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. Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for those who are participating from a distance tonight. And I want to thank Tim Wicks, our head of practice, for inviting me to give this talk tonight. And also I want to thank my teacher, Agent Linda Cutts, for her support for the last 25 years. So for those who don't know me, my name is Tova Green. I am a resident of here at San Francisco Zen Center.

[01:04]

And my work practice position is director of the branching streams groups. There are about 65 Zen centers and smaller groups in the Suzuki Roshi lineage in the U.S. and about 12 in other countries. And I recently came back from visiting one of those centers in Medellin, Colombia. I had never been to Medellin. I had never been to Colombia or South America. And I only have junior high school level Spanish skills. But they improved greatly in the two weeks I was there. So I want to, my topic tonight is elevating women's voices. And I'll start by talking about the experience I had at Medellin with the Sangha at a Zen center called Montaña de Silencio, Mountain of Silence.

[02:15]

And then I also will be talking about a book that I've been reading and rereading in preparation for an online program, with someone named Vanessa Sasson. The book is called The Gathering. It's a novel about the first Buddhist women. And I'll also talk briefly about the work of Paula Arai, who's a Bay Area scholar. She's now teaching at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. So... And I will also talk about some questions I have about some of the things that we do and don't do at San Francisco Zen Center related to, I guess, elevating women's voices.

[03:19]

So my visit to Montaña de Silencio... was full of surprises. I'll just describe the place, but initially I was planning to travel with and be there with Jiryu Ruchman-Biler, who's the abiding abbot at Green Gulch Farm, and he's had a long connection with his center starting in 2006 when he went with a delegation including It was co-led by my teacher, Linda Ruth Cutts, and her daughter, Sarah. Sarah had been living in Colombia for a couple of years, accompanying a peace village, a village that was caught between the rebel forces and the government forces, as many villages were. And they were a peace village. They declared themselves neutral. And so they had international people...

[04:23]

staying with them to protect them. Sarah did that for two years, I think. And so she and Linda Ruth went to that village. They led a group, and Giriu was in the group. And the group stopped in Medellin and visited Mount Tania de Silencia. And the current teacher there, the resident teacher's son, Ricky Jaramillo, was very impressed by Giriu at that time. I think Giriu was great. So that was 2006, almost 20 years ago. And he was a new student at Gringotts and spoke Spanish fluently because he had grown up in South America. His parents were Mennonite missionaries. So Juryu had a long connection with the center and is their guiding teacher. And he recently gave Dharma transmission to Sanriki. But as it turned out, and I think everyone in this room knows, and I imagine most of you online also know that there was a student at Tassajara, Caroline Meister, who went missing.

[05:41]

She went missing on Monday of the week we were planning to go. We were going to fly on Thursday night. And... On Thursday she was still missing and there were people searching for her and Jirio texted me actually the night before saying he was going to postpone his trip because he was Caroline's teacher and he didn't feel he could leave. And then I arrived in Medellin Friday morning and we found out that Caroline had Caroline had been found dead, and then Jiryu said he wasn't going to come at all. And the reason he invited me was to help him and Sanriki with a priest ordination, ordaining two priests at the beginning of the time we would be there, and then attend, well, then go to a center,

[06:45]

a little bit outside the city for a four-day sushin, ending with the jukai ceremony. So one of the two students who was going to be ordained, a woman named Ngyoku, was a Jiryu student. So they decided not to do the priest ordination, but I was able to assist Sanriki with the sishin and the jukai ceremony. And one thing that struck me, so I'll just say a little bit more about Montaño de Silencio. They have a big house in a part of the city that now is not as, it used to have a lot of beautiful houses in it and Now there's a lot of graffiti and some people who are unhoused sleeping on the streets.

[07:48]

There's a drug... I guess many people who are addicted to drugs in Medellin and it's not safe to walk in the street alone at night in that neighborhood now. But... the place inside, it's so welcoming. They have a, uh, come in and take off shoes and there's a Zendo. You walk a little farther in and there's a, an indoor garden and a big kitchen with a long table and, uh, rooms, sleeping spaces for Sanriki and, uh, and Gyoku. And she shared her space with me. And then, um, It's very spacious. And when I arrived, people were preparing lunch, and the Sanriki and Gyoku, and there's one other resident who would have been the other ordained priest named Kaikyo.

[09:03]

And they eat together. They welcome Sangha members to join them. Some people or some meals during the week. And it feels a little bit... It felt, in a way, very familiar. The Zendo had a beautiful altar and room for maybe 20 people. So I practiced with them for several days. And one thing that I noticed in the morning when they did morning service and they did... the echo, kind of after the, like we do an echo after the first three chants, after the either Enmei Juku or the Shosamiyot Kichijo Durrani, starting, and we talk, we start with honoring Shakyamuni Buddha, Mahapajavati, Dogen,

[10:13]

Bodhidharma Dogen, and on to Shogaku Shunryu, they add our first woman ancestor in America, Shunbo Zenki. I was really surprised, and I didn't know that that's the only place I've heard that echo with Blanche added. at the end, and then the bodhisattva, perfect wisdom, Manjushri. And during the time I was there, I had opportunities to do practice discussions during the Sashin, and I also, because Sanriki was the tenzo for the Sashin, as well as one of the leaders of the Sashin, he and I co-led it. He was not in the Zendo some of the time. So they have a sutra book, like our sutra book, but translated into Spanish, which was done by Engyoku.

[11:23]

And I learned how to say the rope chant in Spanish and to read all of the chants in Spanish. along with the sangha. And it was a wonderful way to be immersed in Spanish because I know the chants in English. So I could recognize many of the words in Spanish. But one of the things that became clear was, as I met particularly with some of the... women in the sangha, many of them spoke English so that we could do practice discussions in English, and a few who didn't, and Gyoku translated for me. But they were really appreciative of having a woman teacher there, because both Sanriki and Jiri, of course, are men, and there were...

[12:30]

things they felt they could talk about more easily with a woman. And just one example, there was one young woman who was in the sashim, her husband was helping in the kitchen. And she really had trouble speaking up, she said. And as we began, even with her husband, and they did some teaching together and she always deferred to him. And she talked about her own family where her father took a lot of... He was definitely the stronger, more outspoken parent. And she learned from her mother to kind of be quiet and not say what she thought. And she really didn't want to continue in that way. And... I suggested I gave her a mantra to try out, and it was, my voice is important.

[13:38]

And she told me at the end of Sashin that it really meant a lot to her and that she was going to remember that and to practice that when she went home. And I found out from Sozan, who has many students in South America and Central America, that there are very few women Zen teachers in Latin America. So when I debriefed my time with with Jiryu today and told him I thought it would be helpful if other women teachers could go and visit that sangha. And I actually had such a wonderful connection with people there, I'm hoping I can go again.

[14:49]

So... I think we're fortunate here and in the United States in general that there are so many women teachers and many sanghas led by women, but that's not the case everywhere. And so I want to talk a little bit now about what I'm learning, what I appreciate about this novel, The Gathering, a story of the first Buddhist women, I was invited to do an online program with Vanessa Sasson. It was Brendan who kind of matched us together, and we had a meeting to talk about what...

[15:56]

the book and what some of the messages were and I really appreciated Vanessa's curiosity about what not only curiosity but also her creativity she is a professor of religious studies in the liberal arts department of Marianopoulos College in Montreal. She's Canadian. She also wrote a novel about Yesodara, who was the Buddha's wife. And in reading this novel, the main character in the novel is a woman who became a nun, Vimala. And she's not not a character that is very well known or that we hear about so much as we do Kisogotami or even Yasodora, the Buddha's family members.

[17:09]

And it was very interesting to find out why she chose Vimala as the main character. And... what inspired her to write this novel. And she said that when she first was interested in learning about the first Buddhist women, the first text she turned to was the Banaya, which talked about the women visiting the Buddha and being turned away, asking for ordination, being turned away. and then the third time. He didn't actually say no. He said, what was his phrase? This shouldn't concern you.

[18:13]

Something like that. He didn't exactly say no. But she was... Vanessa... was inspired by the poems that these women had written, the Terrigata. There were 73 poems that survived. And she recommended a translation that I wasn't familiar with by Charles Hallisey. She said she felt that his translation really brings these voices together And she said what is particularly moving about these poems is not just that they are songs of women's accomplishments, but that their accomplishments often arrive on the heels of great suffering. Some of you may be familiar with the story of Kiso Gotami who lost her baby and

[19:22]

couldn't accept that the baby had died. And another woman who's one of the characters in this book, Patachara, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, Patachara, who also lost her husband and two children when she was trying to cross a river. And then found that her husband Her family had also lost their home in a fire, and she was totally distraught. She was another one of the women who suffered. And Vimala started out as a daughter of a courtesan who was raised in a palace-like place where there were different levels of... There were courtesans and also prostitutes at that time.

[20:26]

And she was being raised by her mother, who was a courtesan, to... So the courtesans in that... It was like a palace. It wasn't a palace, but were very beautiful. beautiful and well-dressed and learned to play musical instruments and so on. And that's what Vimola was being prepared for. And then just before she had... There was a ceremony after these young women... began menstruating and just before that ceremony her mother died and she had to leave that place and couldn't find a place to go until she found her way to a brothel and as she was growing older it got harder and harder for her in her life and

[21:51]

She was extremely unhappy, and this is partly fiction, the story that Vanessa created about how she was visited by someone, a woman, who was on her way to join this large group of women who were walking through... and carrying food and so on, which included the women from the royal household, Mahapajabati in Yasudara. But they were walking through the town where Bhimala was living, and she decided to leave the brothel. And what... What Vanessa Sesson says is the women of the Therigata were not limited by their suffering or defined by it.

[22:57]

The wonder of it all is that despite the pain, these women tried for something more. They shook themselves free of their circumstances and walked into the forest to ask for what they needed and thought they could receive, which was the teaching of the Buddha. And then she also stressed that they did it together, like so many other women, they did it together. One of the most impressive features of the Terrigata, she said, is the fact that it holds poems of all kinds of women at once, prostitutes and queens, beggars and ascetics, the mad and the dignified. Everyone is welcome in the Terrigata, so long as she strives for awakening in a world that was deeply stratified and hierarchical. And she refers to the Therigata as a miracle of collaboration.

[23:59]

The story of the first Buddhist woman isn't easy. And she talked about how... Yeah, the phrase the Buddha used was better not to ask... That's what he said. That's what's in the Vinaya. And the women were initially rejected and dismissed. And when they were finally accepted into the community as monastics, it was with heavy conditions, the eight special rules, which made it really difficult for women in many Buddhist countries to be ordained over... until not that long ago. I went to a Shakyadita conference well over 10 years ago, but in Vietnam, and there were many nuns from Thailand who... I'm not remembering the details of this, but there was a lot of difficulty in...

[25:15]

receiving ordination. I think one of the rules was they had to be ordained by men. I'm sorry, I don't remember the details of that, but these rules had impacted women in many Buddhist countries for all this, for like 2,000 years. So one thing that I appreciate about this book is that in the back there are notes about some of the things that came up for Vanessa Sassona. She was writing it and, for example, why she chose Vimalak as the main character of the book.

[26:17]

And, um, I thought I would just share a little bit of what she wrote because her honesty and frankness and, um, you know, how to create a novel where the characters are alive and you can actually, um, envision what their living situation is like and, um, relate to them, I don't think is an easy task. And so she says, when I first began imagining this book, I wrestled with the question of who the narrator or principal character should be. I considered a number of possibilities. And both Yasodhara, who was the narrator, and she wrote a book about Yasodhara, A novel about Yasodora was the narrator in her first book, and Gautami was the Buddha's godmother, Mahapajapati.

[27:24]

They were obvious contenders, but I wanted this book to be focused on someone less prominent. I was looking for a character who lived on the margins, who was not famous or central, and who could therefore tell this story with a bit of distance. I spent a long time leafing through the terigata, looking for the one who would catch my attention. When I came upon Vimala, she told me unequivocally that she was the one I had been looking for. I had no choice but to do as she said. So Vimala became really alive for her. And she... includes Bhimala's Terrigata poem in the end. And it just starts, it starts with, intoxicated by my good looks, by my body, my beauty, and my reputation, haughty because of my youth.

[28:31]

I look down on other women. And she talks about how she... blashed her ornaments when she was being trained to be a courtesan. And then the contrast. Today I collected alms, head shaved, covered with the outer robe, now seated at the foot of the tree. What I get has nothing to do with schemes. All ties are cut, whether divine or human. I have thrown away all that fouls the heart. I had become cool, free. So that was the poem that really spoke to Vanessa Sassone in choosing her as the main character. And she writes about other choices that she made, about what to add, what to change, what to include.

[29:33]

So I recommend this book. And just one other thing, why she called this movement of all the women, she called it the gathering. The gathering is a term I created for this book. To my knowledge, the sources do not provide us with a specific word for this early movement of women. I was initially tempted to call it a women's march inspired by Kama Khandro Rinpoche, who I think wrote a book about the first Buddhist women, but it sounded much too contemporary to me. The annual women marches of today do not, however, seem so different from the march the women in this story are making. The women of this book are marching through the forest,

[30:38]

to ask the patriarchal gatekeepers to let them in. They are asking for access and recognition, which is what women today continue to ask for. This makes me wonder at times how much progress we have really made. So I really appreciate her... making the connection between the first Buddhist women and their struggles and some of the struggles women still face today in some sanghas and in the wider world in general. So I'm going to come to the end very quickly. I wanted to... I would like to... Also, just refer to Paula Arai's first book, Women Living Zen.

[31:42]

Paula Arai wrote that 25 years ago, and she was talking about... Her book was a study of nuns who were living at... the Aichi Senmon Nisodo, a women's monastery in Nagoya. The guiding teacher there is Aoyama Roshi, who's well-known partly through a book that she wrote. And Paula, at that time she wrote, Buddhist nuns have been made generative and have made general... I'll start again. Buddhist nuns have made generative and perennial contributions to Japanese history. Their contributions, however, have been hidden from the dominant representation of history.

[32:48]

And she asks why nuns have been largely nonexistent in the scholarship on Japanese Buddhism. And she... thought part of the reason is the androcentric bias that has dominated academic inquiry. Gender has only recently become a salient category in the field of Buddhist studies. So that was 25 years ago and I think that it's become there's certainly been more books written by women and about some of the women in our our lineage. But this has continued to be an interest of hers, and Paula Araya is now teaching at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and she teaches a class on women in Buddhism called Buddhist Women's Liberating Power.

[33:58]

I love that title of that class. And... She's a wonderful resource. And this year, the Soto Zen Buddhist Association is doing a series of monthly programs focusing on celebrating the voices of women in Zen, past, present, and future. And each month there's a Dharma talk or a panel on a different aspect or by a different woman. Soto Zen teacher or panel of teachers. Linda Ruth is going to give one of these talks in May and referring to a fascicle of Dogen's that features some of his teaching about the equality of women and

[35:02]

And it's interesting to me that this series was organized by SEBA's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee. SEBA has a committee that I was a member of it for four years, and just before I left the committee, they were beginning to talk about how to bring up the... issues around patriarchy in Soto Zen. And this is what they came to, they decided on focusing instead of the patriarchal aspects of Zen, lifting up the women's voices with this series throughout the year. So there's some questions that are alive for me, and I don't,

[36:05]

I think there'll be time for Q&A. But I'll just raise some... One question I've wondered about is why the women's lineage that we chant ends with Chiyono. Chiyono lived from 1223 to 1298. And there are so many women who have... who we do know about, whose lives we know about, who have lived since then. And I've also been wondering and talking with David and with my own teacher, Linda Ruth, about how we could make a Ketchumiyaku with women's lineage available at Jukais and priest ordinations available And I want to appreciate Victoria, who has, there was a beautiful ceremony after my Dharma transmission that I shared with Zenju and several other women who had recently received Dharma transmission, where we made a silk with a circular ketchum yaku of our women ancestors.

[37:28]

there was a ceremony with several elders who were Dharma-transmitted women who gave us these documents and I keep mine with the other silk that I wrote as part of Dharma Transmission is writing a Ketch Miyaku on silk and fold it up and put in a very special bag. So I don't understand why it's so controversial. And then I'm also, as probably everyone in the room has been aware that it seems that the There was a time when there, I would say, as many women as men practicing at city center, sometimes maybe more, and many women in leadership roles, which there still are, but especially with five women going to Ansel Village.

[38:43]

But even before that, it seems like there are many more men than women practicing here now, and I don't know what's causing this and also what we could do to turn it around. So these are some of the questions... that I think are not so unconnected to the story of our first Buddhist women. I love practicing with everyone here, and I'm not saying this to in any way denigrate or not appreciate, the importance of everyone's contribution, and I would love to see more women in the room. So I'll leave. Oh, I know. I do want to end with some words of Blanche and bring her voice here, our first woman ancestor in America, according to the folks that

[39:53]

Montonio de Silencio. And it's something she wrote. It's called Falling in Love All the Time. What is our motivation for our practice? Well, here we are. We are living in this world and we notice that there is suffering. And we develop, as the Buddha did, I wish to know how to help people in their suffering because compassion is a natural, normal human response to suffering. And so we want to know how to ease suffering. We don't want to go around looking and feeling dismal and dull when the beautiful world is all around us, when beautiful people are all around us. The Buddha wasn't pointing out our human condition in his teachings in order to make us feel dismal about ourselves. He was saying, look, this is what is happening, so how can we live a joyful life in the midst of the fact that it doesn't last forever?

[41:03]

Well, in the first place, since it doesn't last forever, we may as well enjoy it while we have it, right? For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:38]

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