This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch. I don't know about all of you, How are you doing? Or maybe I knew. Maybe I know. I'm pretty much stunned a lot of the time by the information that's coming from every direction these days, or so it seems. And yet, along with all this scary and sad and infuriating news, I also received in the mail a few days ago a wonderful book of poetry written by women renunciates over 2,500 years ago. And that's what I want to share with you today. The book is called And here it is, The First Free Women by Maddy Weingast.

[01:04]

Shambhala publication. So these poems are contemporary adaptations of the Terragatta, meaning verses of the elder nuns and the earliest known collection of women's literature in India. These verses were written by women practitioners who, to qualify as elder nuns, had to have experienced 10 monsoon seasons of practice, much like we in California today have begun to count our seasons of fire. So what makes these poems so meaningful to me may be obvious. I am a woman, one of the more challenging identities that I have carried throughout my life. So in sharing these stories of actual women's liberation, actual freedom from not only the cultural conditions, that brought them such unimaginable suffering, prostitution, rape, bondage, the loss of their children, to name a few, but the even greater freedom from suffering that is key to the Buddha's teaching of liberation for us all.

[02:15]

So I want to acknowledge the power that reading these stories had on my own heart, a power that revealed how deeply sensitive and vulnerable I am. As a person who identifies as a woman, those very same forces which are continuing to savage women of all classes and colors and nationalities throughout the world up to this very day in addition i want to take this opportunity to honor and celebrate the life of a very extraordinary person who devoted their career and talent for the benefit of women and in doing so for the benefit of all supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg Before turning to the poetry of the Buddhist nuns, I want to say a little more about Justice Ginsburg and why we should continue to hold her in our hearts, but perhaps even more importantly, in our minds. As she herself said of her beloved husband Martin Ginsburg, he was the first man I'd met who cared that I had a brain.

[03:18]

As you all know, Justice Ginsburg died on September 18th of this year, the eve of Rosh Hashanah. And according to Rabbi Richard Jacobs, that she left us at the very start of the new year has brought to mind the Jewish belief that righteous beings die at the end of the year because they were needed until the very end. Born in Brooklyn in 1933, she was educated first at Cornell and then at Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, graduating a joint first in her class. For me personally, a particularly interesting element of her biography was discovering that she had learned Swedish in the early 1960s and spent time in Sweden while working on a book with a Swedish jurist that profoundly influenced her thinking on gender equality, to which a Swedish friend and colleague had said, By getting close to our family, Ruth realized that one could live a completely different way.

[04:19]

that women could have a different lifestyle and legal position than they had in the United States. So the interesting part for me personally has to do with my own decision as a college student in the 1960s to study in Sweden for a year, also inspired by their successes with socialist ideals for education and health care and child care, and in particular, gender equality, all of which was quite evident in the way that women were treated. in the Swedish Academy as well as in their homes and on the streets. Although it was somewhat odd at first that men no longer held the door open for me, or paid for my meals and theater tickets as I expected, I did develop a lifelong habit of holding the door open for anyone who was coming in behind me. Justice Ginsburg said, my mother told me to be a lady, and for her that meant to be your own person, to be independent. I don't think it's necessary to review the work that Justice Ginsburg did while serving as a judge, both before and during her time on the Supreme Court.

[05:26]

However, I would like to suggest that you all take some time to read through those accomplishments, since a number of them are under serious attack at this very time in the forward-backward trajectory of both our civil liberties and our notions of religious freedom. I will, however, read a few quotes by the notorious RBG, as she came to be called, along with a few other suggestions of how to be in touch with her long and storied career. For example, there was in 2019 a Hollywood motion picture called On the Basis of Sex, preceded in 2018 by the Emmy Award-winning documentary RBG. And then there are the variety of mugs with memorable tags, such as, The Ruth Will Set You Free. and you better believe it, tote bags and bobblehead dolls and action figures, one of which was in my stocking this last holiday season. And here she is, gavel and all. So as a person who is sitting here today to represent the Zen tradition and the teachings of the Buddha, the quotes by Justice Ginsburg I've chosen to share seem to fit perfectly into what made this woman our friend and what would certainly have made us hers.

[06:42]

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade. Don't be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time. You can disagree without being disagreeable. Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself. And finally, women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exceptions. In terms of her years on the court, when the majority view was no longer in keeping with her own, at the time when, for example, the 1965 Voter Rights Act was repealed, she said the work that we do... And voicing our dissent is an appeal to the intelligence of a future day.

[07:47]

The work that we do in voicing our dissent is an appeal to the intelligence of a future day. A day, sadly, that will be without her. So truly, we all know that what this courageous woman fought so long and hard to accomplish is nothing new. The role of women throughout world history has been primarily one of dependence on male authority. Not only dependence, but literally to be overlooked and at times overrun, as we saw in the repeated interruptions of Senator Kamala Harris during the recent vice-presidential debate. And with that noted and said, I'm going to return to the earliest known cases of women's liberation that took place within the Buddha Sangha at a time when women were literally the property of their fathers, their husbands, or their masters. I've chosen from the collection of verses a few examples that I find especially poignant. This one is by a name Anyatara, meaning anonymous.

[08:51]

I was young when I left home. And for years I rambled around, my practice, sitting, walking, and hoping. At first, everything was new. I didn't notice my skin drying up or my hair turning gray. Then one morning, there I was, an old woman. Where had I gotten in all those years on the path? That night I slept out in the wild and it rained. I felt like I belonged there, miserable and alone in the mud. In the morning I went to the nearest monastery and threw myself down. A nun took me in and taught me. This body, this mind, this world. Where they come from, where they go. What they are, what they are not. That night I went out to sit in the field and it rained. I felt like I belonged there. Every drop of water telling me I was home. Don't worry, my sisters, when the road reaches its end, you'll know it.

[09:57]

Here's another one, for me even more poignant than the last. This is by Siha, meaning the lioness. People used to say that I was beautiful, that it hurt to look at me, like the sun. The sun lights the whole world, but it isn't free. It lives its life on a leash. I lost weight and grew pale. My sisters said I looked like a dead person. When I finally put on robes, my family was almost relieved. Maybe it would help. For seven years, I wandered. I got really good at being sad. Late one afternoon, I took a rope and went to the woods. The sun was setting. I could feel the rough fibers against my neck as I put my head inside. And that's when I saw. It was just one more leash. What goes on can come off. So I don't know how it struck you listening to this woman's moment of true freedom, having been preceded by the depths of her lifelong despair.

[11:07]

Reminds me of that old Janis Joplin tune from my own time as a young woman. You know, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. To which Karl Marx had added a century earlier, except for our chains. And yet, For each of us, for each of these women, and for all of the stories of the enlightened male ancestors, it does seem that there is something to be gained. Something intangible, unfathomable, and inconceivable. Unlike beauty, wealth, and property. And that being the moment of realizing that the leash can come off. Those moments of realization come to us humans in a variety of ways that are seemingly independent of culture, time, race, age, or in this case, gender. And yet in all cases, they are utterly dependent on a connection to the truth, the truth about reality. In the first poem, the nun Anyatara has taken refuge in the monastery and received the guidance of an elder.

[12:08]

She's listened to the teachings of the Buddha about this body, this mind, and this world, teachings about what we might call our common ground, the ground onto which we fall and from which we rise up again and again. as the Zen saying goes. In the case of Siha, the lioness, she came to her senses through her own realization of the truth and her case about the nature of the leash. She saw for herself how the steady brightness of the sun and of her own beauty had led her to abandon hope for things being any other way. She did not yet understand that her freedom was not from conditions but within them. If the sun didn't hold to its course, and if these courageous women hadn't escaped from bondage, there truly would be no light and no awakening possible here on planet Earth. So where to start on the journey to true freedom? In these stories about Buddhist nuns, the women started within their homes, either as faithful daughters or faithful wives, as mothers, prostitutes, servants, or concubines.

[13:16]

They started in the place where they were stuck. And then with much trial and error, they found the true location of their entrapment, as with all of us, you know, right inside their very own minds. This next poem is by the nun Mitakali, meaning friend of the dark. I was always smart. If the path was good, I figured it would make me even smarter. One night while meditating, I watched my thoughts piling themselves up all around me. My mind built a house out of all those thoughts and then filled that house. Soon it was a whole city, a whole world. Oh, my beautiful, beautiful thoughts. Who will look after you after I'm gone? I swear I could weep. I could weep for all of you. My sisters, do you really want to be free? Are you ready to leave behind all your precious little houses and make your home everywhere? It's not as hard as you might think.

[14:19]

First stand up, then walk out the door. So following on those first footsteps, the ones we must take in order to leave the world of our imaginary houses and our beautiful, beautiful thoughts, here's another poem that helps to bring us back again to our true home, to the one that's been there all along. This one is by a nun by the name of mita, meaning friend. Full of trust, you left home and soon learned to walk the path, making yourself a friend to everyone. When the whole world is your friend, fear will find no place to call home. And when you make the mind your friend, you'll know what trust really means. Listen. I have followed this path of friendship to its end. And I can say with absolute certainty, it will lead you home. I have a friend who I hadn't seen since we were students together back in Sweden, those many, many years ago.

[15:25]

We were both probably 19 or 20 at the time. He was very shy, and we hardly spoke, although I did remember his kindly face. And then 50 years later... I received a message from him asking if I was the same Nancy Schrader who had been at the University of Uppsala with the study abroad program from San Francisco State. And I said, yes, I am. And who are you? To which I found out that he was now a retired professor of religious studies, and that he had written a number of books on Zen, which I had read and greatly valued. Who knew? that these two young American travelers out on the wide open road for sure would each find our way to become students of the Dharma. We had a most joyous reunion here at Green Gulch within a year of our discovery of how our paths of practice had literally crossed. My friend's name is Dale Wright, and among his numerous works, he is co-authored with Dr. Stephen Hine.

[16:26]

There's the Koan, Text and Context in Zen Buddhism, Zen Classics, Zen ritual and the Zen canon. Most recently, he's working on a book about the famous Buddhist layman Vimalakirti. So for those of you who don't know the Vimalakirti Sutra, it is in short one of the greatest of the Mahayana Sutras, in that it touches on the issue of enlightenment, both for the die-hard monastics and for those who have chosen to stay home to find their way, such as the great layman Vimalakirti, who is the hero of this tale. And to our topic for today, the sutra offers a pointed challenge to the way that women practitioners have been treated within our own beloved Buddhist tradition throughout its history, and that is not very well. The main emphasis in the Vimalakirti Sutra, as in these poems of the Theragata, is the question of human freedom without any exceptions. So I'm not wanting to give away any of the insights that Dale offers in his reading of this text, having sent me a sample to preview.

[17:32]

I want to join with him, however, in celebrating one of the main characters who appears in a chapter of the book called The Goddess. For those of you who have read this sutra, this chapter will undoubtedly be a favorite of yours as well. It's one of the few places in all of the Buddhist traditional literature in which there are actually jokes. some of them at the expense of the serious male practitioners who have just arrived in the goddess's presence. No sooner do they arrive when the goddess, in celebration of a Dharma dialogue between Manju Sri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and the layman Vimalakirti, lets loose a joyous showering of heavenly flower blossoms, blossoms that land and then stick to the monastic garments of the male practitioners. As one of the senior monks by the name of Shariputra endeavors to brush them off, saying that such colors and fragrances are not proper adornments for a monk. The goddess smiles broadly and, as though speaking to a petulant child, scolds the monk by suggesting it is his mind and rigid views of monastic discipline that are improper and not the shower of flower petals.

[18:43]

She goes on to say, Those who are intimidated by fear of the world... are in the power of forms and sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, which do not disturb those who are free of fear of the passions inherent in this world. And then in an even more famous exchange, she teaches the monk that true liberation is the equality of all things, meaning all beings, all places, and in all time, as the Buddha discovered right there under a tree, where for him, in that place at that time, all beings as he saw it are free and then seemingly for the fun of it following a question from the senior monk concerning the goddess's status as a woman and how much better off she would be in the body of a man this being a remnant of the misogyny that is still sticking to the pages of some of our most beloved buddhist texts such as the proposition that successful female practitioners would, in their last rebirth, return as male monks in order to achieve the final awakening of a Buddha.

[19:52]

So the goddess, without making a sound, turns the monk, Shariputra, into a woman and then asks him how he might go about changing himself back into a man. The goddess, in turn, says to the newly created female monastic, I myself have sought my female state for many long years and yet still have not found it. This is Buddha Dharma 101. There is no characteristic by which one can be found to be a woman or a man or a dog or a peacock or a redwood tree. All things are empty of such an essence or fixed nature. As the monk said to his teacher, pointing to a cat sleeping in the corner, Master, I call that a cat. What do you call it? The master replies, you call it a cat. End of story. So I have my own version of this teaching about how it is to have taken the form of what we call a woman. This story happened to me years ago when I was the head cook down at Tassahara, which is a very big job requiring of anyone a lot of hours and a lot of worries, as our head cook here at Gringosch can easily testify.

[21:00]

Anyway, at that time, I had on my crew a surly young man who always mumbled back at me whenever I spoke to him. Finally, I asked him if he would step out back to talk about what was going on with him, and he said, I don't like taking orders from women. Well, rather amazed at that, I amazed myself in turn and replied, You think I'm a woman? So not dissimilarly, the goddess says back to the newly minted nun, if a magician were to incarnate a woman by magic, would you ask her, what prevents you from transforming yourself out of your female state? Shariputra can only reply, well, no, such a woman would not really exist, so what would there be to transform? She then goes on to say, if the elder could change out of the female state, then all women could change out of their female state. All women appear in the form of women just as the elder appears in the form of a woman.

[22:03]

While they are not women in reality, they appear in the form of a woman. And then bringing her lesson to a close, the goddess quotes the Buddha as saying, With this in mind, in all things there is neither male nor female. These basic teachings of the characterlessness or the emptiness of phenomena, of impermanence and of the... dependently co-written nature of things, allows all of us the possibility of becoming free of our conditioned existence, in which our identities are fixed qualities about which we have little or no choice. That is the truth, the ultimate truth. In the conventional world of human language, prejudice and complications, such sayings make no sense. But in the actual world of our embodied awareness, each of us can merely gaze about ourselves and at ourselves in utter amazement. Do any of these labels stick? Old woman, mother, partner, Buddhist, white teacher, friend.

[23:08]

Possibly useful in some familial and conventional ways, but not if they stick to us, nor if we are desperately trying to brush them off. So I'm going to close today with a few more of these poems, which... Each time I read them brings a renewal of my wish for the liberation of all beings. This first one is by a non-vira, meaning hero, in honor of November 3rd. Truly strong among those who think themselves strong. Truly unafraid among those who hide their fear. A hero among those who talk of heroes. Don't be fooled by outward signs. lifting heavy things or picking fights with weaker opponents and running headfirst into battle. A real hero walks the path to its end, then shows others the way. This one is by the Nantita, meaning heart. Somehow I kept climbing, though tired, hungry and weak, old too.

[24:16]

At the top of the mountain, I spread my outer robe on a rock to dry, set down my staff and bowl, took a deep breath and looked around. It was windy up there. As I was leaning back against a large gray rock, the darkness I had carried up and down a million mountains slipped off my shoulders and swept itself away on the wind. As I was leaning back against a large gray rock, the darkness I had carried up and down a million mountains slipped off my shoulders and swept itself away on the wind. And last but not least, by the Nantuna, meaning full. Fill yourself with the Dharma. When you are as full as the full moon, burst open. Make the dark night shine. Thank you very much.

[25:44]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.91