Waking Up to Patriarchy

Photo by Michael SetoOne helped transform American society, the other is helping to transform the lives of Buddhist nuns. In an event at the Rubin Museum of Art, feminist trailblazers Gloria Steinem and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo talk candidly about the personal challenges they’ve faced, the progress they’ve seen, and why there’s still more to be done.

Gloria Steinem: In reading about your life, I’ve been astounded by the degree to which we share certain parallels. We both had mothers who were very supportive of us and also very interested in spirituality. My mother was a theosophist. And so were both of my grandmothers. We both went to India, though in very different ways. I went to India for a couple of years after I graduated from college, mainly because I was trying not to get married.

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Two Great Paths

Samantabhadra Buddha (detail), Tibet Collection of Rubin Museum of Art (acc. #2003.25.3)Dzogchen and Mahamudra, the Great Perfection and the Great Seal, are powerful meditative systems for revealing the nature of mind, explains Adeu Rinpoche. While their methods may differ, their essence is the same.

The meditation approach of Mahamudra as found in the Tibetan Kagyu tradition and the Dzogchen approach from the Nyingma tradition are identical in essence—you may follow one or the other—however, each has its own unique instructions. In each system, Mahamudra and Dzogchen, various methods are used to reveal the nature of bare awareness itself.

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The Genjo Koan

Calligraphy by Kazuaki TanahashiDogen’s seminal teaching, translated by Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi

1 When all dharmas are buddhadharma, there are delusion, realization, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.

2 When the myriad dharmas are without a self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.

3 The Buddha Way, basically, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms just fall, and in aversion weeds just spread.

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All This Is Genjo Koan

Photo by A. Jesse Jiryu DavisThe lifetime teaching of Dogen can be found in one phrase: Genjo koan, says Nishiari Bokusan, the late head of the Soto school. When you come to know it intimately, you will see why it encompasses everything.

This fascicle, Genjo koan, is the most difficult of the entire Shobo genzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye). Even the teachers of old made mistakes and developed distorted views. All of you should open the great vital eye and penetrate Dogen Zenji’s words without sparing body or life.

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Let’s Talk: A Necessary Gamble

Photo by Victoria GerstmanThere are many interesting and important voices that aren’t always heard in the mainstream dharma discourse. So in this issue we’re launching a new department—Let’s Talk—welcoming a broad spectrum of writers and readers to share their diverse experiences of American Buddhism. Lodro Rinzler kicks things off with his thoughts on why it’s essential to cultivate and support young dharma leaders.

The other day I received a call from a friend who had run a query on the Shambhala Buddhist database looking for authorized teachers under the age of thirty-five.

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Ask The Teachers

Photo Credits: (left-right) Barbara Wenger, Janine Guldener, Mary LangQuestion: There seems to exist an unstated, though powerful, suggestion that one must become a monk or nun to attain enlightenment. I sense this especially in the Theravada tradition, and have seen it in this magazine and elsewhere roughly stated by various monastics who maintain that the whole point of monasticism is to display and preserve the human ideal that all practitioners should strive toward. They seem to imply that while meditation and other practices can help a layperson suffer less, a layperson is inherently spiritually inferior because his or her life cannot be free of attachment. So my question is this: Is there truly an impenetrable ceiling over laypeople with regard to liberation? Must you necessarily abandon your familial obligations to find complete liberation?

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Commentary: A Cry for Freedom

by Robert Thurman 

Oh my heart! Oh, my life! How can this happen! What can I do? I’m overwhelmed as I watch a video of the brave and passionate Tibetan Buddhist nun Palden Choetso standing in the street, burning herself as a human torch. I want to respond, to douse her flames. It’s impossible. So too is it to salute her for her bravery, for her faith in love, for her determination, and her belief that peace is possible. Did she cry out for freedom? For herself? Her people? Her land? Her nation? For her beloved lama, teacher, and savior?

I watch as an elegant laywoman, a passerby startled and gripped with horror, manages to quickly take a white khata greeting scarf out of her bag, a traditional offering of goodwill and respect. She waves the scarf toward the stock-still flaming nun and then offers it into the fire as Palden Choetso passes out, dying in agony, her body crumpling to the ground. I also offer a khata from my heart.

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"I Kinda Vow" author Genine Lentine explains the background to her Half-Moon Ceremony

This text, the Half-Moon Ceremony, or Ryaku Demi-Fusatsu is inspired by the Full Moon Ceremony, or Ryaku Fusatsu, a monthy renewal of the bodhisattva precepts. On the evening or morning of the full moon, the assembly gathers to give voice to their intentions and to invoke the energies of the ancestral bodhisattvas alive within themselves. 

The Village Zendo in NYC describes the ceremony as “an ancient Buddhist chanting and bowing ceremony of atonement and purification that provides us with the opportunity to acknowledge our deep karmic entanglements.”  Chanting the Gatha of Atonement is not about self-recrimination, but rather it’s a chance to accommodate one’s fallibility and give stuckness some room to find mobility. The word Fusatsu means, “to continue good practice,” or, “to stop unwholesome action (karma).”  

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Commentary: Saturday Night at the Raccoon Lodge

© Tim DoseNot long ago I sent my students a link to a YouTube clip from The Honeymooners, the old TV series starring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. The episode showed them with their pals at the Raccoon Lodge. You might want to look up the “Official Royal Raccoons Anthem” on YouTube.

The Raccoons are a fraternal order, complete with their own titles, rituals, songs, and costumes, including coonskin hats with dangling tails. They take themselves very seriously, and look and sound absolutely ridiculous. I sent it out because I wondered just how my students and I would look to an outsider during our own services, lined up in our rakusus and chanting in Sino-Japanese.

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Ask The Teachers

Photo Credits: (Left-Right) Barbara Wenger, Janine Guldener, Mary LangQuestion: Buddhism as a whole speaks eloquently on issues such as managing suffering and dealing with violence after it has occurred, with forgiveness, acceptance, and letting go. But, in my experience, it has been largely silent on dealing with issues of violence as they are occurring. So, here is my question: In day-to-day society—be it in a business setting, family setting, or more public setting—we often witness mistreatment such as emotional violence, bullying, and disenfranchisement being perpetrated against ourselves or others. Does the dharma provide any teaching on how to deal with this kind of situation—not after it has happened, but while it is happening? Should we respond and, if so, how should we respond?

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