VOICES OF THE FEMININE, WITHIN AND AROUND US
Winter Study Series with Sarah Bender
Saturdays beginning January 8, 10-noon
on the SMS Zoom
January 8, 15, 22, 29 and Feb. 5, 12
A series of gatherings exploring expressions of female perspectives both within and outside our lineage, and the power they bring to our practice of the Way. Readings, conversation and koan meditation will be incorporated in our exploration.
To join the email list for this series, please email Sarah Bender at sembender@gmail.com
A NOTE FROM SARAH
Dear Friends,
It seems the more I spend time with the topic of this winter’s study series, the more I notice it could be much longer than our 6 sessions. There is so much! So it’s good to dig in and make a beginning.
We’ll be centering each session around a koan or a story, or both, and in a developmental sense that’s built into I Ching, the book of Change. The hexagrams are organized by decades of a human life.
And throughout, we’ll bring in these themes:
Our own lives, questions and dreams, through the decades of our experience
Koan expressions of what the vastness engenders—from infants, to children, to young adults, to fully mature adults, to old people
Yin and yang, moment by moment and through the phases of our lives, the phases of our awakening
The history of our tradition, including both the powerful roles of women and the suppression of women’s voices—and of their very presence as wayfarers.
The stories and writings of remarkable women, from the first Buddhist women to the present, and ways women have formed communities for shared practice
Myth and archetype, the dream stories throughout time and cultures that take up these questions
I believe it’s more than time for us to make space for this exploration in our communal life as women, men and nonbinary people walking the Way together.
I see this series as a place to begin.
There are many books touching on these topics. I’ll start us a list, and invite you to add your recommendations. We won’t be working with any one text, but will read selections.
For this first session, we’ll bring in a 2012 interview with the painter, gardener and activist Mayumi Oda, from which the image above is drawn. Here’s what she says about the image:
I just finished painting a six-panel screen of mostly women marching towards Amaterasu the Sun Goddess — I painted about forty women, with a few men. They are all practitioners of my Goddess Academy, marching from the life they lived, to a more nature-based life, symbolized by Amaterasu — marching from an oil-based economy towards a solar-based economy.
Here’s the link to the interview:
https://www.kyotojournal.org/online-special/mayumi-oda-on-energy-of-change-feminization-and-new-birth-of-japan/
So, here we are not starting with the first decade, but with the voice of an elder in our tradition, one whose art and activism have inspired so many of us in the course of our lives and Zen practice.
Everyone is welcome to attend these sessions, and it’s okay if you can’t come to all.
Suggested donation is $10 per session, but no registration or donation is required. Just do remember to let me know if you want to be on the email list.
sembender@gmail.com