DalaiG has a webcam

Voila, the world today is full of toys!

Woman trying to look pleasant all the time, just looks goony.*

Woman trying to look like nice grandma, looks fundamentally harmless.  Of course, that could be useful.

How woman actually looks when not trying - like she is thinking.  Oh no!

I feel perpetually guilty for not posting here (make up your mind!) so this morning I was trying to copy in a little sign I made for myself in a text box - words of teacher Yvonne Rand. But I can't get it to copy and it doesn't matter, anyway. So here is the text:

Why be unhappy
about something you can change?
Why be unhappy
about something you can’t change?

Now, why be unhappy?  

I don't set out to be unhappy.  It's just that this morning I feel this certain hmm . . . I don't know. Actually. I can't say anything's wrong.  I just have no goals, no drive.  And don't feel like doing what I think I should do.  Hmmm, that's different.  I'm not, like, amused or delighted, dopamine flowing, whatever we mean by "happy."  My senses are not being occupied by something like Grand Budapest Hotel, thank God (they were yesterday - I was too bored to walk out).  I'm just - oh, here.  Kind of interesting.  Of course I hurt somewhere, but that's life at 71 2/3 years old.

Anyway, hello everyone.  Do me two favors today:

1.  Don't smile when you don't mean it.

2.  Don't ever tell me to smile.  (Or your daughter, either.)  Hey, if you don't like someone's mood, go away.

~~~

* I know I should edit those washed-out photos, but they don't pay me enough.
update:  I have no drive, no goals today either, but that's fine with me.  Maybe that's the secret.

Just a (female) practitioner

It stuck in my craw, as my grandmother would have put it, something written a while back by a Zen Teacher who blogs. Distinguishing between authenticated Teachers and the rest of us, he points out that most in the buddha-blogosphere are "just practitioners" who don't make any claims to be otherwise. It is an innocent statement, a generalization based on observation, and I can't disagree with it. But my craw was taking this little modifier, "just" and it wouldn't go down, the way sometimes your throat is dry and a pill gets stuck there.

Well then, I'm a woman. Just a woman, it's been said. I know about this thing of being automatically pigeonholed. I am extraordinarily sensitive to it, as if my whole body had been sanded by sexism.

Because I was an aging woman with health issues when I came to Buddhism 12 years ago, and caregiver to a husband with health issues, and not wealthy, I've had relatively few opportunities to study with teachers. But at last I was able to form a formal relationship with one after years of attending his nearby retreats and doing koan work with him. The same year, this master's sizable international sangha split apart on his refusal to affirm a female student whom his dharma heir had affirmed, who had passed an extensive body of koan work and had originally worked with the Master. My mail told me it had been a dramatic mess.

What is enlightenment for, I wondered, if a man cannot negotiate a peaceful resolution of differences with his heir? But I didn't resign as a student over that. I resigned a year later after he sent me a mean, impatient e-mail. God, I'm too sick. I have no space for that in my life. And I wondered, what the hell is enlightenment about if our authenticated masters are not examples of compassion and harmony in their own lives?

There are relatively few female Zen Masters (the very term is an oxymoron, for "master" was originally a male noun). There is no way to ensure anything like fairness as women work with male Teachers, or female Teachers for that matter. Our sexism - all of us - is so underground it is even harder to detect in ourselves than our racism. We are aware of horrific violence done to women in other countries - most recently in Honduras - but not aware of what is one to us when we are seen as "just" women. Or worse, "just girls."

Another (male) Teacher told me it is considered a bad sign in Zen to want to be a Teacher. Really? Okay. It is something one is supposed to simply rise to, one pops up without any desire to attain. There is no entry exam, that's for sure, no way to formally undertake a known curriculum and pass through hoops and ultimately earn the designation. I do see what a slippery business that could be, I can imagine that diligent merciless people could make it to the finish line the same way they make it through PhD programs.

But the current situation is also quite slippery. It leaves all of us - but especially women - liable to the fits and prejudices of an authenticated Teacher. I have observed that very few women even see sexism when it walks all over us. It is utterly built into our culture - that's why we call it "a patriarchy," and it is built into the masculine heirarchys and traditions of Zen. And so once again, as I have year after year, I find myself reconsidering where I belong, who I can practice with.

Hair!

(style by Damien Carney)

As I sat watching the news tonight and inveighing against the too-old-to-be-so-silly woman with hair styled to fall over one eye, I was suddenly inspired. Yes, as I said, "You don't see Morley Safer wearing his hair like that!" I realized the profound truth of it. There is a vast divide between the sexes, especially in the precincts of power. It is marked by, well, a lot of things, but basically, men look serious and women -- have this hair.

We all saw this week, change is possible, but it has to come from the bottom up. What I propose is simple, a campaign every American can join in and be counted. Gentlemen, grow your forelocks so they fall into or completely over one eye. If you like, you can emulate Sarah's do on her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Every time she blinked, the carefully arranged strands of bangs brushing her eyelashes blinked along with her. It would have driven a lesser woman nuts. That's all we ask of you. If a vice-presidential candidate can do it in front of a million people, you can do it too.

You say everyone would think you looked silly. That's interesting.

As for the women, I'm not asking you to shave your heads; that's a lot of trouble, and winter is coming, besides. I'm not suggesting you stop dunking your scalp in dyes whose long-term impact on the nearbye brain has not been tested with giant longitudinal studies. Just cut your bangs so they don't fall in your eyes.

I know, it's a daunting prospect, but look at it this way -- I gave the men the hard assignment.

THE WOMEN'S FAULT!!!

Checking out some of the Blogissatva 2007 Awards, I became more and more hopeful of finding a woman among them. So it was that on "Progressive Buddhism" (Best new blog 2007) I clicked on a long, post titled "Women, Buddhism and the Internet" by Tom Armstrong.

He comments accurately, "Both the oceanic blogosphere . . . and Buddhist webspaces, generally, are in overwhelming proportion managed, written and visited by males." With reference to a Pew report, he explains that this way and that -- you can read it. He includes an interesting paragraph on great women buddhobloggers who have quit (and by the way, the last post on this site is dated July 7), and regrets the loss.

Then he lost me by saying "In one sense it seems that the problem is clearly THE WOMEN'S FAULT!!!" I don't know what I like best, the caps or the three exclamation points. Or maybe the adjectives in the next paragraph: "Similarly, some snarling complaints that meatspace sanghas are overrun my [sic] old white men are specious." So often, language betrays us.

No, what I liked most of all was not the above, but the memory it brought forth. Just a few years ago my father-in-law sat at my dining room table and told us a very long, detailed, carefully crafted story of a long-ago effort in his small town to give opportunity to "the blacks" through the schools. It ended with the statement, delivered in a sort of holy hush: "And you know---they wouldn't take the opportunity." The rising voice explained, "They had every chance." And on it went. Being wise in the ways of racists, I just cleared the table.

I hang around with other educated women, and I notice it is true that they aren't blogging or reading this kind of thing. Their Buddhist activity is not about talking, but about bringing homemade soup or sunflowers when you're sick, about thank-you cards and watching each other's cat. Bodhissatva work.

They have all had to listen to plenty of long, windy male explanations of everything in their life, and some still do, from fathers and husbands and bosses. In particular, these women would not like to be told that the significant wage gap and the heavy glass ceiling that closes off top jobs is All Our Fault. My friends are responsible and intelligent, and would love to earn as much as men do, especially the women who have ended up raising and supporting their children, and sometimes their grandchildren, alone.

They don't like to debate and discuss, either, and would probably consider arguing with this guy useless, like some other male amusements, such as war.