So today is the first day of our fall practice period, Aspects of Practice. And during this period where some of us are very excited to be taking our teaching inspiration from the book, The Hidden Lamp, stories of women, and commentaries by women that make up a very important part of our Zen heritage. So we will be having talks, classes on Thursday nights, and lectures all the way through the month, and hopefully everybody will be participating as much as they can. It should be fun. So my, I decided that my favorite stories were about anonymous tea ladies and their mind refreshing teaching.

[01:05]

It's been really, I have to always figure out these days, which way is it better with my glasses or without my glasses? It's only been about 30 years or so that women have emerged in the world, as then priests and teachers, with the same training and, more recently, the same status as men. Many women scholars and priests have been interested in looking at the roles women played in the history of Buddhism throughout the world and throughout the history and in their particular traditions. In Grace Shearson's 2009 books and women, which was one of the first ones that kind of ushered in a whole rush of books about women. She provides one of the first overviews. And in one section of her book entitled Women Who Humiliated Monks, I loved that one.

[02:10]

That was my favorite. She discusses stereotypes of women who appear in the koans. One type is the kind of Iron Maiden. who takes on a more male persona, kind of out-toughs the men. These are people we've read about, nuns like Mo Shan and Liu Tianmo, who is also called Iron Grinder Liu. She was actually very much of a stereotype of the kind of woman who was in your face with the male monks. These women often led monasteries for nuns, and they had, you know, administrative positions. So they were in power. They managed to get into powerful positions as women, and they did not hide their lights.

[03:12]

They felt that the way to get heard was to directly challenge the patriarchy. But there were these other women and as discussed in both that book and The Hidden Lamp, and and very common in many Chinese and Japanese stories. These women were nameless. Nameless, anonymous old women selling tea or cakes by the road, working in the fields or cleaning monks' huts, carrying water. These figures lack power, education, social status, and are without men. They're outsiders, not anybody to take notice of. They represent more the mother or grandmother stereotype. Feminine caretakers. And yet these women surprise us and the monks, fortunate or not fortunate enough to encounter them by manifesting as powerful teachers, surprising and humbling monks who don't expect to be challenged.

[04:18]

This usually results in the monks recognizing the limitations of their own understanding and ability to directly experience their essence of mind. So today I want to bring forth two of these tea ladies whose stories appear in the hidden lamp. The first story is Dongshan and the old lady's water buckets. And the other one is the old woman's rice cakes. I'll talk about the story separately and then at the end I'll kind of talk about the themes or the underlying teachings, I think, or the underlying questions and issues that are raised by these for me. So the first one I'm going to talk about is Dengxian and the old lady's water buckets. Dongshan Liangji was a Zen master who lived and taught in the golden age of Zen in China, in the Tang dynasty.

[05:30]

He was the founder of the Soto school or the Chan school and the Zen school. And so he's considered one of our fathers of Soto Zen. He took a long time to be enlightened. And in the story, we clearly see that he probably was not enlightened at the time of this encounter with the woman in the water buckets. A lot of times in those days, and Dongshan was one of the people, they spent a lot of their time on pilgrimage. There wasn't internet or easy access to libraries. So people went to go from mountain to mountain, traveling hundreds of miles to get the real truth. They never expected to get the real truth from old ladies. So when Dong Chan, this story is about a pilgrimage that Dong Chan set out on.

[06:35]

He was setting out on a pilgrimage to find the essence of mind. And he encountered an old woman carrying water. The master asked for some water to drink. The old woman said, I will not stop you from drinking, but I have a question. I must ask first. Tell me, how dirty is the water? Go away and don't contaminate my water buckets, replied the old woman. On one level, you could say that the woman was simply asking about dirt that might be contaminating the water. On another level, the question might be directed to the problem of spiritual impurity and pollution. Dongshan was still caught in the world of phenomenon. He was still caught in the world of duality, and the woman pointed it out to him in a very skillful way.

[07:42]

The Heart Sutra teaches not stained, not pure, no discrimination. The Zen eye of Natu does not see either dirty or clean water. She was saying, don't pollute my water bucket with duality. Don't place labels on anything, including me, she might've added, for women in those days were often considered impure. And she was challenging that notion. Don't buy into that the woman saying I am not pure or the woman says in her answer, I am not pure or impure. The water is not dirty or clean. Too bad you didn't answer it correctly. How might it awaken Dongshan answered the old woman. He could have just taken out his bowl, scooped out some water and taken a drink and bowed.

[08:45]

But he was not awakened. So we had to go to Waste Thirsty. So in some of the commentaries on this story, they refer to our sixth ancestor, Wen Ning, the sixth patriarch in China. Because he had a story that was not dissimilar in terms of him being a poor, uneducated person, was illiterate. And his story was that he was in a town square and a Zen scholar, a Buddhist scholar came and started expounding the teachings of the Diamond Sutra. And he had no knowledge of Buddhism, no knowledge of reading, but just by hearing the words of the scholar, he had a powerful experience.

[09:54]

And that powerful experience, he found out that the person was a Zen scholar, and he went off to find the fifth patriarch. to really learn about this and to really... He had the aspiration for enlightenment. He developed bodhicitta from just hearing the words without any context, without any previous knowledge. And when he went to the monastery, it is said that the... The head of the monastery, the fifth patriarch, recognized that he had something special, but that he was a diamond in the raw. So he sent him to clean rice. And in this particular part of the story that is referred to in terms of being relevant to this particular story about the woman. He was there doing rice and he wasn't really included in the teachings of the monks or the experiences of the monks that they had.

[11:04]

And then one day, the head monk asked all of the monks in the monastery, I would like you all to compose a gatha, a four-line poem, expressing your understanding of essence of mind. So the head monk there, Shen Shui, very famous monk, he was the head of all the monks. He felt, I better do this because he said that if the person who wrote the best gatha would become the next patriarch, the sixth patriarch. So the most senior monk wrote a poem and the poem is, our body is the Bodhi tree or the tree of enlightenment. Our mind is a mirror bright. Carefully we wipe them hour by hour and let not dust alight.

[12:13]

Hui Ning, the uneducated monk, hadn't heard the request for writing a poem, but he wandered by the wall one day and noticed this poem. And so he went up to another monk there and he said, what's going on? And could you read me this poem? because I can't read. So the monk read him the poem and he thought a minute and he said, would you please, I have a poem I'd like to write on there. And the monk said, You're going to write a poem?" He said, well, I can't write it. I'll have to ask you to write it because I can't do it. But don't despise a beginner, he said. If you are a seeker of supreme enlightenment, you should know that the lowest class may have the sharpest wit, while the highest may be in want of intelligence. The monk then agreed to write down the gatha.

[13:16]

that Wing Ning had composed in his mind without a pencil or paper, composed it in his mind and said it. He said, there is no Bodhi tree, nor stand a mirror bright, since all is void, where can dust delight? Which is showing the emptiness side because the other monk had given his poem, which really contained the form side. But as the Heart Sutra tells us, form is form, emptiness is emptiness, emptiness is form. And so the sixth ancestor thought again, and then he thought of another poem. The mind is a tree. which is meaning all things are manifestations of the essence of mind. The body is a mirror stand, where the body is the temple of the spirit or the container of our consciousness.

[14:28]

The mirror itself is so clean, dust had no place to land. So after seeing this, the other monks were greatly surprised. How wonderful. No doubt we should not judge people by appearance. This is a true bodhisattva. The next day, the fifth patriarch called, waning to his room, and expounded the Diamond Sutra. When he said the phrase, keep your mind alive and free, without abiding in anything or anywhere, he was enlightened. So here was another case of supposedly elitist monks, very, very studious, spending years and years studying. And here's this illiterate guy. So illiterate guys and anonymous tea ladies end up being the teachers. So I'm going to talk about that more at the end, but that whole concept of kind of how we see things and how we judge what we hear by who we hear it from and how wisdom can be hiding in the most unlikely places.

[15:50]

And that especially has affected women and their history in many, many ways, but certainly in Buddhism. So the second story, The Old Lady's Rice Cakes, or Deshan and the Old Tea Lady, whichever you prefer. Deshan was a famous scholar in northern China who lived and taught also during the Golden Age of Zen. And as a youth, he studied classical precepts. Initially, he wasn't a practitioner, he was a scholar. completely, as they say in one of the commentaries, soaked himself in the Diamond Sutra. This sutra teaches that the realization of Buddhahood occurs through concentrated study of the conduct practices and Buddha over countless eons, and that right conduct must come from unselfish and helping others. But the teaching that he got was more, you have to work really hard, you have to study, you have to put in great effort.

[16:56]

And that's the only way you reach understanding and enlightenment. So this was consistent with the Northern School of Buddhism, which was called the School of Gradual Enlightenment, that encouraged sutra study, chanting, precept study. But one day, Daishan, heard about the Southern School, oh, terrible, where Wei Ning was. And the Southern School was teaching that Buddha and realization was a sudden direct experience. So he was so upset with that concept after his years and years of spending his life studying that he decided to take a pilgrimage to the South and enlighten and to confront the Southern school and correct their misunderstanding. So he piled his diamond commentaries on his back and made his way South.

[17:59]

When he was traveling South, he came across an old woman by the roadside selling tea and rice cakes. He asked, who are you? She responded, I'm an old lady selling tea cakes. When he asked if he could buy some refreshments from her, she inquired, venerable priest, what are you carrying on your back? He said, I'm a scholar of the Diamond Sutra. And here I have all my notes and commentaries. He was really proud. Hearing this, the old woman said, I have heard that according to the Diamond Sutra, past mind is ungraspable, present mind is ungraspable, and future mind is ungraspable. So where is the mind you wish to refresh with rice cakes? Oh, scholar. If you can answer this, you can buy a rice cake from me. If not, you'll have to go elsewhere for refreshment."

[19:04]

Daishan was startled. He was unable to reply. Why didn't he just pick up a rice cake and eat it? The old woman then directed him to the great Zen master, Longtan, who was nearby. and perhaps her teacher. And as Grace Shearson describes, she sent him to Longtan for more ego annihilation. Daishan burned his notes and commentaries the next day. And after his study with Longshan was enlightened and became a great Zen master. So Joan Halifax commented on this story in The Hidden Lamp, and I'm just going to read a couple of her comments. An old nameless woman on the road helps the smarty Dashaun get free from his load of conceptual detritus. She is the Diamond Sutra itself, signless and aimless.

[20:09]

She is nobody we know. And at the same time, she is an intimate manifestation of some kind of wild and cranky freedom. Through her, there is no abiding and no attachment. So here is Deshan hauling around his ideas about the Sutra. Among other interesting burdens, he encounters an old woman who cuts him free from the conceptual mind with a diamond of her mind. Thus I have heard are the first words in the Diamond Sutra. Thus Deshan heard from an old woman. For sure, his mind for a rice cake, And he was a stale rice cake, as he could not reveal his own mind when confronted with her fierce reality. This nameless old crone, I love that, this nameless old crone became Daishan's catalyst to awakening. challenging his ego-based confidence, shattering his idea structure, introducing him to an ungraspable moment in a moment of absolute freedom from glosses, commentaries, and secondary consciousness.

[21:25]

He didn't need to travel any further. Here it is. When I was reading these, I just thought about Dogen's teaching in Fukanza Zenge. So I just put it in here. Fukanza Zenge is about practicing Zazen. He says, the Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one. right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice? And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as heaven and earth from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[22:27]

Why leave behind the sea that exists in your home and go aimlessly off to dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, if you go astray from the way directly before you, you're lost. So that's kind of our basic teaching, right? These people were going off with the idea of finding enlightenment or attainment, and they were... They were using effort, but their effort was with goal. They were taking a kind of a left brain, right brain, left brain, I mean, left brain approach when so much of Zen is direct experience. So I was very interested in, when I was reading about these, I was interested in the context of these stories, the context of this time, this golden age of Zen, supposedly golden age of China, the Tang Dynasty.

[23:41]

So I'll go share with you. Apparently, in this Golden Age, there was greater prosperity than at any other time. There were significant developments in culture, literature, and technology, and poetry, and during the Tang Dynasty, Women had independence and opportunity unmatched previously. They were included in study, but this was very class-connected, obviously, because there were a lot of noblemen and noble people who rule certain areas of China, they became very rich and prosperous. They were able to get information from all over the world because the information was being translated now from Sanskrit and people were coming through the Silk Road and bringing all sorts of knowledge and it reached some women. It reached the women who were the noble women.

[24:45]

is unlikely to reach the women who were necessarily tea ladies, at least not easily. And Wu Zetian became the only female in Chinese history to be empress during the Tang Dynasty. So it was also known as the Golden Age of Zen. And that was because, again, all of the Mahayana Sutras coming from India had started to come in and be translated somewhere around the 5th century. And Bodhidharma also arrived in the 6th century. So this was a time when ideas of all sorts were coming around and people were so excited about those ideas that they were traveling about to try to find out, you know, where they are and they were talking about it in certain. And also there was money to support Zen monasteries. So a lot of the noblemen became patrons of Zen teachers.

[25:53]

So in this context, I wondered if it was a time when women were being more appreciated, where some women were getting educated, you know, why were these women anonymous? I thought, well, you know, it could be just a ruse that the people of the stories are including. that they may well have known names of these people. And they were just using these women as kind of foils for humbling the men, for making a point about the right way to practice, about the focus on sincere practice. Maybe this use of an anonymous old tea lady was kind of like a shock therapy.

[26:58]

This is just my thinking, right? Could be anything. But I was thinking about it because it was, In some schools of psychology now, they think that people are stuck in their ways, stuck in patterns of behavior or thinking. The way to have behavior change is called dramatic relief. So these ladies provided dramatic relief. They chose not to be the iron maiden lady who confronts, but they thought, so they were just, were they really unknown? Or were they unknown in the story when they wrote the story down? I wondered about that. Because it was a time when women were more valued. So that's one thing. But what if they were just regular women?

[28:00]

Average Chinese women going about their business And there was all of these monks traveling all around. There were people giving talks in the squares. There was opportunity to listen in on big talks. They were not given formal education, but they were around. You know, they were around it. They overheard things. I mean, some of these stories are about women who clean the monk's hut. You know, they move the books around. Maybe they look at the books when they read them. Maybe these ladies were actually very learned, self-taught, or absorbed from the monks that they came and encountered with, or absorbed from the talks they heard. And maybe they were using skillful means. Or maybe they were really disguising themselves. Maybe these were nuns. And this was a way they weren't allowed to teach.

[29:04]

And they just went down to serve the tea and the tea cakes and thought, hmm, maybe this is a way for me to transmit the way. I'll just sit here. I have to have a job. I have to make money, but I'm really a scholar. Maybe that person is a diamond. These concepts in these stories are not beginnings in. You know, these talks about the nature of mind, about emptiness, about all of these concepts that were being transferred. These are sophisticated concepts. So how would an old lady fit in there? So really, it's kind of a challenging thing to think about that for me. These are actually maybe our ancestors that they just didn't bother to ask their name. What about that? What about if there are a lot of people that we encounter all the time who we take for granted and we don't pay attention, we're not mindful?

[30:11]

People that we buy our coffee from, like Ross. Ross was a barista. And they had no idea they had a Zen scholar, but Ross had his little conversations with people who bought coffee. And I'm sure many of them had aha moments after talking to, getting the coffee from Ross. So maybe these ladies were just, they didn't have money. They weren't able to have a formal education. They weren't allowed in the monasteries. Some of them later became nuns, that was hard, or maybe they were nuns, but they weren't allowed to teach the male monks. Even if they were smarter, they had to defer to the male monks. So perhaps, you know, perhaps these were, truly, in one of the commentaries, they were little diamonds floating around, and you had to notice them.

[31:17]

So it's interesting to me because I was thinking about how much we don't see, how much we make assumptions about when we meet somebody. Maybe it's race, maybe it's gender, maybe it's, I don't know, where somebody's from. And so we don't bother to talk to them. Or maybe it's just, we don't, we're not paying attention. We're so involved in our own life and our own self-centeredness that if somebody is not going to give us something that we want, if we don't think it's worth spending our time, and yet here were these women. who had these pearls of wisdom or diamonds, whatever. And it was only if you took the time to pay attention to them.

[32:20]

So I think that's really an interesting lesson to me from this. You know, how many times do... And so much of... We, you know, we hear talk of, we talk here about the preaching of insentient beings, insentient beings preaching the Dharma. You know, listen to the trees, listen to the birds. But what about the other people? What about their voices? So it seemed to me from seeing these women that they were very wise. And they weren't being used by anybody for anything. They just happened to be, and these were chance encounters, but maybe they weren't. Maybe women placed themselves in places where they would have encounters.

[33:26]

So I find that to be very interesting. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. How many of these, how many of these old ladies were there? Maybe young ladies too. I had a talk yesterday by one of my colleagues on the generalization of Avalokiteshvara and he was sharing with us the history of the movement of Avalokiteshvara from India into China and that's sort of where

[34:36]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was never written. Partly, some of them were illiterate, so they couldn't write about it because they weren't allowed. is that he had to be very careful.

[37:11]

He had to be very careful about it because he was threatening the hierarchy. He was threatening the social norms. So it had to be quiet. And so there were many people who had this teaching. So Dogen has a fascicle where he talks a lot about women and the role of women, and he quotes Shakyamuni somewhere. Ah, yes. When you meet a teacher who speaks of supreme enlightenment, you must not consider the teacher's caste. You must not look to see whether the features of the teacher's face are pleasing. You must not scorn the teacher's shortcomings. You must not think about the teacher's behavior. And then later on, Dogen says, However, those ignoramuses who do not listen to the teachings of the Buddha say, I am a senior monk and should not do obeisance before a younger monk who has acquired Dharma.

[38:19]

I am the one who has practiced for a long time and should not do obeisance before one who began his studies late in life. Uh-oh. But has acquired the Dharma. I have assigned the title master and should not do obeisance before one who does not have the title master. In pondering the elitist behavior of some monks, he later says, why are men special? Emptiness is emptiness. Four great elements are four great elements. Five skandhas or five skandhas. Women are just like that. 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 in the Buddha way. That's from a fascicle called Raihai Tokui. And he says that and yet,

[39:22]

These things were still happening in Japan. I'm sure there are stories of women in Japan as well that had the same experience of not being seen or heard, despite the fact that they were wise. And yet, the basic teaching, I think, of the Buddha or Dogen is that there is no difference, and we need to notice And if we're, you know, and here we are, if we spend, as I say, we spend more time talking about sentient beings preaching the Dharma than about a lot of sentient beings preaching the Dharma. Yes, I think we're, yeah. White women are what? Wise women are getting heard sometimes. Yeah.

[40:25]

I think, I mean, I think the issue is what people have to do to be heard. You know, do you have to become a politician and raise your voice and act like a man, being an aggressive in that way? Or can you just talk quietly like we talk here and be heard? I think that is true here. I think women are heard here. We're all given opportunities for positions. We're all given the opportunities to learn and study and share the Dharma. So, so I think we're working on it. It's a work in progress. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[41:35]

Yeah, so they appear, if you just look at them, right, as a poor person, maybe doesn't have a man, so they're out working. You know, in those days, women stayed home and whatever, but these women had to be working. They were out there doing that. And it was only if you stopped and paid attention to them that you got the idea that there was something really important, that these were people to be heard. Right. Yeah. Well, but they get mind refreshment. And the rice cakes are called mind refreshers. So they get more than they bargained for. Yeah, Raga? They were pointing out both.

[43:21]

You know, and they were actually challenging these people not by saying, they were challenging these people by saying, give me, you know, give me the answer. And as if there were, as if there were a scholarly answer. They were fooled. They sucked them in. And the answer was a direct response. Meet the woman. and have a situation, have a stimulus, have a question and respond by drinking the water or eating the cake. Cause that's the direct response. It's just right here, right now. This is what essence of mind is right now. And these women do that. Yeah. Well, I don't know if it depends on if you're too much in your mind.

[44:40]

They might get you. Beware of little ladies looking harmless. Yes. would be named and passed down, but I can still be a part of it. Sure, and that's one way to look at it. That's one side, right? That anybody can be enlightened and anybody can share their wisdom and can help and can be a bodhisattva and share and help someone wake up. That's one side. But the other side is,

[45:45]

if that kind of anonymity is focused on certain people and not others, disproportionately distributed so that one gets the idea that the real scholars are named and these other people don't have anything to offer. That's the... Yes, Andrew. Age and experience outweigh scholarly academic. I like to imagine that those women didn't need it all. They didn't study at all. They just lived their life. They saw everything. They experienced everything. So by the time the scholars come up and ask them questions, they know. So they don't really need a title. They can say, think about the elders in my life. I know several elders in my family Mm-hmm.

[46:52]

Well, you know, that was like the disagreement between the Northern and Southern schools. You know, if you believed in you could just live your life and if you were totally present and mindful and actually got what it is, you can do that. But then he went, like the sixth patriarch went to the fifth patriarch and he said, that's great. You know, I know you've got it kind of, but let's not tell anybody because they'll be jealous. You have to kind of study and perfect, you know, kind of perfect it so that, so it's not either or. But it's true that, you know, if you can hear and you can see and you have experience of paying attention, Um, you can, you can get, you can become wise. So, uh, so, so, uh, and these, these people obviously, obviously are examples of that.

[48:13]

They were illiterate, mostly. Yeah. [...] mm-hmm

[49:25]

Yeah, I think we can't ignore it. And I think it makes a difference to when we used to just chant the men. And so I've been around long enough for that phenomenon. When we used to just chant the men, we had no role models. you know, who are our role models? These were male archetypes and male, you know, very much male stereotypes that having real women who we can tell stories about and know about their life and where they were born and, you know, what their families were like and that kind of thing makes them real to us and they make us feel like we have some ancestors of our own that we can actually, we can actually honor. They never chant the women? Do they chant them at the monasteries for nuns?

[50:58]

Yeah, I mean whether they... It would be very interesting to find out and whose names they chant. Denise? I witnessed an example of something that seems shocking for today. And after the debate was over, it was really clear that she had squarely prevailed. Shortly after that event, one of the male teachers got up and dismissed her. Mm-hmm.

[52:16]

Yeah. Well, I mean, we don't have to look far for that sort of behavior. It's hard not to conclude those things in the talk, but you know, we have enough news in that area. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well it's not, you know, because it's our history, it's our legacy. So to change something like that that has thousands of years of history, it takes time and we're working on it. We're all here working on it. I don't think you'd get away with that too quickly here and you'd hear about it, hopefully. Anything else, just last question, comment? Okay.

[53:17]

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