Zen Women by Schireson Grace

Author:Schireson, Grace. [Levering, Grace Schireson Foreword by Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2010-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Ryonen’s deepening awareness taught her that she could live her life without her beauty but not without meaning. She does not condemn the system that excluded her. She does not blame others for her difficulties. She does not protest the unfairness of the Zen establishment. Instead she exposes the inquiry beneath her motivation to practice Zen. The question behind the act of scarring her face is revealed in the last line of the poem: “But I don’t know who I am amidst the change.”

When Ryonen showed her disfigured face to Zen Abbot Hakuo he was shocked, but he immediately allowed her to enter the all-male temple, Daikyu-an. She soon became one of his leading students. Her act of letting go of worldly identity is among the few records of her life. Much of her published work, including the poems she wrote after her Zen training, has been lost. Piecing together her story we find a few remaining expressions of her awakening.

Initially, Ryonen leaned toward rejection of the phenomenal world.

In this living world

the body I give up and burn

would be wretched

if I thought of myself as

anything but firewood.166

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.