So I really enjoyed that minute of Zazen that Karen led us last week. And by the way, she does this amazing one-minute Zazen instruction every time her group meets. It's very cool. So I recommend joining her group once in a while just to hear this one-minute Zazen, which I will not do as well. But I just thought, let's just do that. That was so nice. Just settling into our seats, feeling where we're touching our chairs or cushions or the floor, whatever it is. Tuning in to the sensations, physical sensations. You could try this thing I'm learning in my exercise class where you get wide on the inhale Let your lungs fill up widely on the inhale and then long on the exhale.

[01:05]

So like lifting your sternum on the exhale. And we can take some deep breaths, wide on the inhale and then long on the exhale. You ever do this and you just hear your body say, thank you. Just take a minute. Thank you for paying a minute of attention to me. Okay, so the assignment was to pick one ancestor and link it to the lessons of your current life in COVID.

[02:09]

So I'm sorry to say I did a different thing. But first, I wanted to say a word about ancestors. I was thinking about the handful of you or the few people who have joined Berkeley Zen Center since COVID, and you have never heard us chant the names of the ancestors, which is something we used to do three times a week. And we're working on a plan to do a few more services starting next year to start doing more, a little, short services so that, you know, We can, and you know, it's just amazing. It's a really long chan, all these names. I can't remember, like, I don't know, 50 or something. And then about, I don't know, maybe 20 years ago, we added, and it wasn't just Berkeley Zen Center. I mean, this sort of Soto Zen world got involved in adding a bunch of women ancestors and the,

[03:10]

the original so-called, you know, male ancestors, and actually one of them was probably a woman, but that's just aside. You know, there's stories about them and, you know, it's sort of, it's made into like, it's supposed to be like an unbroken line from Shakyamuni Buddha to Suzuki Roshi or whatever. But of course, there's a lot of made up people because the Chinese, culture was much more into creating it as this kind of lineage than they were before that. So there's the, so we chant the men and then we chant the women that were sort of collectively put together by a variety of Soto Zen groups. So that's what, you know, we shared with you this document that we made at the time that we put together the list of women, we made a little paragraph about each woman. And actually, it would be cool to have one of those for the men, too, because, you know, we don't we don't know about all the men.

[04:16]

But that's that's I just wanted the people to have a little more of a sense of context, the people who started BCC. And I hope that we can share that with you soon and even better be in person where we can chant the names in unison, which is a really nice thing. And I was thinking about, so this thing about the ancestors is kind of a double-edged thing. Like, you know, those of us who were in Sashin, we recited this text of Dogen's, and one line of it is, Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we, we in the future will be Buddhas and ancestors. That just points up to me that it's this double-edged thing. There's a tendency when we hear these stories to think about them as how we could never be like them and put them at some kind of distance.

[05:22]

That was part of what, over the centuries, teachers have chided their students for doing that. There's a story that when they wrote the Blue Cliff Record, they had them on these wood blocks. The Blue Cliff Record is this book of koans, and then when the teacher was listening to his students talk about them, They were talking about them like they were amazing people that we could never be like. And he got really mad and he took all the woodblocks and burned them for one of the Blue Cliff records. So, and I noticed that in myself, there's a tension for myself. Like sometimes, like I, so I want to, I'm sharing three stories with you today and I want us to feel inspired and, but to feel that it's somehow accessible to us. not far away, not like, oh, we could never do what these women did or be like what these women were, you know? So that's a little bit of context.

[06:26]

And so I'm doing the Japanese. You might remember that Susan did someone from the Indian, the era of the Indian teachers. And then last time Karen did the Chinese, Ling Zhao, one of the Chinese ancestors. And so I'm doing the Japanese. And, you know, Japan has long been pretty much a Japanese country. There was temples and monasteries, but like, you know, women practitioners have kind of remained somewhat outside the status quo in some important ways. There were nuns going back pretty far, but they didn't have the same social status and financial support that the male monks did. And I thought about, so I was trying to pick one of these three and I kept getting closer and closer to the day and thinking, well, I got to pick, I got to pick which one, you know, I was kind of working on all three of them at the same time and knowing that I was going to have to pick one.

[07:41]

But then finally, you know, honestly, I kind of feel like they all want to be, have their stories told. So that's what I'm going with. They're all really amazing women who I want us all to feel inspired by and not feel like we could never be like them if we can. And I tried to think about what traits they shared that I was responding to. And I came up with the three R's and the three C's. They all had difficult circumstances. you know, personal and also with this issue of kind of their standing or the support they got in the Buddhist establishment. But they were always very respectful. And they were very resourceful and they were resilient.

[08:45]

And those are my three R's. And also for the three C's, I think, They were very courageous, compassionate, and creative. So that's kind of, that's my inspiration, to be respectful and resourceful and resilient and also courageous, compassionate, and creative. The first one is Princess Yodo, although she wasn't princess anymore when she was the abbess, the fifth abbess of Tokaiji Temple. She was the daughter of the emperor. But just, you know, so anyway, she was the daughter of the emperor. But this was a very tumultuous time. And I think that, you know, a lot of Japanese history, and maybe all of everyone's history, was incredibly tumultuous, you know.

[09:50]

Especially if you were in the aristocracy, they were always defeating that king, that emperor, and getting a new one, and killing all the relatives of that one. So she came to the temple to pray for her brother who had been killed as in this one of these political dramas. He'd been killed, and she came to pray for him. And the temple itself, Tokeji, was established the first abbess had been the widow of a samurai and she's part of what she wanted to do with this temple was to provide a refuge that and a place that granted divorces for for runaway wives and abused wives so it was sometimes referred to as the divorce temple and this it served this function for over 300 years Both the village that it was in and the temple itself functioned as a kind of underground railway for runaway wives.

[10:59]

Right up through the Tokugawa era. So Princess Yodo, I didn't mention, she lived in the 1300s, the 14th century. So like 1318 to 1396. And Tokeiji was founded in 1285. So she continued this function of the temple when she was the abbess, and she even reduced the number of years. Somehow they created the scenario that a woman who stayed there for three years would be granted a divorce. And so she reduced that to two years. So, and, you know, I just, as I was trying to understand the context, the historical context of these women, I came across this timeline. And I just want to read you a few of these dates because I felt they just, They just hit me so strongly.

[12:08]

735, a major smallpox epidemic spreads from Kyushu, resulting in a third of the population perishing, 10 years of social instability, and four transfers of the imperial capital. Starting in 773, they started a 38-year war. In 907, severe epidemics and extreme weather, including floods, drought, and the death of the emperor's sons. 995, unprecedented scale epidemic ravages this area. 1181, severe drought created the Yowar famine. And so, and as just a little more context, so Dogen was, you know, in 1200, that was around when he was. So I just, you know, in our time, you know, they always talked about how these, either these diseases, these epidemics, or these natural disasters would create conditions for social unrest, because the government would be failing to

[13:13]

you know, help the people and they would get upset. So, I mean, it just, given the, you know, because of the pandemic, I just felt it so much more keenly myself, like, you know, what it would be like to live through these times. And, of course, this wasn't just Japan. I mean, other places had these, you know, were dealing with, you know, plagues and severe weather and such. So, anyway. That's her context. And I want to show you a picture of their temple and then show you a couple of her poems that I just really like. So I'm going to share the screen. There we go. So here's Tokaji Temple, which in about 1902, it was absorbed into the male, it was taken over by a male teacher and absorbed into the Rinzai men's Buddhist, under the umbrella of the men.

[14:29]

But it lasted as a nunnery until then, So they're from 1285 to 1902. And anyway, so here's her poems, a couple of her poems. One, heart unclouded, heart clouded, rising or falling, it is still the same body. And then decorate the heart of the beholder for the Buddha of the flower hall is nowhere else. So, I mean, it just feels very close when I hear her words, her poetry. So, that is Yodo, Yodoni, or Princess Yodo. And I'm going to stop the share for a minute. And my second ancestor is Otagaki Rengetsu. Whoops, that's for next week.

[15:29]

Otogaki Rengetsu, her period she lived in was 1791 to 1875, so much more recently, fairly recently. She was, and she has, you know, some resonance with the Patachara story. She was born in Kyoto and she also was, you know, served a sort of high class in the, She lived at a castle and she was trained in Japanese traditional martial arts and such and traditional other arts. Apparently, it seems like, I mean, I don't know if everything is completely known, but it seems like maybe she had a first arranged marriage that was not so happy. but she had three children, but then that husband died and all three of those children died. And then she had a second marriage, which was, it seems like maybe more of a love marriage, and had two more children, and they all died also, along with her mother and her brother.

[16:40]

So at that point, she was about, between 30 and 33, she entered the monastery. She'd been adopted by another family at some point, and the father of that also went into the monastery. And I guess it was a monastery. It seems like it was men and women going in together, but women could only stay in the monastery for two years. So after two years, she took vows and she got the name, rengetsu means lotus moon, And she, so after the two years that she lived in this temple and her stepfather or adoptive father also practiced there, when he died, she, so sometime around when her two years was up and he died, she left the temple and just became an itinerant wandering nun. And she had to work to support herself because, again, women didn't have the same kind of financial support as the men did.

[17:52]

began to do was to make clay, make pottery. And she gathered her own clay and made teapots and teacups, sake bottles and various things. And her work was widely admired and she created, they think, around 15,000 pieces of art. And she also was a poet and a calligrapher. So she would write her poems on these teacups and teapots and such. So I'm going to share. some of that, some of those visuals with you. And actually, when I was thinking about the 15,000, right before class, I decided, I thought, oh, 15,000, maybe there's something on eBay. And there were nine things, nine pieces of her art on eBay.

[18:58]

So I'm gonna share again. The next page, which is all of these. I hope you can see. So here's like a teapot with this poetry inscribed on it. And then this teacup also has poetry. And then here is a scroll. And this is her. So this is her very flowing handwriting. And BCC, actually Grace Shearson donated to BCC. We have a piece of Otagaki Rengetsu's calligraphy, we own that. And sometimes it has been up for us to see. And then this one you can't see, but there's also a poem here with these drawing of these two birds. And she wrote some beautiful poems. I'm going to share a few of those. I had to control myself, but anyway, I picked three.

[20:01]

The first one is, as a nun gazing at the deep colors of autumn. Clad in black robes, I should have no attractions to the shapes and scents of this world. But how can I keep my vows gazing at today's crimson maple leaves? And then, ice in the mountain well. Yesterday, I shattered the ice to draw water. No matter, this morning, frozen just as solid. And I read a commentary on that that was in Tricycle many years ago where the woman talked about, she likened it to sort of like how we have some kind of insight or we have kind of a breakthrough or we see the way through, but then in the next situation that's different, we kind of, we have to go through that process again. We get stuck again. And then we have to, you know, turn towards ourselves and open our hearts and all that.

[21:04]

And then, you know, we get stuck again. So that was the commentary on that one. And then this one, Dharma light. If you want to extend the light of the Dharma, let it first illumine your own heart. And there are a lot of beautiful ones that are, you know, more naturey, not so dharma, and just lovely, lovely poems. I encourage you to pursue and look into them more. That's kind of my goal is to give you a little taste of these people and maybe encourage you to go look again, look at them further. She has a book of poems called, I think it's called, lotus moon or something like that. Then the next person, okay, let's stop this share. And then the last person is Kojima Kendo. So for those of us who are used to chanting these names, these names are ringing for us, you know.

[22:11]

I'm sorry for those of you who haven't. So Otagaki Rengetsu and now Kojima Kendo who actually lived She was born in 1898, and she died just 1995, not that long ago. But her heyday was mid-century, and she was kind of an activist. So she lived for that long time, and she was a nun for most of that time. And she worked tirelessly to advance the status of women in Soto Zen. And when she started, they were given only a fraction of the money allotted to men, and their education was limited, and their transmissions were not officially recognized. So they couldn't be seen as teachers and couldn't be part of the highest level of administration. which is kind of like how the Westerners are to Japan. We can't be these things either.

[23:13]

But she, they, you know, so because of Kojima Kendo's almost single-handed efforts, these inequities were changed. And she was the first leader of this Soto nuns organization. And she also was, she was the only Japanese person at this, there was this third international Buddhist conference in 1954. And she was the only Japanese person of either gender there. And she worked to have women teach independently and get recognized as teachers and succeeded in many of these things. And she had, her slogan was, Yayadekiru. Hey, you can do it. And one of the things that I think is just such a cool story is, so one of the ways, and this gets back to the sort of the respect and the resourcefulness and the creativity.

[24:21]

So one of the ways that she and her nuns approach this trying to gain some kind of more standing was they, reinvigorated this ceremony that was called the Ananda Koshiki. It was about Ananda. And it was a big, it was a ceremony where they expressed their gratitude to Ananda for this. I think most of us know this story where Ananda actually intervened when the Buddha was saying, no, there can't be women uh nuns there can't be ordained we we don't want ordained women i always picture him thinking oh that's just gonna cause no end of problems and i also think of kind of ananda as being the feeling type to buddha's thinking type if you know about the if you know about the typology you know so anyway in the story buddha says no we're not going to do this and

[25:27]

And Ananda's like, our mother is out here with these 500 nuns. And Buddha's saying, no, no, no. And Ananda says, well, is it true that women are just as capable of being enlightened as men are? And Buddha says, yes, that's true. And so after three importunities on Ananda's part, the Buddha gives in. And so this ceremony hinges on this statement about how women are just as equally able to become enlightened as men. So they kind of enact this gratitude ceremony. It's nothing direct to anybody, but they enact this gratitude ceremony. And in the process, they sort of raise him up and raise themselves up at the same time. And I just think it's a very cool a cool, cool strategy. So that was Kojima Kendo.

[26:30]

So I want us to have plenty of time for our little small groups. And I guess I tried to think of a question and I, what I thought of is, you know, what inspires you And do you feel any of this tension that I talked about between someone doing something you admire and yet the other pieces may be a little, instead of being inspired, there's this little jealousy that creeps in or this some way that you feel separate, you know? And so that's what I, I was thinking about, you know. I often do, I want to and I often do feel inspired when I hear about these women and men too. But in this case, we're talking about women ancestors.

[27:31]

And in particular, these, you know, people had such difficulty, a variety of kinds that they lived with and worked with and responded to. in their situations, just responding like Yodoni, working with these women, helping them escape bad marriages and just working with what was at hand, but with compassion and creativity. So I think maybe we'll go now into breakout rooms. Hey, you can do it! Hey, you can do it! So welcome back. Where's Lori? I'm here. Somehow I've lost you. Oh, there you are. Okay. So you've got about 14 minutes.

[28:34]

Yeah, I'd love to hear from people, from you guys. You know, I want to question, I suppose, what inspires you, but who inspires you? And, you know, we talked about both people in history and people in our lives, both finding both of those inspiring. Anybody? Please unmute yourself and speak up. maybe we should get the participant thing open and look we can do if you want if you're more comfortable raising your blue hand that's fine too well i'll tell a quick story you know your your stories i particularly like the timeline the way that you explained what the conditions were that we could relate to and what we're going through with the pandemic and um today that woman whose story I told a little bit about on the first night who came to the office hours at school came to the office hours today and she's from Honduras and her whole family and neighborhood and people that she knows were struck so badly by the hurricane and she was telling me that

[30:00]

You know, the water is like three feet high in people's homes and there are hundreds of homeless people. And her sister who lives in that neighborhood and doesn't have money, somehow someone else in that neighborhood had money and went out and bought food. And her sister cooked all this food and they fed 200 people. And then she herself belongs to a church in Richmond And I gather that a lot of the members are immigrants from Central America. They decided to cook food here and sell it. And I said, well, where did you sell it? And she said, in our neighborhoods. We just went out into the streets. And they made things like quiches. papooses and things like that and she said yesterday I made four hundred dollars selling food and I sent it to my sister in Honduras so I just felt really inspired by that and somehow tonight when you were talking it reminded me of that.

[31:12]

Yeah resourceful right really resourceful. Resourceful and also just kind and generous. More stories, anybody? More stories? Someone in your past who inspired you, Ethan, or? I really love history. And thank you, Laurie, for sharing those stories from ancient times, and not such ancient times. For me the most inspiring stories are the ones that are here in this lifetime, especially way-seeking mind talks and people kind of baring their soul, sharing their experiences and referencing things in their life and practice that were encouraging to them, that were you know, maybe dharmic if they came into practice, uh, around, you know, at an early time, or maybe something else that wasn't, you know, technically dharmic, but still had that feeling of support and something that was unconditioned.

[32:25]

You know, we had this sort of conditioned, conditionness that kind of maybe keeps us down from expressing our full flower and then something happens and then we just kind of blossom. And so the stories are great and inspiring. The old ancestor stories, it's the ones with our Dharma family now that really continue to move me. Yeah, thank you. I agree. I could tell a story that I just remembered. On Sunday, just yesterday, I was tuned into the Green Gulch Sunday lecture, which Sonia was giving. And then they had a long kind of Q&A. And a woman spoke up who we didn't actually see her face. She didn't have her video on. And she said,

[33:27]

She asked a question about dealing with fear. That was a short question. Sonia said, well, could you tell me a little more about what the fear is about? Then she started telling a story which became like a patachara, you know? It started with how the apartment she'd lived in in San Francisco for decades was finally sold and they couldn't stop it and she had to leave. She can't afford any rent in San Francisco, so she had to move to a small rural town in Northern California where she doesn't know anybody. And she went on like that for a while. She's very lonely and isolated. And she said she lost her father. And then she started saying that her brother died, and then her sister died, and then her mother died. And she tried to do some work, you know, some charitable work in this town, but they didn't need her. So desolate.

[34:28]

She was like, almost like everything was, the only thing that was missing was losing a child from the story of Patajara or even Rengetsu. But maybe it was interest. So these stories are exactly right among us, but the only interesting observation I would make about it was that the way people here in California who practice Buddhism responded was not go to a house and bring me a mustard seed from a house where nobody has ever taught. And it wasn't, um, what was the name of her? Which, which woman was it? Um, Kachara. Regain your presence of mind. Nobody even dreamed of saying anything like that. None of these wise Buddhist people, blah, blah. They just responded with tremendous empathy and support and showed her that they really heard her suffering.

[35:40]

So I don't know, maybe the Buddha wasn't so wise after all. And he might not have done that with everybody who had those problems, you know. I mean, I think the feeling was he felt an affinity for her or something. And he spoke from a place of an affinity for her because obviously he couldn't get away with that with everybody who. Yeah. Yeah. It was a striking. difference in the response that we will have to such suffering. Old stories that we have about war. Yeah. Other thoughts, stories? Ron? Uh-oh, you're muted still.

[36:47]

This is a different kind of story. It's a modern story. And it was after Richard Baker kind of crashed at San Francisco Zen Center. They had a big meeting in the dining room. that everybody was invited to, and they're just trying to process what had just happened. And one woman got up, and she said, you know, the way it was, I felt like I had to be like a man. And she started crying. And you could just see how it wasn't that she was weak, it was that she, you could just feel she was realizing And she couldn't be herself in that situation. She had to be this sort of male model of strength or whatever that was. And to actually realize that, and with a room full of like 50, 60 people say that, to me was, I mean, I'll always remember it.

[38:04]

It had a big effect on me because it was so clear. And so, essential what she was saying. And the fact that she was willing to be vulnerable like that in front of everybody, for me, it was really, really helpful. And so I always remember that. I was there too, that day. I was there, but I don't remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, we didn't. I mean, you know, also, we didn't go to the women. We didn't study with women Zen teachers from Japan, right? We studied with males Zen teachers from Japan. Anybody else want to share some inspiring?

[39:06]

Yeah, Rondi. Yes, I just want to say I think it's really important that we're adding the contemporary women teachers at the Berkley Zen Center, like Rebecca Mayeno and Maile Scott and Fran Tribe. I just think that's really important. And I know since in the time that I've been at the Berkley Zen Center, there are probably more women priests than men at this point, women who have been ordained. And I think that's really significant. And that's sort of an earmark of Buddhism in America, that we're open to change. Yeah, Columbine? Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think that Buddhism is willing to adapt to how things are changing. But I think that's a really interesting point that

[40:07]

that you said about how our lineage comes from men, you know, Suzuki Roshi, Coppola and Chino, et cetera. And I wonder, I mean, Les talks a lot about how we're kind of adapting Buddhism to, you know, America and the Silicon Valley and stuff like that. And I wonder how it would have been different if let's say a woman brought it here, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Trying to think if there's any of the, I mean, there were definitely women who went to Japan and brought it back. Like Kenneth Roshi. Like Kenneth Roshi and Edo Kearny. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, they, but they also went to men in Japan, not to women, so. There is a contemporary woman teacher, Aoyama Roshi, in Japan now that some people have gone to study with.

[41:09]

And she has a book. I think it's called Zen Seeds or something. You guys are on two screens. So if someone in the second screen is raising their hand, we're not seeing you. So if you'd like to share something, I'm watching that screen. Oh, great. Okay. I don't know if we're all seeing the same though. I don't think, I mean, there's something. Cricket has her hand up. There's a flu, who does? Cricket. Oh, hi Cricket. Hi. It just occurred to me to share a few months ago, just before the pandemic, I took a class for several weeks at Green Gulch with Wendy Johnson. Most of the other people were residents, and most of them were in their 20s and 30s. And Wendy was like, you know, the most wise, loving grandmother, you know, just teaching.

[42:16]

It was an ecology and Buddhism class. It was really, you know, sort of, right up her alley. And what she shared, both of Native American traditions, Buddhist traditions, and then introducing us to a lot of women, people like Stephanie Cozzo, lots of women who are both Buddhist practitioners and environmental activists. And the young people in the group hung on her every word, and she was making herself available, you know, to meet in the evenings and do like potluck dinner type things, and you know, I could see that they were going to carry her as, you know, sort of an internal... An ancestor in a way, yeah.

[43:20]

Absolutely an ancestor. Still very much, you know, generously giving of herself, you know. And in the middle of this, there was also a demonstration. And so she took time to go to that and organize a bunch of people when she came to Berkeley as well. So to me, she was very inspiring. Yeah, I've experienced her that way too. Okay, well, it's 8.30. So thank you all very much. We have one more class. Susan, do you want to say anything about the plan for next week before we do our vows? Well, we're thinking that we will share next week, the three of us, and talk about some contemporary women ancestors. So that's our plan.

[44:14]

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