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, everyone. Thank you for being here. Just curious, how many people, for how many people this is like your first half-day sit? Congratulations, you're almost through. So many of you here have been participating in our wonderful True Dharma Eye of Women workshop with our fabulous co-teachers, Jan and Pam. Thank you so much.

[01:00]

So I thought, since we've been just studying female ancestors, a female lineage, I thought I would just talk about one woman. And if you're interested in learning more, there are a number of books out there about the female ancestors. One was written by Pan called The Bigger Sky. Jan also has a book called Dharma Matters, where she has collected essays, and there's a number of essays in there about women in Buddhism. And my source material for most of this is these two other books, Zen Women by Grace Shearson and The Hidden Lamp, which we have in the bookstore, by Sue Moon and Susan Moon and Florence Kaplow. This is a story about a 12th century Chinese woman named Na Zhang.

[02:07]

She was born into a fairly well-educated and politically successful family. She was married to a scholar, a successful scholar official. And one of, I think it's Grace, she says in her book that Mao Zedong might have gotten interested in his studies because she had this older sister-in-law who really wanted to become a nun, but the father wouldn't let her become a nun, so she started practicing at home, like many of women doing, or women doing things that they weren't supposed to because it was against the tradition, against the mores of those times. And so Mao Zedong's Mao Zedong's sister-in-law was practicing Zen, and then when her parents died, she went and ordained as a nun. So this might be how Mao Zedong became interested in Zen practice.

[03:10]

It doesn't really say whether or not her husband died and then she went to study with these Zen masters. She studied with quite a few. I looked in there to see if she was a widow, since we were learning about the fate, the horrible fate of widows back in ancient India. and unfortunately, not so ancient India. So this story is an awakening story, or sometimes, I don't know, the word koan is also used with this story. It's basically, a koan is often, is usually a brief anecdote, usually between a teacher and their disciple, not always, sometimes it's between two teachers, where they're just expressing their understanding of the Dharma, and it's often like an enigmatic saying that confounds the logical mind, like, what is the sound of one hand? Does a dog have good nature?

[04:12]

Moo. So those are some fun koans. And the Chinese, I can't pronounce the Chinese word for koan, but It needs a public case, something to take up publicly and study. It's related to the law in China, something coming before a docket. So there's the story. This is a translation that was in The Hidden Lamp. So I'll just read you the case or the story, and then I'll tell you what I think of it. So before Mao Zedong became a nun, she used to visit Master Daoese monastery to study with him, and he gave her a room in the abbot's quarters. He was the abbot. The senior monk, Wanan, did not approve. Dawei said to him, although she's a woman, she has outstanding merits. Wanan still disapproved, so Dawei urged him to have an interview with Mao Zedong.

[05:16]

Wanan reluctantly agreed and requested an interview. So this is also a process that we do here. If you're having a conversation about the dharma with the abbot, that's called dhokusan. It's a private interview. If you're having it with somebody who's a practice leader like myself, that would just be called practice discussion. So the abbot is encouraging the head monk to have an interview, a practice discussion with Mao Zedong. So he reluctantly agrees, and he requests an interview. And Mao Zedong says, do you want a dharma interview or a worldly interview? And a Dharma interview is what Wanan said. Mao Zedong said, well, then send away your attendants. And then she goes into the room. And a few minutes later, she calls out to Wanan and says, please come in. So when Wanan entered, he saw Mao Zedong lying naked on the bed.

[06:19]

This never happened to me, by the way. And I'm lying naked on the bed for our practice discussion of Doku-san. So one other one walks into this room. The teacher or the woman who was in the abbot's quarter is lying naked on the bed on her back. And he doesn't miss a beat. He points to her genitalia and says, what is this place? And she says, all the Buddhas and ancestors of the three worlds the six patriarchs and all great monks everywhere come out of this place. What is this place? All the Buddhas and ancestors of the three worlds, the six patriarchs and all great monks everywhere come out of this place. Wanan said, and may I enter? Mao Zedong replied, horses may cross, asses may not. Wanan was unable to reply. Mao Zedong declared, I haven't met you, senior monk.

[07:23]

The interview was over. She turned her back and walks out. She turns her back on him, and Wanan leaves, he's ashamed. Later, Dawi said to Wanan, the old dragon has some wisdom, doesn't she? So I do co-introspection with this. male teacher who was not part of the San Francisco Center lineage, but I told him I was thinking about getting a talk about this, and he's like, wow, you're brave. And I said, I might even say the V word, so I'm just laying it out right now. So the reason why this story resonated with me, there's many reasons why it resonated with me, First, I just love how unconventional and brazen Miao Zhang is in this. So she knows that her staying in the Agnes Quarter is against what we've been saying in Theravadi Gurus would be the Vinaya.

[08:29]

In Japanese, it's called the Shedi. It's the monastic rules of conduct. So, of course, we don't know if all the monks there were celibate, but you're taking a vow of celibacy. And I read in one of the books that it might have been, I don't think it's anybody who really didn't know, that it could have been that Dawi and Madhuzhan were actually lovers, and that was why she was in the Addis Quarters. But regardless, obviously, the senior monk, the head monk, was very upset that this woman was in there, because back then, in 12th century China, women did not train as monks with men, right? They were elsewhere. So she doesn't budge. That's what I like about it. She doesn't budge. And also, I love how confident she is in understanding of the Dharma. The Dharma, the big capital D, is the truth of the Buddha's teachings. And as we've been hearing from Pan and Jan, this word shunyata, or emptiness, or dependent co-arising, or the other day Pan described it as this, that, conditionality,

[09:40]

This arises because that arises, and this ceases because that ceases. So everything is arising in this moment, including us. I know it doesn't feel like we're arising because we're sitting down. We feel the earth, and here we are. No one's levitating yet. Could happen after this talk. So the understanding, her understanding of the Dharma is very, she's very confident in it. She doesn't shy away from this one-on-one interview with the senior monk. And the senior monk is the person who really helps to co-lead, my understanding is, the monastery. Next to the abbot, this would be the person. So if the abbot was gone, one-on would take on the abbot's responsibilities. We do something similar here during the practice periods, the 90-day traditional time where the students gather with the teacher. We also have a head monk, or shusou, that co-leads the practice period with the abbot.

[10:43]

So, I don't know why I'm laughing, I guess, because I've read this so many times. It's like, she already sets him up with that first question, right? What is she asking? Do you want a dharma interview or a worldly interview? She's already positing his duality that the Dharma is over here and the world is over here. But he doesn't, for whatever reason, get that. He doesn't not respond or walk away or he engages in this false duality and he doesn't think it's false. So she's already sizing him up, right? And she probably has an idea, at least obviously I'm making a lot of this up, I would have an idea that because he's kind of arrogant, he's going to choose the Dharma into him because he wants to He wants to show her up, right? He wants to show her that he is the senior monk and he is superior to her in his understanding of the Dharma. So she already knows that he's a little bit ignorant because he didn't, he did not, because the way he responded, he didn't respond in this one mind of non-duality.

[11:52]

this Dharma interview and worldly interview are not opposites, right? We chant in the Harp Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So if the Dharma interview represents emptiness and the worldly interview would be representing form, the Harp Sutra tells us that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Everything is arising out of emptiness, but emptiness doesn't exist somewhere else. Like, I'll open the door and we'll find it somewhere else, right? Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. This also speaks to that in that way there is no independent abiding self, right? This not-self characteristic that the Buddha taught, as well as everything is interdependent, right? Everything is arising together, we're all influencing each other. And we're not necessarily always aware of that. So nothing exists independent of something else.

[13:01]

I also just can't believe that she would lie naked on a bed. I can't even imagine what San Francisco Zen Center teachers would say if someone said, I went to this Dharma interview. The person was lying naked on the bed. This nakedness, for me, represents, in some ways, the way in coming to the world, right? We're naked, we're vulnerable, we have no artifice, and we're also trusted. I had this experience a long time ago with my niece when she was first born. And when I was an adolescent, I never wanted to babysit, you know, my friend's babysit. And I was like, why? So I was 40 before I changed my poopy diaper, which I mean, parents, the dry stars. But I remember my little niece, Skylar, they're so small. Do you know how small we are? We're tiny. Anyway, I would feed her this bottle and then she would do this thing called rooting where she would rub her face on my chest.

[14:16]

It was getting goosebumps. I might even cry. I'm not going to cry. But It was so extraordinary to be with this little being fresh from the source. She just, it was incredible. I'm like, I know where people have tons of these. They're so unlimited. You forget that you've been up for six days. Exhausted, listening to them cry. So there she is, just rubbing her face against my chest. And then she just slowly slides down into the crook of my elbow. What the hay, right? Like, how does she know my elbow's even going to be there? She's not thinking, like, the way out, but my head hurts my head. She better, her elbow better be there. I don't know. Last time it wasn't. She has no prior. She's not cognitive, obviously. But there she is. For me, that's trust. That's just this faith. She's just doing it, sliding down. There'll be something there. And then she falls asleep, and then you're sort of stuck not moving your arm for however long, because you don't want to wake up and start screaming.

[15:20]

But that was such a profound experience, being with this little baby. And when they don't have poopy diapers, they smell really freaking amazing, right? Like, what is with that? Who's the doctor? What's going on there? How does the baby smell like that? I wanted to take her little onesies with me. I'm like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Anyway, I don't put you on the spot. I don't know how I smell like that, but it did. So that was my adventure with poopy diapers and my wonderful niece. So, yeah, so our nakedness, right, vulnerable and trusting, like my little niece sliding down into the crook of my elbow like a hammock. And also, obviously, clearly it's about, can't be about sex, right, sexuality. Woman lying naked on the bed on her back. Perhaps she... wanted to embarrass him, she wanted to tempt him, or she just wanted to see how would he respond?

[16:25]

I mean, at least he acknowledged that she was lying naked. He didn't just go like, hey, I got this question, right? He didn't ignore the fact that she's lying naked in front of him. Even though she is in this most vulnerable position, being naked and on the bed, she never loses the power-up position, right? He's never able to really one-up her. She's in control, in my opinion, of the entire conversation. And because of the time, Miao Zhang would have known, obviously, that the head monk, who's a man, would have thought, as he did, that he was superior to her, because he was the head monk and he's a man, so therefore he's superior in his knowledge of the Dharma, and he's superior in general because he has... He thinks he doesn't have a vagina, right? So she seems like she had a lot more understanding of the human condition, perhaps, than Wandan.

[17:30]

I'm not sure when. He entered the monastery, but this is his account. He wrote this down. So I just want to say that that was the source. And then it was translated by a scholar who I don't know very well. I don't know her at all personally, but Marion Levering. She's the one who discovered this story and translated it. So I think that maybe if he had said, I want a worldly interview, maybe she would have been in her full upright position in her robes, although she wasn't ordained then, and maybe they would have had tea and a Dharma conversation. But he wanted the Dharma one, so she decided to be naked. I think also her being naked raises these questions, right, about sexuality and desire. And she says to him, you know, everybody's coming out of this womb, out of this place. So what is the role of sexuality and desire? Without it, none of us would be here in this room.

[18:31]

So I think that is really not only is it something relevant to Buddhism, because I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, and there was a women were either the Virgin Mary or they were not the Virgin Mary, let's just say that. There wasn't anything in between, right? So this idea of sex and desire being bad, that we have to not recognize and acknowledge our basic human desires and somehow do away with our bodies, especially female bodies, right? We are often painted as the seductress. We're the ones who are, you know, being with the apple, right? Right? It's all her fault. I mean, Adam couldn't just say, I don't want the apple? But that responsibility almost always falls onto the women, generalizing, of course, to be the one that's not going to tempt the man from their spiritual pursuits. And so the fact that Wei Nang is supposed to be a celibate monk, and she's not a nun right now.

[19:40]

She's just a lay practitioner. So... I think her lying naked is like, so what about this sex and sexuality and desire? What about this body, right? What about this body that you find is not worthy? Why is this body inferior to your body? I remember, yeah, when I was in Roman Catholic Church, it just bothered me that I couldn't be an altar boy. It's just like, well, I don't understand. I get to go back there. I get to have the... The private time, you know, and the behind-the-scenes thing and the sacristy and all that, and yeah, it really frustrated me. So I probably didn't really want to do it. I just wanted to be equal. I just wanted to be equal with the boys. So I took that all out in the baseball field where I was better than them. Not always, not always. But I don't know. I was raised in the 1970s in a very patriarchal neighborhood.

[20:42]

So this is, I think, also why this struck me, is the feeling of there's something wrong with me because I'm not a boy, right? Something wrong with me because that's what the church tells me, right? That the boys are our favor and the girls, you know, are responsible for them going awry. So this also struck me because of my upbringing. And although my family neighborhood in my family was patriarchal. My father did. He wasn't that patriarchal. He did teach me how to play baseball. And he took me to all my games. And my mom tried to stick me in a dress many times, and then she realized it was a futile effort. And so she just stopped trying to put me into a dress. And now here I am. Who knows? I'm saying that because my parents, they didn't seem, I don't think they were intentionally doing it, but they They didn't seem to be so stuck in some of the main gender roles.

[21:44]

I did have to do most of the cleaning and stuff, but there was these places where they were just letting me be who I was. You want to play baseball? Great. I'll teach you how to play baseball. I'll take you to the games. You don't want to wear a dress, even though my mom was heartbroken because I was her first daughter. And then all of a sudden she had two boys and she had to be, and she couldn't get me a dress. So she was really disappointed by that. So also, as some of you probably know, when Siddhartha, before he became enlightened, he sat under that Bodhi tree and was determined not to move until he experienced enlightenment. And then Mara, the Lord of Temptation, shows up to try to pull him off his seat to try to get him, to try to thwart his attempts to attain enlightenment. And he has many tricks up his sleeve, including, of course, his daughters, who try to seduce the Buddha to try to get him to stop pursuing his goal of enlightenment, of understanding how to alleviate suffering in this moment, right now, not in the next moment.

[22:57]

Also, I think... I want to mention this quote from Dogen, who, for those of you who don't know Dogen, he was the 13th, 12th century founder of Soto Zen in Japan. And he has really, he's written a number of fascicles, stories, essays. And there's one called Receiving the Marrow, where he talks all about the equality of women and men as teachers and Here is one of his quotes. Those who are extremely stupid think that women are merely the objects of sexual desire and treat women in this way. The Buddha's children should not be like this. If we discriminate against women because we see them merely as objects of sexual desire, do we also discriminate against all men for the same reason? it seems really obvious.

[24:01]

Only women are the objects of sexual desire, but not men. I mean, come on, man, give yourselves more credit, right? So it is obvious, but back then, I don't know whose audience was. Sometimes his audience was a mix of monks, and some of them were very young, and sometimes monks as well as lay practitioners, men and women, and maybe even, I know there were some nuns who Dovian worked with. So it might have been a mixed audience, but I think that's really very clear. Men can also be the objects of sexual desire, and so can women. So with Mao Zedong's resolve, after Wang Guidan asked her what this place is, and she says, all the Buddhas of the three worlds, the six patriarchs, and all the great monks everywhere come out of this place. In this book, Grace Schultz wrote, The Zen Women.

[25:03]

I think it was Marion Leathering who said this, that that response vindicated the vagina. It's like, wow, really? That's great. Vindicated the vagina. I just love that phrase. So, Mao Zedong's response can be parsed on several levels. The first is obvious that every single human being here in this room, walking on the planet, has emerged from the womb, right? This mysterious journey from the womb through the birth canal, right? The womb of emptiness, if you will, right? This dark, mysterious place, this one source of where all humans are born from. So the sexuality desire, in this case, would actually lead to birth, right? To us being born, as I said earlier. So the one source of all human births, right? Coming out of that one source. the differentiation. So the womb, of course, is impossible to know. In Zen, darkness often is an illusion for the great mystery of life and death.

[26:12]

We all develop in this place of the womb and this place of darkness and emerge into the light of form. No one emerges into this world of phenomena without going through the gate, this gateless gate. Mao Zedong's response demonstrates her knowledge also of how temples were actually designed during the Tang Dynasty, they were designed, they were laid out according to the science of geomancy, which was aligning the layout with the harmony of the universe, right, geomancy. So the buildings were laid out in the shape of a healing body. So where the Dharna Hall is, which is this, Well, I don't know if in ancient China, sometimes the Dharma hall where the talks were given was separate from where people meditated. I'm not really sure. I wanted you to know that. The seven buildings that comprised a monastery were the mountain gate, the main gate, which we have here, the Buddha hall, which we don't have here, but maybe one day we'll get one, the Dharma hall, the toilets,

[27:28]

the bathhouse, the monk's hall, where they were sleeping, and I guess that answers my question, and the kitchen. Sometimes the monks do sleep on these tans, they're much wider, and they put their, everything they own is tucked underneath, and they just have no privacy. I think that helps to break down our attachment to the ego, and drive each other nuts a bit. I know I wouldn't do that for very long. So those are the traditional seven buildings in a monastery. So where the Dharma Hall is, where the teachings are heard, that would be where the head of that body would be, right? So the head would be represented by the Dharma Hall. And then, can you guess? The genitalia. What would be the building? The bathhouse. The bathhouse, the toilets. The gate. The gate. Right. Oh, the gate. So she's also, when she's talking about her genitalia, that everybody's coming through this, all the great patriarchs, all the great monks everywhere are coming through this gate, literally coming through the mountain gate, and then, of course, coming through the birth canal.

[28:47]

Obviously, in the genitalia, they were talking about was men's genitalia, not women's. But still, she knew this. She knew that this was also what she was referring to, right? And, you know, clearly Wagon and everyone else came through that gate to when they became monastics as well. And when you come through the gate, it's like a recognition of, as we were talking in the workshop, you know, the home leading, right? You're leading home, renouncing worldly affairs, maybe renouncing even conceptual thinking. My teacher, Tia, who is here, I think I mentioned that, the work circle, right, like drop fascination with thinking. So walking through the gate, you're being reborn, right, trying to transform yourself. Also, I feel like what she's saying to him is, you know, how can you say, how can you believe you're superior to me when we're all coming out of the same gate?

[29:57]

Just because our physical form is different doesn't mean that you are superior to me or that I am inferior to you. And Wayne then asks, and may I enter? Now, who knows if you really wanted to have sex with her, but clearly that's the obvious implication on the surface of that question. But maybe he is also asking, can I too? enter the womb of emptiness, can I be transformed? Will I become a great Zen master? Can I enter that dark place and emerge in a different way? Enlightenment. And then Yadon replies, horses may cross and asses may not. And horses are, this is obviously subjective, but most people will probably think that horses are more noble than a donkey, right, than an ass. So that's probably part of it, but also Grace Shearson points out that this statement also shows Miao Zhang's understanding of teaching that Zhao Zhao, who is a very famous, the dog-ha-Buddha nature, Chang teacher, he lived in 778 to 897,

[31:21]

And when Zhao Zhou was giving a Dharma talk once, there was a smore out in the audience. Zhao Zhou was saying that his Dharma is so powerful that he's a bridge to enlighten, that he could carry across not only horses who could get to Dharma, because they're noble, but also asses, donkeys. I could also help them become enlightened because I'm such a powerful teacher. And so the smart aleck was making fun of Zhao Zhou in this lecture. So the smart aleck is questioning Zhao Zhou about him being the great bridge of Zhao Zhou, the bridge to enlightenment. And Zhao Zhou responds to this by saying, horses can pass over this great bridge, and asses can too, because he's so amazing. She's reversing that, right? She's saying horses can cross, but asses can't. So sorry, Renan, you're never going to. cross. I think he's not going to cross.

[32:23]

Her body is not the bridge that he's going to go across to get or the gate that he's going to enter to become enlightened. I just think that's pretty brilliant that she reversed it like that. So he was stunned and speechless and probably just realizing that his understanding of the Dharma wasn't nearly as profound as hers. And he leaves. Well, he doesn't leave because she dismisses him first, right? So, which I really like. You know, I have met Yu Senior Monk, which we obviously know she's being sarcastic. The interview is over, and she turned her back to him, and then he leaves, feeling ashamed. I'm sure, again, given that it was 12th century China, that this was... so unlikely that a woman would turn her back and dismiss him. That just didn't happen.

[33:24]

That just didn't happen. Of course, she's a naked woman, besides turning her back. So I feel that what she does here in this interview with Wanang is she disabuses him of all his inverted views. In the Heart Sutra it says, far beyond all inverted news, one realizes Nirvana. So who knows what happened to Wayne on after this, because she's certainly disabused about the view, the inverted view that women are inferior to men, that the Dharma is separate from the worldly existence, and that only men can master the Dharma, only men can become great teachers, and that somehow, yeah, that's tied to physicality, tied to somehow their genitalia. And also, she disabuses him of the inverted view that somehow men came into the world in a different way than women. And that reminds me a little bit, too, of the myth of, I consider it a myth, of the Immaculate Conception, that Jesus was born not in the regular way, that Mary was still a virgin.

[34:39]

And there is a similar myth around the Buddha being born out of the side of his mother. Right? So again, I understand that this, now that I'm older, I understand that this is a way to say they're extraordinary beings. It's not a way to say the woman's body is dirty and therefore they can't go through the birth canal. Right? Which, of course, to be born you have to. Well, nowadays we have, obviously, we have cesarean sections. But, yeah, that, again, we have to avoid being born in the regular way. Right? Because this person is such a spiritual person. master, the baby Buddha or the baby Jesus. So I never understood that either. And yeah, so this one source as represented by the womb in this, the gate where everything emerges and how we are transformed. I once heard a long, long time ago, I don't know if anyone remembers Wayne Dyer.

[35:43]

That was like my first introduction to sort of new age thinking. And, you know, there's a lot of great phrases. And one of them was coming from the nowhere to the now here. Right. Just switching that letter to now. Nowhere to now here. And I will end... on one of Dhoni's quotes from the same fascicle receiving the marrow, where it talks about emptiness and the aggregates, what makes us up here. We chant that also in the Heart Sutra, form sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. So he says this, why are men special? Emptiness is emptiness. Four great elements are the four great elements, the same elements here, the same elements in men, women, Four great elements run through everything. Women are just like that.

[36:44]

Both men and women attain the way. You should honor the attainment of the way. Do not discriminate between men and women. This is the most wondrous principle of the Buddha way. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your patience to sit more. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[37:25]

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