By Jade Reidy
Oral tradition and the lineage of Zen is transmitted through kusen and stories told over and over again during zazen by Godo and masters. These stories are collected by the disciples and often published after the death of the master. And living traditions are they treated cultural ideas, prejudices inseparable time and space. One of these prejudices, which is presented as a historical fact, is the idea that women were not involved at the highest levels of Buddhism and the development of Zen in Japan. Historical sources tell us that this is false.
The history of Buddhism spans about 2500 years. The history of nuns covers the same 2500 years. Back to the eternal present requires that we get rid of any cultural assumption. Appears obvious: women have played a vital and constant in the history of Zen, they were an integral part of Buddhism in India, China and Japan, even when the company went against the tide of this trend . Women have actually taught men to respect women and, as shown by the documents, they have blazed the path of realization. The
lack of written historical sources describing the lives of Zen nuns of the past shows the extent of loss regarding the information on our full line and he can not prove that women were not essential agents of the monastic tradition.
One reason why women have completely disappeared from the writings of Zen in Japan, is that men have decided that the monk had to be called so and the nun NISO. So is it a general term, without gender, which means "monastery". Men are self-appointed as referees for all the monastics, while the proper term for the monk is Nanso; this term is indeed more to bhiksu Sanskrit, which means a mendicant monk male.
Some translators have therefore assumed that Dogen and others had little to say about women, since they only used the term sô. This is not the truth.
If one goes directly to the time of Buddha in India, is among his chief disciples many women and first of his stepmother, who raised the Shakyamuni Mahaprajapati, and his wife, Yasodara . When Bodhidharma brought the Buddhist teachings in China, there had only four disciples to receive the shiho of his hand, and on these four disciples, one was a woman named Soji; was the daughter of Emperor Bu. We hold that Dogen who was mentioned in the Shobogenzo. Buddhism takes root in China, then spread to Korea and from Korea to Japan, when King Song (in the first half of the sixth century, almost 700 years before the birth of Dogen) was sent to the Emperor Kinmei sutras and Buddhist sculptures. The first ordained Buddhist Japan was a woman.
The first person to have been ordered in this new religion of Buddhism in Japan (584) was a woman named Shima, from a powerful family of the tribe Soga. After her two other women, and Toyomi Ishim, took names and Ezen Zenzo-ni-ni. It was not possible in Japan to receive full ordination as it required the presence of ten monks and ten nuns.
Gangoji Chronicles relate that these three women traveled alone to Paekche in Korea, where Buddhism was well established, and there they received full ordination in 587. Upon their return to Japan, they lived together in a Yamoto Amada, a Buddhist temple for women headed by a woman named Sakurai-ji. In 623, there were 569 nuns in Japan and 816 monks and 674, during a ceremony took place on a large gathering of 2400 nuns.
It happened in Japan for the time préconfucéenne, an era of spiritual power and governmental authority were not separated, and where women exercised their influence in both areas. It was felt that women possessed of shamanic powers and during the Asuka period (550-710) and Nara (710-784), there was the government eight empresses. They put all their energy for development Buddhism. Thus Zenshin nor had she-models, many examples of women engaged in both religious and political affairs.
The Lotus Sutra for Women was invaluable: the history of the Naga princess who became a Buddha was interpreted as evidence that women had access to enlightenment. The temples of nuns founded by the Empress Komyo in 740 were called "Lotus Temple for Absolution of Sins." (Metsuzaishi Hokke-ji) and every temple houses ten nuns, a figure that rose to twenty years after 766. These temples were receiving economic aid from the government. The Empress Komyo also founded charitable institutions responsible for providing medical aid and relieve the poor. She herself was ordered to the main temple of Todai-ji in 749.
Shotoku Taishi, who was a master figure in the formation of Japan, felt in respect of women, deep feelings. Of the seven temples he had built, five were reserved for women (Amada), and most famously, Chugu-ji, still exists today in Nara.
At that time, Confucian values had already fallen into the the country for a hundred years and with the edict of the Taika Reform, in 646, women found themselves increasingly deprived of institutional powers. According to documents dating from the ninth century, it is clear that women have not remained passive in the face of such hardship and such an injustice, and yet at the time of Dogen, Confucian values still dominated Japanese society.
The Kamakura period
"What right males only are they noble? The empty sky is the empty sky to be a female is exactly the same thing. "
(Dogen: Taisho vol.82)
Dogen was forced back to the time préconfucéenne to convince his followers that women were able to instruct mankind. He used examples based on his stay in China:
Miyoshi-Ni was seventeen monks and disciples is through her that during the ninth century, the monks obtained enlightenment.
Massan Ryonen-nor was the teacher of the great Chinese Zen master Kankei Shikan Zenji.
Throughout his life, Dogen himself was under the influence of monastic women. A month before he died, he wrote that neither was the Egi- "Dharma sister" of Ekan, Ejo and Esho. Although no woman was ordained by him, Egi-ni spent twenty years at his side. Dogen showed him the utmost respect, as well as several other nuns. She was at her bedside when the end of his life, he fell ill and she contributed significantly to take control of the next generation, led by ejo. She was also the "aunt Dharma" of Gikai, which followed the Ejo Eihei-ji temple.
Two chapters Shobogenzo, Bendowa Raihaitokuzui and affirm the equality of women and men in the practice of Zen. In addition, Dogen completely reinterpreted the reading we can get this sentence Nirvana Sutra: "All lives are the Buddha nature. "
is a nun, Ryonen-ni, which would primarily influenced to write in Bendowa, his most explicit teaching about women. Dogen never stopped to praise him, saying she had a "rare aspiration to enlightenment" (bodaishin). In Eihei Koroku, he writes that Ryonen-ni was deeply devoted to the Great Way of Buddha. It is sometimes compared to Massan. Ryonen-ni in China is the marrow of his bones that the nun would known Zen.
Thanks to money donated by a woman named Shogaku Zenni, Dogen was able to build the dharma hall which is in its first Kosho-ji temple, and upon his ordination in 1225, donated Shogaku Zenni Dogen in the remainder of his fortune.
This is just one example of support that women have made to Dogen and the influence they have exerted on him.
Ekan Daishi was the mother of Keizan. She was a nun and abbess of Joju-ji at the funeral of Gikai in 1309, it is from her Keizan kept his religious devotion. Miyoshi-ni, the niece of Ekan, was appointed the first abbess of Amadis de Soto School, Hoo-ji, which was built by Keizan in honor of his mother. May 23, 1325, in memory of it, Keizan vowed to help women in the three worlds and the ten directions. Thirty nuns followed his instruction, the introduction of nuns in practice soto, as was established by Dogen Keizan and through the influence of their mothers, kept under the Muromachi period, thanks to their successors.
Source: New book by Paula Kane Robinson Arai soto on nuns: Women Living Zen, published by Oxford University Press. The author, who speaks fluent Japanese, wrote his thesis on the subject at Harvard University and spent a year in and around a community of nuns soto in Nagoya, Japan, in 1989.
Teishin (1798-1872)
Teishin became a nun at the age of 23 years. She was 29 when she met Ryoken and they fell in love. He was then aged 70. Teishin was a poet, and both together made up poems and talked for hours about literature and religion. Teishin never published his own poems but chose instead to assemble some of Ryoken after his death in 1831. The book is titled Hasu No tsuyu or Hachisu No tsuyu.
This selfless act Ryoken allowed to be known to a wider audience, while Teishin, she remained relatively in the shadows.
The moon, I am sure
Shine its bright light
High above the mountains,
But the dark clouds enveloping the tops of their obscurity.
Here with you I would stay
The days and years without number
Silent as the bright moon
Together we have contemplated.
Love Poem to Dogen
French translation: Juliette Heymann
June 2001
Jade Reidy
Source: Buddhaline
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