Gwynn, Ellen B.

Biblioteca Digital de les Illes Balears

Not Difficult, Not Easy
Continued from page 15
standing people are important is that they
show us very clearly that this practice is
not dependent on our appearance. It's not
dependent on our way of life. This prac­
tice simply means clarity. Our everyday
clarity. What are you doing right now, this
moment? If you are monk, you have
monk's job; if a lay person, you have lay
person's job. Keep your correct situation,
whatever it is. Moment after moment,
keep the great question, "What is this?"
Question: Do you have any famous
layperson stories from the present day?
JP: Yes! Nowadays there is a very
great story, and it is taking place even as
we talk. It is the most important story of
all. Everyone must attain this story, be­
come a true Vimalakirti, or Layman P'ang,
or SuI. This very moment is that story. So,
everyone here is a famous lay person!
Jacob Perl. JDPSN is abbot of the
international Kwan Um School of Zen.
president of the Kwan Um School ofZen of
Europe. and guiding teacher of Provi­
dence Zen Center. 0
Dharma Mirror update
available March 1 to purchasers of that
manual. The update covers requirements
to take each category of precepts, plus
several clarifications of practice forms.
To receive the update, send $2 to Dharma
Mirror, Kwan Urn School of Zen, 528
Pound Road, Cumberland RI 02864 U.S.A.
Condolences
to the family and friends of Leo Pruden, a
respected scholar of Buddhism, who died
in October in Los Angeles after a long
illness. He was 53. Dr. Pruden was a
friend of the Kwan Urn School of Zen
sangha from its earliest days. While a
professor at Brown University in the
1970's, he translated many of Zen Master
Seung Sahn's dharma talks from Japanese
into English.
18 PRIMARY POINT Winter/Spring 1992
Letter to the editor
Dear Kwan Urn School of Zen sangha (c/o Primary Point editor),
I am writing this open letter to the entire sangha to express something
that troubles me about our school. I write in order to start a dialogue, or
to extend any existing dialogue schoolwide. I initially sent this letter
before Jane McLaughlin was made a Ji Do Poep Sa Nim, so that happy
occasion does alleviate some of my concern, but not altogether.
What concerns me is the fact that of twelve Ji Do Poep Sa Nims, there
are only two women, and during the twelve years between the inka
ceremonies for Barbara Rhodes, JDPSN and McLaughlin PSN, only men
have been acknowledged as able to provide the kind of teaching that is a
cornerstone of this school. How can this be? In our center in Tallahassee,
Florida, often more women come to practice than men, and I assume that
most centers have plenty of female members. Why aren't women
"making the grade" as teachers?
This whole question bubbled into my awareness in a peer counseling
training class in which participants were asked to look deeply within and
identify an area in which we felt blocked. What I uncovered was an
internalized feeling of unworthiness as a female practitioner in a histori­
cally patriarchal religion. But while I could chalk up the invisibility of
women in the Zen tradition to historical oppression, I couldn't so easily
rationalize away the near-invisibility of women among the Ji Do Poep Sa
Nims in our school.
What I saw in myself was a deep feeling of demoralization, a resigned
despondency about the capacity of women to realize our true natures. I
wondered if we are simply not up to par with men, perhaps because we
focus too much on raising our children rather than sitting lots of retreats.
I worked with this demoralization during the ensuing weeks, talking with
others and just sitting with it. I have come to see that women are not less
equipped than men-after all, raising children is practice, just as sitting
retreats is, depending on the mind you bring to it. Something else is going
on and I wonder if it is being looked at.
Somehow the capacities of individual women are being overlooked.
(I don't know how Ji Do Poep SaNims are selected-whether Zen Master
Seung Sahn controls the whole process or whether existing Ji Do Poep Sa
Nims are integral to the process or what.) Acknowledgement of
McLaughlin PSN as a teacher encourages me. Nevertheless, it is hard for
me to believe that so few women in the Kwan Urn School of Zen are
capable of doing kong-an practice with students. And if this is so, why?
Can we begin a school-wide dialogue on this?
This process of questioning has been valuable for me because it
uncovered a kind of insidious self-doubt that was quietly binding me.
And it seems that paying attention to it has dissolved much of it. If there
are other women who experience this, I hope this letter will help bring it
to your awareness so that you can let it wither away or begin to addresss
it. I hope it is recognized that the absence of women teachers can be
demoralizing to women students, and that it surely perpetuates unfair
attitudes about gender among members of our school. If anyone has
comments on this letter, I'd love to hear from you.
In the dharma,
Ellen B. Gwynn
Tallahassee, Florida


Letter to the editor

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Biblioteca Digital de les Illes Balears