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. Thank you, everyone, for being here this morning. My name is Heather Shorin Yeruso, and I am a resident priest. here at San Francisco Zen Centers. My gender pronouns are she, her. Although I identify as a woman, I'd say that my gender expression is decidedly non-conforming. Back when I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, there was not this expansive vocabulary to articulate the fluidity of gender. There was one word for girls like myself. who prefer to play baseball rather than play with dolls, and who wore pants instead of dresses, and climbed trees instead of having tea parties.

[01:07]

We were called, in the vernacular of the day, tomboys. This was decidedly a negative term in my neighborhood. I recently came across a new word that I feel more accurately reflects my gender identity and expression, demigirl. This is someone who was assigned female at birth, but does not fully identify with being a woman. This word sounds so much more empowering and exciting than tomboy. Being a demigirl just came naturally to me. It was just heather being heather, like the Japanese magnolia tree in our front yard that I love to climb. It didn't try to shed its gray-white bark to be more like the pine trees surrounding our yard. Perhaps I preferred... being a tomboy because I had two older brothers and I wanted to do whatever they did. I remember one summer when I was about five years old, I ran outside the bungalow we owned in the mountains to play with my eldest brother, Anthony.

[02:12]

He was probably about eight years old then, and I was probably about five or six. And he was standing on the edge of the driveway with a group of boys who were much older than him. I was most likely clad in a tank top and pants that my mother had made for me. And back then, my hair was curly or wavy, and it was short. I was so excited to be outside with my brother, and I was standing there in the gravel driveway, and the boys were standing on the deck above me, and one of them asked if I was a boy. And without hesitation, I said, yes. And then this feeling of dissonance waved through me, and my voice quavered as I said, no, no, I mean no. And my brother and the boys roared with the rise of laughter. I froze for a moment while the hot stab of shame pierced my gut, and then I turned and ran as fast as I could toward our backyard.

[03:19]

I didn't stop running until it was safe and I was among my friends. the pine trees. I don't recall how long I stood there catching my breath, waiting for the shame to release its grip on me and hiding from the scorn of the boys. This is my first memory of experiencing shame, maybe even my first memory of suffering, which is the first mark or characteristic of existence. One of my dear Dharma friends, she is an Indian woman and also a... Zen priest like myself, she told me that the Sanskrit word dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A, that we translate to mean suffering or unsatisfactoriness, can also be understood this way. Du, D-U, means constricted, and kam means sky of consciousness. So when the sky of consciousness is constricted, we experience suffering.

[04:23]

The Sanskrit word for ease or bliss is sukkha, S-U-K-H-A. The su means expansive. So when the sky of consciousness is spacious and expansive, we experience joy and wholeness. This incident with the boys was the first time I remember feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. This type of shame is what psychologists call state shame. It's a momentary experience that occurs in response to an event. Of course, I had no name for the shame. It was just this body-mind experience of being othered, of not belonging, of feeling ridiculed. I never mentioned this experience to my parents, and this is one of the powers of shame. It keeps us locked in a hell realm where we feel powerless and paralyzed. Unlike my brother and the boys, I was too young to be trapped in the box of the binary gender system.

[05:28]

I was still floating in the childlike, non-dual world where trees were my besties, bees hummed in my heart, time was timeless, and unicorns were real. Of course, my brother and the boys responded in this way because of their own limited view inculcated in them by the white-bodied, heteronormative, patriarchal world. Girls look this way, girls dress this way, and girls behave like this. This was, in the language of today, this was the approved gender expression for girls. Of course, their limited view of girls also limited the view of themselves. This is how boys look, this is how boys dress, this is how boys behave. Locking them into a gender box built for little boys. maybe a box constructed out of the walls of suppressed shame. We know as practicing Buddhists that everything changes.

[06:30]

Impermanence is the second mark of existence. So although it was an intense experience of a state of shame, it passed through me. However, if we are routinely shamed by our parents or other authority figures who have power over us, We internalize the shame, especially when we're little kids. We internalize the shame and it crystallizes into what psychologists call trait, T-R-A-I-T, trait shame. The shame places our thoughts, words, and deeds, our expression of who we are into the box of should and the box of shouldn't, another binary. This isn't the shame, of course, that keeps us from stealing or lying. This is the shadowy shame that becomes a part of our personality. Karmic conditioned beings are hungry ghosts that burrow deep into our body-mind and obscure our perception of ourself, others, and of course, life.

[07:34]

In Buddhism, the proximate cause of faith is suffering. The proximate cause is the nearest condition that gives rise to a specific quality. The intense suffering in my life has led to a deep faith. in the practice and study of the Buddhist teachings as a path to liberation amid suffering, not ignoring or avoiding suffering right in the middle of the arising suffering. I view trait shame as the proximate cause of pride. For a person raised as a Roman Catholic, pride was not a cause for celebration. It was one of the seven deadly sins. Given that some religious traditions still consider being queer, in all of its glorious manifestations, something to be ashamed of, I love that the pride movement transformed this word associated with sin and shame into one used as an expression of our whole selves, making the invisible parts of ourselves, the shamed parts of ourselves, visible in the sunlight of celebration.

[08:41]

Since its pride month... and the rainbow flag is the symbol of the LGBTIQA plus community. I've been thinking a lot about rainbows. When I was in sixth grade, our teacher held up a prism to the sunlight streaming through the window, and poof, the invisible light magically shimmered into streaks of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. This prismatic moment is akin to how I feel about Buddha's teachings. Before I began practicing Zen, I perceived my adult self as a solid, independent me that was separate from nature and everyone else. I didn't know that my perception and experience of myself as a concrete and discrete entity was a false view. The more I meditated, the more my perception and experience of myself became more ephemeral, just like a rainbow.

[09:43]

This embodied sense of fluidity of who and what I am is the third mark of existence, what the Buddha calls the not-self characteristic. For me, the not-self characteristic is the most transformative teaching of the Buddhas and also one of the more difficult ones to understand and experience. One framework the Buddha offered To refract our experiences through is the prism of the five aggregates or heaps, forms, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. The more we practice meditation and study the Buddha's teachings, the more we begin to experience the insubstantiality, impermanence, and impersonal nature of these arising mental and physical phenomena. One definition I find helpful when contemplating this teaching is from the Buddhist scholar Carl Brunholtz.

[10:46]

He wrote this fabulous book about the Heart Sutra called The Heart Attack Sutra. Here's my paraphrasing of Brunholtz's explanation about the fluidity of life. Not only is our perceiving mind dynamic in that it changes from moment to moment, but but everything we perceive with our senses, so all sense objects, are also dynamic. Phenomena cannot be defined by themselves. Rather, we can only talk about rising conditions as complexes of mutual relationships with other phenomena, which in themselves are complexes of relationships with other complexes of relationships. This is also what we call in the Buddhist teaching dependent co-arising. This arises, so that arises. This ceases, so that ceases. And so rainbows, like everything else we perceive and experience in this world, and even though we may not see it this way, we are every moment experiencing ourselves.

[12:00]

We might not be attuned to all those experiences throughout the day, but But part of the practice of zazen is to become more intimate, more attuned to what's going on in our body minds, both while we're meditating and also while we're going about our everyday activities. So rainbows, like everything, are complexes of mutual relationships with other phenomena. So this definition of the not self-characteristic isn't nearly as poetic and as simple. As what Suzuki Roshi says, because we are changing moment by moment, I don't exist. And you know what? Rainbows don't exist either. They are optical illusions that do not exist in a specific spot in the sky. You can't touch them, drive around them, or walk under them. Rainbows move when you move. When we look at them from the ground, rainbows look like arches or bows.

[13:01]

However, if you are in an airplane, you can see that the rainbow is a circle. Rainbows are composed of millions of raindrops that each contribute rainbow speckles that refract and reflect sunlight in front of a viewer at an angle of 42 degrees. Our rainbow speckles, the five aggregates, change every moment, which means that our perceptions are changing each moment, even if we're not tuned to these changes. Just like seeing the sunlight transform into a rainbow shifted my perception of invisible light, my brother and his friend's reaction to my confusion about my gender, well, actually, they were confused about my gender. Their mockery shifted how I felt about myself. Before our interaction, I was not that self-conscious about my sex or gender. However, after they mocked me, I perceived that there was something wrong with me.

[14:04]

I went from feeling the expansive joy of sky consciousness to the restricted consciousness of the gender binary. Instead of experiencing myself and the boys like a rainbow, this beautiful spectrum of colors, we were all reduced to just two colors. The rainbow flag of the gay pride movement is a symbol of unity and diversity. Out of the invisible, infinite, one source emerges the spectacular array of the 10,000 things. The rainbow flag was first used on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. The first pride marches around the country were held in 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall Uprisings. that happened in Greenwich Village, New York City, from June 28, July 3, 1969. Stonewall was a gay bar that was routinely raided by the police.

[15:06]

The uprisings are considered the catalyst for the gay rights movement. Although Stonewall is considered the event that launched the Pride movement, there were many causes and conditions that led to these riots. In fact, one of the proximate causes was literally just 500 feet away from the Stonewall Inn. The Woman's House of Detention, which opened in 1932. Tens of thousands of women and transmasculine people were incarcerated there mostly for being gender non-conforming. By the 1960s, around 75% of the people imprisoned there were queer in some way. This is according to Hugh Ryan, who wrote the book, The Woman's House of Detention, Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. Ryan says that women and transmasculine people were arrested for being wayward and for dressing incorrectly for their gender. In the 1960s, the Woman's House of Detention began marking gay prisoners with a D for degenerate and placing them in solitary confinement because they were a danger to other women.

[16:21]

Hugh Ryan writes this about the Stonewall uprisings. On the first night of the riots, people incarcerated in the prison could actually see what was happening out their windows, and they started a riot all their own, setting fire to their belongings and throwing them down to the streets while chanting, gay rights, gay rights, gay rights. The woman's house of detention was eventually shut down in 1972. And oddly enough, in that same year, The first issue of Ms. Magazine was published. In a recent New York Times article commemorating the inaugural issue of Ms. Magazine, it says that the publication was billed for women whose interests went beyond the limits of home and husband. The co-founders of the magazine, one of those, of course, being Gloria Steinem, they decided to use the title Ms., because it describes a woman without reference to her marital status.

[17:27]

Not surprisingly, Ms. Magazine was banned from some libraries and newsstands. I was five years old when the inaugural issue of Ms. was published, so I grew up with Ms. as part of my vocabulary and understood its meaning. The use of the word Ms., in lieu of the confining Mrs. or Miss, emerged from the expansive sky consciousness of feminism. This was the beginningless beginning of breaking free from the box of gender roles. One of my favorite new words is mix, M-X. It was added to the Merriam-Webson Dictionary in September 2017 and is used as a title for people who do not identify as being of a particular gender or for people who simply don't want to be identified by gender. So maybe we'll see a magazine called Mix. There's so many words nowadays to describe the rainbow of gender identities and expressions.

[18:31]

This new vocabulary helps me shift my perception not only of myself but also of others. And although the words we use to label this and that are empty of any meaning other than the subjective ones we infuse them with, most of us have had experiences of the harm that words can cause. This expanding vocabulary helps all of us view the world with what Suzuki Roshi calls beginner's mind. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the experts, there are few. Ehei Dogen, the 13th century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, addresses the binary of gender, the discrimination against female teachers, in one of his fascicles titled Receiving the Marrow, by bowing. He chastises male monks who discriminate against female teachers. Here's what Dogen Zenji says.

[19:50]

This is the most wondrous principle of the Buddha way. He also says, before becoming free from delusion, men and women are equally not free from delusion. At the time of becoming free from delusion and realizing the truth, there is no difference between men and women. This is Dogen's beginner's mind in action, going against the fixed views of women and men and reminding his disciples, that the enlightened mind has no characteristics. Zazen, or seated meditation, helps to cultivate beginner's mind because we become more intimate with the ever-changing state of our internal, physical, and mental world. The more spaciousness we experience with unpleasant or uncomfortable physical and mental feelings, arisings while we're meditating, the more spaciousness we have for allowing others to have their own experience and to express themselves.

[20:58]

Beginner's mind is also necessary to investigate our projections and assumptions about other people, especially those who we disagree with, hold ill will toward, and sometimes just wish would go away so that we can feel peaceful. No matter someone's political beliefs, religious traditions, or cultural heritage, we all experience suffering. We all are trying to find happiness and contentment. We are all trying to care for our family and friends. Reverend Zenju Earthland Manuel has written several lovely poems in her book, The Shamanic Bones of Zen. I'd like to read an excerpt from one of them she calls The Hearts of Nirvana. May the afflictions within our stories of suffering be revealed. Knowing that all who suffer, suffer the same afflictions. Knowing that all life is transforming, ever flowing. Every moment is a chance to plant new seeds.

[22:02]

New seeds that create new and selfless acts of love. New seeds that endure throughout time. New seeds that represent our inherent interrelationship. which represents the whole cosmos. May the seeds of enlightenment come forth from within, illuminating hearts of enchantment, hearts of clarity and complete perception, hearts of awareness of all bodies and minds, hearts of non-judgment. There is nirvana in all beings and in all things. All consciousnesses are within all other consciousness. All seeds exist. before they exist and need only be planted to be born. All beings exist before they exist and need only be planted to be born. When there is no coming or no going amid conditions, no being or non-being amid conditions, there is Nirvana.

[23:07]

If our practice doesn't extend the rainbow as a bridge to all sentient beings, then we are stuck in the binary box of us versus them, of she, her, or he, him. While doing research for this talk, I also came across a number of fascinating myths about rainbows. And these myths span several different countries and cultures and timeframes. Some people view rainbows as serpent dragons. that are evil and dangerous to humans. Some view them as a belt of heaven or God. Some people consider them good omens. Some people consider them bad omens. Again, shifting perspectives. There's no one way to view a rainbow. Someone's projection about the rainbow is equally as valid as my projection about the rainbow. Now, they may not be factual, set in science, right, when...

[24:12]

People were coming up with these myths about rainbows. They were not people who had the vast knowledge of science, but they had these creative minds and they were in tune with nature. And depending on all these causes and conditions, the stories about rainbows shifted. And I think what these myths show us is that the discriminating mind is always looking for certainty, trying to make sense and meaning of the world. And one way that the mind does this is, of course, through language, creating concepts. So these complexes of mutual relationships, whether I call that complex Heather or I call it Jane or I call it my brother or I call the complex of mutual relationships rainbows or Republicans or Democrats. The words are just constructed overlay, a conceptual overlay.

[25:18]

And those conceptual overlays, of course, are handy for us to have conversations, a simple way of referring to what's going on, and sometimes words and phrases are complex and complicated to understand. The downside of getting stuck in this conceptual overlay, or not even knowing that there's a conceptual overlay, which was how I lived my life before I began practicing Zen, is that we fail to see or are blinded by these concepts and we think that that's the world. It's hard to break out of this conceptual overlay and feel the texture of life. So grass is grass, but what does really grass feel like? What does it feel like to walk barefoot on grass? And it depends on the type of grass. Is there dew on the grass? Is the grass dry and brittle? Is it cushiony?

[26:19]

Is it spiky? I mentioned something as simple as grass because what I would call grass, someone else has a different experience of it. We all have our own internal worlds that nobody else can experience. So these concepts are... important of course and it's the beauty of language and of course the fluidity of language. The fluidity of life allows for us to expand that language and expand our consciousness. The rainbow is just a rainbow and these cultures, these people are projecting their stories onto the rainbow. A couple of the more fascinating myths I discovered is that some cultures perceive rainbows as androgynous. They say rainbows represent both male and female qualities. The other myth that's common to many countries as diverse as Bulgaria, Australia, Greece, and sub-Saharan Africa is that if somebody jumps over a rainbow or walks under a rainbow, they will be transformed from a boy to a girl or a girl to a boy.

[27:29]

These myths remind me that when we solidify our perceptions of others, we also solidify our perception of ourselves. Zen is a practice of moving beyond the binary and manifesting the mystery. Reverend Earthland Zenju Manuel says this about the practice of Zen. Zen is for those who thrive on the intangible, the ambiguous, the amorphous and the infinite. We are stars forever suspended in nowhere. You can't really see Zen. You can only experience it after some time of walking the path. I hope that as we continue to walk side by side with all beings on this path, that we walk under and jump over many, many rainbows together. Thank you for your time and attention. and have a wonderful day.

[28:31]

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. 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.

[28:56]

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