[Marsha]
> 'A New Zen for Women' by Perle Besserman. This book
> was not the
> first and only source, but this book deals with the
> sexism explicitly.
Marsha, here is an interesting link about Zen,
Women, and Buddhism as follows:
http://www.geocities.com/zennun12_8/index.html
I'm reading a link within this link. It is "9.
Mugai Nyodai: Japan's First Female Zen Master". The
first quote at this main link in which I give above
states, "Many women must have completed their studies
and some must have started temples, but we know very
little about the history of women in the Dharma
because the translators and historians were mostly
men."
By the way, did you ever hear about the African
elephants that were killing rhinoceroses' and other
animals, randomly just for the kill seemingly. It's a
true story. Biologists were baffled by the elephants
killing these other animals seemingly suddenly without
any apparent reason. The biologists, didn't know how
the animals were dying at first, then they discovered
these young male elephants were doing the killing.
The biologists and other practitioners study this
event tested these young males and discovered
unusually high testosterone rates. These people also
discovered that no adult male elephants lived in this
large area. I believe why this happened was due to
the periodic culling that occurs in this part of
Africa due to the high numbers of elephants and their
shrinking habit. Those doing the culling (killing)
did not pay much attention to which elephants they
killed off. It seems that the adult males in this
area where killed off without any foresight into what
might happen. The people on this project experimented
by gathering adult male elephants in other regions and
brought them to this region where adult males were
absent. The much bigger adult males soon showed their
strength and this had a calming effect on the young
males. Their testosterone levels dropped, and these
young males stopped killing off the other animals.
I see this elephant event crossing over into the
human population in the U.S. For instance, It is
readily known that amongst black people in the U.S.
the fathers are not around that much at all. On Meet
the Press in October 14, 2007 Bill Cosby [with
another guest that is a doctor (what kind of doctor
I'm not sure)] was on the show and a very interesting
dialogue occurred. The statistic that Russert quotes
from Cosby's book in the first comment, I pasted
below, from Russert is very telling of the connection
I'm pointing out. I'm sure it can't be all
testosterone, but biology (as Pirsig points out) is
where some of these social degeneracies are coming
from. It also mentions 'bums', in which they call
homeless children. Here is some of the transcript
found at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21293963/
"MR. RUSSERT: Let me to right to the book. Your very
first chapter, headline, Whats Going On With Black
Men? And this is what you write: For the last
generation or two, as our communities dissolved and
our parenting skills broke down, no one has suffered
more than our young black men. There is one statistic
that captures the bleakness. In 1950, five out of
every six black children were born into two-parent
home. Today, that number is less than two out of
six. In poor communities, that number is lower
still. There are whole blocks with scarcely a married
couple, whole blocks without responsible males to
watch out for wayward boys, whole neighborhoods in
which little girls and boys come of age without seeing
up close a committed partnership and perhaps never
having attended a wedding.
Bill Cosby, why is that so important?
MR. COSBY: Because children need the guidance.
Because the other parent needs help as well. Because
if a home is set with one parent, and then to otheran
aunt, a caregiverwere in big trouble. But these
families that we speak of are also included with
homeless children, the number of homeless children we
have.
DR. POUSSAINT: Homeless children and homeless
fathers, that one-third of homeless people are black,
black men. But I think, you know, right now that
figure cited is 70 percent of black babies are born to
single mothers in the United States each year, and a
lot of them are living in poverty because of that.
And the boys and the girls dont have fathers, and
every study indicates that the involvement of fathers
with their family, and particularly with their
children, is very important to their good and healthy
development. But thats not happening. And many of
these fathers dont even know what to do as a father
because many of them grew up in homes that were
fatherless. So whats the model for a, a two-parent
home or for a family? Theymany of them dont have
any.
MR. COSBY: Or what is the model for corrective
behavior? If you have this generational, fatherless
situation, unwed father or whatever, but the male is
not there, then it, it registers on another person,
on, on the child as abandonment."
I'm also thinking about "abandonment". This goes
along with what you, Marsha, mentioned in another post
about how you dropped out society in a not so sudden,
shocking way. You had the opportunity to do so in a
more gradual way with books, such as Pirsig's, that
helped you realize your disillusionment was supported
by these people that wrote these books for they said,
"It is okay.". I know I was paraphrasing, but I
believe you mentioned something to this affect. So,
when people abandon, not only society, but static
intellectual patterns for a more dynamic experience
due to the suffocation of certain static patterns, an
abandonment occurs I would say. I don't think
abandonment is strictly an event of, for instance,
these fathers, but it is also an event that children
may elect to perform in what some think as normal
teenage rebellious years. I think Pirsig would think
differently. I do know Joseph Campbell has a lot to
say about the 'rites of passage'.
patches of white,
SA
woods,
SA
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