Buddhist teachers in America

·期刊原文
Meetings with remarkable women; Buddhist teachers in America,
by Lenore Friedman
Reviewed by Pilgrim,Richard B.
hilosophy East and West
Vol.39
January 1989
pp.106-108
Copyright by University of Hawaii Press

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p.106

Two primary characteristics of both these books suggest that they be treated in a single review: both are hagiographies and both feature the lives of contemporary women. Beyond that, major differences between the books begin to enter the picture and demand separate treatment.

The two unifying characteristics are by no means unimportant and both books are significant for that reason alone. As autobiographical they provide material of both intrinsic and extrinsic interest, whether that interest is personally religious or generally academic. As featuring the lives and thought of women they provide both evidence and reminder that women are serious participants in the religious life, and they begin to redress an imbalance in documenting the religious life of human beings more generally.

With the possible exception of the author's introduction to Meetings with Remarkable Women (hereafter Remarkable Women) these books carry no particular feminist "agenda," though there is a very important feminist message. This message is clearly expressed in the ukiyo print by Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770) that graces the cover of Passionate Journey. The picture depicts a geisha as Bodhidharma crossing the Yangzi on a reed. This is a stroke of genius on someone's part, but is doubly appropriate if we keep Remarkable Women in mind as well. In one single image we find expressed many of the central, though sometimes muted, themes of these books: (1) Women are co-

p.107

equal partners in the human spiritual journey. (2) The context of that journey, at least in these books, is ultimately Buddhist. (3) Just as Bodhidharma helped transmit Buddha Dharma to China so also are women helping transmit Buddha Dharma to the West. (4) While in some sense the Dharma is beyond gender, it is equally realizable by women. (5) Women may well be some of the great Zen "patriarchs" (definitive teachers) of our day. (On the latter point Friedman quotes Sonja Margulies in Remarkable Women with the following forty-seventh birthday poem: "Today the partiarchs/not taken in by/historical situations/grew breasts/gave brith/and stayed home/to celebrate/ (forty-seven years/of undivided life") (p. 247).)

Beyond such joint considerations, however, the two books part company in significant ways. Passionate Journey translates the "spiritual autobiography" of one Satomi Myoodoo (1896-1978) who, after considerable trials both spiritual and otherwise, finally "arrives" within Zen Buddhism as a disciple of Yasutani Roshi. The translator, now author, then writes an extensive "commentary," setting Satomi's story in a broader context of Japanese religion and history, and providing some degree of explanation of religious factors operative in Satomi's life.

Remarkable Women on the other hand is based on firsthand interviews with selected and "successful" female Buddhist teachers in America, as well as with many of their students. After the author's introduction, a rehearsal of the ambivalent (at best) place of women in Buddhist history, there follows a series of chapters expressing the views of these teachers who represent a variety of Buddhist lineages (primarily Zen, but VajrayBaana and Theravaada, too). Here the author does not merely comment from some academic distance but helps carry the conversation as an obviously intelligent lay practitioner herself.

Of the two books, which are admittedly of very different character, Passionate Journey strikes me as less successful or rewarding even while ostensibly more academic. In the first place, while one can sympathize with Satomi's life and be interested by it, her story has less immediate intellectual or religious appeal. Satomi's life and story have a more "local" appeal, I suspect, for people who may have known her personally and for people with an interest in the variety and character of Japanese religion. The autobiography reveals a relatively uneducated and socially/psychologically marginalized woman who has great difficulty in finding her spiritual center through the maze of popular Japanese religious practices (including shamanism, Buddho-Shinto spiritism, popular Buddhist practices, and so forth). In fact precisely at the point where a more sophisticated form of Buddhism enters the picture and a more general audience might take greater interest, the autobiography ceases. Having found her center in Zen, Satomi tells us no more. Satomi's life shows us some fascinating things about women and religion in Japan, but Satomi herself teaches us very little.

In the second place, the author's extensive commentary (actually almost half the book) is, as it were, neither fish nor fowl. It offers a very general survey of key elements in Japanese religion (as a general and historical context for Satomi's odyssey) and some modest attempt to look more closely at those religious practices that directly inform Satomi's life. As such the commentary appears as merely that and fails to provide a serious analysis and interpretation of Satomi's life or the immediate context of it.

Remarkable Women not only has greater and wider appeal, but is more successful as

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an integrated book. It not only shows us but teaches us as well, and on a variety of fronts. However, its central appeal and power lies in the "remarkable" women it presents. These people, whatever their background, reveal a common spiritual genuineness. Whatever the content of their words, one cannot but feel that in these people women's voices are Dharma voices, and they speak with an impressive confidence. It is a compliment to the author that these voices are allowed to come through and be heard.

Aside from spiritual confidence and a direct transmission of Dharma, something this reviewer can only intuit and not judge, the book instructs in a number of areas by these firsthand, living accounts of Buddhist practice in America.

1. Perhaps unique and revolutionary in the history of Buddhism, a developing American Buddhism not only openly and equally includes women but is giving a feminine (or female) shape to the Dharma itself in teaching styles, in language and demeanor, and in tone. Implicit at some points and explicit at others, this shift implies a critique of the excessively male styles and the (negatively) patriarchal past, although openly appreciative of the many male teachers and their styles at the same time.

More importantly, however, this shift opens up something rather new the possible development of a uniquely female upaaya (skill in teaching) within at least an American (Western) context, an upaaya in tune with a "woman's rhythm" (p. 237) but directed, in compassion, to both men and women.

2. A distinctive American Buddhism continues to take shape. It is a shape that both loves and yet is willing to leave many of the traditional forms and formulations of Buddhism behind, yet clearly keeps both Dharma and meditative practice as central. It is a shape that is increasingly ecumenical if not eclectic, and these women's lives of training all reflect that. It is a shape in which practice is prior to intellectual formulation, and "practice" ranges from specific meditations to social action (though, interestingly enough, the latter is certainly muted here, the section on Joanna Macy not withstanding).

3. Teaching and teachers come in great variety, and many wear their authority very lightly. From roshi to nun, from "professional" to householder, and from traditional to iconoclastic, both women and American Buddhism are finding their voice. The teachers in this book are certainly not cast in one mold; each is uniquely herself even within the relative unity of gender and the absolute unity of Dharma. Their diversity, however, is a celebration of their complete humanity and of the Buddhist notion of upaaya as that reaching out in wisdom and compassion by whatever skillful means necessary in order to help others wake up within their own life.

In this book, moreover, an underground, oral tradition of teaching transmissions (from a great variety of Asian teachers to America), together with a hidden network of practitioners, centers, and teachers in America, is made public. The American sangha hereby becomes less faceless, and Remarkable Women gives both face and voice to an American teaching.