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 morning, everyone, and welcome to San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Kyoshin Wendy Lewis, and this morning I'm going to be talking about solitude in community and in spiritual practice. I actually was going to talk about the women ancestors, but then that shifted to a meditation on how women and various individuals and groups are othered in culture and society. And then it shifted to this kind of meditation on solitude as a choice and aspect of a creative or spiritual journey.

[01:04]

So this talk is a kind of unfolding meditation of my unfolding of those thoughts. So duality and interdependence are two ends of a continuum. And these two ends are how we negotiate our experience and negotiate our interpretations of our experience. And wherever we find ourselves on that continuum is an indication of our concern about our well-being. So when we're on the dualistic side, where most of us usually are, and Buddhism says most of us usually are, we're the most concerned. with our own well-being, success, safety, comfort, and our relative power in regard to others. So the end of the continuum I'm calling interdependence is not comfortable.

[02:13]

And it's not really describable in our conventional way. but I think it will come across as my talk unfolds. So as a framework, I'm going to read a poem by Laurie Sheck, and it's called That I Might Step. Then I came to a peace so random it felt dangerous. rough battlefield expectancy, most tenuous and fragile contract. How can I step with threadbare tenderness across the zero hour of each strike and batter? Why do we live in time, its edges crumbling, its contours filling with monuments, hard data?

[03:16]

But there is a very plain situation in things that sometimes comes, just calmly. It holds no trade routes, no borders, fortressed, guarded, that I may briefly touch it, that I might step into the curious, despite. So, whenever I consider talking about women in Buddhism or the women ancestors, I'll get this sensation of discouragement. And it's not because it's not an interesting topic or that there's not joy in it, but because talking about women ancestors is a necessity in a certain way. So several years ago, I read a book called The Book of the City of Ladies.

[04:19]

in which various aspects of building this city are associated or identified with a woman or women from history. And this was written in 1405 by the Italian-French author Christine de Pizan, and it was translated into English in 1982. So the effort of the book is to discount... negative conventional ideas and ideals about women and how they're measured in what you would call a male-dominated society or culture. So before Christina Pizan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies, this sounds so modern, which is partly why I'm telling this story. She had engaged in this debate about with the author of The Romance of the Rose, concerning the way women were depicted in his poem.

[05:22]

And in her last letter on this, she wrote, As for me, I will write nothing further on this subject. Whoever may write to me, for I have not undertaken to drink the entire Seine River. What I have written is written. I will not be silent because I doubt my opinions, but I prefer to devote myself to other matters that please me more. So this is what I'm working with, you know. So when I finished reading the book, a friend of mine was so relieved because she said it was awful because I was just so miserable about how it seemed like in 600 years nothing had really changed. So, and that's, you know, if Christine de Pizan was writing now, she would probably be talking about a lot of the same issues. And of course, as I'm doing my thinking and research on this topic, there was an article in the New Yorker, and it was called, it was in July, the end of July, called What Women Want.

[06:35]

And it was about equal equality. or you would say unequal pay, for men and women at the BBC. And women had been receiving less pay for not just comparable work, but for comparable and even greater requirements of professional requirements and expertise. One woman, the woman who was particularly profiled in the article, was based in China. So she didn't just have to know Chinese, but she had to know protocol and different cultural sort of expectations. So I won't go into any more details about it, but these familiar ingredients for situations like this, in this case it happens to be unequal pay for men and women, but it's the legal costs and the consequences of bringing a complaint,

[07:39]

people who are afraid of their own jobs and their own lives, so they're not going to speak out, and then finally the effect of other men stepping forward to support the women. And then when that happened, the BBC bureaucracy had moved from denial, then to confession, and then to reparations. So this whole thing. So I attended a talk on ethics that was given at a law school and university in San Francisco. And the speaker said that professional ethics and policies and legal restrictions are not for criminals. They're not for people who, you know, are obviously going to do things on the edge or marginal.

[08:43]

They're actually intended to provide a context for ordinary people who want to do what they like, support their friends, get things for themselves. This is very normal behavior. This is something I think we always have to realize. It happens on our own lives on a kind of daily basis, but then it starts expanding into the world and has a different kind of impact. So this is supported by secrecy and lying. And a friend recently pointed out something called gaslighting, which will be very familiar to you. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize and delegitimize the person's or group's belief or perceptions.

[09:59]

Instances may range from the denial that previous abusive incidents ever occurred... up to the staging of bizarre events with the intention of disorienting the group or person who is the focus of the manipulation. So this sounds familiar because we've done stuff like that before. Children will manipulate each other and their parents and their parents will manipulate them by this kind of gaslighting. And this is usually to get something they want or we want or to avoid... punishment, or ridicule. And then the impact increases as the differential of power increases. So part of the purpose of gaslighting is to place people in the role of victims. So a victim can be ridiculed, dismissed,

[11:04]

and accused of causing their own problems. And so when a system benefits from that, that person or group is silenced. And this is very convenient for maintaining the status quo and the secrecy and dishonesty that that requires. Therefore, women are paid less at the BBC. And their experience of mistreatment is ridiculed and sidelined and silenced. And then the truth becomes too clear to avoid. Men step forward to support them. And then the situation is revealed to be what it is. So I think you can pretty easily shift this around to other circumstances. And this strange way that this is a normal part of life. So Christine de Pizan writes in 1405, and... it's translated into English in 1982, and I read it, and I'm like, this is like it was written, you know, five minutes ago or something.

[12:13]

So how is that? How interesting. So in the stories of the women ancestors, and this is where some of this comes from, both mythical and real, they're characterized as either exceptional or acquiescent. So on the mythical level, they're able to change their sex to male so that they can become enlightened. And then on the real level, you know these stories, right? And then on the real level, they're considered to be different from other women. They act like men. Or they have access to practice and teachers because they're wealthy and they make donations to monasteries. to the teachers. And as I was writing this, I thought, oh, this isn't going to be depressing, you know. But I do have this real interest in the truth, and I actually think it can make you laugh, you know.

[13:17]

But the truth is often beautiful and liberating, but it's also uncomfortable and not so pleasant sometimes. And this is partly due to our own acquiescence or the manipulations we might enact for the sake of our safety and that of others. And so this dualistic way of dealing with things is completely understandable and it's reasonable and it's even kind of comfortable when we are the ones who are in favor. You know, things are going our way, so we don't want to hear about it. So it's just interesting. But the hints where the impact of the truth or clarity can change our lives or perspectives, even though it's usually a little bit temporary. And I think this is one of the powers of solitude.

[14:23]

particularly relating to truths, is that it's an opportunity and a container for more carefully examining or resting in the liberating quality of clarity and allowing it to mature and be a foundation for further insight. So in a way, the creative journey, the spiritual journey, it's a process of transforming our intuition beyond its personalized limitations. So the women ancestors and historical figures, you can think of people as I go along that you know who are like this. have experimented with the interdependent end of the continuum. And you can't really tell whether they were successful or not because of our ideas of what success is.

[15:30]

And you could start with Christine de Pizan. She was widowed at 25, and she had two children, and she had to figure out how to support herself and them. She didn't want to remarry, which was... basically your option. But her father had educated her to an unusual extent. She was an only child, and they used to call them astrologers. He was a philosopher, and he had been invited from Italy to the court in France because of his learning. And so he educated her. And there's evidence that she had run a scriptorium where they copied manuscripts. And that's how she knew so much, because she had read all of these and probably reread them, copied, edited them, and edited them. And in the course of the correspondence that she had on the Romance of the Rose, she wrote, the only fact is, and I can say this honestly, that I love learning and a solitary life.

[16:43]

unusual person. In our tradition, there's a nun named Miao Dao, and she was the daughter of a brilliant and very successful man who managed to kind of thrive and survive in China during the 12th century, which was a very turbulent time, by being more literary than political. This is how it was described. I thought, how interesting. But Miao Da benefited from his support of her to become a nun, and she became a nun when she was 20. And as she was from such a sort of privileged and wealthy background, she brought that to the monasteries where she lived, and she was actually listened to and given teachings because she had brought that. And she became a student of Da Hui, and he is famous as the promoter of using koans over silent illumination in attaining awakening.

[17:55]

So Da Hui describes her progress as an example of his teaching being so effective that even a woman who possesses the will and determine of a great man can study Chan. Did you hear how I said that? Sorry. So there are not extensive records of Miao Dao's subsequent career as an abbess, but some of her sermons were recorded, and she is included in Chan genealogical histories. In a chapter of a book called Buddhism in the Song, Ding Hua Xie writes... While examining new evidence of women in the Sang, one must also keep in mind that the images and roles of women portrayed in Shan literature reveal more about men's perceptions of women than they do about women's experiences as seen from their own point of view.

[19:04]

A few female practitioners, it is said, wrote works on Shan teachings or had their own discourse records. Unfortunately, None of these works are extant today. So there are also male ancestors and historical figures who have experimented with solitude or making the choice of separation or have worked within the limitations of separation. Dogen Zenji, who's the founder of Japanese Soto Zen, 13th century monk, was not that famous during his time. And his works were lost for several centuries and rediscovered by scholars in the 18th century, modernized in the 19th century, and translated into English and other Western languages in the 20th century. So we think this famous man who we quote and teach about, and yet he was forgotten for all that time and was kind of a loner in the whole tradition of

[20:13]

Zen in Japan. And there are European figures like Machiavelli and Montaigne, and their works are considered politically and culturally essential, and yet they... lived very much on the edge of things. Machiavelli lived on kind of a poor little estate in the country for a long time, and that was when he wrote The Prince. And Montaigne lived in his family home in this small town, and that's where he wrote his essays. And of course, William Shakespeare's life story is so elusive that some people think he didn't even write his works. So these famous people, and, you know, their gender is not always so clear, even though I'm saying women and men, but many others as well you can think of were solitudes, loners, something in that realm. And this isn't, you know, about a denial.

[21:20]

of connection or relationship, but it's a very sustaining form of survival and happiness, sort of like Christine de Pizan said. So I think solitude, again, can be particularly rich for people who are creative, in either or both artistic and philosophical arenas of expression, and very necessarily, I think, for those with spiritual intentions, tendencies, or skills. There is almost always some kind of resistance and denial and sort of whining regarding the spiritual life requiring celibacy and study and various renunciations of comforts and food. So this is the perspective of renunciation being required.

[22:27]

But it can also be welcomed and recognized as the context for spiritual effort and maturity. So the the deep struggle of renunciation with its anxieties about spiritual understanding, do I really know what I'm doing and why, isolation, ridicule, assumptions of denial and self-effacement, and so on, can kind of make that spiritual choice awkward and difficult, particularly because we're almost always in a community or culture that doesn't value that choice or that struggle. And that's actually sort of, in a strange, contradictory way, helpful, because the struggle is so important. The understanding what renunciation is is very important.

[23:31]

So it has to be in that context in a certain way. Kaz Tanahashi writes about the poet Ryokan. After completing rigorous training in a monastery for 10 years, he disassociated himself from religious institutions. And during harsh weather, extreme poverty, sickness, and ridicule by others, Ryokan sustained his solitary Zen Buddhist practice in good humor. And there's the story of the nun Rionon, who she wanted to be a nun, but her beauty was considered a distraction for the monks. So she purposely held a hot iron to her face and burned it so that she could pursue her vocation and training. And when she was close to her death, she wrote a poem.

[24:34]

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn. I have said enough about moonlight. Ask no more. Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs. So when I was a teenager, I used to go for long walks in the middle of the night. And this was partly to get out of the house, because it was kind of a stressful place, and the night streets were very quiet. And at 2 a.m., the bars would close. And one night, I was walking past a bar that was closing, and there was this group of men and a woman out in front, and they were kind of laughing and saying goodnight, and you could tell they were kind of drunk and woozy and everything. But as I walked past, I felt this sudden sympathy. that I can't explain, and I didn't quite understand it then, although I felt it changed me.

[25:43]

And as my life unfolded, my father was an alcoholic, and his parents were alcoholics, and he was very difficult to live with. But I eventually started to feel that sympathy for him, you know, the human condition. And he was a cab driver who liked to work at night, and he wrote... plays and poetry. It's amazing. And on my daily walks in the city, I hear conversations, I hear people arguing. I saw this couple walking towards me and they seemed so happy and then turned out they were yelling at each other about something. And that happens all the time. People argue on the streets. I think it feels safe or something. But then I also see people who either walk on the same streets or I see them coming in and out of their houses and sometimes we say hello and sometimes we introduce ourselves to each other.

[26:46]

And there's the grass and the trees and people who live on the street and there's quiet spots where there are not so many people. And this whole thing, it's this kind of buzzing reality that is unconcerned. with my fussing or my anxiety or anything. And I find some freedom in it. In The Lonely City in Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Lange writes about working in solitude as a reparative process. A process that involves enjoyment, gratitude, generosity, perhaps even love, creativity as love, but also works of thought, of teaching and instructing, sharing the working of the mind. So in general, solitudes are not known for their social skills or kind of winning personalities or that sort of thing.

[27:58]

I mean, they're amusing and entertaining and... instructive, they offer us a lot. But they often are, it's conflictual because of that, as I was saying earlier, that relationship between renunciation and the sort of unacceptableness of solitude or whatever you want to call it. And the Buddha, you know, is kind of an exemplar of solitude. And when you read the sutras and everything, he's not particularly friendly. you know, or gentle. You know, he's strict and he's critical and he doesn't seem to have laughed. I don't remember reading a sutra where it says, oh, and the Buddha laughed. I don't remember that. So he spent, you know, years in the forest and living on almost nothing, not bathing, and spending a lot of time meditating. Now, who wants to do that, right?

[29:00]

And he supposedly said you don't have to do that. But he didn't go back to his life of luxury and status or anything like that. He still begged for his food, he still meditated, and he spent time alone. So who wants to willingly make the sacrifices necessary for a deeply creative or spiritual life journey? It's not necessary. And I think that's more what the Buddha was saying, that a deeply creative or spiritual life is not necessary. He didn't, you know, go on campaigns or, you know, beat this drum and say, come on everybody, I'm talking today and I'm going to, you know, convert you or anything like that. He waited, he taught, and he lived his solitary life. odd, unexciting life.

[30:02]

So Olivia Lange, in her book, the term loneliness is often another way of saying solitude, describes loneliness is subject to pathologization. This has more than a casual link with the belief that our whole purpose is as coupled creatures. or that happiness can or should be a permanent possession. Virginia Woolf described a sense of inner loneliness that she thought might be illuminating to analyze. If I could catch the feeling, I would. The feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world. The idea that loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality. And I think that that otherwise unreachable experience of reality is towards the end of the continuum that I'm calling interdependence.

[31:13]

And it's not a place to hang out, but to feel the interconnection of the two ends. They inform and balance each other. Length includes. Art, and I personally would also say spiritual teaching and practice, does have a capacity to create intimacy. It does have a way of healing wounds, and better yet, of making it apparent that not all wounds need healing and not all scars are ugly. The way I recovered a sense of wholeness was not by meeting someone or by falling in love, but rather by handling the things that other people had made, solely absorbing by way of this contact the fact that loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive. So, you know, how shall we live our lives and judge other people's lives?

[32:18]

Along that continuum of duality to interdependence, there's an inevitable clinging to duality. And then there's those moments like that, you know, my standing outside the bar and feeling something shift, but not really quite knowing what it's about. But it was based in my night after night of solitude, walking on the streets and seeing people coming out at 2 a.m. or a little after. And then there's deeper solitude, which requires commitment and even courage to take us towards that interdependence, the otherwise unreachable experience of reality. Before I end, I wanted to express my gratitude to a few writers who I haven't mentioned directly, but who I encountered along the way as I was thinking about the women ancestors,

[33:22]

about what I call othering, and about solitude. They are Mary Beard for Women in Power, Rennie Edo-Lodge for Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Andrea Wolfe for her biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature, Deva Sobel for The Glass Universe, and Ralph Ellison, and my friend who recommended it for Invisible Man. And I'll end again with Laurie Schecht's poem. That I Might Step. Then I came to a peace so random it felt dangerous. Rough battlefield expectancy, most tenuous and fragile contract. How can I step with threadbare tenderness across the zero hour of each strike and batter? Why do we live in time, its edges crumbling, its contours filling with monuments, hard data?

[34:30]

But there is a very plain in things that sometimes comes just calmly. It holds no trade routes, no borders, fortress, guarded, that I may briefly touch it, that I might step into the curious, despite. So thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.96