Can a Woman Get Enlightened?

(Ici traduction en français par Google)

 

Barbara Rhodes, student of Zen Master Seung Sahn, and the first female lineage holder in Kwan-Um School of Zen, gives a surprising answer.

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You've never expressed much discomfort as a woman in your role, although you trained in a lineage that has been traditionnally very patriarchal.

I tend to fill whatever role I think is needed. I haven't let anything get in the way of my being a mother, or a nurse, a good friend to someone'or a teacher.

You've spoken about your first trip to Korea with your husband. Even though he was the less experienced teacher, you say they treated him with more deference and that you responded by working with your own ego. Can you talk about that?

Not just working with my own ego, working with everybody's ego. When you see it that way, there's no room for personal anger. Look at how human beings relate to one another. There are lots of problems. I've been able to see that gender bias is not personal. I can only help women by being a strong woman and believing in myself. So I don't get upset; I just see that there's an imbalance in the way people treat one another.

In a difficult situation, when do you say, "All right, this is practice," and when do you say, "This is unacceptable"?

It depends on the situation. We have to understand that people have varying needs and find support in different groups, as I do. But I may not need to speak about myself as a woman; I don't even recognize myself as a woman. Still, it does hurt when someone says you can't do something because you're a woman. On a trip to Mexico recently, I approached a man about renting a sailboat. It was quite windy, and he looked at me and said, "You can't, it's too rough out there for a woman." I got pissed. I gave him my American feminist look; I stuck my chest out and said, "I'm a woman and I can do it!" He let me have the boat. I was a feminist in that moment; it made sense.

My understanding is that your teacher once told you that women can't get enlightened. Can you tell me about your response to that?

Well, of course it pushed all of my buttons. A woman can't get enlightened! I was furious. But what he was pointing to was my identification with gender. A woman doesn't become enlightened, just as a man doesn't become enlightened ' a human being becomes enlightened, that's all. That was a great exchange.

Did your teacher, Seung Sahn, make much of a fuss about gender?

We were all treated the same. He's Korean. He's autocratic. He doesn't pretend he isn't. He doesn't have us vote on things, for example. He always says, "Someday you'll be making decisions, and then you can do it any way you like. This is the way I do it." You can't opt out of society, and so society must be democratic; but you can opt out of a sangha, or find another teacher if you don't like his or her style. It's all voluntary.

How do you view your teacher's style now?

A lot of it is, I think, very skillful, and we have accomplished many things. But his style is one way. I'm not so autocratic. This doesn't represent a schism; it represents a difference in style. Now that I'm older, I think I'd give him a harder time if I lived in the same temple again. I was much younger then, and so it was fine, but it wouldn't be now! [laughs]

How do you account for the difference in style? Is it a cultural difference?

Perhaps. And also I think it has to do with our personalities. I find that when I teach, I'm more willing to share my own problems and struggles 'these become teaching tools. Zen Master Seung Sahn doesn't think that kind of openness is skillful. But he's heard me speak, and he hears good things about me from the students, so he's happy. He's just more private. Some Americans are that way, too. . . .

You say you need to believe in yourself, and that you need to be yourself. What does this mean, especially when to such a great extent 'as a mother, as a nurse, as a teacher' your life is so devoted to the needs of others?

Zen Master Seung Sahn didn't want us to be devotees; he wanted us to believe in ourselves and be strong. As autocratic as he was, he was very accepting about how we led our lives, what our responsibilities were. In Zen, to believe in yourself, to find out who you are, is no different from discovering that there is no self. And when you're really clear, it becomes obvious that the only thing to do is to help another. When you do something, just do it.

It's been the same with my career. I believed in myself. I always wanted to be a nurse. And it turned out I was right, this made sense. There are a million things to do as a nurse, and I enjoy it. When all my friends went to college, I went to a three-year training school. I didn't even think about it. I was popular, I had good grades, I had the same background as my friends. But I didn't think that it was "less than" to go into nursing. I just listened to myself. I went toward that goal. It was a challenging path, but it never veered. In fact, I've never understood it when people don't know what they want to do. I feel that if someone really pays attention, they'll tap into their skills, their purpose, and their ability to give. I know that if you ask, "What am I?" an answer will appear.