Good morning. We will now begin today's Dharma talk offered by Abbas Pruschredder. Please chant the opening words along with me. The words should now show on your screen. surpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[06:22]

Welcome to Green Gulch. I don't know about all of you, how you're 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 Maddie Weingast. Shambhala publication. So these poems are contemporary adaptations of the Terragata, meaning verses of the elder nuns, and the earliest known collection of women's literature in India.

[07:47]

These verses were written by women practitioners who, to qualify as elder nuns, had to have experienced 10 monsoon seasons of practice, and not 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. 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 to 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.

[09:02]

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. 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.

[10:15]

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, 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

[11:27]

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. 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.

[12:28]

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, with 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. 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.

[13:34]

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 in voicing our dissent is an appeal to the intelligence of a future day. 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.

[14:48]

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 nun named Anyatara, meaning anonymous. 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.

[15:53]

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. 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.

[16:54]

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. 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.

[18:02]

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. 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. In 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.

[19:06]

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. 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.

[20:10]

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. 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.

[21:18]

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. 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.

[22:24]

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. 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 diehard 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.

[23:38]

The main emphasis in the Vimalakirti Sutra, as in these poems of the Terragata, 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. 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.

[24:42]

As one of the senior monks by the name of shari putra 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 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.

[25:44]

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. 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.

[26:47]

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. 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?

[27:49]

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. 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-arisen 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.

[29:02]

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. 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 nun Vira, meaning hero, in honor of November 3rd. Truly strong among those who think themselves strong. Truly unafraid among those who hide their fear.

[30:06]

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 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.

[31:17]

And last but not least, by the Nandpuna, 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. Let us please chant the closing chant, which you will now see on the screen. Excuse me. tension equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of buddha's way beings are numberless i vow to save them delusions are inexhaustible

[33:07]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Before opening the floor to questions, I'd like to say thank you for coming to the Dharma Talk. Please know that we do rely on your donations now more than ever. If you feel supported by the Dharma offerings of our temples, please consider supporting San Francisco Zen Center with a donation at this time. Any size is gratefully appreciated. A link will show in the chat window now. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[34:14]

We will now close the lecture portion of our time together this morning, and anyone who would like is welcome to return in five minutes for a period of question and answer with Abbas Fruchrader. Please feel free to unmute yourself if you would like to say goodbye now. And otherwise, we will meet back here in five minutes. We will now move to the Q&A to offer comments and questions.

[40:50]

Please click on your participants button on your Zoom control bar at the bottom of your Zoom window and it will appear. After opening your participants window, click the blue raise hand button at the bottom of that window. You may also send your comments or questions through the chat window. On a smartphone, swipe right and you will see a raise or lower hand feature. Thank you. And we will also share the name of the book that Abbas Fu recommended on the chat window. Thank you. Welcome back. Thank you all for coming. And those of you who have stayed, we'd much like to hear from you. I see Patrick's hand. Patrick, where are you?

[41:51]

Hello, Fu. Can you hear me okay? Yes, yes. Hi. Hi. It's not Patrick. It's Patrick's wife, Lee. Yes, I see that. Hi, Lee. Nice to see you. And he's here as well. He'll be probably showing up here in the camera at some point. But I just wanted to thank you so much. I'm so grateful for your talk this morning. just everything about it, the homage to RBG, the book of poetry. And as you're sharing this, I feel that hunger for knowing more about the women who endured the misogyny, but prevailed. It's very inspiring. And it is evocative of RBG and her inspirations. So just really, really grateful. But I do have a question. I actually, I want to say too, that you embody that for me as well.

[42:54]

Someone who has endured the prejudice and has succeeded in living this fullness. So I want to just acknowledge that that's true for me when I see you. So thank you for enduring and for coming forth in this way. Really appreciate that. Thank you. And the other thing I had a question about was that moment that you described of talking to the grumbling cook who said he doesn't like to take orders from women. And your response to him, I found that quite interesting, and I wondered if you could elaborate on that a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was a longstanding awareness of mine that I couldn't find the woman thing as an experience.

[43:55]

I don't experience myself as a woman or as tall. I mean, it's a comparative idea, right? No man, no woman. All of these relative terms that we've been trained to think in terms, you know, we think in dualistic terms, right and left, right and wrong, up and down, man and woman, good and bad. So that's our training. So I've been trained that way. I mean, I can say, you know, I can check the box female if I'm asked to. It's not like I've lost track. But at the same time, in terms of reality itself, I don't know what that is. It doesn't make sense to me. Is it the absence of male sex organs? I mean, I wouldn't know what that was like to have, you know, I have no reference for what that would be. So it's not a not something. I'm not a not something, you know. So then what am I? Well, I like what the Buddha said when he was asked, you know, what are you? Are you a water spirit? He said, no. They said, are you a ghost? He said, no. Are you a demon?

[44:56]

He said, no. They said, are you a human being? He said, no. They said, well, they said, the guy said, what are you? He said, I'm awake. So I think we can all say that. I'm awake. We are. We're awake. And now what do we do? I'm curious. Go ahead. Sorry. No, that was enough. I wondered if I kind of want to know the end of the story. As if there were one. As if there were one. Yeah, I notice I want to know if it made a difference. So I can see that there's some attachment to an outcome there. I want the young man to be awakened, wake up.

[46:00]

So yeah, just seeing that in myself. Well, there is one kind of not an end to the story, but an interesting sidebar to the story. because I'm remembering right now because it was upsetting, equally upsetting. So I was telling my friends at Tassajara that this had happened. So we all talk to each other, right? We're not like isolates. So I was like, you know what just happened to me in the kitchen? So I was telling the folks in the office and one of the elder males monks, who I greatly revere, was there and he said, oh, that's no thing. He just, he's just sexually attracted to you. That's all. And I said, oh, that helps. That's a good reason to be mean. So I was like, yeah, I don't know the end of this story, but I don't think it's ended yet. Definitely not. So, you know, but it sort of helped me understand, like, I bet that's true. And he's very awkward and insecure. And so he's acting mean to me rather than goo goo eyes, which is another weird thing. Either way, it's very weird. what we subject each other to is not just men.

[47:04]

I mean, women do it to men too. This is not, this is my way, one way mirror. I only know how it feels from that direction, but I also know how it feels. I mean, I don't know how it feels, but I, I understand that there's certainly must be a feeling when it comes at you in whatever form you're taking, you know, children, whatever your form is, people project on us and make up stories. And then those stories aren't always respectful or kind or generous. And, You know, so I think the Dharma is ultimately going to save us. That's my hope. Yeah, mine as well. Yeah. Oh, more? Do you want to say more? Well, I was going to say the book of poetry, does it have the dates for those women? I'm just curious, as I imagine through time, these different women having these experiences. Yeah, not really dated, but, you know, there probably were oral.

[48:04]

Initially, there were verses that were repeated orally. And in fact, if you read the Targata in translation, which I have done, they're much less vibrant than what this man, this is a man, Matty. And he says that, he said, this is... artistic endeavor of his to use the Terragata verses to make this articulation from the heart, which I think he did beautifully. And, you know, Joanna Macy says at the top here, like opening a window and letting a clean, fresh wind blow through my being. And I thought it was the same way. Well, that's how I experienced your talk this morning. That's exactly how I experienced. Good. Well, these opened a window for me. My partner and I were... crying. Some of them, I left out some of them that are going to really make you sob. Like the one where the woman takes out her eye and hands it to the man who's going to rape her and awakens him. He wakes up and she's grateful that he wakes up.

[49:07]

I mean, I'm like, okay. OK, I'm not ready for this, you know. So some of them are really painful. Some of these women have been prostitutes. They've been in very unhappy, abusive marriages. So I kind of didn't bring in the darkest of them. But each one of them is a window that opens for that woman. All of them are these are poems of their liberation. So that's what makes them so incredibly powerful. You know, yes, this, this, and this happened to me. You know, they lost their children, and they're crying. And one of them, a woman whose daughter's name is Jeeva, and she's crying for Jeeva and crying for Jeeva. And suddenly she realized there are 84,000 Jeevas. All these women have lost their daughters named Jeeva. For millions of years, we've lost our daughters. And so she says, not that you stop grieving, but if you'll pause and listen to the echoes of the other voices. You're not alone. And I was like, okay.

[50:11]

Profound insight. Profound insight. And these voices are different than the Zen guys getting enlightened. I mean, I'm used to those stories. You know, they're like, whack, whack. You know, I'm sort of like, okay, I like them too. But these are so different. They're coming from the kitchen and the hearth and the bedroom. You know, they're coming from losing children, the family life, and running away from bondage. They had to run away. They had to escape. They cut off their beautiful hair. One woman said in one of the poems, like her father had sold her for her weight in gold. And so her dad, before he was going to sell her, was feeding her all these sweets, trying to fatten her up. And so she couldn't eat. She's just like, I don't want to. She could see her father watching her eat. And so that night she cut off her hair and ran away. And that was just the first step. She still had to become liberated.

[51:11]

That was many years later that she actually found her freedom. So there's the liberation and then there's the liberation. Right. It's like the story you told of the noose going around the neck, reaching that point and everything that came before that. Yeah. I'm glad you were as moved by them as I was. I really am grateful to share this book. I'm so happy. One of the students here, Miriam, has told me, she said, have you read this book yet? And I said, no. And then as soon as it came, I just was like, I can't believe it. This is fantastic. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Hi, Patrick. Hi, Guru. See you later this afternoon. Oh, yeah, that's right. Good, good. Nagarjuna. Julie? Where is Julie?

[52:15]

Are you unmuted, Julie? I think you can unmute yourself. You can't? Let me try it again. Okay, I think you're unmuted. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Turn your volume up a little if you can. How's that? That's perfect. Great. You started off, you said that being a woman has been one of your more challenging identities. Yeah. And then towards the end of your talk, I started to wonder if I sometimes hold on to that identity too tightly. When I hear enough stories that I'm not safe in my body as a woman, I can walk out onto the street and be immediately suspicious of a strange man I see, and I can embody some of that fear. So I wanted to play a little bit with this question.

[53:19]

On one hand, I feel that my woman identity is a deep, deep well from which I'm drawing that's helping me wake up. And then I wonder if there are ways that I could grasp on too tightly to that identity. So I'm wondering if you've, if you had anything to share. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's the ongoing practice of really questioning what are you holding on to? I mean, this is just one little sample of things we hold on to. And, you know, the more you peel away the layers of the onion of what you believe to be so, either about yourself or the world, you just find another layer until you run out of onion. It's like, wait a minute. The emptiness teachings are basically, these are nominal. They're names. Woman is a name. Fu is a name. I kind of like it. It just means wind. It sort of suits me.

[54:21]

Nothing there. Nothing I can hold on to and say, well, this is me. There I am. I think inquiry is the heart of the Buddhist practice. What is it that thus comes is the, you know, the moment to moment challenge that we are invited to ask. What is it that's happening right now? Not the answer. The answers are like variable. Everyone can come up with their own answer, you know, and then it passes away too. But the questions, who am I? Where are we? What's happening? What is it? That's the door. We open that door. And we look in there and we look again and we look again, you know, each time, all day long. What is it? I don't know for sure. There's a sense saying, you know, not knowing is most intimate. And you're getting close. When you really don't know what's happening, you're getting really close.

[55:22]

So it's not so much like a one-off thing where I, oh, no, now I get it. Oh, I understand. You know, it's like... I don't even remember if I understood something three weeks ago. I mean, what was it? I don't have any idea. So it's going to always be something fresh. And each time you look again at whatever the question is, like, what is it to be a woman? What is it to be a woman? Every time you ask that, you might have a different answer. No? Isn't that interesting? Huh? Today it's, hmm. Yesterday it was, hmm. And I'm not alone. I think this idea that you are not alone. There's a bunch of us here. Right here, right now, with you. Holding this same question. Listen for our voices. Listen for that you're not alone. That's what's so beautiful about these free women is that they weren't alone. They were in Sangha. They were in community.

[56:26]

And that's probably the one thing that allows us to go through this very hard stuff. Because I'm not by myself. In that dark Zendo this morning, there were other people there. And I love seeing them. And I don't even, I don't even, it doesn't even matter who it is. It can be any 20 people. It would be wonderful to not be alone in that room. looking at what am I? Thank you. You're welcome. George. Good morning, Fu.

[57:30]

Thank you for a magnificent Dharma talk, as we expect every time you speak. Oh, thank you, George. Pressure. I have a question about young people. Our schooling system essentially trains them to accept the ordinary way of seeing reality. The many new challenges that they face, it's not working very well. suicidal ideation is going through the roof stress and anxiety is rapidly increasing because schools have failed to truly engage young people as a community and part of the evidence of this is they are excluded routinely from any decision making in terms of how their schools operate and even most basic is what we're teaching you actually helping you learn things and how is that relevant to what the challenges you face. Many young people say, I want to learn more about life.

[58:32]

I want to learn the basics of how to be happy, how to transcend the suffering that I experienced because of the atomization of this group of human beings that I'm with many hours each day. What suggestions do you have for us to break that crystal and move into a different way of teaching that actually speaks to the whole being, to the heart, as well as the mind? yeah yeah such an important question george and i know you've been doing this work for a very long time yes and um well you know the system is rigged i mean there's just no way around it the way we're educating our children the way i was educated well i was educated to do office work basically to sit in rows and and exactly the first job i ever had was in a bank in a row Just like in fifth grade with a little list of numbers that I was supposed to change before computers.

[59:36]

You can imagine such a thing. Anyway, and it kind of dawned on me. Maybe my first moment of liberation is like, I got to get out of here. It's going to kill me, you know? So I moved to Wyoming. That was a really good move. Started riding horses. Anyway, so we have to, each of us have to escape. somehow from whatever the trap is. And it could be a golden cage. I mean, some kids get a pretty good education, but still it's the conventional world that they're being taught to, you know, as materialism at the core competition, you know, that film, the race to nowhere. These kids are getting these incredible educations, many of them in Marin County and private schools and so on. And they work really hard and they're taught to get really good grades and then they get into really good schools and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of that, there are no jobs that are of any interest, anybody who want to do. And I had these two lovely young women came to the, after the talk one Sunday, I think I mentioned this before, and they were going like,

[60:41]

I said, oh, hi, who are you? And they said, oh, I work for Google and I work for Facebook. And I said, oh, they said, yeah, they looked like they were prosperous. And then they were looking at our young women who were setting the vegetables and the flowers out on the table that they just harvested for the Sunday sales. And they said, how do you get to do that? I said, well, it's really easy. Here's an application. So, I mean, we don't have much to offer, right? We've got a very simple life. Farming, gardening, friendship, a small stipend, you know, and we don't have room for everybody, unfortunately. But it's a model. It's a way of modeling. You know, there's all this farmland that's getting abandoned all over America. It's like, hey, why don't you guys go farm together? Why don't you form little communities? Not hippie communities that didn't go so well, but, you know, maybe communities based in virtue and in morality and in concentration and wisdom like A Buddhist community might be nice. So I keep feeling like we're modeling a way of life and that whatever we're teaching, really we're teaching how to live together.

[61:50]

How do you live together and share resources? We're going to have to, you know, and that means less individuality. You know, that's our specialty, isn't it? So I also often point out, remember in high school for you who, went to high school in America, how there was one valedictorian, one homecoming queen, one, you know, they were like about five stars out of our 300 students. The rest of us were like Swiss cheese. You know, it's like, what are we? If we're not the one of the five, we had no, we weren't elevated to be anything. And that's what the kids are getting, right? Anyway, I could go on and on because this is one of my favorite topics too. I feel like Zen Center's children's program, as meager as it is in our effort to offer something for the kids, that their parents bring them here. There'll be 100 kids here on Sunday when we have the kids. We don't know what to do with them. What do you do with 100 kids for an hour? So if we had a school or if we had some other ways of joining with the larger culture, but right now we're just tiny.

[62:58]

And we're doing, again, I think modeling of ways of thinking, ways of treating one another. collaboration, community. Anyway, George, I went to Sweden because I was looking for a better model. And I think it used to be one. I don't know what they're doing anymore. But at that time, there was a lot of virtue in the way they were understanding culture, society. And those ideas are still there. But how we... you know, move our culture in that way is beyond my imagination. But I'm with you, George, I really am. I know you are. Thank you for all your work. Thank you. Tell them we love them. They know that. Okay. Okay. Anne.

[64:01]

And thank you so much for your talk. This is the second talk by you I've been to and both times just feels so great to hear your words. And I'm in Portland and I've never been there, but sorry, it's so dark here. It's just dark here. I can't explain it. I was actually going to ask a question, but then this last question, I wanted to say one quick. maybe in addition. I went to high school at a private school, but they also had people there who were on scholarship. And we actually were taught some Zen philosophy in addition to a ton of other philosophical material as you do in high school. And there was one story about a Zen practitioner who puts the shoes on his head. And I never studied Zen after that and didn't think about it until probably January of this year.

[65:12]

And something about that story, my mind clicked back to it and just thought, oh, that is exactly what I need to be studying. And so I feel like with kids, sometimes even giving them a small story or symbol or, just something tiny that you say to them, they might carry it with them for 15 years and then something will click and they'll be like, oh, I remember, that's what I need right now. Like, so it's not, you know, I don't know, maybe that's a hopeful story, but I just wanted to respond to, was it George? George, yeah. Thank you, Anne. That is a hopeful story. You are testimonial. I actually had a question. Is there time for me to? Yeah, of course. Okay.

[66:13]

So going back again to that story about the naming of the cat and or anything really just with labels and names and how since I'm new to studying this When I am speaking to other people, I mean, it's one thing when I'm in myself observing life and kind of peeling back the layers of naming things and taking things in my mind apart, like dissociating things and sort of getting closer to more of an intimate experience of life. But when I'm... I'm kind of wondering what you would say, like when you're speaking to another person who is presenting you with almost just like a brick wall of like labels, assumptions. And it's just something that kind of flows from them, which is I do it to everybody.

[67:17]

We sort of maybe I'm doing it right now. But how do you how do you like approach? that the same way as you would kind of your own mind. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. No, you do know. You do know you're on track. It's really the, where the challenge is like my own mind and not that I have, you know, like I haven't figured it out. Of course it can't be figured out. Right. You can't figure out your mind. It's like a surprise, surprise. But yeah, But we have one and you have one and all of the people here have one. And so we're pretty familiar with when I say my mind, it's something ungraspable. And when I'm attending to my own mind, it's really gets very, you know, free. Like what I like about sitting meditation is like, let her go, let her rip, you know, no constraints, take off the boundaries, take off the leash, let her go.

[68:22]

What's it doing? And as you said, the word dissociate, that's actually a disease. So what we don't want to do is actually in the societal sense, in the world of conventional responsibilities, meaning I respond conventionally, if you say good morning to me, I'm going to say good morning, even though it's totally optional. I could say good morning. cottage cheese, or anything. But I am choosing to engage with you in a socially acceptable way. And you have to do that. Because otherwise you end up dissociated, out of association. You're no longer in society. And that's not where you want to go. And that's one of the challenges of this practice is you can get very kind of woo-woo, as the people in the 60s found out by taking too much acid.

[69:24]

You can basically blow your mind in a way that it doesn't come back in a useful form. So we want to make sure we're not crossing the line into, you know, like the red line, into the red line. You know, we just keep coming back to what's expected of me. What's a skillful way to say this or to respond or to engage. So I read books about that, you know, having difficult conversations. how to win an argument without fighting, how to have all kinds of skills so that when you're engaging in society, which is what we want to do, our devotion as practitioners is for the benefit of others who are not necessarily devoted practitioners. Yeah. When that guy said to you, oh, I don't like to take orders from women, that was an act of trust on his part. And sort of like a mode of friendship, that honesty that he's... Because, you know, there's conversations where... That's not going to happen.

[70:29]

I mean, that guy's not going to tell you that. Right, that's right. That's a good point. I guess, like, you had the opportunity to say that, but otherwise, what would you have done to kind of open up this moment of being like, do you think I'm a woman? Yeah. Or you think I'm giving you an order? Or you think this is a something? You know, like, is that? How does that happen without someone making that leap? Well, that's a great question. And I think try things. Experiment. You know, my partner teaches motivational interviewing, which is a kind of very successful practice for working with people who are addicted to substances or of any kind. People are living on the streets, you know, and they basically want to enlist the person's interest in being well or making changes. It's called change talk. And unless the person is making that kind of expression, you're not going to change anybody. You can't go in there and, you know, work them over.

[71:32]

You actually have to wait for them to be expressing some interest in what you're saying. You know, may I give you some feedback? If they say no, well, then go away. I'm not going to give feedback to somebody who says no. You know, so I basically we want to be in conversation somehow. And one of the, you know, it's not a trick exactly, but it is a trick is to keep expressing interest in what they're saying. Well, tell me more. I don't quite understand you yet. I don't quite understand what you mean. You don't like taking orders from women, you know. And I really like to understand what is it for you with that? Tell me some more about that. You know, people love to talk about themselves and their own ideas. So you get them going around what they have to say. And then maybe you find a way in there that kind of dispels their problem with talking to a woman. Maybe they can experience some friendship. I mean, I'm making this up, right? I don't know what could happen. But we can try things.

[72:34]

And being friendly, like that one poem I read about the path of friendship, I... guarantee you is the best path of all. And I think that's really true. Dalai Lama said, my religion is kindness. So if we can be kind to people who are confused or upset or disturbed, you know, the Buddha came into a clearing where he was a raging elephant was, you know, and he just calmed it. And I have actually seen a video of a monk who in Thailand doing that very thing. There was this bull elephant just absolutely insane, knocking trees down and everything. And this monk just quieted that elephant with his presence, with his calm presence. So we have a power to help bring it down. Let's bring it down. Calm it down. That makes sense.

[73:36]

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Amy, maybe. Amy, please. Greetings, Blue. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. It's wonderful to be here. I'm looking at squares. I'll find you any second, I'm sure. I couldn't rename. I would have renamed as Nomi, but I couldn't. Oh, there you are. Okay, good. There you are. Top left square. Hello. Hi. Thank you for your talk. I'm really grateful to hear. you hear the stories um and i feel like it's a very personal subject um so something that will come up for me in meditation the question that i have is um that i that came up for me that's been coming up for me was about justice ginsberg And just reconciling for me that she's such a deeply ethical person that had such an ethical impact on women's rights and on human rights and civil rights and on justice.

[74:53]

And also just reconciling the current situation and the impact of the decision she made I'm not saying that that's why we're in this situation. There's so many factors, but that she did make a decision not to retire when she could have been replaced by a justice who was aligned with her ethics. So again, how I've been feeling is just that her deeper intention for liberation and justice for all beings, as well as our deeper intention is the longer arc of the impact. And also just kind of sitting with the complexity of the feelings, I think, you know, that come up around it. Yeah. I guess that's my question. Yeah. It's not yours alone. We all wondered, like, Ruth. But, you know, the happiest thing I've heard of lately is packing the court.

[75:56]

So I'm less worried than I was. You know, I'm like, oh. Yeah. Okay, there seems to be ways around awful many things when it comes to American politics and governance. There's a lot of, you know, that's crazy and then that's crazy. And then, you know, they keep going up the bat. Like, who's going to win this round? So the pendulum does seem to swing. That's what it looks like to me from my lifetime of watching presidencies and governments and wars. And, you know, it's kind of like... What's going to come from this one? Hopefully we're going to be really maybe, hopefully happy, you know, and then what? Well, at some point it's going to, maybe by then I'll be gone and that'll be okay. But it's going to go back again because that seems to be how we do the dialectic, Hegel, you know, all these guys, these political scientists. So there's no once and for all. There used to be Buddhism in India and then it kind of disappeared, you know, and now it's going back. so we don't have a there's no end of the story basically but we do our part right we're in this story now so we'll do what we can to to make it right fair kind you know with all our with all our hearts with all our effort just like these women and just like these are these are our ladies these are our ladies this is the ladies guild they're really holding up a standard for us

[77:28]

And I am so grateful for that. So don't give up. You're welcome. Lillian. Maybe this will be the last one. Go off to have a break. Hi, Lillian. You're muted. Oh, let me try again. Okay. Maybe. Thank you so much for your talk and for everyone's questions. I do feel less lonely. It's wonderful to hear through other people's questions that it seems like all women struggle with. reconciling the identity of what means being a woman, what part we pick up, what part to put down.

[78:40]

My question, I guess, I find it easy to be kind to other people, but it's extremely hard to be kind for myself. How do I be a little bit gentle? I guess that's my question. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people say that the last person on their list is themselves, you know. And it's kind of a sign of your generosity of spirit. And in a way, that's a good sign. Like you said, I can be really kind to other people. So that's in the plus column. And we all are grateful for that. You know, and then there's this, how do you learn about boundaries?

[79:44]

When I was in therapy, my therapist used to say to me all the time, I teach boundaries. What's a boundary? I had no idea. So, but I've learned. I've learned like, what's mine? What's my time? What's my wish? What do I want to do today? I used to defer. Oh, I don't know. Whatever you want to do. I wouldn't even ask myself, what do I want to do? What is it that I'm interested in doing? Where are my interests going? What movie would I like to see or whatever? So it was a training, kind of a redo of bad habits. So there is some ways in which we need to really turn toward ourselves. and and realize that i can't really be very kind to other people if i haven't practiced here you know how what does that feel like until i go sometimes i like right now i just put my hands on my on my body like oh sweetie oh you little deer and i rock i like to rock like oh gosh this is hard and you know i just feel as though we deserve all of us

[80:56]

deserve kindness and patience and so on. And then we try to model that, you know, what we most wish to have from others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So that's how you know. How would I treat myself? I treat myself the way you treat me. How nice is that? you you're welcome and this food somebody would like to know that the name of the author of the book his name is a hymn m-a-t-t-y weingast w-e-i-n-g-a-s-t And he talks about his process and he's gotten tremendous kudos from Jack Kornfield and Ruth King, Joseph Goldstein.

[81:58]

I mean, all of the Theravadan Vipassana teachers are in here saying this is a great book. So I think he's really scored. He really did a lovely job. And I hope you all find the book and increase the appreciation that he gets from all of us for doing this job. There's one more question by Scott Will on the chat. Okay. Can I read it to you? Sure. Scott Will says, I enjoyed your presentation today. And I think that women have a much more equal position in American society than women in Buddhist countries like China and Thailand. How can that be? How can that be changed? how is that possible that that happened uh maybe i'll just ask him to unmute yeah maybe happy to hear directly uh scott will hi pu it's scott hi scott hi there i'm just

[83:12]

I mean, it seems to me maybe it's just possibly through legislation that American women have more rights, but it would seem to me that women in China and Thailand are somewhat submissive to men. And, you know, considering the philosophy that we've just been discussing for the last hour, I'm curious as to... how that can be the case if in fact it is. Yeah. Well, you know, I haven't experienced those cultures personally, so I can only imagine. And I have experienced this culture, and I know that it was hard won. Women's rights weren't just given, they were demanded, and they were in a long trail of tears trying to get voting rights. job rights and I mean it's been in my lifetime that many of the equal pay for equal work I mean it's still you know the ERA still hasn't been passed and there's still a lot of resistance and there's a lot of blowback from women who don't want to have that kind of freedom you know I want to be I want to have a nice husky guy to

[84:30]

you know, protect me and take care of me and so on and so forth. So it's not exactly like women. It's more like, well, some of us really would like to live a life of our having our own independent identity and our own voices to be heard and so on. And we can't do this by ourselves because liberation from whom? I mean, it's in relationship with our beloved brothers, sons and fathers. You know, so it's like, how are we going to be free unless everyone's free of their presumptions of who they are of their identity men are going to have to give it up too you know white males are kind of like being given a message hello hello you have a lot of you know maybe you're going to have to take a look at that and maybe they're not going to stay in place the way you're used to and maybe you're not going to like that so much but what you're going to get in turn is something more wonderful than you can imagine like all of us being free together, loving each other, respecting each other, you know, taking turns.

[85:36]

And so I feel like there's a lot at stake for everybody world round. And I think there have been influences. I mean, Sweden was pretty interesting in terms of their social democracy. And women did have a big role. And there were a lot of them in the government. There were a lot of them in the colleges. I hadn't seen anything like that in my life. how many women were present in all walks of life in Sweden. There was a name for it. Hemaman is a man who would stay home and take care of the children. And the women would have the professional life. That was back in 1968. Wow. I think these things are modeled. There are models of liberation for all around the world, and they're also models of where it's not happening. And there's older cultures that are still basically holding the lid. So, you know, I think we take care of our home as best we can and our own friends and then see what radiates out from there.

[86:45]

But I don't think the Buddhist societies have treated women well. Buddhist women were The nuns have never, they weren't even taught to read. You know, in Tibet, there was not so long ago, I have a friend who's done a lot of work on getting the Dalai Lama to agree that the Tibetan nuns need to be taught how to read the sutras too. That they weren't being, they weren't illiterate. They weren't being given any opportunity. So that's changing. You know, he gets it. He's a modern human being. So I think there are changes and they're probably going to happen over way past my lifetime. But some of you may around to see those changes so it's easy to say certain things but it's really different to kind of look inside the house and are you doing that as you're calling out is that happening would the buddha been happy with you right now you know it's like okay everybody please take care stay safe and hope to see you all again please always welcome

[87:52]

at Zen Center. Thank you, Huel. You can unmute and say goodbye if you like. Thank you, Fu. That was great. Thank you, Fu. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. My shoe's so. There he is. Me. You. Nobody thinks you can be seen. We can see everybody. This is an amazing thing. I'm happy to be seen. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Bye, Foo. Bye, guys. We finally got a clear day. It looks like it. Your house looks clear. It's beautiful. Yeah, good. Mazel tov. See you later. Cindy, nice to see you.

[88:53]

Thank you, Fu. OK. Bye-bye. I'm going to hit the leave. Jessica? Rosa? Bye-bye. T, can't see you, T, but I can hear you. I see your name. Bye, T.

[89:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.24