Zen’s Women Ancestors

08/30/2024, Chikudo Catherine Spaeth, dharma talk at Tassajara.

08/28/2024, Pamela Weiss, dharma talk at Tassajara.

08/28/2024, Shundo David Haye, dharma talk at City Center. In this talk, given at Beginner's Mind Temple, Shundo reflects on a recent visit to Tassajara, which included the monthly Full Moon Ceremony and the Obon Ceremony. He encourages us to remember our place in the ongoing lineage of Buddhas and Ancestors.

08/27/2024, Jan Willis, dharma talk at Tassajara. In this talk, Jan Willis discusses the conditions around the time of Buddha's lifetime, and how the Buddhist community was created.

08/25/2024, Onryu Mary Stares, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. In this talk Onryu Mary Stares discusses reality: how our attachments and karma lead us to obscure reality; how practice guides us to seek what is real in each moment.

08/21/2024, Dan Gudgel, dharma talk at City Center. In this dharma talk, given at Beginner’s Mind Temple, Dan uses the Soto Zen standard “Confession” verse to explore the connections between personal and collective karma. The verse is: “All my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate and delusion, born through body speech and mind, I now fully avow.” Avowing karma — acknowledging and accepting the reality of the situation a person is in — is a crucial first step in stopping further harm and beginning to repair harms already done. In the talk, Dan looks at examples of his own karma, inherited in his youth and still reverberating today, even though it’s not beneficial.

08/21/2024, Shundo David Haye, dharma talk at Tassajara. In this talk, Shundo explains the elements and significance of the Full Moon Ceremony to those who had participated in it on their arrival day at Tassajara, and encourages everyone to understand their role in creating and sustaining the monastery and the community.

08/17/2024, Sokaku Kathie Fischer, dharma talk at City Center. In this dharma talk, given at Beginner’s Mind Temple, Kathie references Eihei Dogen's work, "Receiving the Marrow by Bowing," to tell the stories of important Zen women ancestors in the light of changing demographics over the millennia, and discuss Zen master Dogen's courageous and uncompromising defense of women's practice. "Receiving the Marrow by Bowing” (“Raihai Tokuzui” in Japanese) is a fascicle from Eihei Dogen’s (12th-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan) long work, “Shobo Genzo” (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye).

08/14/2024, Roger Hillyard, dharma talk at City Center. This talk was given at Beginner's Mind Temple, by Roger Hillyard. The path is sometimes dark and difficult, sometimes smooth and joyous. It is always circuitous and doesn't proceed in a linear direction, so we cannot resist its call. When we seek the extraordinary we miss what is before us, beneath our feet. There is a direction we can go in, but not a place where we arrive. The only place we take steps is HERE, on the ordinary ground with an ordinary mind.

08/11/2024, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. In this talk Jiryu discusses four fundamental, inter-related aspects of the Zen posture of body and mind which we can care for in sitting and in daily life: 1) grounded in the belly, 2) upright and strong in our spine, 3) clear and empty in our mind, and 4) warmly welcoming of the whole wide, bright, constantly changing, utterly unknowable field of experience.