, it's very safe, and you get a lot of approval, and things are just hunky-dory. Now when this is, so this is in lots of areas. So let me just go on a little further with this. There are these studies that have been made about teenage girls. This has been in the news kind of recently, some of these books. One of the books is called Reviving Ophelia, and it's a study, it's a therapist who's done, who works with adolescents. And there's also other studies that have been done about young girls,

[17:03]

like junior high school girls, and the difficulties they have. And these are girls who in grade school were very active on the teams, they were very good in school, outspoken, running around, happy-go-lucky, played musical instruments, did all sorts of stuff. This is kind of these case studies. And then when they get into junior high school, like about 7th grade, 6th, 7th, 8th grade, there's this enormous change. For example, in many cases they become very aware of their appearance, and that becomes the most important thing. They drop their studies, stop taking risks in class like speaking out or raising their hand, won't play their tuba anymore, their musical instrument

[18:04]

that they were just loving, stop doing all these things that they were very involved in for years. And also various eating disorders, it's epidemic, happen in these years and also in high school. So anyway, there's these studies about why is this happening and what happens to young girls at this time, where young men at this time, and also these tests and so forth of self-esteem. There is not this marked change where they're going along just fine and then they crash. So I think maybe many women in this room have experienced that kind of thing, and it takes a while to kind of get back to who we were at 10 years old, when you're out there playing kickball on the street and riding your bike

[19:05]

and what happened there. And it can be a difficult journey to find out what it is that one took on in order to be accepted and approved of and fit in to a certain cultural mold where you need to look a certain way. For men and women this happens, but for women it's very strong and very detrimental to one's psychological and physical health, I would say. There's a lot of stress involved. So now, also when young people are growing up, they often have a very strong spiritual life, actually. I was just recently talking with a number of people about this subject.

[20:09]

They say how they love Sunday school. They love their minister and they were very drawn to the rituals in the church and they wanted to be a nun. So in this kind of very ingenuous spiritual inclinations that young people have, for young girls, often what happens in their own tradition is that they're drawn to things and they keep getting doors slammed in their face. And either, if not in the teaching itself, often it's within the teaching will say about women's place or women are not able to do this, women can't do that. Women are not fit, really. They don't have the capacity.

[21:12]

And so one may have a gut feeling, just like when my dad said, there's no women, this, this, this. I had a kind of gut feeling that that couldn't be right. I was probably ten, right, right before I went into my decline. Some gut feeling that that couldn't possibly be right, but not being able to come up with an alternative. There's only one thing being put out there. So what we feel on a gut level, in many ways, doesn't mesh with our spiritual tradition that's being given to us. It's just, there's no reflection there. And this, I think, is very painful, actually, to have, to be drawn to a spiritual life and feel like somehow it's not okay, it's not for you, it's for this other group I'm speaking about, women and men.

[22:13]

So from, and young people have spiritual experiences, strong spiritual experiences that may not be acknowledged or encouraged in any way, you know. So this is very painful. So to come from a Judeo-Christian background, let's say, and come into Buddhism and feel like, aha, I finally found some place that can meet this spiritual longing that may have been kind of buried deep for years, and then one wants to feel like there is a place for everyone and that you will be met, that there isn't gender distinction in terms of realizing your Buddha nature. And then if you look into the teachings,

[23:20]

you might find some things that will be very disappointing, as well as things that are not disappointing. So I'm trying to bring up kind of both. I think there is within Buddhism some things that you've probably heard about that you can find in the Buddhist sutras and texts. For example, you have to have a male rebirth in order to be Buddha. Women are okay in their place, the nuns, if they follow the eight special rules. Women's bodies are impure, and you can use this as a meditation to fully realize detachment. You can use the filthiness of a woman's body in that way. You can find these kinds of things in the Buddhist writings and they can be difficult, especially if you feel like, aha, I finally come someplace

[24:23]

where this will not be an issue. But it is an issue. There are things that are issues here. So this is to study some of these things and also to look at the underlying teachings of Buddhism which counteract some of the commentary and writings that came along in the 2,500 years of Buddhist teachers and writings and tradition. So what I would like to do now, it's 8 o'clock, I think we can do this, is to go around the room and have each person say something about their experience of what a woman Let's see.

[25:25]

Their experience of being a woman in a religious practice or for the men, how they viewed from their religion of origin, this is what I wanted to talk about, the religion of origin, not necessarily Buddhism, how they viewed women and what their capacities were, what they were taught in their church. We can just share a little bit. If someone wants to pass, please feel free to, but I think it's helpful to bring into relief how it was that we've been formed by these kinds of beliefs about women and their spiritual capacity. Is that okay? Does that sound all right? I know some of you have done this already

[26:28]

and I hope you tell the same stories because they are so great. Anyway, I'll just start out. I came from a Jewish background and I think the feeling was always that the woman's place was in the home and that was really all the rituals around family life were her domain. And the temple life, other than the kind of sisterhood or the auxiliary and fundraising, those kinds of things, was more for the man. And I remember this one time, there's a ceremony, which is a very joyous ceremony, where the Torah, you know, the five books of Moses, that's very beautifully decorated with crowns and it's carried throughout the temple on a particular holiday, sort of to show the joy in having this teaching. And it's carried along and people touch the Torah with their prayer book or their prayer shawl. And I didn't know that you had to use something else

[27:33]

and I touched it with my hand and it was like, oh, it just caused this big flurry. And I remember feeling like, gee, you know, what's the matter with my hand? And so that was one thing. And then this is just a little story. I took it as, well, I didn't have a prayer shawl, you know, but nobody actually said in that instance, you're a woman, don't touch it. But I felt somehow, and maybe I should probably say that you probably don't want to touch it because it'll just get dirty, you know, with the oil on your hand and it's got a beautiful cover. It's probably at that level that, but in the context of the temple where I felt like I was a little bit peripheral anyway, that that was something naughty, you know,

[28:34]

more than naughty, that I was a woman in touching it seemed to be how I felt it. Anyway, just this story about my confirmation. We were confirmed at 15. I wasn't bat mitzvahed at 13. I was confirmed at 15. And there's a part of the ceremony where the rabbi, and I had seen my sisters go through confirmation. It was very special. Everybody was crying because you get blessed individually by the rabbi in front of the open ark where the Torah is there, and it's in front of the whole congregation. And it was sort of like doksan. It was like this personal interview with the rabbi, sort of just the two of you, very intimate, and being blessed. You know, you put your head down. I just couldn't wait. It was going to be the spiritual culmination of these two years of schooling and ready for the ceremony. So first of all, it was the baby boomer, so there were so many of us we had to go up two by two.

[29:36]

So there was this person, you know, who was going to hear, Bye, bless you. Anyway, we got up there, and the rabbi, who was a scholar, a wonderful scholar, but not much of, he didn't have a lot of rapport. He was more of a scholar, excellent scholar. Anyway, so it came time for him to give, and he had to do these things like blessings, so he did his blessing. What he said to me was, You're a real pretty girl, and I hope you go a long way. That was it. I sort of never went back to temple and participated because if that's the pinnacle of one's ceremonial events, well, gee. Anyway, it was disturbing and sad. And in retrospect, I think it had more to do with the fact that this man was a scholar.

[30:39]

He really didn't have a lot of ease with these adolescents, and there's all sorts of extenuating circumstances. But the fact that he said, You're a real pretty girl, my spiritual longing and wanting to be close with God and all this was not met, and instead my appearance was the only thing this person could think of saying at a time like that. And it really hit very deeply, and it hurt. So that's my story, one of my stories. So shall we go around? Would that be okay? Basically, just take a mirror and put it up. I grew up in New York in a Jewish synagogue. And I was also very tall.

[31:45]

I had a nickname. I was a wash, a white Anglo-Saxon Hebrew. I didn't look Jewish, so that was a little bit difficult. And in my confirmation class, I still have a picture. Everybody's sort of dark hair and small, and there's just Lena, and she's tall, and her legs were going way out. So I got a lot of that constantly. You're pretty, don't have to worry. If I had trouble with anything, I was like, It's okay, you're pretty. And my father, too. The whole bringing up in the culture and stuff like that. Well, you can always model. You could end up starving for that spiritual and some sort of connection. Very much that. To a point of going extreme, I went to a Jewish camp, and everybody else was studying swimming. And I'm like, I'll study Jewish studies, and I can hang out with the rabbis and talk.

[32:48]

And it was still always, it was just an incredible struggle continually to be taken seriously on some level. And also, too, just being a teenager, and the side glances, the male energy of it for me was very difficult, because there was always that looking behind your shoulder, there, look, and just being a young girl, and that, like, not being respectful, basically, of my being a woman. So I just got a lot of that, a lot of difficulty with that. I didn't really have any formal spiritual upbringing, necessarily, so I think that half of my family, my father's side of the family was Jewish, and my mother's side of the family was Catholic. And my father was a lot more gregarious type.

[33:52]

My mom was a lot quieter, anyway. And I think what's coming up right now is, I have a brother who's two years older, and my father was always louder and very charismatic. He got a lot of attention, and his mother and father were very much in the picture, and my mother's parents weren't. And so, of course, my father's Jewish mother was really into her son and into her son's son, so my brother. And so I think early on there was a sense that my father was more important than my mother, and that his career was, his opinion, his career, just his presence was much more the focal point,

[34:55]

and then that carried over to my brother as well. And so there was a sense of not being all that... I was a ballet dancer, and my brother was a lot more scholastic, and so I'm getting a little confused now, because I didn't really have anything in particular to say, but I think it was just there was a definite sense that my brother's achievements would be more valid than mine, and I might as well go off. You know, it didn't really matter, although it didn't really matter what I did. We got it. That's the negative side of it. I mean, the things that were verbalized, everybody was really openly supportive

[35:58]

and encouraged me in all the same ways that they encouraged my brother, but it was just what was said was different than what was acted upon, and I saw this was incongruous for me. Thank you. My early training, I don't think I stepped foot into a church until I was around seven, and that happened because there was an Episcopalian priest that befriended my brother, and he was so shocked that our entire family had no... were not baptized, didn't go to church, that I think he took everybody inside, like my grandmother and my uncles and my two brothers and my mother, and had us all baptized at once. I think I was about seven then, and the Episcopalian church to me was...

[36:59]

I mean, I didn't have any feeling toward it. It was just to dress up and go on Sunday, and I basically thought this priest was a fool because we were just heathens. I mean, we were like a bad family from the very beginning. My grandmother was really a wonderful woman, and her background was... or her practice was the Christian science faith, and that was founded by a woman called Mary Baker Eddy. So my concept of a real religion was different, and she really embodied this practice. It was very inspiring for me. She was the only one in the family that wasn't insane, and then growing up as a teenager or a young adult, I would find the families who went to church on Sunday and go along with them, so I got to go to a Catholic or a temple or a Baptist church,

[38:02]

and I loved every single church. I can't think of a specific incident in my life that I was very discriminated against as a female, but I grew up a Methodist Christian, and to me, that experience was pretty balanced. There was a woman, a minister, in a lot of the churches I was at. It was mostly just a social club, anyway, to me. But what really was important to me, I remember being really little and asking my mom, Why is God male? Why is God a man? And I also asked her, Why is he white? and things like that. And she said, well... She was very good with me. She'd say, Well, you can't...

[39:04]

Nobody really knows if it's male or female, or if he's male or female. And that kind of satisfied me for a while. But as I got older, Christianity wasn't a thing for me, and then I immediately got into other spiritual things, and I'd gotten into Indian religions, and that was all male-oriented. And then I got into Buddhism, and just all these different things. I was looking at all these things, and they were all male figures that were worshipped, and that was the qualities that we wanted. And I really felt a need for something else, and I got into things like paganism and more feminine religions. And I really found something where I could feel at home there, but at least here, in the practices that were going on here, they were just kind of cheesy in a way,

[40:06]

and not really satisfying my deeper needs. I've settled on Buddhism, but I still feel like there isn't a definite appreciation for feminine qualities, like the ability to give birth, and just really emotional qualities and intuitive aspects of being feminine. It's not just the physical part, it's just a lot of the psychological makeup too that I find important. I was brought up Catholic and had the strict nuns with the long dark habits, and they taught through fear and memorizing. And it was very, it was very challenging. And the story I'm going to tell

[41:08]

is kind of how I ended up seeking or finding Zen. When I was 24, I left New York and sailed in the Bahamas. I worked on a 120-foot gaffer schooner for a year. And that year ended really nicely. I mean, I really loved being at sea for a year. And the year ended with my falling in love with someone in the crew, a man named Tom. And we went to St. Thomas and lived there. And I was very happy. And from the very beginning, we cared about one another very much and talked about marriage. And I had been brought up Catholic and he had been brought up Protestant. And I guess we, well, if you're married outside the church, you're excommunicated. So I was still enough Catholic that I was concerned about that.

[42:08]

And one thing Tom said was, if we got married in the Catholic Church, was there a way that he wouldn't have to promise to bring up children Catholic if we had any children? So I went to the priest to talk about this. Is there any way that we can get married in the Catholic Church and Tom won't have to promise to bring up the children Catholic? And the priest said, well, my dear young lady, you would first have to stop living with that man. And so I said, I don't feel in any dark state of sin at all. I feel very beautiful. It's a very happy time of my life. I sailed around the Bahamas for a year and that was wonderful. Now I'm living on an island with someone very special. I feel very beautiful. And I said, on expensive St. Thomas, we're supposed to get two separate living spaces

[43:10]

for the purpose of maybe coming before the Catholic altar to possibly be married. I said, that is a facade. And I left. Tom had his mouth a little bit open and that was like the end of the Catholic Church. The last straw that broke the camel's back. And so then on the island I went to the Moravian Church, the Methodist Church, the Anglican Church, just the Lutheran Church to see what those were like. And they were beautiful island churches. And at the Moravian Church there was mostly black people and one came over swiftly to us with a handbook. You know, this is where we are in the service. They knew we were newcomers. And then at the end of the service the black minister walked down the aisle to us and said, would we like to receive Holy Communion? And I thought, quite a bit different than the Catholic Church with all its rules, regulations and rigidity.

[44:12]

And so, you know, my little search for other ways eventually led to Zen. I love hearing these stories. I'm just a little worried about the time. That was a long story. Well, it was a great story and I'm glad you told it. Let's see, we've got about 40 minutes and about 40 people. Is that enough? No, not that much. Anyway, let's, if we can, no offense intended, kind of distill our story and kind of keep it to some encounter with how our religion kind of viewed women and how it affected us. Otherwise we won't get all the way around. I'd love to hear everybody. We can do it next week, too, but I think we only have six classes. It'll be short. Yeah. Well, I was raised in the South, which was stressing,

[45:14]

just being a woman for that. But I was raised in a Methodist family. But I don't really remember anything from that particularly. But I ended up going to an all-girls Catholic high school and that was my first, I felt my first really religious experience in a, not in a spiritual way, but in more of a, I don't know. Anyway, so I went to this all-girls Catholic high school and there was a brother's school and right off I noticed that the girls' school had less funding. All the buildings were a little bit shabbier than the boys' school. The boys' school had a lot of press in the area where I lived. I mean, it was probably one of the highest academically. The least girls, but no one was least

[46:16]

or whatever that is all about. But it was just the all-girls school. And so we had to take religion classes every year and it was a lot of sexuality and what was going to happen to us if we had relationships with men. I quickly removed myself and sort of took it on as an anthropological study of Catholicism as from an outsider view and making friends with girls who had been in parochial schools throughout. And I found myself very different than they were. Anyway, I could go on and on. I grew up in a pretty a-religious family. My grandmother was of the opinion that either you were a good Catholic or you shouldn't be one at all and so we didn't practice.

[47:16]

So I guess my mom thought we couldn't be good ones. So the only thing that really stands out in my mind is remembering hearing my mom saying that she regretted having stayed at home and having kids and sort of being there for my dad rather than going out and going to school and pursuing a career. That she had sort of fallen into this mold that my grandmother had been in. I grew up Catholic as almost everybody in Austria and it was no big deal. Somehow it seems it's not such a big deal to grow up Catholic there than here because everybody is and some people go to church, some don't. It's kind of not so under control. And when I was about like 14, 15, 16, 17

[48:19]

I was in a kind of group with young people and we were very interested in spirituality and like creating our kind of own religion in the Christian church and like having mass together like with priests and it was really, I didn't feel any kind of discrimination like between women and men. It was more like we are all young and we have the power and we're going to do it. And like the struggling started later more like when I started to tend to other religions like Zen or like this and when there was this kind of feeling for me like I have to do a kind of commitment to this or like practice this way and in another way there was this feeling for me there's something lacking for me as a woman in this religion. It's not fully what I want to have or when I have just this it's not enough that something is missing and it was very strong for Sarah this year especially when I got in trouble

[49:21]

so like this and all this crying for example or like somehow I lost contact with the earth or like being grounded or I can't really say and then there was a woman there and she was singing with me like doing an Indian ritual and it helped me such a lot and then there somehow was this kind of I'm a woman, I can do what I want and if something is missing in Zen then I get it somewhere else. It was really a relief to kind of get to this point because up to that point I had the kind of feeling something is wrong with me I'm not doing the practice in the right way. I grew up in a sort of same thing Catholic, well my dad was Catholic my mother was Episcopalian none of us practiced we went to church twice a year

[50:22]

Christmas and Easter but then they sent me to a private Catholic girls school and it was a boarding school so I was really in it for a while and they wanted a young lady and this is what they got me. My remembrance is we had to go to mass every morning and I wanted to be an altar boy and we couldn't and it was the same as when I was in a public grammar school where the girls couldn't be cross guards they had to go and do dishes in the teacher's room so it was no different it was just on a religious level and then when I was in high school I told my dad that I was going to be a nun and I think I was just sort of I don't know if I was kidding or not but his response was if you do that I'll go and blow the place up

[51:25]

and I told a nun that I was going to become a nun and she said I'll leave if you do so I didn't have much contact with religion until I was in the 7th grade and I went to a private Episcopal girls school boarding school and we could do anything I mean I didn't have to have that slump because the girls at my school got to do everything we got to go we played all sports I mean we got to like really be and the church people all came out to watch our sports games and you know we had teams and sports was a big deal so if you weren't smart you could be a jock

[52:25]

I mean we could do everything boys do including, except I never, you know right that was the main thing except what? except never said oh the most important thing but every, and I didn't really understand the religion I didn't understand about how God could be three people no I didn't really understand but I liked the hymns I didn't feel excluded at all I was brought up in a Protestant family although my parents quit going to church when they started going through a divorce and I was about 12 and they sent us to this church which is non-denominational but it was very fundamentalist and so I bought that whole thing for all my teen years I mean I wouldn't go to dances I wouldn't go to movies

[53:28]

and a lot of guilt built up over those years but it was for me the church was a refuge and I did feel equal in that church and I was a Sunday school teacher and I got so deeply into that that I wanted to go to I did go to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles when I was 18 and my parents were so aghast at that that they tried to bribe me I wanted to be a missionary in God I think culturally, as far as gender goes culturally I was more affected by realizing the male and realizing I was looking at myself more as an object more than in a religious aspect it was more the cultural, social thing about gender because I thought when I was a little girl not until I was 12 I guess I thought I was just the same as a guy I had a younger brother and I was awesome

[54:30]

so it's more of a cultural thing although later on I see the patriarchy in the church as a religion I was pretty much raised hedonist so I can't talk very much of a tale about gender inequity that I've seen in religious culture in general I was raised Episcopalian and I've been to Wicca and Atheism so I guess I just see a whole spectrum but when I came here last summer the first thing I thought of was well if women started Buddhism we'd have a lot more color in this temple I don't understand why everything's black so I think over time as I came out and stayed here more I realized there's a lot of my own anger that comes up just from being a woman and this culture and I'm a lot more accepting and respectful of the traditions

[55:31]

that I've found here but I think part of why Zen is in America this man theory is to bring together men and women and to marry those ideas into something that works because I think that's why it's here this is just my own take on it and that we're supposed to teach each other and I see it here that's why I really appreciate it I've been to Catholic school for 8 years I mean you can just go on and on forever the main things that stick in my mind are just so much guilt guilt and fear you're not supposed to touch your body it was just terrible because I had strong sexual feelings from an early age so I was always feeling like I was a sinner I never really wanted to be an altar girl that didn't really bother me so much

[56:32]

I always liked singing in the choir that was a good thing and I remember my first grade nun teacher went to Selma, Alabama to the Civil Rights March and people were really disgusted it was real controversial like that was really out of line out of her place and I wondered if they would have felt the same way if she had been a priest doing that I kind of lost interest I guess when I was about 11 in the Catholic Church but I was still forced to go to church until I was done with high school but I just kind of went to the park instead and then the other thing that really sticks in my mind is my sister when she was in college had an abortion she went to Mexico and my father made her promise never to tell me or my mother that that had happened and in fact I didn't really know I knew there was all this tension going on in the house but I didn't really know until about six years later

[57:34]

that she had this abortion and I think that has a lot to do with Catholicism being just such a terrible thing I grew up in the Bronx in a Jewish neighborhood but my family wasn't at all religious and I think I had two sisters if there had been a boy in our family he probably would have had a bar mitzvah but none of us had any religious education and just briefly recently since moving to San Francisco I've become involved in a synagogue where men and women lead services and the language is egalitarian and I had a bar mitzvah a year and a half ago and now I co-lead services at my synagogue and it's a very important part of my life but we're reclaiming the role of women in Judaism so that's one reason why I find this discussion about women in Buddhism so interesting I was brought up as a Catholic too

[58:40]

but I haven't got much memory of it because it was a very short period I just forgot about it when I was 10 because I couldn't deal with it I was scared of the priests and so I can't remember of anything that I would have to tell here but of course later I found my way to Zen and I'm going the way of Zen and this is a spiritual experience and it is as we say we study the self and we forget the self and I experienced it in some ways that studying the self meant for me was the experience also to forget about the idea what I had about myself being a man respectively allowing the part of femininity that I have inside to allow it to

[59:42]

to happen and in my Zen experience in my spiritual experience I experienced these moments these deep moments these sweet moments that you have in moments of meditation to me they've been an experience a feminine experience this feeling of kindness, love compassion to myself I identified this with with with feminism this feeling and if I for example picture it or if I have like a symbol or something it works far better for me if I imagine for example the green or Tara than the Buddha in some state and it develops this sweet feeling much easier

[60:43]

so this is just an experience for myself concerning, so I'm much more open actually I can open myself much easier to this to this big love or compassion by going a certain different way which isn't the way of a man yes now have I made myself clear? yes yes I don't exactly know what to say I was brought up in a fairly religious Jewish family and I think that the overt message was not so much that there was any difference but it was mostly the cultural message that came in that later kind of fed and I would say never saw I had the same experience of women the rule was women's domain was the home

[61:43]

and men were in the world and I remember they were never, almost never, I'm trying to think if I can think of an exception where I saw a woman on the stage I don't know what it was called I was thinking what does that mean? and I remember when I'd go sometimes go to another synagogue and I would see a woman like a reformed temple I would actually be sort of horrified there's some sense like oh something's out of order here so so there's that and I was thinking about this koan I feel for myself being here was there ever any difference because I think I've spent most of my life making every all the differences go away and try and only bring up the sameness and in the last few years I've seen the problems around that so I think that

[62:50]

for me, like in the koan that you read that there was mixing up but it's some kind of compensatory thing I don't really understand it very well but it's a very interesting it's an interesting koan I think it's very mixed up actually and it comes from feeling second class in some way my my my mother was very religious and a seeker and I know that she felt discriminated against and she was very active in in seeking something that would meet her needs so we went to a lot of different churches we went to catholic mass and hindu

[63:51]

and self realization temple and lots of different things and I remember her studying a lot and arguing with people a lot and often it was gender that they were arguing about and I felt very religious at one point in my life when I was young and I don't remember so much being in the churches although I know I went but she also brought like tape bible tapes and we'd listen to them and we'd read the bible and stuff and we'd she'd talk to me about religion and we'd have you know the sabbath and like break bread and stuff and she was very very kind of passionate about that and so I feel like I received

[64:52]

religion from my mother more than any church and I feel that that's very wonderful and I feel very grateful to her for that and from about the age of 14 until about 19 I was very involved in the Methodist church two of those years in Ohio which has its own kind of conservatism and the last three years at a high school in Germany but it was an American high school and I worked really hard at both trying to believe in a god and be religious and so your question Linda you know what kind

[65:53]

of discrimination or was there any discrimination or what did you see or what did I notice is I must say a little bit appalled at the state that I didn't really notice any and I suspect I didn't notice any because I was a male running along the male track in the Methodist church so of course I wouldn't notice because everything had blinders on it and I just shot down the track there but occasionally I would wonder why and all of this so the church was a little like our structure here in the sense that I could spend a lot of time every day, day after day week after week actually in the buildings and doing things and I noticed that there didn't appear to really be any women except when we wanted some kind of food or something you know it wasn't until many many years later that I thought god that's really strange but I didn't think it was strange then and no one leaned over and said excuse me don't you think it's

[66:55]

strange that there's no women here no one ever pointed that out to me and I never thought of it so discrimination was rampant, it was so rampant that in some sense was all there was and it wasn't even tellable except by those of course 151% of the population that were being discriminated against and were noticing it every time they did anything so I'm sorry I did not notice the discrimination then and I completely failed at finding god my parents were raised Baptist and Presbyterian and left those churches somewhere in the course of college and medical school and I don't think they realized the extent to which their medical training and practice carried

[67:55]

many of the same sorts of beliefs and difficulties but what occurs to me though I can think of stories similar to some that they said one thing that comes to mind that is a little different is my mother telling me I think not long after I was divorced her saying, her expressing some empathy or some understanding as to why I might not want to be married but in the course of that she said something like how she realized that she had that she had tended to believe that women are stronger than men and therefore can take a back seat and that men have a greater need to be good in themselves and to have

[68:57]

grown up with this and four brothers to whom you know whose need to be out there I think was somehow seen as stronger than my own it was interesting to have it stated so simply and also some recognition that maybe this was skewed so it's like a premature sort of generosity when you haven't when you haven't had had that various experiences yourself and you're already deferring to other people's need for them with me

[70:01]

what you were saying is so very much like me my mother was raised Presbyterian and my father Episcopalian and when they got married naturally she, as it was in the time you know went over and was like in the Episcopal church and so we were both that because she kind of went with my dad and I of course didn't think too much of that and I was one of the acolytes all male acolytes and after acolytes you got a little older and you could be an usher and I remember I hate to admit it but I can remember standing in the back one time when I was like an usher these are the people that bring up the plates you know when they pass around the plates and there was a girl usher and it just struck me as so strange and I think I realize I have a lot of strong conditioning

[71:01]

even now in ways I'm not even aware of but I'm trying to think if I ever saw a female acolyte and I vaguely remember something about that but I definitely remember it was mostly men and as far as the structure of the church it was very much my father like his father was like one of the founding people in this cathedral and going down the line and that way but when I think of the essence of religion as far as what it's really about behind the religion that was so much more my mother because she was very patient and these type of things that you naturally maybe seem to be attributed to women but not only that she was a dynamic

[72:02]

kind of doer type and what seemed to me dynamic but when I say that I realize that a lot of the things she did were very much the things that were accepted for women to do like heading up this program at the church or doing this type of volunteer work or that type of volunteer work or well maybe she would have a yoga class with some other women that would come over to the house but it wasn't until she was much older that she actually started a job like doing real estate but she was this girl scout troop leader and took them on hikes and things which was great and actually she played the male role too because my father had polio when he was 19 and even though I think he was wanting to be like the conservative male and take the strong male role there was just things he couldn't do and so my mother

[73:04]

took us canoeing and my mother introduced us to the outdoors and my mother was the patient one and my father had a hot volcano temper and then it would be gone but he was he never had much cell control he had a good heart basically and a good sense of humor but very I think I don't know anyway my mother as far as the real I hate to say my father didn't have any of the essence of spirituality but I really think and I feel like my mother is a very exceptionally compassionate type of person and what you were saying too about religious figures like Tara or maybe the Virgin Mary images of women naturally seem to bring about more of that

[74:05]

type feeling and I want to get in touch with that in myself too and I do feel that there's bound to be so many social trappings that we're afflicted with in Buddhism too when you consider it was 500 years before it was ever actually written down and maybe King Ashoka kind of wanted a little influence when things got written down or whatever I don't know oh I'm going too long but anyway so I'm interested in finding out about women in Buddhism and getting in touch with femininity femininity yeah and I don't even know how to say it so that shows something but anyway thank you Susan? I was trying to why don't we go Ann come up from that side what do I want to say I did have an experience

[75:07]

of coming to Buddhism after 12 step programs of this relief of finding a language that seemed to include my experience rather than this sort of transcendental higher power which always seemed to be something up above what I really was just to talk about a deeper truth just to take it in the opposite direction physically for me seemed more acknowledging of the feminine it's just been really interesting to hear everybody and there seems to be some correlation between age and experience of discrimination but not completely I'm also interested in some of the younger experiences I actually have a really good story about this sort of thing I grew up going to, well I was raised as a Protestant and we ended up going most of my years to a Baptist church

[76:08]

and actually I felt that I was a very spiritual child and I really loved memorizing memory verses and liked to read the bible and was very excited to go to Sunday school for a long time and then I became an adolescent and I still liked it I think for a while but I kind of got a little more removed from it and that had to do with a lot of things but I kind of remember the precise instant I decided I just really didn't like or couldn't believe in or just didn't trust the church anymore was one Sunday school course night when I was in high school the sort of the topic of the day was why women couldn't be elders in the church and there must have been something political going on in the church I was really unaware of it but it only made sense and I seem to recall that there was something going on but they looked it up in the bible and there was a bunch of proofs

[77:11]

in the bible of why women couldn't be elders in the church and of course if they couldn't be elders there's no way they could be a minister or anything like that and I just remember thinking this is not like any sort of god that I know and I just said I just really turned off at that point I don't know that I lost faith but I definitely lost faith in that institution I was raised Catholic as a lot of people are I loved being Catholic though I loved going to Mass I loved attending Mary's garden I loved teaching Sunday school I just loved the whole idea that I could be holy through this experience and maybe I could come back as like Bernadette if you ever saw a song with Bernadette that would be lovely but I think I really got it well the way you really had access to God though was through the priests and I went to Mass

[78:11]

and I did all these different things I tried to be this present there and I was raised with two brothers who were dragged out of bed to go to church and one brother brought Dick Francis novels that he put in the missiles and read during the homilies and then the big moment after Mass was when you walked out the doors and back with your family and there was the pastor and this was your chance to be near him and I remember walking up this one time I must have been 14 or 15 and my brothers were behind me because they just wanted to get to the social hall to have donuts and coffee and I walk up and literally the pastor reaches over my shoulder to my brothers and takes their hands and pulls them to him we used to say this was priest recruiting and I mean there's all sorts of stuff and I just totally got it it was like wow I do not have a place here and this priest really symbolized my whole experience it took me about 8 more years to get out but as soon as you said

[79:14]

what's destroyed that just popped up as my whole experience of being in a Catholic organization so that's why I'm here laughter I shake hands up here laughter laughter how many people are left to speak 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9, 10 I wonder if we it's about a minute before 9 how do you feel about going to like 9, 10 if each person can maybe take a minute would you like to end at 9 and we'll continue next week what would you like to do it's a little tight a little tight to just have a minute why don't we start the next how about one more because it is just a couple we've got a couple minutes how about Virginia you're next I start with a couple of different things

[80:15]

I teach writing groups and I have a student who just went back to school at an MFA in the writing program at Mills College and recently saw Tilly Olson who's 84 she said it was so wonderful to see a woman up there now this is a 35 year old woman she had had that experience but in 1995 that was still like that kind of modeling hadn't yet happened for her and she's a mother of 2 children and she's going back to school for a second career and she's just getting that experience so I'm so struck with how many layers of experience and how subtle it is and how deep it is and I'm also struck with how most people are Jewish or Catholic and those are very heavy duty things

[81:17]

and is that sort of like a kind of paradoxical thing that then we come to Buddhism so it's almost like for me it's like woah I am Jewish my parents were from Poland and Russia and they were Orthodox and the men sat downstairs and the women sat upstairs and we also see that some of the most important things were handled by the women in other words the rituals of food which I value enormously were done by women and Passover Seder all that wonderful ceremonial food again was done by women so it's a kind of mixed message of that the real things the grounded things the things that count in the world were done by women so yet there was sort of that sense that this woman mentioned of this kind of pretense of giving this strange not power

[82:19]

but not power to the men so it's very very complex I think very complex and from my own perspective I don't see that when women go out in the world and become real estate agents that that's what you need to move toward so it's for that even that you wear those black robes I feel is strange and I know that I lived in New Mexico for 20 years and I once threw a beautiful pale green shawl I think at Baker Roshi and said why don't you try this on for a change you know let's try some pale green instead of the black masculine Japanese blah blah blah blah you know that thing you know samurai you know it's complicated it's very complicated and I really did appreciate some of the men saying that they came for the feminine imagery

[83:20]

to Buddhism and I think for women too that middle path for me like more Chinese Buddhism is very grounding and very middle path and also for me what brought me to Buddhism was art and aesthetic and the beauty way path within all the homeschool beauty way path so that's a big aspect that again blends masculine and feminine so those are just some comments it's after 9 why don't we end I'm sorry we didn't get to everyone but hold your stories till next week and we'll start with Virginia next week we always for those of you who are new to Zen center classes we always start with the verse for opening the sutra and we close with the verse for

[84:22]

these verses are to help you just open up to what's happening and focus on the whatever the teaching is either coming from your fellow classmates or from inside or the teacher or person up in front and then we end with dedicating the merit of our work here tonight and the bodhisattva vow so if anybody doesn't know what those are just follow along and we can maybe get some copies of those maybe our intention is really the trade of breathing and place breathing breathing

[85:16]

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