Apologies in advance.
I've studied all I can find of nun life in China and Japan and I think all along, at least in China, there's been a place for those who are active and self-supporting in cloistered and/or family settings, but without having it required of them that they meet ableist standards rooted in a liturgy and physicality of ritual that reflects court ritual from Imperial China. Historically, no one with so much as a limp could serve in the Emperor's bureaucracy, which is reputedly how we got the self-exile of Han Shan, who was "perfect" until he was thrown from his horse.
Several years ago, Rev. Gesshin Greenwood had a blog post (no longer extant) featuring a decision tree depicting the Soto life path. It humorously but inexorably led from hearing about Zen to becoming a layperson in a rakusu, to novice, to full priest, to teacher, to abbott. I thought, here is a recipe for "too many cooks."
Of nuns in ancient China, Dr. Karen Carr says: "Inside the monastery, women cleaned and cooked, but they also sang prayer chants and played musical instruments like gongs and bells. Many Buddhist nuns spent most of their day spinning, weaving, or working in the fields, just like other women of their time." Elsewhere I have read that
many indeed ran shops or stayed home to help their elderly parents, showing up at the temple only on special occasions.
That's how I envision my life: time divided between cooking and cleaning, homestead maintenance, planting and maintaining trees, and raising and preserving food. And showing up at zazenkai when I can.
I do feel called to exemplify Buddha in my "sitting" -- such as it is -- and in my "doing" -- such as it is -- yet he recommended some separation, a home leaving, for at least some of his volunteer examplars. I'm all for it. But ultimately this led to the rigorous home-leaving of Japan's teaching monasteries, with some practices bordering (to my eye) on the abusive sadhu practices tried, and then repudiated, by Buddha himself (the Middle Way).
Did we all skip ahead from emptiness to form and forget how even the form and formlessness of a blade of grass preaches all dharma endlessly?
This has tangled up me and others in the West as we have no, or very few, temple systems and parishioners to subsist on, so we hang out at home and cosplay with bells, candles and robes intermittently and refer to ourselves as "priests." I have heard of some in Japan who have read or heard of all this and that their response was akin to a double take and "what??" Could the SZBA be simply trying to add some spine-stiffening to our Zen culture so as to stand up to scrutiny from the Soto-shu as to our legitimacy?
To which I'm tempted to respond, why bother?
I aspired to the nun life but felt that requiring of nuns that they be also priests expected to serve at the altar and leading chants struck me as likely to lead to undue stress.
My life does seem to differ in some way/ways from that of most of the laypeople around me. I've dedicated a considerable portion of it to the very altar work and etc. that I "cannot" by SZBA standards do.
Personally I'm a lot like Chudapanthaka, unable to hold the chants and dance steps in my head, along with inability to hear and coordinate with what the other officiants are doing, or often unable to sit up even in a chair for long enough to make it through a sit, and needing to pee and poo suddenly and irregularly during longer events. Also I'm prone to random seizures. So, as the difficulties mounted, I considered telling my brick-and-mortar sangha, before Covid, that I'd probably soon be hanging up my robe.
And what of those whose condition prevents
any physical form of way-entering? We tell them they are not qualified, like Han Shan?
Zoom has made continued participation possible in my case. Yay Zoom and its like.
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"When Ma-tsu certified P’ang’s awakening, he asked him if he would put on the black robe or continue to wear white."
Maybe our cultural setting requires a third option: some kind of gray. "Home-leaving" as we have modified it but no expectation of a curriculum that must end in failure if we do not make full priest, let alone abbott. Chop wood, carry water, chant metta, or whatever one can do between the extremes of book Zen and waterfall-meditation Zen. Just another monk, just another nun.
Continuing to chop wood and carry water,
gassho,
ds sat and lah