After Zen Buddhism came to the West, men and women practiced side by side in the same monasteries and sat in the same zendo. The transmission from teacher to student continued. Buddhist services, rituals, and ceremonies were held, but it increasingly became troubling that only male ancestors and patriarchs were mentioned. Additionally, all the stories, koans, and texts were about male practitioners, male Zen masters, and monks. Where were the women? In the last decades of the twentieth century, there has gradually been more attention to the female ancestors of Zen. Texts were translated and studied, and research into female Dharma successors was initiated and conducted. Step by step, it became known that there are also female Zen ancestors. Their names came to light, and gradually more was learned about their lives and the conditions in which they practiced.
Still, it took some time before there was official recognition of the female ancestors. In 2007, for the first time in the U.S., an official document was used during a Zen ceremony that included the names of female ancestors. The specific impetus for creating this document was the preparation for a jukai ceremony, the receiving of the Mahayana precepts, within the Salt Spring Zen Circle in British Columbia. Rowan Percy, one of the people who would receive jukai discussed with her teacher, Eihei Peter Levitt Sensei, that she missed the names of female practitioners in the documents, which listed more than eighty generations of patriarchs since the Buddha. This led to the creation of a document that included the names of women, starting with Kanzeon and Prajnaparamita, and extending to mythical female ancestors, then moving on to Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and North American matriarchs. Rowan was the first to receive this document during her jukai.
The document was handed over to the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA) in the U.S, and a committee of North American Zen teachers was formed to do further investigation. In October 2010, the document was unanimously approved by the SZBA. The design of the circle in which all the names of the female ancestors were included, was designed by Barbara Cooper.
In the middle of the red circle, there are two lines on the left and right. The names of the Zen teacher who gives the ordination and the student who receives it can be written on these lines. This is in line with the patriarchal document to which both names are also added.
The names of the Western matriarchs in the circle often vary slightly, tailored to the female ancestors of the relevant sangha.
- Chanting names once forgotten – Lion’s Roar
- Female Ancestors of Buddhism – TheTyee
- Women’s Lineage Papers – Peter Levitt
- Roused from a dream – Tricycle