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“Mountains, Rivers, and the Whole Earth”: Koan Interpretations of Female Zen Practitioners

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“Mountains, Rivers, and the Whole Earth”: Koan Interpretations of Female Zen Practitioners religions Article “Mountains, Rivers, and the Whole Earth”: Koan Interpretations of Female Zen Practitioners Ben Van Overmeire ID Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation, Flanders, Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium; [email protected] Received: 27 February 2018; Accepted: 9 April 2018; Published: 11 April 2018 Abstract: Though recent years have seen a critical reappraisal of Buddhist texts from the angle of performance and gender studies, examinations of Zen Buddhist encounter dialogues (better known under their edited form as “koan”) within this framework are rare. In this article, I first use Rebecca Schneider’s notion of “reenactment” to characterize interpretative strategies developed by contemporary female Zen practitioners to contest the androcentrism found in koan commentary. Drawing on The Hidden Lamp (2013), I suggest that there are two ways of reading encounter dialogues. One of these, the “grasping way,” tends to be confrontational and full of masculine and martial imagery. The other, the “granting way,” foregrounds the (female) body and the family as sites of transmission, stressing connection instead of opposition. I then argue that these “granting” readings of encounter dialogues gesture towards a Zen lineage that is universal, extended to everyone, even to the non-human. Keywords: performance; gender; encounter dialogue; koan; Zen Buddhism 1. Introduction Buddhist writers have not always been kind to women. The canonized texts of this religion contain a host of prejudices against the female gender, perhaps the most well-known among which is that women can never become enlightened without first transforming into men. It should be no surprise that these attitudes have been the object of much critical scholarship, drawing upon foundational insights in gender studies (Kabilsingh 1991; Gross 1993; Campbell 1996; Wilson 1996; Arai 1999; Levering 2006; Salgado 2013). Such studies have drawn attention to women who have by their words and actions resisted the censure of male Buddhists. A prominent example of such a woman is Wuzhuo Miaozong (!W妙宗; 1096–1170 CE), a disciple of the famous Chinese Zen master1 Dahui Zonggao ('g宗r; 1089–1163 CE). Miaozong lived during the Song dynasty and was one of the first nuns to be included in an imperially sanctioned Zen lineage history, The Outline of the Linked Flames (lianteng huiyao oÈ會要). Published in 1183, the Outline collected the exemplary lives of the school’s patriarchs (zushi V+). As Miriam Levering points out, “There are no ‘matriarchs’ in Ch’an’s [Zen] highly mythologized history from its origins in India down to the Sixth Patriarch in the beginning of the eighth century in China. [ ... ] Thus, at the beginning of 1 In this article, I use the (originally Japanese) term “Zen” to refer to (1) the variety of East-Asian groups that have identified their practices or doctrines by the Chinese character ª and (2) the contemporary American traditions that self-identify as “Zen” and largely were established by Japanese masters or people who studied in Japan. This does not mean that I consider these diverse traditions identical in any way, doctrinally or otherwise. However, since the focus of this article is on how encounter dialogues are read in a contemporary context, and moreover since all testimonies from The Hidden Lamp use “Zen” to talk about these dialogues (whether these dialogues originate in China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, or the United States), I have also used “Zen” throughout. Religions 2018, 9, 125; doi:10.3390/rel9040125 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2018, 9, 125 2 of 10 the Northern Sung (960–1127), Ch’an represented itself as an almost exclusively masculine preserve” (Levering 1999, pp. 188–89). In view of this “masculine preserve,” it should be no wonder that, when Dahui decided to give Miaozong sleeping quarters next to his own, this caused some of his male followers, including a monk named Wanan, to protest. Dahui responds to Wanan’s criticism by pointing out that Miaozong has “outstanding merits” best experienced in a Dharma interview. Wanan thus reluctantly agrees to take the role of student in an interview with Miaozong: When Wanan entered he saw Miaozong lying naked on her back on the bed. He pointed at her genitals, saying, “What is this place?” Miaozong replied, “All the Buddhas of the three worlds, the six patriarchs, and all the great monks everywhere come out of this place.” Wanan said, “And may I enter?” Miaozong replied, “Horses may cross, asses may not.” Wanan was unable to reply. Miaozong declared: “I have met you, Senior Monk. The interview is over.” She turned her back to him. Wanan left, ashamed. Later Dahui said to him, “The old dragon has some wisdom, doesn’t she?” (Caplow and Moon 2013, p. 107). The dialogue above constitutes a remarkable example of the most famous genre of Zen literature, encounter dialogue.2 Better known under their form as koan, these typically short dialogues portray verbal and physical confrontations between legendary Zen Buddhist masters and students, often concluding with one participant proving his superior spiritual prowess over the other, a victory sometimes accompanied by sudden spiritual insight. I called the dialogue featuring Miaozong remarkable because, as Levering’s comment already implies, women rarely appear in encounter dialogues, let alone a proud laywoman who uses the marks of her sexuality to act as a fully-fledged Zen master. Despite the unorthodoxy of this dialogue, Miaozong’s humiliation of Wanan seems to participate in the verbal and physical conflict that haunts many encounter dialogues, where the goal of awakening apparently justifies the usage of any means necessary, from verbally castigating the other party to cutting off their fingers, hands and heads. Such a reading, which one often finds in the commentarial tradition, can be profoundly alienating to some Zen practitioners. However, obvious as it may seem, it is not necessary to interpret this encounter dialogue as portraying conflict. In The Hidden Lamp, a modern collection of koan featuring commentaries by accomplished female practitioners, Hoka Chris Fortin describes her performance of this piece during a women-only retreat: We performed a skit of this koan [“Miaozong’s Dharma Interview”] on the opening evening [of the retreat], and I volunteered to be Miaozong. I wore a flesh-colored full-body stocking, and I was deeply moved and even jolted by the experience of entering into Miaozong’s skin and enacting her fearless and compassionate activity. Here was direct body-to-body, heart-to-heart transmission, across time and space, from a full-blooded woman who had no shame about her body, and who was a deeply realized practitioner, to me, now, a woman practitioner more than a thousand years later. Zen teachings have been traditionally conveyed through a predominantly male lineage, a lineage that I have entered and that I honor. But prior to entering Miaozong’s skin, I had 2 The English is John McRae’s translation of the Chinese jiyuan wenda (_ãOT), a term that was first used in Yanagida Seizan’s Japanese-language analyses of Chinese Zen literature. As McRae clarifies, the word jiyuan denotes “the teacher’s activity of responding to the needs (yuan, ‘conditions’) of the student [ ... ] or more simply the perfect meeting of teacher and student” (McRae 1992, pp. 340–41). Religions 2018, 9, 125 3 of 10 never before been consciously aware of how some part of me was subtly and perpetually changing from a woman’s body into a man’s body in order to fully engage with the teachings. As I lay on my back on the floor, my knees apart, calling out, “All beings everywhere come out of this place!” I became aware that this womb that bled rich red blood every month in my youth, and that had given birth to a son, was timeless, the womb of every woman. Miaozong’s unbounded confidence in the pure Dharma body of practice, and her embodied faith in the sacredness of a woman’s body, resonated through me like a dragon’s roar (Caplow and Moon 2013, p. 108). “Deeply moved and even jolted,” Fortin is transported to the past and feels a bodily connection to Miaozong, and beyond that, to every woman who has ever existed. For Fortin, “entering Miaozong’s skin” is clearly more than theater, as it leads to an awakening profoundly tied to her own female body. This awakening not only affords Fortin a vision of the past, but also allows her to interpret Miaozong’s actions as those of a “compassionate” teacher. At the same time, she becomes aware that, in her Zen practice, she has unconsciously performed a male version of herself (“some part of me was subtly and perpetually changing from a woman’s body into a man’s body in order to fully engage with the teachings”). Within the Zen tradition, what Fortin experienced could be classified as a type of kensho or satori. But this explanation, useful as it may be to practitioners, gives us little further information about what, exactly, has occurred during Fortin’s performance of Miaozong. In this paper, I will explain Fortin’s performance as “reenactment,” a term that I understand through the work of Rebecca Schneider to mean “re-playing or re-doing a precedent event, artwork, or act” (Schneider 2011, p. 2). I argue that reenactment of encounter dialogues not only summons the past, but also offers new interpretative possibilities, shifting opposition to connection, or from a “grasping” to a “granting” hermeneutic. I then examine this hermeneutic shift from “granting” to “grasping” in a number of other testimonies collected in The Hidden Lamp (2013), a modern collection of koan featuring women. Like “Miaozong’s Dharma Interview,” each koan in The Hidden Lamp is accompanied by commentary from a contemporary female Buddhist practitioner.
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