Good morning, everybody. For those of you who haven't met me, my name's Megan Collins. Shugetsu Myozen. Do I need to move this some more? How's that? Better? Okay. So, thank you so much for inviting me to lead this wonderful morning. And normally, it has never been hard for me to write a talk, which I give from once in a while. But this one Oh, you know, Helen, I'm gonna need some water. But this one has been because I really don't know at this point in my life what it's like being a woman in the current world.

[01:12]

I'm dealing with being old. And I live mostly in the company of widows. And most of my companions and age mates still have very bright minds and a lot of joie de vivre. And there are no, what I used to call, stocked clocks among them. It happens. Some people just get to a certain age and then they live mostly in the past. They don't have a joie de vivre about the future. But still, we're mostly dealing with being old more than the business of being women.

[02:14]

But I do have some things to say about that. And then I'm going to ask some questions of you all because you know better than I the world of today. I come from the World War II generation. And that made a seismic change in the life of women. Before that war, women stayed home and reared their children. And there's always some exceptions, of course, that's a necessity. But in the war, all the young men were gone to the war in the Army or the Navy. And there were just things that had to be done, and the women had to do them. One of my friends was a ferry pilot, and she flew planes all over the country from, you know, where they were needed from here to there.

[03:23]

I myself, in the summers when I was in college, was a copy boy at the New York Times, which to have a girl doing that was unheard of before the war. And then, of course, after that, we didn't want to go back. is secluded, we have them. And a lot of women were barred from various kinds of professions. I myself never suffered from not being able to do what I wanted to do because I never wanted to be anything but a writer. And that's always been open to women since the time of the Bronte sisters, even before. But when I was young, there were big hurdles in the way of women who wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or, God forbid, an engineer.

[04:39]

A friend of mine who was a college professor in the sixties at a Massachusetts university told me that it was considered an unusual high honor for her to have tenure. But any old simple-minded adult of a man could have tenure. But for her, she was supposed to be honored that she could even be a professor at that place. And being and having tenure was just really super, super privileged. The last time I was briefly in the hospital, all the young interns who came to attend to me were young Asian women. And when I commented on one of them to that, she told me that now 60% of the students in medical school are women.

[05:47]

But when I was in college, there was a sort of peculiar double vision that they had about what young women were supposed to do. You went to college and you could choose a career, something difficult to study. And then after you got out, you might work at it a few years until you got married and had children, but then you were expected to stay home and take care of the children. With a few exceptions, there were some determined women who would keep at it, but by and large, that was the pattern. knowledge of your career and your studies in college was supposed to be put into the service of charitable work.

[07:01]

You could work for the League of Women Voters. whatever. But I can still hear Dean Gildersleeve, you know, saying that you should use your college learning to be involved in charities. Girls of Bournemouth, don't be a potato. And there was still a lot of bias then about women who didn't marry. She was looked down on in a kind of condescending way and called an old maid or spinster and stood outside the mainstream of a society in a way that that unmarried men never, never had to put up with.

[08:07]

There used to be a genre of movies in those days about spirited, independent women and Katharine Hepburn was always the one, if it wasn't Ravel and Russell. And they were, you know, in a kind of combat with men for their position and considered rebellious. But in the end, they always had to bow down or, you know, become subservient to Spencer Tracy or whoever it was, Cary Grant. Let's see. And in social life, we had to defer.

[09:12]

My parents were really very liberal with me at home and never suggested that I shouldn't say whatever I thought and enter the conversation. But still, the mothers, including mine, would warn you, don't ever beat a man at ping pong. And above all, if you were intelligent, you were advised not to show it, because you might make some man feel inferior. I remember when I was a young married woman, we were living in North Carolina, and some discussion was going on about the Norman Conquest, and the date was in question, and I said 1066. And then later on in that same group, The man who had been unsure of the Norman Conquest date said something about another date and he said, but I don't really know.

[10:24]

And another man in that group said, well, don't worry, Megan will tell you. And I, you know, I really felt slapped by that. I want to mention a movie. It wasn't really well received, but I liked it. It was called Avatar. And it was an unusually beautiful kind of, what did they call it? You know, like, yeah. And it had these blue people that lived in the trees. And the thing I remember about that was that the way they greeted one another was not to say hello. They would say, I see you. I see you. And that made a huge impression on me because

[11:26]

I think that's what many women in our society just do not feel as if they are seen, especially when you're not young and gorgeous anymore. Middle-aged women, you just become kind of invisible, and that's got to be very wounding to the spirit. And I'm sure minorities feel the same way that they've just, just not seen. So, but one thing we can do about that, we can resolve to see everybody that we can see, we can look and see in the world. I was really struck. I went to Hawaii in the early spring, and there was an atmosphere about that place that I could feel among the people.

[12:41]

And somebody told me, well, that's what aloha means. Aloha doesn't just mean hello, goodbye. It's a generosity or openness of the spirit toward other people. And we could import some of that beside the pineapple to the mainland. So, let's see. So I always feel that we, I, or people, women of my generation, owe a big vote of thanks to our daughter's generation. Because in the 60s, they decided they weren't going to put up with this anymore. And they marched and they were mocked about burning bras and stuff, but they organized and it made a difference.

[13:48]

Because I noticed that doctors now no longer act like Mr. God, the male ones, like Mr. God as much as they used to. They'll talk to you and answer your questions. It's a change. It's a change. So in the early days of BCC, when I first came, which was in the late 70s, and going on into the early 80s, we were still pretty new being over here. We started in a in a little Victorian house over on Dwight Way, where Mel lived and Liz. And the Zendo was in the attic.

[14:51]

And you'd have to be awfully careful when you stood up that you didn't bonk your head on the ceiling, a slanting ceiling. But it was a lovely little Zendo, a lovely place. And then we moved over here. And the atmosphere, as I remember it at first, was a little bit patterned on the Japanese monastic kind of system. Now, I never felt that Mel himself had felt any discrimination toward women, personally. However, all the major practice positions were men, and there were no women priests. Maile Scott and Fran Tribe, we have to thank for changing that.

[15:53]

They, Maile, Fran was a little, She was very strong. I'm not saying that, but her way of going about things was maybe a little milder than Meili, but Meili, man, it wasn't going to be any men ruling the world when she was around. And that was true at the other Zen centers, BCC and Tassajara as well. The men were just in all the major roles. So, and also, the way that that started, when I first began to sit here, you'd come in and get on the tan, and somebody might pass behind you, and you would just know who that was by their body language, because you had been sitting with them for a couple of years or more, but you might not know their name or ever have spoken to them.

[17:18]

And Meili decided to start a women's group, and we would meet sometimes elsewhere from here. I can't remember whose house, but it was a very strong group. And from that beginning, then, Meili wasn't ordained then. But then that's what began to make the difference, that we began to know each other and talk to each other and have ideas about things that we would discuss. And it began to change the Zendo and the ways of being here. And another person I think who was influential was a Zen teacher named Maureen Stewart.

[18:24]

She was the head of the Cambridge Zen Center in Massachusetts. A wonderful woman. Oh, I miss her. But unfortunately, she died pretty young of breast cancer. But she came out here one time. Anybody else go to that sashin she had over in Olima? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful, wasn't it? And that was the kind of first time we had had that kind of a gathering. And she... Her being here made a difference afterwards. So, okay, all that being said, I'd like to move on to some questions.

[19:29]

And I'd like to know, Do any of you feel like your status as a woman has changed at all during your adult life? Is it better or worse? Or anyone want to speak to that? Yes? Yes. Yes. they have to adjust themselves.

[20:38]

And that they are not, they're adjusting themselves awfully because they're suppressing as much as they can. May I ask what country that is? Iran. Iran? Mm-hmm. Yeah, here also. Okay. I just like, here it's like in the surface, women, they have a lot of power. Surface. Mm-hmm. They're deep down. I mean, I kind of like feel like, yes, then you're Iran. Then you are kind of like, you know, you can't go get her, you have to follow. So if you are like, as you get older and then all the things... Become invisible. Nobody sees you anymore, yeah. Yeah, Sue? I think it's hard, I think you brought this up, I do find that invisibility. And I find that I do need, and I'm willing to assert myself where I feel that I'm not being seen.

[21:48]

And I think that some of it is about being a woman. But I also find it's about being old and short. Carrying a stick really helps. I agree with you. You'd be amazed how often people comment on my stick. When I'm out in the street, people will say something about it. Right. And I also want to know, since we're recording this, what title you would like for this talk. Did I write down a title? Women's Sashim lecture. That's not very... We can do better than that. Did you have an idea about that?

[22:53]

I see you? Hey, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, I like that too. All right. So I think we have enough of that elsewhere. Kaulinda. So one of the things that I've only recently become very clear about, I have a long life to look back on too, but I'm still 15 years or so younger than you, which is amazing. But I thought that I was an exception to the oppressed women. when I was a young adult woman. I thought I was an exception to be, because that's when feminism was, you know, first wave. I thought, I've done whatever I wanted. I've fought. I've gotten power in the intellectual world, in the blah blah world. I've traveled.

[23:55]

You know, I thought that it was a good thing that women were, you know, standing up for their rights and organizing, but it really, I was an exception. That's what I thought. But I was so wrong. It took quite a long time for me to understand how I was wrong. I just want to mention how I was wrong. I, and I'm sure many people have this experience, had to keep up both sides. I had to fight and become strong and prove that I could win over all of the biases and oppression. At the same time, I had to make myself attractive. I had to succeed in a feminine way. And the tension of that just about killed me and I didn't know it. So, just one small detail. I would, as a young woman, always be looking to see if somebody had a wedding ring on. And up to this day I have that habit.

[24:57]

Do they have a wedding ring on? Have they succeeded? Have they made it? Because otherwise you're afraid. Yeah, I'd like to put in that when I was... I'm just telling you, cataract surgery is the most wonderful thing that can happen to you. I had had 10% vision before I had my cataract surgery. I couldn't see the baby on the... on the chart. Well, when I was a youngster, there were no contact lenses yet. And I had those kind of glasses that had bottle bottom. But as you say, Linda, it is the job of a young girl, young woman, to be attractive. That's your job. And I would dagger around the world without my glasses on half the time.

[25:59]

And I know I had the reputation in school of being a terrific snob because, say, if somebody at the distance of Rondi would wave to me, I wouldn't see it. So that pressure on you to be pretty and attractive and also you wanted to do well at studies because you could and it was awful, okay? Yeah. because there is a deep inner conditioning for me that if I acknowledged it as a girl, my life was over. And it's something what Linda's talking about. In other words, I had to buy into every male value and make it even more so.

[27:05]

And I had to compare myself constantly always like where do I stand and what's my status and only after having children and entering the women's world and understanding that there was a interwoven support system that I had pushed away so much as a girl that I didn't even know it existed So that has continued as I get older to the point where I'm wondering how are we going to knit the men and the women together because the two styles are so different. So the horizontalness of the women's world, the feeling that that is where he's at, the playing field is level.

[28:09]

We are all of the nature to get ill and die. And women are really holding that, and men get to deny it most of their lives. Because it's all still about, where do I stand? Am I higher or lower? Can I be higher on the pole or not? And that is more important to my sense of well-being as a man than anything else. Well, they have to, really. Men are... No, no, no, I don't think so. I think the men competitive, you know, in the working world, I know in the corporate world, if you're working, you've got to watch your back, men or women, but of course men have been in that. So, it's that vulnerability that you cannot have in order to compete with other men in corporate rivalry.

[29:20]

Yeah, well, let's Mary and then Judy. to study psychology said she was the only one. And when she would walk into the psychology building, she would know that there was not a bathroom for women in the whole building. So there's a kind of structural reality that has existed for a long time that I think really has changed dramatically. I mean, in my lifetime, it has changed. And the way that I see it now is that I'm hearing a lot more anxiety from the men around me about this whole issue.

[30:27]

And one example would be that as we were, a year ago now, we were coming into figuring out who was going to be the president, vice president, and treasurer of Berkley Zen Center. And the reaction was, when a cast of characters was suggested, oh my god, the women are taking over. Meaning there were going to be a whole slew of women over, and San Francisco's in our hands here. I mean, that was the anxiety, right? And I remember saying, now each gender feels like the other gender's in charge. But we actually sort of managed to not have the ceiling fall around this issue. I don't know if anybody's heard noise, but it's been kind of cool. It seems to be all right. Yes. And Judy? Yeah, well, I just really enjoy the spirit of both ICU and Let's Talk About It.

[31:36]

And I wanted to give a shout out for two things that I've really found to be refuge over the years, which is intersectionality and allyship. So we could call it, in our Zen speak, identity action. But I really do think that that's an incredible refuge. And I've been fortunate to be in a lot of difficult circumstances where I had to engage that and I had to stretch. So for instance, the first time I was working in an environment where there was a large trans community. mostly trans women, and they were women of color. And that blew my reality wide open. What does that mean? And how does it impact the bathrooms? And so on and on. And now, I feel like there's a great refuge in the whole

[32:36]

gender fluidity, sexual conversation around, I don't know what to call it, identity or choice or way of being or something. Because I feel like when I really touch deeply into Buddha nature, I feel that in my body. So like sometimes there's that feeling in the root chakra of And do I call that male and something like that because it has an assertiveness to it, cocky? Or do I call it, you know, as such a misfriend is, you know, like sometimes assertive and receptive, what we call being masculine. around ever-changing nature, for instance, of Avalokiteshvara, or many of the others.

[33:50]

And I feel like that has to be a really important part of this conversation, not to mention that race is a construct, and yet we live with it with real impact, and so on and so on. Because I get concerned sometimes in our gatherings like this, true nature in the conversation. That has no gender? Well, that's fully inclusive and fully empty, depending on how you want to look at it. And yet, there's the real thing of walk out this door. How am I going to meet? How am I going to do that I see you? And how beginner's mind and don't know and identity action really do Yeah, Penelope? You give whole new meaning to I see you.

[34:53]

Thank you for that. It's so lovely. And the experience of when you're on the receiving end of somebody, where you feel them, even if you're not using the words, when you feel they're actually stopping to see you or not, is very palpable. So I love this. I'm going to take this out. And another thing that rose for me as she was speaking, I was a single mom by choice before the wave of that started. Where would their place be?

[36:01]

Something on that order. So I think always for me, and this goes way back to the first waves of this round of feminism, that was actually quite threatening. The power of not necessarily being partnered to import the child and raise the child. Yeah, Stephanie. A little louder, please. I got in touch with that memory as you were speaking about the challenges that you had, you know, being old.

[37:26]

So, the thing that's helped me in getting older is that sense of myself. I've spent many years of practice here and recently going home like this. So I wanted to thank you for bringing your strength and your spirit over the years that I've known you because it creates an energy that contributes Well, thank you very, very much. I don't remember this occasion. Was I Juso or something? What was I doing? That doesn't really sound like me. Banging sticks in the window. Sierra, yeah?

[38:31]

Kelsey, I'm sorry. I wanted to, well first I wanted to just express really deep gratitude for all of you here. As a younger person who has really entered the BBC community, I am super grateful for the ways that women have kind of charted a course so that The other thing I wanted to kind of talk about, as my experience as someone who isn't that old, is a little bit off of what Judy was bringing up with the ICU hand. I feel like there's still a lot, a lot of work to be done. and that can't sort of just say, oh, you know, we did that back then this way, we did that back then this way.

[39:38]

There's still, you know, there's still in my life, I definitely have to balance and do everything still. I still have to be, you know, the beautiful, attractive young person, and also, you know, there's still that pressure. And I can, uh... yes jerry And the nurses, a couple of the nurses there said, you don't want to be a nurse.

[40:46]

At that time, nurses were the aides. You can be a doctor. And so it was these other women who were nurses who said, you can be a doctor. I was the first person in my family to go to college and whatever. So it wasn't coming from my family, but the nurses, the sisterhood of nurses said, And when I went to college, there were three of us. I went to a women's college because I didn't want to be, I felt that women could be more empowered in these colleges. And I wanted the support for a medical career. And I was a chemistry major, and there were three of us who wanted to go to medical school. And the person who, three of us, three chem majors, majoring in a science. And the person who was the head of that group told us, we should not go to medical school.

[41:49]

You'd better be a chemist because you needed to have, you know, you had more time to enrich your family. So then I went to medical. I was trying to get into medical school, and at that time there were maybe two women in a class of 100 going to medical school. And I had a very interesting interview at Harvard, where the person said to me, we don't really take very many women, because you all, there's scientific evidence that women don't finish, and women don't last in medicine. And what do you think you're going to do about that? So it was called the pressure interview, and they especially did it for any woman who tried. I didn't go there, because I didn't You know, I failed with pressure. But what I noticed when I finished medical school and hit the wards, there were just no doctors.

[42:49]

There were all nurses. But the nurses were my saviors. Again, the sister thing. The nurses were my saviors. And the nurses were all sorts of nurses of every whatever. They all supported me. And I could actually talk to the nurses about what jerks the male doctors were. And so it was the support of other women for me. And by the time I got out and went through residency, there was starting to be a women's support group, which was also women doctors. And it really made a huge difference in terms of not getting into the hierarchy, having a kind of egalitarian experience in the women's group. And that kind of bolstered my experience.

[43:53]

When I came out to Berkeley and went to the School of Public Health, I went to the Women's Health Collective and all that. And then there was the Medical Committee for the Rights of Women. There were always these organizations of women coming together. And they were all sorts of people in those organizations. And so I just, for me, there's this issue of the importance of the critical nature of women as sisters and being able to really be aware of that and be supportive. That has made a huge difference for me all through my life and continues to be. So even getting older, dealing with other women about getting older. Well, thank you. Good to hear that. Let's see. I see the time is up. I wonder if there's one other thing.

[45:00]

I had several more questions, but this... All right, maybe I'll just do that and you can think about them. We don't need to talk about them. Well, I did the first one. Do you feel like your status is changing in your adult life? If you are married, are there questions about the balance of status between you and your husband? Yeah, no, because That's men we're talking about. No, I mean, this was not about marriage. I know, of course, everybody has partners, but I was specifically thinking of marriage between a man and a woman. But anyway.

[46:01]

What is the balance of house care, cooking, child care between you and him? Does he help some, a lot? Are there any issues about female status in your workplace? Any issues at BCC? Any issues in your general society? Did you have any question I did not bring up? Maybe you could just tell me that if you have one so I can think about it. Yeah? I'm sorry, I didn't hear. What is it to be a woman? All right. Thank you so much.

[46:54]

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