This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's very moving to be with you all this morning As we explore the narratives that make meaning out of the headwinds our society faces, today I will share my thoughts on the creative expedient of liberating narrative, a skill that helps with the long game of living the Dharma. With the intention to see the Buddha's tradition from a woman's perspective and illuminate how women or anyone can wield liberating power, I explored the creative expedient of storytelling, a favored method in sutras.

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To do so, I followed principles I developed to help me navigate the rich terrain. I began with breathing space for not knowing. That involved assuming what evidence I did have was incomplete. It also involved doing as much rigorous research into socio-historical materials and Buddhist teachings as I could muster and turning to experts to assess the plausibility of my findings. approaching my findings from an embodied perspective, opened up insights into what women might have seen, tasted, smelled, heard, touched, and thought. It helped me humanize them. As Buddhist women, they likely lived with a sense of our interdependence and sought out ways to respond to suffering with compassion.

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I deliberately sought out Buddhist sutras, teachings, and practices that are not heralded for the way they might support women or are known to have generated suffering for women. I wanted to probe possibilities for engaging in a liberating interpretation of such material. Today, I will share two stories I wrote as part of my larger project, a book titled Of Lotuses and Mud, Women Liberating Dharma. To give you a sense of the amount of evidence fortified in these stories, there are 24 footnotes in the two stories I'm sharing today. Queen Shramala, Philosopher Queen. Teachings on Tathagata Garba

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the Buddha's womb, are ripe for examining a woman's perspective on a woman's capacity to be enlightened in a female body. Indeed, one of the main texts that advances the Buddha's womb teaching, the Sutra of Queen Shramala of the Lion's Roar, delivers the teachings through a woman. The Sutra is dense with philosophical and technical language. As a Buddhist scholar, I can imagine how the teachings would be more accessible and inspiring if they were conveyed through a story that draws out the relevance for those with wombs. My story weaves together textual and philosophical points from the sutra. The conversation I depict between the queen and her female attendants is a creative expedient for bringing the philosophical teachings to life.

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But this is not my philosophy. This is the sutra's philosophy. Queen Shramala was delighted, though not surprised, when the dutiful messenger delivered a letter from her parents. They had always cared for her with rich opportunities for growth, never intimating that a daughter was any less capable than a son. Devout Buddhists, they envisioned her as aspiring to heights beyond her position at the pinnacle of royalty. Wanting nothing less than her full awakening, they encouraged her to study the Buddha's teachings. In due time, The Buddha predicted she would become the Buddha of universal light. He praised her explanation of the Dharma, quoting the sutra, Excellent, excellent! Your wisdom and skillful means are most profound and sublime.

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Queen Shramala's teachings went on to become an authoritative force for the pivotal teachings on Tathagata Garba, or Buddha nature, as it came to be used in East Asia. One day, with head bowed, five attendants approached Queen Shramala. Beloved Queen, in what way may we best serve you? I have called you to my chambers today because as young women, you may have been treated in ways that make you question your worth. Our world is filled with ignorance. Such defilements conceal the seed of awakening that lies within each of us. Let me share a teaching that has freed me from doubts. and delusions.

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It is called Tathagatagarbha, womb of the Buddha. Though its wisdom is lofty, you can integrate it into daily life. The primary thing to do is live virtuously. It means to pay attention to actions, especially if any including your thoughts, are motivated by greed or dislike. Such motivations cloud your ability to see clearly. One of the hardest things to see clearly is the nature of self, because things are not entirely what they appear to be. Through our senses, we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think. they provide practical information for navigating life.

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For example, if someone has fallen, you can assist them because you have eyes to see and arms to lift them. Daily life is full of such opportunities to behave virtuously, and our senses are central to that aim. Yet, Our senses can lead us astray, for they only reveal part of reality. If we live as if our senses inform us about the whole of reality, then we act in ways that are not fully informed. This invariably leads to results we do not want. We inadvertently generate frustration, dissatisfaction, and sometimes anger. In this way, we produce our own suffering. Oh, dear Queen, we do not want to live that way. How do we become fully informed?

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You already have all you need. When you are honest, live with integrity, and sincerely aim to cause no harm to yourself or others, you can trust what emerges from your wombs. They are powerful sources of wisdom. Listen deeply. Wombs provide the conditions for allaying suffering and activating enlightened activity. They are by definition the perfect conditions of a compassionate care, providing all the nourishment and protection needed to grow and thrive. Indeed, being pregnant is bodhisattva work. You are cultivating a Buddha in your body. To nurture an embryo of a Buddha is a momentous responsibility.

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It is also a major contribution to our world. Carrying a being in your womb is excellent practice for how to live all the time. Since caring for an embryo is concrete and has high stakes, it can spur you to intently cultivate compassion. Focus your senses on awareness of the conditions you are generating. All your actions affect the embryo. Do not worry, though. You cannot stain the purity of the embryo. Your womb is pure, but you must be careful not to coat it all over with defilements, such as exposure to toxins and intoxicants, being selfish or callous, and getting overly stressed. Please be sure to eat healthy food and get sufficient hydration and sleep.

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Spend time in nature where you can hear birds sing and feel fresh breezes on your face. Caring for yourself is to care for the Buddha growing in you. To protect yourself from harm creates an environment that protects others from harm. Many women have found that it is easier to be virtuous while pregnant. Their wounds tell them that each action has a direct and immediate consequence on the embryo. Since they are living for another being, they are keenly motivated to be aware and to care. Being conscious that the self is not an independent entity is also easier when pregnant. It can also help dissolve the delusion of being a separate self. The corporal connection through the umbilical cord between you and the embryo is direct.

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In a concrete way, it demonstrates the nature of how all is ultimately interdependently connected. Is this teaching helpful if you don't give birth? My beloved, you do not need to have or use a womb for this teaching to be effective. Wombs as perceived through our senses offer only one perspective of reality. Seen through another lens of reality, the womb is the liberating wisdom of emptiness. Through this lens, all boundaries are impermanent, fluid, and ultimately empty of intrinsic substance. Hence, all beings are wombs of Buddhas. Whether you are pregnant or not, have a physical womb or not, you can visualize yourself as pregnant with a Buddhist embryo.

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All your actions can be done with the intent to care for that embryo. Anyone can live with this awareness and cultivate genuine compassion for self and all beings, turning the world into a womb for Buddhas. You enliven this world by enriching and protecting all beings with loving care. whether you have your own children or not, please share this teaching. It is most important that all our children develop this wisdom. We have the capacity to stop suffering because all of our bodies are vehicles for birthing Buddhas. Bowing with the Dharma.

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Bowing with the Dharma is a liberating narrative that explores how a woman might wield liberating power in the face of a misogynist practice and sutra. Everything in the story is based on historical records, except the thoughts and actions I attribute to my protagonist, the nun, Lian Liu. prepared this story before we found the results of the election, but it's still an inspiring story. The Silk Road funneled products, people, and practices from the Far West and sundry regions of Eurasia through Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, 618 to 907. In the 7th century, it was a buzzing cosmopolitan city that was central to driving a period of rich growth.

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Not coincidentally, women of Chang'an enjoyed freedom. This is all true. They were known to be confident and competent in numerous activities that fueled the culture. It was in this context that a woman wielded her prodigious skills to actualize her vision of becoming ruler of the country. Wu Zhao, the woman who would become China's first recorded ruling empress, became a widow at age 25, when the Emperor Dai Zong died in 649. As his royal consort with no children, it was tradition that she enter Gagne Temple. She shaved her head and became a Buddhist nun. At the same time, another woman, age 24, entered the temple.

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She, too, was widowed young. It was not unusual for a widow to choose to become a nun, nor that the aristocratic family she had married into raised her infant son. She was given the Dharma name, Lian Lu, Lotus Du. The two young widowed novices learned the daily rhythms of a nun's life together. It was a quiet life with a measured pace. Both nuns particularly welcomed chanting sutras with the fragrance of incense wafting through the air. Gagne Temple drew learned and wise teachers who taught them about the Dharma. They found the teachings on the relationship of form and emptiness an intriguing challenge. One of the teacher's plain explanations was most helpful. The elder nun asked them,

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to look out to the garden where a plum blossom was blooming even as snow was gently falling. She pointed out how rain had fallen earlier and nourished the tree to grow. Now that the temperatures were colder, not rain, but snow fell. So the form of the water is dependent on particular conditions. There is no fixed essence to water. She gave other common examples of things that are dependent on specific conditions to arise. Leaves changing colors in the cool autumn nights. The moon waxing and waning in the night sky. The vegetables that only grow in the summer. They came to see the causes and conditions of phenomenal reality and how everything is interrelated in an ever-transforming stream of impermanence.

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The elder nun also asked a series of questions that focused on their own bodies. What have they eaten to nourish their bodies? Where did the food come from? Where is that food now? After the teacher notes that we can see differences of form in male and female bodies, she presses them to consider if a peach becomes female when a woman eats it. Does a peach become male when a man eats it? Is skin male or female? Are bones male or female? She ends the lesson with a teaching from the Sutra on Transforming the Female Body. It's a real sutra. In all dharmas, there is neither male nor female.

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A few years later, into their life as Buddhist nuns, their temple held a service in memory of Emperor Dai Zong. Emperor Gao Zong attended them in honor of his father. This occasioned Wu Zhao to renew communications with him. Although it was not typical for a royal consort to ordain and then return to palace life, Wu Zhao did. She eventually had four sons and was elevated to the highest rank of consort as heavenly empress ruling alongside Emperor Gao Zhang. She continued... to be devoted to Buddhism and became a generous patron that supported its growth in numerous ways. This is all true. Her 675 patronage that contributed to the massive Buddhist stone carvings in Luoyang, Longmen's grottoes, were a harbinger of her future.

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After Emperor Gaozong passed in 683, Wu Zhao eventually founded the Zhao dynasty with Luoyang as its capital and reigned as holy and divine empress from 690 to 705, interrupting the major Tang dynasty. Empress Wu focused on uplifting women's rights and advance the idea that an ideal ruler is one who rules as a mother rules over her children. This is true, too. To deepen her understanding of Buddhist teachings, she asked Buddhist Hawaiian master Fatsang to explain the Hawaiian Sutra, to convey the primary teachings of interpenetration all in one way. One in all, he lit a candle in an octagonal hall he built of eight mirrors, adding a mirror on the top and bottom.

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The light of one candle shone clearly in each mirror, which demonstrated that everything is present in each part, an interrelated and interdependent whole. Such teachings helped her see the hollowness of men claiming superiority over women, fortifying her aim to reign over the country as a mother. Despite there being no record of a woman reigning over China before, a Buddhist text promulgated in 690, The commentary on the meanings of the prophecies about the divine sovereign in the Great Cloud Sutra, real sutra, supported Empress Wu's sovereignty. The commentary imparts that the Chakravartin, universal wheel-turning monarch, in the Great Cloud Sutra, referred to Empress Wu.

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In the Great Cloud Sutra, the Buddha proclaims, Devi of pure radiance, who appeared as an earthly queen, would, quote, reign over the territory of a country in the body of a woman, end quote. Indeed. On October 5, 693, Empress Wu was recognized as an incarnation of the Chakravartan of the Golden Wheel. Empress Wu circulated this text throughout the empire, enjoining monastics to transmit its teachings. Those at Gagne Temple heard the text. prompting, this is my imagination, Lian Lu to reflect on the time she spent with Empress Wu when they were novice nuns 45 years ago. Lian Lu decided to gather a group of her disciples and go on a pilgrimage to pay homage to their Chakravartan empress in her capital of Luoyang and see with her own eyes the giant Virochana Buddha carved into the Longman grottoes.

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Waiting for a moderate season, it was mid-spring of 695 when they set off. Lian Liu had turned 70. Her disciples were determined to care for their beloved teacher on their momentous 230-mile journey. The distance was not all on flat land, and they planned to rest for a few days at temples along the way. Weather and health permitting, they anticipated it would take six to eight weeks to reach Luoyang from Chang'an. The long days of walking afforded Lian Lu time to consider matters in a deep and extended fashion. Along the way, they encountered numerous monks. The nuns adhered to the Garudama that obliges, quote, a nun who has been ordained even for a hundred years must greet respectfully.

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rise up from her seat, salute with joined poems, do proper homage to a monk ordained but that day." After the nuns did their bows to a few monks they encountered along the way, Lian Liu pondered how the practice might affect the young monks. Some appeared to be of similar age to her grandson. Though she had not seen her son since she left for the temple when she was 24, she had heard that he eventually married and had a son of his own. Although Liang Lu harbored doubts about nuns bowing to monks in a unilateral practice, she yielded to the practice since she found that that bowing helped her dissolve the genacious delusion of being a separate self.

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She found bowing itself, no matter the context, embodied humility. Bowing reminded her that she is an integral part of a vast web of activity, pulsing with both suffering, and compassion. Bowing generated an experience of trust in the interconnected whole. For her, each bow refreshed her awareness of all for which she was grateful. Yan Lu had time to consider that now having a female emperor in a world where previously there were no reigning women why a woman must bow to men just because they are male. Not only did the practice rile against the cosmopolitan ethos of women engaging in numerous activities that had been the province of men before, it struck her that the practice might be detrimental to monks.

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The concern grew heavy in her heart as she contemplated what those like her grandson would learn from the practice. If elder nuns continuously bowed down to him for no other reason than they are female and he is male, might it be harder for him to maintain awareness that he is not only not special, but that women are are equally capable of liberating wisdom. Yanyu worried that these young monks' efforts to live in accord with the Dharma teachings of no-self were being undermined by nuns treating them in a way that exalts them. It might cultivate a delusion in men that they are superior to women, resulting in them treating nuns as if they were not able to fathom the Dharma as well as a monk.

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Fortified by the positive view of women she recently heard from the commentary Empress Wu promulgated, Nian Liu thought about another sutra she had learned back when studying with Empress Wu. The teacher had stressed the passage in the sutra on transforming the female body that proclaims, in all dharmas there is neither male nor female. It had always confused, Lianu, how a Buddhist teaching based fundamentally on emptiness could turn around and urge women to change into men. That's what this real sutra does. She had never been persuaded by the ten reasons the sutra offered for why this would be better for those with female bodies. Given the rhetoric of this sutra and her concern for monks being unilaterally bowed to, Yangu thought...

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of a way to counterbalance any reifying tendencies that might encourage delusions about the nature of bodies that arise from such texts and practices. While walking along in silence, she mentally composed a sutra on transforming the male body. The sutra on transforming the male body would mirror the female body with similar but opposite admonition. I command my man's body to transform into a female one. Of course, the real sutra, real, I mean the historical one, says the opposite. Likewise, as the Sutra on Transforming the Female Body volunteers ten reasons why women need to change into male bodies, the Sutra on Transforming the Male Body conjures up ten reasons why a man must transform into a female body.

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And again, I'm drawing on the historical Sutra to mirror it. Men lack the capacity for primordial activity, a.k.a. giving birth. Two, they are dependent on women for their very lives and survival, nursing at their mother's breast. Three, thus men are not sovereign of their own bodies. The historical suture says women are dependent on their fathers and husbands and sons, that kind of stuff. Such dependency gives rise to holding their insecurity and lack of power. To hiding, sorry, their insecurity and lack of power. Five, which in turn results in men being boastful and arrogant.

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Six, close to others' views and unwilling to listen to others gives rise to spiritual complacency. Seven, men are competitive and combative rather than cooperative. Eight, men are divisive rather than harmonious. Nine, men are short-sighted rather than thinking or of future generations. Ten men are lustful. Lian Liu thought an amendment to the Golden Light Sutra would be helpful, too. With this sutra, she substituted women for men. And this is a real sutra, too. May all men, except for her... Switching. May all men be transformed into women, courageous, intelligent, and full of wisdom.

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May they practice the Bodhisattva path at all times, cultivating the six perfections until they reach the realm of enlightenment. Yan Lu envisioned that if both men and women chant both versions of these sutras, both men and women might be spared delusions about the nature of bodies and self. She was not ready to declare that these sutras were not the Dharma, but she did decide to teach her new ideas to her disciples. Finally, Liang Liu and her disciples reached Luoyang. After doing nine prostrations towards the palace in homage to Empress Wu, they continued to the Longman Grotto. By Rochen, a Buddha towered above them.

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In awe of the magnificence of the carved stone, they did nine prostrations. As they sat, In the shadow of Virochena Buddha, Liang Lu shared her reverie with her disciples. Their insight into the nature of emptiness and its relation to form deepened, inflaming their inspiration to share this with men and women far and wide. Riding on the winds of change in the air with a reigning empress, They imagined special preference for a specific gender would melt away into a narrower period of history, and their current insights would be passed down through the generations. The male bias and discrimination against women found in some sutras and practices would be remedied, protecting others.

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from having to suffer as they did. Fortified by rigorous grounding in historical context and reasoning that is informed by Dharma teachings, the creative expedient of embodied narrative enables us to hear the voices of women who know who we know in our bones paved the way for our presence here, today. The stories connect us to the truth of their profound and sometimes playfully serious wisdom insights. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

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Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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