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Where is the conversation about gender roles in Zen?
Interview with Shea Zuiko Settimi (September 2019) |
| Zuiko |
It is hosan(1) at Zen Mountain Monastery (ZMM), in the Catskills mountains a couple of hours from New York City, and I am in the kitchen having breakfast. Cheerful voices are heard between the monastics and other short and long term residents who are loafing around. I am talking to Rakusan, one of the older monastics. He practiced at Mount Baldy in the 70’s, so we share dharma roots. I am telling him that I am going to write an article about women and zen. He lights up - “You should really talk to Zuiko, she worked a lot with that! She might be here today.”
This hosan I am helping Rakusan with the building of a bed for Zuiko. Zuiko is ordained at ZMM, but has just taken out leave and naturally lacks furniture after having lived at the monastery for about a decade. When we are back at the main building to have lunch, Rakusan suddenly points at someone outside: “There is Zuiko! Go talk to her now!” This is how it is here. No time to lose, to dwell, to overthink. I run out: “Zuiko!” We agree to meet a couple of hours later.
About understanding different perspectives
It is a warm Autumn day early in September. We are sitting outside the beautiful monastery building on a low wall plated with large slate slabs. A small Japanese Buddha statue greets us with gasshō.
BIRGITTE: Why do you think Rakusan was referring me to you about the topic of feminism and Zen?
ZUIKO: Especially in a culture like the United States, the universal standard experience is men. To get more granular: white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, college educated, middle class men. Zen as an institution in this country is no different. Most teachings that come down to us are from men, the koan curriculum is about men, mostly. You know - 800 koans and only a handful that contains a woman. There was a time when all of the teachers here were men. At the end of a sesshin some years ago I spoke about how that week the chant leader was a man, the work supervisor was a man, all the talks were given by men, dokusan was offered by men. I wasn’t hearing the dharma in a woman’s voice. All week. And if no one is bringing that out, the men aren’t noticing that, even many of the women don’t notice it.
BIRGITTE: True! I also find myself wondering if others don’t see this!
ZUIKO: Yeah! So I think I’ve just been a person who has been very vocal about bringing that up. When I worked on the Mumankan (2) I would transcribe every case and commentary to switch the pronoun - from he to she. Shibayama says “...a true Zen man” and I would change it to “...a true Zen person”. And I was constantly doing this translation, even though I understand that what it’s pointing to is beyond those kinds of identities. First I need to be able to find myself in it.
I really react against comments like “...but the absolute is beyond dualities like gender.” You can only say that from a dominant perspective. If the absolute and the relative really are non-dual, then these things do matter and are important. Because you know, we don’t live in some “no eye, ear, tongue, body, mind”-state. And in my experience that way of viewing the teachings gets invoked when people want to avoid an uncomfortable conversation about gender or race - one that it is really important to have.
BIRGITTE: Like they are not willing to take another perspective, not realizing others have a different experience than they do.
ZUIKO: Yeah. There was a dharma encounter several years ago when I brought up a thought experiment that I had heard from a friend of mine: What if the Buddha was a woman. All the ancestors were women. All the teachers here were women. And most of the books written about the dharma were by women and most of the monastics were women. As a man what would that feel like to come in here? Would you be able to study the dharma in that kind of setting? That isn’t something that men have to think about. But women do have to think about it. And certainly non-white people have to think about it. What if all the teachers were black? What if most of the sangha was black? As a white person would I come in feeling like I could study the dharma here? We must be talking about it and noticing it all the time. Zen in the United States and Zen here has not been some kind of neutral field. It has been white, male.
Question the tradition!
BIRGITTE: Same as the culture. Or maybe a little bit better than the average culture?
ZUIKO: Maybe, maybe not. I think we are starting to recognize that we train in forms of practice here that have been handed down throughout the centuries as skillful means for transforming your life and realizing liberation. These ancient forms get mixed with our cultural norms in the U.S. like white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, ageism and so on - and we end up conflating the skillful and transformative with “the way we do things here.” I think living in the dynamic tension of continually discerning these two things - the skillful means of an ancient wisdom tradition and “the way we do things” - is vital to create a place of true belonging for everyone who wants to practice the dharma.
BIRGITTE: Right.
ZUIKO: Just think about the form of sesshin. Sesshin was developed in Chinese monasteries to curb the energies of young 20-something monks, to wear them out so they could focus on the matter at hand. But for a person who’s 78 years old, is sesshin the best form that training can take, or is it just hard on a person? Another example is a friend of mine who’s a queer black person. So for those whose daily life is a series of moments of feeling unsafe, uncomfortable or not welcome, coming into an environment like this where renunciation is held up as the way, is that skillful for everyone? Or is creating a place of deep comfort, safety and welcome more skillful? For somebody like Shugen (3) who’s a white guy navigating the world, making happen all the things he wants to happen in his life, renunciation is really powerful.
Same for me, I’ve always been able to go through my life and know that I can make things happen. So coming here and having to share bathrooms and wake up at a particular time, not getting everything I want, has been an extremely skillful way for me to train. But for friends of mine who grew up poor, whose life is renunciation because they don’t have enough, to come here and be told that the way is to renounce and to be a little bit uncomfortable, I think is coming from a very particular perspective. And we don’t see it as a perspective - we’re like “well, this is Zen training”. And I’m asking what is Zen training when you have multiple marginalized identities or if you’re poor or disabled or just an older person who needs more sleep? And these conversations are now happening, but I have just been really hammering at it.
We ran a program down at the temple (4) earlier this year that was just for people of colour, and in planning it the two instructors were really helpful in guiding us on how to create the right kind of space and environment for it. They advised: “There should be cookies out all day, all the time, so people can eat whenever they want. And there should be coffee and tea out all the time so that people can be comfortable.” I was taking that in, I hadn’t thought of that. She said “When you’re life is constantly negotiating racism, your place of practice should be a refuge, a nest.” Which is interesting because Daido Roshi (5) would often say that practice and training is about getting pushed out of the nest.
BIRGITTE: At the edge of the cliff, throw yourself off.
ZUIKO: Skillful practice should unnerve the comfortable, and comfort those who are uncomfortable every day. We don’t have that, we have just this one way. We are talking about it, but… sesshin is still sesshin, and you know I love sesshin. I don’t think we should just get rid of everything.
The whining noise of conditioning
ZUIKO: I remember very clearly when I was in discernment working on my vows: What does the vow of service mean to me as a woman? As a woman I am deeply conditioned to put others´ needs before my own and to make sure everyone else is okay, to take care of everyone else. Some of the vows are not a stretch, instead they’re reinforcing my conditioning. So many of these monastic deeds and virtues mean something different than to a man who has a certain feeling of entitlement. So that was an active question for me: what does it actually mean for me to serve?
I do have to serve. I also think that part of my service is having boundaries and knowing what my needs are. Male teachers and male monastics might not understand this. I also noticed that women around here for a long time did a lot of the so-called invisible tasks, like taking notes during meetings and being the first to volunteer to do things. This has changed somewhat. But I remember thinking “why are the women always doing this?” There needs to be a kind of squeaky wheel, our patterns are so deeply conditioned. It’s not mysterious. There are traditional gender roles being played out.
BIRGITTE: Yes. Absolutely. And I feel like you need a fine razor to cut the line there. To be able to even see it. And stand by it in the face of “there’s something the matter with your perception of reality” – and still standing by it.
ZUIKO: Totally. This matters so much. Especially in an environment which is so idealized. Where people think “Oh, people here are so enlightened”. But you know, they are just people. They are good people. And let´s really bring our humanity to the table. All of it. Let’s not pretend, and in that way, create false harmony.
BIRGITTE: Yes. These things are so difficult to change in a culture. So a contemplative community is a place where you should have the opportunity to really look at it.
ZUIKO: Exactly. What is our practice for if we’re not using it to apply it to exactly these things.
BIRGITTE: I remember identifying with the ideal of an enlightened ungendered reality when I was in my early to mid 20’s. Then I was made aware of my gender by being treated differently myself because of my body/gender.
ZUIKO: Yeah, I think when you speak about realizing you are being gendered and being made aware of your gender, that is an experience that women, transgender or non-binary people have. I don’t know how gendered men feel. In the same way that white people don’t feel racialized either. It’s the invisibility of the universal identity. I feel like men in the sangha sometimes talk about gender and race as if they themselves are outside of the conversation. So when the Me Too movement happened, an older white man in the sangha came to me and asked: “what can I do to help?,” which is beautiful - what a question! There is a way in which white people ask black people “what can I do to help?,” and men ask women “what can I do to help?” - so I told him, “if you could look at your own suffering under patriarchy, what has patriarchy done to you?
As women, we know about this with respect to patriarchy. And men can kind of go through not paying attention. I would love for the men to have their own group where they get together and talk about what a shitty deal it is for them too. To not be able to be vulnerable, to not be able to express a full range of emotions, to not ask for help - that sucks for them.
In the same way as a white person, I get in touch with my suffering around white supremacy. I’m doing it because I realize it’s hurting me, not for somebody else. And I think until men find their own suffering within patriarchy, it’s really hard for them to feel a part of the world or they feel resentful and left out. We can never be inside another person’s experience. But this gives us a way to go deeply into our own experience. There is a deep spiritual aspect of ourselves that needs to be recovered.
In zazen we’re working with what arises in our mind. How do we make visible what’s designed to be invisible? I think the way to bring that into consciousness is relationally, and that’s why it’s so important to do work together as a community. Only when someone gives you feedback can you start to see something about yourself.
The Dharma diamond shines on every surface
BIRGITTE: What challenges can you mention in getting people to do this work as a community?
ZUIKO: One thing that we hear a lot is “I don’t understand what this has to do with the Dharma. I didn’t come here for this. I didn’t come here to study race and gender. I came here to study the Dharma.” As if anything is outside the dharma. Lots of people get emotional about this, especially here in the United States, like we’re not supposed to talk about it.
BIRGITTE: Yes, what is the dharma, right? In the first of the Four Great Vows we vow to save all sentient beings. People, animals and entire ecosystems are dying right now. The work isn’t just about getting a magical enlightenment and save all life with your golden charisma. So what is the work of a Boddhisattva, right? It’s actually difficult work, which will affect your zazen.
ZUIKO: Yes, how to have a peaceful mind or maintain your serenity in the midst of suffering. For many years, my cushion was the place where I went for things to just be calm and quiet. At what point does that become too narrow of a focus? Practice isn’t necessarily about not being comfortable, but how do you find your comfort and where is your practice in the midst of someone pointing out that you said something racist? Where is your practice in the midst of feeling implicated in systems of oppression? What is your concentration for if not to be applied to situations that are hard, painful and disruptive to our sense of self?
Letting go of the self is not an abstract moment, it is getting direct feedback about how you’re harming someone, even though you didn’t mean to. Taking that in is letting go of the self. It’s not some magical moment on your cushion necessarily. It’s that very real moment when you feel like you’re dying - because you are! The sense of yourself as a good person is dying, because you’re more than just a good person. You’re a complete person. Who creates harm? I mean, I create harm all day long, with what I eat, what I wear and what I am not paying attention to. Just get over the whole good person trip. You know, it’s a trap. And I think this [the monastery, the dharma] is a place where people who really want to be good come. And try to feel like good people. And we all are. We’re everything, you know.
Footnotes
1. Hosan service is when everyone who lives at the monastery is off from the normal monastic schedule. At ZMM hosan is from Sunday at 13:30 until Tuesday at 14:00.
2. Mumankan, The Gateless Barrier, is a koan collection from the 12th13th century with 48 koans.
3. Shugen Roshi is the abbot at ZMM.
4. ZMM has a city satellite, known simply as the temple, in Brooklyn, New York.
5. Daido Roshi Loori was ZMM’s founder and second abbot. This year it is 10 years since he died.
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