I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning, everybody. I'd like to introduce our speaker today, Laurie Sanaki, who began her Zen Buddhist practice 25 years ago at San Francisco Zen Center on 8th Street. While she was there, she worked at Green's Restaurant. She was the Tenzo Tassahara, and she was the abbot's assistant. She was ordained by Tenshin Rev. Anderson in 1985, and she moved to Berkley Zen Center in 1989 to be with her husband, who she married shortly thereafter, a little before, I can't remember exactly. At some point, they were married, Huzon Alex Naki, or Tato, and she was a Shuso two years ago, and she currently is the office manager of Berkley Zen Center, as well as being a member at large. Good morning.

[01:02]

Well, we are near the beginning of a period of intensified practice called Aspects of Practice, kind of a short practice period. And our theme for the practice period is our Buddhist ancestors, our Zen ancestors. and possibly more fleshed out. It seems like after listening to the two talks we've had so far, Richard's and Alan's, our flesh and blood ancestors, or even our blood and guts ancestors. And I was particularly encouraged to give a talk today about female ancestors. And As I was thinking about giving a talk about female ancestors, something kind of came into my throat and said, talk about me first.

[02:15]

So we'll see what happens. So what kind of seemed to want to be said was that I don't believe that the selflessness of Buddhism is the same as the selflessness that's foisted upon women in patriarchy. So it's not because our female ancestors were so incredibly selfless that we don't know more about them. And it's not the same as selflessness of people who are kidnapped and forced into slavery or selflessness of children whose parents are not really clear on what their job is. It's not the same as selflessness like if you work for a company, you work, you give yourself to your company and then your company is giving itself to its shareholders.

[03:23]

I think that those kinds of selflessness are based on the dream of gain and loss. And usually involve tricks, bribes, threats, things like that. And our practice is never something that needs to be foisted upon anybody. And Buddha selflessness is not anything that would ever be foisted upon anybody. So I believe that Buddha's selflessness, the selflessness of our practice, is based on a selflessness that's just the basic bottom line of reality. It's just what's already there. It's what's already happening. And no matter how much

[04:27]

you gain through the dream of gain and loss, how much you appear to have gained, you never will gain any more self than the person who appears to have lost the most. And no matter how much, so for those of us who may feel that we've had some selflessness foisted upon us, No matter how much we unhook from that, it's never going to feel like we got a self. We're never going to get any more of a self than we have right now. And we're never going to have any more of an opportunity to realize selflessness than we have right now with the selflessness we have right now. So our practice is to witness and celebrate what's already happening.

[05:45]

Witness and celebrate the selflessness that we always just return to, we always come up against, we always come home to. And so it's not like when we sit zazen, we give up ourself. and someone else gets it. Or we get someone's self that they, the person next to us, is giving up their self and we get it or something. Or the person in the front gets it or something. It's more like we just look and [...] finally we finally admit to ourselves that it's just not there. And then we just try to settle with that, just try to just get used to that and settle with it. So when I think of my female, our female ancestors, sometimes I feel sad that I don't know more about their stories.

[06:53]

But mostly I feel happy. I feel like there at least were some women who found freedom. I mean, I hope there were others too, but at least our female ancestors found freedom within their limitation. So mostly I feel happy. And I think we shouldn't feel like it was just like this little trickle of women until now. Now women can actually practice. There was always hundreds and hundreds of women ancestors from the very beginning. We have a chant we do, which we did this morning if you were here. It's about 36 women, and they were all the women, ordained women students of the Buddha that somehow made a name for themselves. So that was like the tip of the iceberg, and I'm going to tell a story later about like several hundred women who aren't even on that list, women ancestors of the Buddha, not even on that list. all the way through in China and Japan, there's always been a lot of women practicing Buddhism, and I think it's because it's a path of freedom, and I think it appeals to women for that reason, and anybody else who feels somehow issues around their freedom.

[08:13]

And so I didn't bring all these books because I'm gonna talk from them, but I did want to point you towards, if you want to delve into this more deeply, This is called The First Buddhist Women, and it's about all those women that we chant their names. And then this book, Great Disciples of the Buddha, has a section on women ancestors, the women ancestors of Buddha, which includes the lay women also, which are not in this book. Then this book, Daughters of Emptiness, is a book of poems. by Chinese women, ancestors. And then, more recently, we have Women Living Zen, which is all about Soto Zen women and nuns in Japan, right up to the present. So, don't hesitate to delve in.

[09:17]

And I was thinking about this and I think it's interesting that this phrase, I've noticed this phrase because my son watches TV, has kind of crept into the vernacular about how it's not about you or he always thinks it's about him or she always makes it into being about her. I think that there's, it's like that's pointing at something like what Buddhist selflessness is about. It's like, who is it about? Who is it about? We can sort of tell when we're in a relationship, in a moment, in an encounter with someone, you can sort of tell who it's about somehow. And if the person thinks it's about them more than you think it ought to be or something, it's sort of like, even though it's subtle and mysterious, it's also kind of right there in front of us. And in our practice, so yes, it's about settling into the selflessness that's already there, but then how do we bring that into our activity?

[10:33]

How do we embody that? How do we express that? And so I think if for models of that, we want to look more to the model of parents towards their children, the selflessness of a parent towards their children, the selflessness of a host towards their guest. Also, I mean, it's really the selflessness of doing the activity for the activity's sake. But maybe that's still a little too subtle. So I just want to go back to the parents and not even humans, like if you just think of mammals, you know, it's like the mammals are always about the next generation. It's always about taking care of the next generation and ultimately about getting the next generation to know that it's about them taking care of the next generation.

[11:34]

And so we look to our Buddhist ancestors in this same way. They were about us. They were about their students. And it's like the person in this model, it's like the person in the power position is the energy's going towards the person in the less powerful position. And really, it's not even really like that. It's really more like there's give and take, and it's hard to tell. It's like such a dance that it's hard to tell who it's about. But if it's about anybody, it's kind of about the next generation or the guest. The host is about the guest. And I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about a story our abbot Sojin Roshi, which I'm going to tell you the mythologized version, my mythologized version of the story. And if you want to know the real story, you can talk to Sojin or Alan in my version, which, as we talked about on Thursday, is actually the real version as opposed to what happened.

[12:42]

The mythologized version is the actual real version. So Sojin Roshi and Aitken Roshi were sitting around talking, and Aitken Roshi said, leaned back and said, you know, what really makes my day is when one of my students has Kensho. And Sojinroshi said, in his inimitable way, what really makes my day is when one of my students changes their life. When one of my students ends their suffering, that's what makes my day. So, I mean, I'm telling it, you know, in a Soto, this is sort of like the ultimate dialectic between Rinzai and Soto. And I'm kind of telling it to favor the, my Soto school. But really, in either case, it's the same. They are about their students. And it's about being willing to enter into a situation where you're dependent on those other people.

[13:44]

So get on that, guys. And we're dependent on each other. They're dependent on us to wake up, to make their day. The reason why you can do that is because that's actually what's really true. We are dependent on each other to make our day. So I think this is our model of our selflessness is from a position of plenty, we give ourself away from a sense of having something to give. It's not somehow. we have so little and then we have to give that little bit up or something. So I was thinking about this and I had actually gone a lot further in the talk when I came upon a wonderful story about a woman ancestor that I had, two women ancestors actually, that I had never heard before.

[14:49]

And so I'm just gonna tell that story and while it doesn't exactly, I don't know if it actually meets my point I'm trying to make here, like two arrows meeting head on or something, in the neighborhood. So this story is about Queen Samavati and Kujitara, one of her servants, Kujitara. And before she was queen, Samavati was living with her parents very harmoniously, happy family. in some part of northern India, I think. And then a plague struck their village, and the three of them fled their town, along with many other people who were fleeing the area. And they went to a city called Kosambi, which happened to be where the Buddha was, one of the places the Buddha often would come and stay.

[15:51]

And they had hoped to meet a family friend, Gosaka, I've been coached on how to say these names. I'm trying to say them right. Kosaka was the king's finance minister, and he was a friend, and they were hoping he would help them. But they get to the city, and there's like a homeless shelter set up for all these refugees that are streaming in. And she goes to get food. And the person who's giving out the food notices the first day she took three portions, the second day she took two portions, and the third day she took one portion, and he kind of teased her and said, oh, did you finally realize how much food you could eat or something like that? And she said, well, the first day, three days ago I got food for my mother, my father, and myself, and then that day my father died, and so yesterday I got food for my mother and myself, and yesterday my mother died, so now I'm just getting food for me. very plainly and of course he was ashamed of himself and he apologized and got into a long conversation with her which culminated in his adopting her basically as a foster daughter and giving her housing and she began to help run this homeless shelter and it ran so much better under her influence than ever before

[17:19]

than it had, I mean, it was just, it was basically going from chaos to order, having her, putting her in charge, went from chaos to order. And word got back to the king's finance minister that this project of feeding these homeless refugees had calmed down, and he was curious, and he inquired further, and he met Samavati, Samavati, and wanted to adopt her himself and so she moved into this elevated circle, sort of the royal circle. And she settled into that life and in that way came into the notice of King Udena, the king. And you know, I used to be confused, like why did the Buddha run into so many kings in his time? But the way Alan described to me is they were like small kingdoms, like tribal city-states.

[18:25]

He was the king of a clan, and it was maybe like a county or so, the size of a county or so. So anyway, in this area, King Udaina was the king, and he had two wives already, which was fine in those days. And his first wife was someone he'd married for political reasons. And then the second wife was very beautiful, but had turned out to be very cold and self-centered. And so he was, I guess, still shopping around for the ultimate wife. And he fell in love with Samavati, and I guess some people got to marry for love even in those days. So he asked for her hand in marriage from Gosaka, and Gosaka did not want to give it, which I think is a really interesting part of the story, but it's kind of a tangent. I'm not gonna get stuck there, but okay, so it's not, you don't want your daughter to marry the king? Okay, but anyway. He refused, actually.

[19:27]

Selfishly, he wanted to have her with him and he refused and the king got very angry and fired him as finance minister and took away his mansion and banished him from the kingdom and refused to let some of a tea go with him. So she felt really badly, felt terrible that she had sort of been the cause of him losing everything. So she went to the king and said, it's okay, I'll marry you, which I get it. I think it's interesting, you know, sort of like, okay, I'll marry you." So she marries the king and I think there's an interesting, is this where this interesting passage is in here? I haven't mentioned, although it possibly is obvious I was supposed to mention that Samavati just was someone who just exuded loving kindness to everybody around her. She was a wonderful person who was very strong and loving kindness even before she encountered the Buddha.

[20:34]

Because Samavati had great love for everyone, she had so much inner strength that this decision was not a difficult one for her. It was not important to her where she lived, whether in the house of the finance minister as his favorite daughter, or in the palace as the favorite wife of the king, or in obscurity as when she was in the house of her parents, or as a poor refugee. She always found peace in her own heart and was happy regardless of outer circumstances. So maybe this is an example of the kind of true selflessness trumping her foisted upon kind of selflessness. So again, her life fell into harmony. And she had a servant named Kujatara. Kujatara? Sorry, I'm forgetting the pronunciation. Anyway, Kujatara. Kujatara. was a servant who would go out shopping for flowers and for the women's quarters.

[21:40]

So apparently there's like women's quarters in the castle with about 500 women living in them. And Kujatara goes, the queen gives her eight coins every day to buy flowers for the women's quarters. And every day she takes four quarters and buys flowers and pockets the other four quarters. And one day she's going to buy the flowers, she's getting ready to buy the flowers, and the florist says, I'm having the Buddha for lunch, and afterward he's going to give a Dharma talk, why don't you stay? And she says, okay, and I want to read you this part too, because it's amazing. Following the meal, the Buddha gave a discourse to his hosts, and as he spoke, his words went directly to Kuchitara's heart. Listening with total attention, tranquil and uplifted, she took in every word as though it was intended just for her.

[22:44]

And by the time the Buddha concluded his talk, she had attained the path and fruit of stream entry, which is in this sort of old style, there's these three stages, the stream enterer, the once-returner, and the never-returner, and that actually comes up a few more times. But those are like the three stages of being a sort of enlightened person, enlightened disciple of the Buddha. Without quite knowing what had happened to her, she had become a totally changed person, one endowed with unwavering faith in the triple gem and incapable of violating the basic laws of morality. The whole world, which had seemed so obvious and real to her, now appeared as a dream." So the first thing she does when she The first thing she does is she buys eight coins worth of flowers and she takes them back to the women's quarters and the queen asks her, why are there so many flowers today? and she falls on her knees and begs the queen's forgiveness and explains what happens, and then tells the queen about her amazing inner transformation, hearing the Buddhist talk.

[23:55]

And I guess the queen isn't allowed, the queens are not allowed to leave the palace, so she makes Kujita, her personal attendant, and assigns her the job of going every day to hear the Buddhist Dharma talk. And when she comes back, the high-bred women, the women in this women's quarters, put her on this high seat as if she were the Buddha, and she repeats what she heard, and they all sit and listen. And she, I can't, I don't know what the equivalent of a photographic memory is, but she has something like what Ananda has, where she remembers the, the words of the Buddha and she recites them. And she also figures in the Pali Canon. She actually put together a set of sutras that she put together and it's one of the chapters of the Pali Canon. So what happens next?

[25:03]

So then, Samavati, the king asks her if there's anything he can do for her, and she says she wishes that the Buddha would come every day to the palace to give a Dharma talk. And so the king asks if this is possible, and the king says no, he won't, but he sends Ananda. So Ananda goes every day, and gives a Dharma talk at the palace. And through this means, many, many of the people in the palace are converted to Buddhism and attain stream entry in various other stages. Oh, then there's this one, another great line in here, one to share. Now through their common understanding of the Dhamma, the queen and the maid became equals. Within a short time, the teaching spread through the whole of the women's quarters and there was hardly anyone who did not become a disciple of the Awakened One.

[26:26]

Also, Gosaka became a devotee of the Buddha and built a monastery. Okay, so once again, things have settled into harmonious pattern except, of course, there's always a snake in the Garden of Eden, and in this case, it's the second wife of King Udaina, who hates everything, hates Buddha and everything Buddhist with a virulent passion. She doesn't, she's not jealous of Samavati as a wife, but she really, it really galls her that the teaching has spread through the palace. And there's a reason for this. Because when her father, before she was married to King Udaina, her father had met the Buddha and was so taken with him that he thought a proper gift would be to give his daughter as a wife to Shakyamuni Buddha.

[27:35]

And Shakyamuni Buddha turned him down and in something which I cannot but feel was a mistake, given what happened later. I know that's sort of blasphemy to think that the Buddha could make a mistake, but he, in the process of saying no, he gives a Dharma talk about how, one of his famous talks about the unattractiveness of the body. And she is just, you know, her vanity is completely inflamed, and she's just furious. I think in a funny way, the story goes on to say that both of her parents immediately attained never returnership, which is the highest stage. I think that's sort of like put in there to make it look like not such a bad idea what the Buddha did. But anyway, he, for whatever reason, did that and she never forgave him and she eventually married King Udaina. she began to plot, tried many ways to discredit Samavati in the eyes of the king, and they all failed, and basically her kind of just, you could say her selflessness or her non-engagement, she, nothing, the barbs just dropped off of her, you know?

[29:01]

The, so, However, finally, the Queen Magandiya is the queen who is perpetrating these various things, and she ultimately does succeed in killing Samavati and all the women by burning down the women's quarters. So it has a very sad ending. But the king, there's some more interesting parts. The king has been sort of influenced by this, and he goes to visit another monk, Pindola, and he asked the monk Pindola how the celibate monks can be celibate. How can these young men actually be celibate monks? Pindola tells him that the Buddha has taught them, and I like this, I think this is kind of neat, he's taught them to treat women, to think of women as either their mothers, their sisters, or their daughters.

[30:08]

So I like that a little better than the disgusting, you know, repulsiveness of the body method. So that's pretty much it, I was gonna read Of course, and when this fire happens, it's almost like September 11th for them. I mean, it's like the news just through the whole town and the monks are discussing it with the Buddha. And the Buddha says, he's all along been praising Samavati. And he says, the world is held in bondage by delusion and only appears to be capable. I think he means, I think this could be substantial. To a fool held in bondage by his acquisitions, which is kind of like that dream of gain and loss, enveloped in a mass of darkness, it appears as if it were eternal or real. But for one who sees, there is nothing.

[31:12]

And then King Udaina finally figures out that it was Magandiya who started this fire, and he has her and her relatives cruelly executed. And it's sort of awful, but I want to tell you that because there's another interesting passage. Soon King Udaina regretted his cruel, revengeful deed. Again and again, he saw Samavati's face in front of him, full of love for all beings, even for her enemies. He felt that by his violent fury he had removed himself from her even further than her death had done. He began to control his temper more and more and follow the Buddha's teachings ardently. And the Buddha also, when talking with the monks about this, he says that Magandiya, while living, was dead already and Samavati, though dead, was truly alive. So, what do you think?

[32:18]

Any comments? Would you go back to the passage you read right before the last one? I didn't understand. About how it's not real. The world held in bondage by delusion. Why don't you read the intro to that? Sure. Referring to the tragedy at Kosambi, the Buddha spoke the following inspirational verse to the monks. The world is held in bondage by delusion and only appears to be capable, or I would say substantial. To a fool held in bondage by his acquisitions enveloped in a mass of darkness, it appears as if it were real. But for one who sees, there is nothing. I was talking with a friend a while ago about our recitation of lineage, and he was saying, well, I wonder what about the people who were not named in the lineage, the guys?

[33:25]

And so we just started thinking about wherever we go, in the places of work and play, the various contributions to society, there's a person or a group of people that get the sort of recognition. all the people that kind of laid the foundation contributed in some way and it's nice here the echo that we recite on Founders Ceremony all the cooperating founders both hidden and revealed to make this place possible which is as you said you know it's like now we have all these women that we can study it's a little effort to acknowledge all the people And it's helpful for us to remember that whatever it is, it's the tip of the iceberg, you know, and to feel the strength and power of all those people who don't get mentioned. Yes, Susan? Thank you very much for bringing the women ancestors in today. And I have a sense that Buddha was a real human being who could make mistakes.

[34:29]

One of the stories out of the first book you mentioned that impressed me was that his stepmother, Mahabodhapati, at first wanted to be a disciple and kept rejecting her and saying, no, no, you can't. Women can't be. He didn't want to start a women's order, right? At least that's the story. Yeah. It's the real story. And put all kinds of more regulations for the women to follow than the male disciples. And so I'm very happy that the Buddha was a real human being who was a part of his time and made some of these mistakes because it's part of what I love about Buddhism is that we're just all doing our best and even enlightened people can make mistakes. So thank you. Oh, and did the woman who collected the stories, did she escape the fire? I doubt it. I doubt it. She's not mentioned again. And I think it's interesting, part of the story that, I mean, I love the story, I love the image of the women's quarters with the woman, you know, the servant put on, I mean, I just love all that.

[35:42]

And also I love it that it gets spread because people are seeing that it's working for somebody. It worked for Kujitara, that's why Samavati was interested in it, and it worked for her, and that's why the king was influenced, you know? people were seeing transformations happening and that's what was being transmitted in a way. Anybody else? Linda? Yeah, you said you liked it when they said that they were thinking of women, all women, as their mother, sister, or daughter. Well, that was the practice. I just think that that's very nice when men in a sexist society decide to find a way to respect women by thinking of them tenderly as mother, daughter, or sister.

[36:47]

But actually, to put it that way is the other side of saying women represent all the different what's left out of that list is woman in her prime, you know, as lover, beloved. They left that off the list because that's just what was considered dangerous about women. Exactly. And so if they couldn't mention that, they had to kind of do the mother, sister, daughter, safe, non-sexual thing because they blamed women for being the source of bodily contamination of those pure spiritual men. Well, I don't agree exactly. I mean, I think in other words, if you were to dwell on women as the beloved, it would be harder to be celibate. I mean, and for me too, it would be for me too. I don't agree with a lot of what you're saying. I mean, I think there's a truth to what you're saying, but it doesn't have to be that the women were being blamed.

[37:50]

It's just how do you coach yourself to think about these things? You know, how do you not stimulate your sexual energy? If you want to be celibate. I mean, we're not practicing celibacy here. We're not practicing celibacy here. I don't even... Well, a couple of really brave people here are practicing celibacy. Some intentionally. And we're waiting, we're waiting with bated breath for their insights. Yes, Courtney and then Sojin. Well, I can't understand what you're saying. It's almost as though it's a psychological method to make, to change your behavior. To change the adolescent boy, you know, somebody who's got a very strong sex drive. control this behavior, but it's like a mind trick to do it.

[38:54]

It's like I'm going to pretend that this person is a sister or a mother and then I'll settle down. But the more difficult thing would be, of course, not this behavioristic approach, but to actually go straight into it and get through to the other side. Like transmute that energy somehow? So then you don't have to leave anything out, but you can still behave accordingly. Right. So the idea is that you could somehow transmute that life force and that sexual energy and that that is what happens. Well, let's hear from people who are, I mean, yeah, let's hear from the people who are trying to do that. I want to know about that. I'm interested in that. Sojin? Yeah, well, I think He didn't expect that lay people would be celibate. And for lay people, we had the precepts of not chasing after lust, but to find someone and then remain faithful.

[40:06]

And that's the usual. But for monks, the precept for monks was to be celibate. And so that's why, you know, and also in India, it's not just Buddhists, but I think it's traditional in India to think about reincarnation or rebirth. And we've had so many rebirths that everyone has been your mother or your sister or your, in some point in the past, you know, ancient times. So that kind of plays into the factors into that. And so it's just a device to help the way monks think about approaching men. I'm not sure what he said about approaching men.

[41:12]

He wasn't interested. It wasn't as interesting or it wasn't as ... didn't survive or something. Yes? I was thinking about what Linda said and Courtney and I was thinking about it more along the lines of that it's a device to, for example, if there's someone who really, really bugs me and every time I'm around them I'm just mean, nasty to them, then whatever I have to do to not be mean, nasty to them if I can't always work through stuff, sometimes I remove myself from the situation, and if I have to use a device to do that, be that, this is how I'm gonna think of you, then I think that what happens sometimes is by using that device, that charge behind it, you don't necessarily have to, for me, I don't necessarily have to go through it, but something starts shifting because I'm sort of behaving in a different manner, whether that's me

[42:13]

you know, boggling my mind, but something in turn does shift. And I've just, in the last couple of years, I've just become a proponent of, you don't have to go through everything. Some things you just have to figure out how to lessen the amount of suffering. In that case, it would be important that you did, that it did shift though somehow or other. Yeah. Are we close to the right time? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you everybody.

[42:51]

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