What is Buddhism ?


Buddhism cannot be categorised. No label suits it.
Buddhism is not a religion, at least not in sense that we generally use the word. In fact, it does not at all presuppose belief in the existence of one or several gods, and in a more general way, categorically rejects the idea that there is anything to believe in without being able to submit it to analysis through reasoning.
Buddhism is not a philosophy either, because it is not limited to an intellectual or conceptual approach. It teaches, in fact, that to understand is not enough. One must also experience and eventually "realise". That is the spiritual dimension of Buddhism.
Buddhism is not a cultural, political or social phenomenon either.
Culture, of which one could say that art in all its facets is the superior expression, is rooted in worldliness, whereas Buddhism goes beyond the worldly. Within culture, art is an end in itself; within the framework of Buddhism it is a means. Art is minor when compared to wisdom. In other words, Buddhism is timeless and beyond worldliness, whereas culture or art is rooted in a given time and society.
Buddhism is not political, that is, it does not know the limits of frontiers or of groups. It is not based on opposition between people. It does not come "from somewhere". It transcends continents and groups of humans. Nationality, colour, social class and membership of one party or another etc. do not constitute pertinent criteria in its eyes. The process is, on the contrary, to show that fundamentally all people, and more generally all living beings, share the same fundamental nature, the same emotions, the same aspirations and the same fears.
It is not a social phenomenon either. Buddhism is an individual quest for perfection. The Buddhist looks for himself. He evolves in the solitude of his own spiritual path. The Buddhist message influences, of course, the attitude or the behaviour of those who study and practice it, but it does not have a social aim. It does not intend to be a pressure group and does not set out rules about the organisation of society.
Lastly, is Buddhism a science? The sciences, in any case those which we describe as pure, are turned towards the exterior world, the diverse phenomena that we perceive. Buddhism is, on the contrary, turned towards "the interior"; that is to day, it is attentive to the mind. That is why it is said sometimes that Buddhism is a "science of the mind". As with all expressions, it has its limits.
I prefer to say that Buddhism is unclassifiable; that it eludes categories and comparisons.

Historically, Buddhism is the teaching of the Buddha Shakyamuni, who lived in India more than two thousand five hundred years ago. With the passing centuries the teachings was transmitted, translated into diverse languages and enriched by numerous commentaries. In this way, Buddhist literature is incomparably extensive.
More profoundly, Buddhism is the thought or thinking of the Buddhas, which is summed up by two great principles: compassion and wisdom. Buddhism is, therefore, a way of thinking. Buddhists are those who aspire to finding this good way of thinking and train in it. Buddhas are those who have succeeded.
One could also say that Buddhism is essentially reflection on happiness and the teaching of the causes of happiness. After having shown how much we deceive ourselves, how much we lose our way because of how we conceive the world and ourselves, Buddhism wakes us up to a new vision. It makes us see things in another way and leads us progressively to the realisation of the true nature of phenomena and of the mind.
This realisation is precisely at the origin of the cessation of all suffering and of all fear. A Buddhist is, above all, a serene person. He has no fear. He is also a good person, open to others. Theses three qualities -wisdom, serenity and goodness - are, moreover, linked one to the other and come one from the other.
Buddhism is, therefore, a voyage towards wisdom, serenity and goodness.

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Women's Liberation
Sharon Salzberg, Barbara Rhodes, Judith Simmer-Brown & Pat O'Hara on what it means to be a woman dharma teacher and how they'd like to see Buddhism in America evolve.

Melvin McLeod (Editor, the Shambhala Sun): To begin with, maybe you could each tell me something about how you became a Buddhist teacher.
Sharon Salzberg (Co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and author): I went to India in 1970 to look for a meditation teacher. It was an incredible time. As Westerners there, we felt like a group of adventurers. We were interested in practical teachings-it wasn't a question of becoming a Buddhist or adopting a dogma, but really bringing something into our lives.
Most of my early teachers were men, but I didn't feel much gender bias. The person who actually told me to teach was my first woman teacher, Dipa Ma. She had led an extraordinary life, with a tremendous amount of suffering and very little control over her life in an ordinary Western sense.
When she told me to teach, what she actually said was, "You really understand suffering; therefore, you should teach." I think that reflected not only what she'd been through in her life, and what I'd been through in my life, but also something within her experience as a woman-an understanding of the depths of suffering and the transformation of suffering into compassion that seemed unique. She was the model for me of how to take the losses, the tragedies and the difficulties of life, and actually use them as enrichment for my understanding of the dharma.
Judith Simmer-Brown (Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Naropa University and senior teacher (acharaya) in Shambhala International): I learned Zen practice from Suzuki Roshi and felt completely in love with the absolute present quality that he had. After his death, I met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and felt the same kind of connection with him. As time went on, Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged me to teach dharma and to step as fully as possible into that role. He always encouraged women teachers.
In those days I never really thought much about women versus men teachers, because there were a number of both in our community. It was when my meditation students began to talk to me about the obstacles that they faced as women that I began to think about it more, and I talked to Trungpa Rinpoche about it. He had incredible sympathy for the situation of women. You got a kind of direct transmission from him that on any ultimate level, the issue of being male or female was not a problem, while obviously in our relative experience this was something that we all had to deal with.
As time went on, I realized I had a lot to figure out about what particular strengths I could bring to situations as a woman, and what support I could provide to both male and female students to sort out this issue of gender. I was helped a great deal in this by Khandro Rinpoche, a woman Tibetan teacher. There is one quote from her that I find very helpful, and consider a kind of slogan or koan for my life as a woman teacher: "If being a woman is an inspiration, use it. If it is an obstacle, try not to be bothered." That helps keep me from being snagged by my sense at times that being a woman is an obstacle, and it also helps me appreciate the qualities as a woman that I can bring to my work as a teacher.
Barbara Rhodes (Vice School Zen Master of the Kwan Um School of Zen): I met the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn in 1972. I didn't feel any obstacle being a woman, as he didn't seem to treat anybody like a woman, particularly. It was more like we were all a bunch of really yang Koreans. If you've met him, he's pretty yang, and there weren't a lot of women around, but I liked him. I really loved his teaching. He just kept stressing: Believe in yourself. Only go straight. Don't know. Ask yourself who are you. It was pretty much an androgynous practice.
At one point I asked him if there were any women Zen masters in Korea, and he said, "Oh no, of course not. Women can't attain enlightenment." He said it with a really straight face and then walked into the kitchen. I followed him in and said, "I've been with you for two years and you've always said just to believe in yourself. How can you say women can't get enlightened?" He just stared at me and pointed his finger and he said, "So you're a woman?" In other words I had grasped man/woman concept. He was saying that you can't attain enlightenment if you hold on to that self identity. I really liked that approach.
He made a few of us dharma teachers when we were pretty young students-we'd only been practicing with him about three years. He didn't distinguish whether we were men or women; he just had us start teaching.
Pat O'Hara (Soto priest and resident teacher of the Village Zendo, New York): I started reading dharma books in the late sixties, but as a single parent I found it extremely difficult to enter into any Buddhist community with a young child. It was a difficult time because I knew that I had a passion for the dharma, but I couldn't find a home that seemed conducive to my idea of mothering.
Finally, when my son was old enough in the early eighties, I began to practice at Zen Mountain Monastery with John Daido Loori Roshi, and right off he started talking about my starting to teach. My attitude was, no, I'm just here to face the wall, thank you, but he was very encouraging.
As an American teacher, he didn't have any issue of men versus women, and whenever the gender was vague in a koan, he encouraged us to switch it to female. So initially I wasn't really aware of the incredible marginalization of women that had occurred in the history of Buddhism, of all the women who had been forgotten and their names left unsaid.
Then when I began to study with Taizan Maezumi Roshi, it was like studying with a woman. It was very peculiar. He was this wonderful feminine energy and we would sit in this darkened dokusan room and cry together [laughs].
Melvin McLeod: The prominence of women in Western Buddhism now is unique in the history of Buddhism. How did it come about?
Pat O'Hara: Well, the whole feminist movement was going on at the same time Buddhism was coming to the West, and there had to be leakage back and forth.
Sharon Salzberg: What I've seen happening in the Theravada tradition is a kind of movement back to the people. So much of what was taught over the last couple of centuries didn't necessarily reflect the actual teachings of the Buddha. As a woman you were told to create merit so maybe in your next life you could be a man and get ordained and become enlightened. As Westerners began practicing, that idea exploded. There was the sense that if liberation is really possible, I want to explore it. I don't want to think about someone else doing it, or doing it in my next life. I want to know how I can actually transform my life now. So the movement toward women teachers is also a reflection of the belief that liberation is real, a real possibility for everyone. For most women teachers I know, there was no self-conscious decision to transform Buddhism. It came from wanting to change our lives, and discovering a tradition that said we really could.
Judith Simmer-Brown: I discovered feminism before I discovered Buddhism and it gave me a sense of confidence and desire for liberation. I very quickly saw that liberation would not come through feminism, but I appreciate what I learned about myself from it. It gave me an enormous yearning to be free from confusion.
Feminism inspired a sense of confidence among so many people in the seventies, and women didn't hold back spiritually. They may have held back in other areas, but in the spiritual movements, women really have sought liberation.
Melvin McLeod: To what extent is the predominance of women teachers attributable to the character of the particular Buddhist teachers who came to the West?
Judith Simmer-Brown: I've studied with quite a few Tibetan teachers and not many of them have shown the kind of encouragement toward women that I experienced from Trungpa Rinpoche. He encouraged women to overcome any sense of shyness and really step into teaching roles.
Barbara Rhodes: I've already described Zen Master Seung Sahn. I don't think he has too many feminine bones in his body. But in Korea, the nuns just love him and most of his students there are women, the ones who practice seriously with him. He has actually empowered women much more than other Zen teachers in Korea. I have to give him credit where credit's due. He's that kind of a person.
Pat o'Hara: Maezumi Roshi came to this country as a young man and just fell in love with the freedom and real thirst for the dharma here. He seemed very open to the new traditions, and part of it was that he empowered a lot of women. It's wonderful.
Melvin McLeod: I'm surprised, because it sounds like overall you haven't experienced a lot of obstacles in becoming teachers.
Judith Simmer-Brown: I think that at times women face more obstacles from other Western students than from the teachers. My women meditation students tell me about the difficulties they've had in many different settings in the Buddhist community. They can find it very difficult to hold their own and have confidence in a variety of situations.
Melvin McLeod: Do women teach the dharma in different ways than men? Are there issues you address in your teaching that are particularly close to your heart because you are a woman?
Sharon Salzberg: I teach so much about loving-kindness, and people often say to me that it's because I'm a woman. I actually like to think not. I like to think it's more a reflection of something very basic in the teachings of the Buddha. Now, was I drawn to teach about love and compassion because I am a woman? Maybe, but look at the Dalai Lama. Compassion is what he embodies and teaches, and what people seem to long for. So I'd say no, it's not about my being a woman.
Barbara Rhodes: I refer a lot in my dharma talks to what I learn from working as a nurse at a hospice, and from being a mother and a daughter. I can't help but draw on my experience of these roles, and I think if someone compliments me as a teacher, it's usually because they appreciate how I draw my hospice stories and my mother stories and my daughter stories into the teaching of Zen.
I lead a lot of meditation retreats and I feel so gratified that men come in for their koan interviews and there doesn't seem to be any thought of whether I'm less than or different; there's just a nice sense of flow back and forth. Sometimes people do say, "I'm glad you're a woman," because maybe I spent a little more time with them, or I said, "Oh you look sad," when one of our male teachers might not have said that. Sometimes I think that's a gift, but sometimes I think one of our male teachers might have given a sharper interview that would have been just as or more helpful.
So there is some difference. I think I have rounder corners than a lot of the male teachers and that can be a blessing sometimes. When my daughter was little, I would pick her up all the time, and I think I pick up my students in a way-not physically, but with that same sense of patience and loving their weaknesses if they're vulnerable, just feeling that and going into it. But of course, fathers have that quality too, and people who don't have children will have those gifts also.
Judith Simmer-Brown: In the Tibetan tradition, the wisdom aspect of the teachings is associated with the feminine, which is depicted in the form of the dakini, while the skillful means aspect of compassion is more masculine. Without joining the masculine and feminine aspects we can't become fully enlightened, and I've reflected a great deal about how this relates to my gender being female.
One thing I'm aware of is how easy it is to get hooked on gender as concept, and yet how easy it is to ignore gender altogether. In my life, I'm trying to identify the ways in which my gender might be helpful to wake things up for myself and others, and at the same time, trying to step over the ways in which my gender might be an obstacle-getting stuck in particular states of hesitation or emotionality or whatever.
For instance, I have been reflecting on how emotion can be an obstacle for women, and yet how it is also the wisdom aspect we have to offer in many situations. I'm interested in how emotions can be empowering for myself and for others-really seeing emotions in an empowered way, without falling into extremes of emotional indulgence. I have been doing a lot of teaching on romantic love and on working with the emotions of intense domestic situations, such as parenting, and in this I think there are things in my temperament and experience as a woman that might be helpful.
Melvin McLeod: What is distinct about the way a woman teacher relates to her female students, and what is different about the way she might relate to her male students?
Pat O'Hara: For me it's more about the type of person who is drawn to a woman teacher. In particular, the kind of man who is drawn to a woman teacher is probably a little different than the kind of man who is drawn to a male teacher. I asked some men students why my teaching appealed to them, and most of them said they wanted something that was open to the masculine, yet without the martial quality of traditional Zen. They liked the softer approach I offer, particularly in terms of body work-meditating in a position of ease as opposed to a position of tension, that kind of thing.
Barbara Rhodes: Women will often find me… I don't know if hard is the right word, but I've stuck with this practice and it's not an easy practice. To stand for this practice is what I try to do as a teacher, so I think they might find me an inspiration, but also too hard.
To generalize, I think women can become overemotional sometimes and men can have a hard time bringing up their emotions. So if there is some overemotionality, maybe I can inspire a woman to move toward the center, to find the strength men often have to overcome emotionality. It's not that one way's better than the other, but I do help women to realize that it doesn't help when you're overemotional. And it's the same thing with men. I encourage them to cry. I know they're right on the verge of tears and I'll kind of bring out the Kleenex box and encourage it, whereas a male teacher might not.
Sharon Salzberg: I think women tend to bring up their life situations and the traumas they've suffered more easily than men. In her very first meeting with me a woman might say, I've had a breast cancer diagnosis, or my son died, or something like that. A man might also have a tremendous source of suffering in his life, but it will be much later before he says, this is weighing on me, or I don't know what I'm going to do, or I feel like such a failure. There's not usually the same degree of vulnerability and openness expressed right away by a man.
Judith Simmer-Brown: It seems to me that initially in relationships with students there might be more sense that my gender or their gender is an issue. But once you get beyond the first couple of conversations it seems pretty irrelevant. I was talking with a woman just the other evening about her new pregnancy, her fear about being a mother and that kind of thing, and obviously there are certain life situations where gender is very relevant. But it seems the really deep issues of meditation practice are not so gender-oriented. To me, it seems important to get beyond gender-related issues to those core issues that we all share as human beings. The issues we're experiencing in our meditation practice are usually much more fundamental than these gender-related issues.
Pat O'Hara: I agree with you so much, Judith. I remember giving a talk about not being heard and not being seen as a woman. After the talk, this man came up to me and said, you know, you're talking about me and my life. That really helped me to see that in dealing with issues of sexism and racism and homophobia and that kind of thing, we're talking about everybody's experience.
Melvin McLeod: As women, what changes would you like to see in the way Buddhism is practiced in the West?
Pat O'Hara: I feel I haven't been paying enough attention to the incredible pain a lot of women feel about the lack of a matriarchal lineage in Buddhism. Women are not often written or spoken about in Buddhism. In our community, we started chanting the names of women throughout Buddhist history, and I saw the faces of the women in the room bathed in tears. Seeing their faces in tears is what woke me up to how important this is to many women.
Now I and other dharma sisters in the Zen tradition have a different attitude towards the texts, the legends and the stories-a little bit more quizzical, a little bit more ironic. You know, how could they all be men? Come on now. This is a constructed quality of all these texts, and we have to know that. It changes the way we talk about things and it changes our attitudes towards forms and services and hierarchy, the whole power relationship. Everything begins to shift a little bit, I think.
Judith Simmer-Brown: I know that women students who find themselves visualizing deities and lineage trees that are all men feel a sense of incredible loneliness and a longing for lineage figures who are female. But also, as the institutions of Western Buddhism get larger and more complex, women are finding it hard to hold their own in a variety of situations. I hear a lot of stories from my students of struggles to be included in the service of visiting teachers and in various teaching situations. These kinds of stories touch me very deeply because it's easy to miss, especially when you're a woman teacher. But it's not necessarily that way for all the women in the community.
There's another thing that needs to be remembered about the phenomenon of women in leadership positions in American Buddhism right now. There's a pattern whenever you have a new religious movement that women are often influential at the beginning, but one or two generations later they're gone. As these movements become institutionalized, the structures become increasingly patriarchal and women are moved out. So we have women Buddhist teachers now, but that may not be true for our children and grandchildren.
Barbara Rhodes: In our tradition a lot of the centers have the same basic type of mural, which is all men. There's the Buddha and all these deities, who are all men with beards and mustaches and swords and shields. I think I'm out of touch with how programmed I've been to accept that. I've been fortunate enough to have a teacher who seems to have really respected me, but it's good to hear what you both just said, because I forget how much this has on some level demoralized me and a lot of other women. I'm just used to it. I need to look at that issue more deeply.
Sharon Salzberg: The motivation that brings so many people to the dharma is looking for a sense of connection. What they find is exclusion rather than inclusion, and that's a source of tremendous suffering and heartache. So it seems very important to reach into the various traditions and bring forth the elements that provide inclusion and connection and welcoming.
Pat O'Hara: I want to say a little bit about hierarchy, because it comes up all the time in my tradition. I see my dharma sisters doing a lot of work around the teacher not always being at the apex of some hierarchy, but having a different role in different situations. People are working in groups to share the dharma, not assuming that only the teacher is going to be able to say the appropriate thing.
I think that's a very important aspect of what women can bring to Buddhism. As outsiders, not part of the hierarchy, we feel that we can criticize it, and then we begin to live that criticism and it changes the way things are done. I think that's an important element also.
Judith Simmer-Brown: Hierarchy is very important in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet there are ways in which hierarchy may not represent the genuine mandala principle of center and fringe. There can be privilege granted in hierarchy that is different from a true sense of spiritual authority.
I think that's an area where there may be changes, but it's hard to know what kind of changes they will be. It's extremely important for the vajrayana practitioners in American Buddhism to honor our teachers, the lineages, and the hierarchical forms that allow us to really understand what spiritual power is. And I would view the democratization of American Buddhism as a problem if we began to make everything the same for the sake of whatever problems we might have with hierarchy. But there are appropriate hierarchies and there are inappropriate hierarchies, and trying to figure that out is really important.
Sharon Salzberg: I agree. I think we need something like a hierarchy of function which doesn't demean or denigrate anyone. The distinction really needs to be made.
Judith Simmer-Brown: Earlier, Pat talked about how difficult it was for her to be member of a Buddhist community as a single parent with a two-year-old. I would love to see a solidly lay Buddhism in America that is much more receptive to the needs of families, that incorporates the whole sense of the domestic life, both for mothers and fathers. We need a Buddhism that is much more accommodating to a lay family model, one in which serious practice is still very much the foundation. Our centers and communities need to work with this in an ongoing way, becoming more creative about it.
Pat O'Hara: That's absolutely on our plate to do. Buddhism is predominently lay in this country and people have families, so for Buddhism to really grow we're going to have to find those forms that include the family. That's happening a little in different centers now, but I believe it will happen more.
Sharon Salzberg: And along with that we have to plant the seeds of a viable monastic community. Particularly for women, that's the container where a sense of lineage and of tradition can be passed on.
Melvin McLeod: Which relates to Judith's warning that women's roles can be diminished as Western Buddhism becomes more established.
Sharon Salzberg: I was thinking about that. I was thinking about the young women I know and how, because of the degree that feminism has seeped into our culture, they're very different than I was at that age, in terms of their sense of confidence in themselves, their right to be included and their sense of self-respect. Reflecting on what Judith said about women's roles diminishing, I was thinking maybe that won't happen-not because of Buddhism and not because of institutions, but because of the actual women involved.
Judith Simmer-Brown: Maybe it won't happen. That would be wonderful.

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What's the Relationship Between Emptiness and Beautiful Nails?
An interview with Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo, the First Female Tulku Reborn in the West
by Andrew Cohen

Introduction
I first heard about Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, the first Western woman to be recognized and enthroned by Tibetan lamas as a tulku (an enlightened teacher who reincarnates in whatever form can most benefit all beings), when I read about her in Vicki Mackenzie's book Reborn in the West four years ago. Touched and inspired by what I had read, I knew that one day I wanted to meet the remarkable woman miraculously discovered by Penor Rinpoche, the current head of the Nyingma sect, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Jetsunma was born to a Jewish mother who was a grocery store cashier. Her stepfather was an Italian truck driver who drank too much. Both parents beat the kids. She was baptized a Catholic and went to a Catholic school. Even though she experienced an inexplicable attraction to Buddha statues, she claims to have known absolutely nothing about Buddhism until her destined meeting with Penor Rinpoche when she was thirty-six. "There was no one who put me in touch with Buddhism," she told Mackenzie. "The only thing that could have connected me, but didn't, was that my mother took me to Coney Island, and a palm reader there told me I was an old Tibetan. That was all. I had no idea about Tibet. Not a clue. When I thought about Tibetans, I thought of smelly old men on rugs!" At seventeen, she ran away from home and went to Florida, where she got married and had a child. She and her family then moved to an isolated farm in North Carolina.

It was there that her spiritual depth began to reveal itself. First she had a series of prophetic dreams in which she was "told" what to do. Eventually she was instructed to begin her meditation practice. "I knew that if I prayed for guidance, I would get to learn how to meditate, as the dream instructed. That was the start of my real spiritual training." Constantly praying for and receiving guidance, she systematically practiced different kinds of contemplation that she would ultimately discover were Tibetan Buddhist in form. Finally, after a relentless questioning of the meaning and significance of human life, she lost all fascination with mundane existence and turned her back on worldly pursuits. Her contemplations continued to deepen and she began to meditate on the absolute nature of reality. "I didn't have the words for it, but I knew it wasn't like God, the old-man-on-the-throne idea. What I was meditating on was a nondual, all-pervasive essence-that is, form and formless, united, indistinguishable from one another. I saw that it was the only validity-that and the compassionate activity that was an expression of it." She continued to meditate intensively for several years, during which time she lived a householder's life. When she was thirty, she had a spiritual experience that made clear to her that her personal life was over, and that she had been born solely to be of benefit to others. "After that," she said, "people started coming to me."

Jetsunma moved with her family to Washington, D.C., in 1981, where a group of new age seekers soon discovered her. In order to support her teaching work, they formed an organization called the "Center for Discovery and New Life." One day, her group was introduced to a Tibetan lama who was selling carpets to raise money for his monastery in southern India. The money was mainly for young monks who needed clothing, books and food. Even though Jetsunma and her students knew nothing about Tibet and little about Buddhism, they decided to raise money for the monastery. They managed to sponsor seventy-five Tibetan children in southern India, and a correspondence followed. A year later they received a letter from the monk who had sold them the carpets, informing them that His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, the abbot of the monastery that they had been helping to support, was making his first-ever teaching trip to the United States, and he wanted to visit Washington to meet and thank the people who had sponsored so many of his young monks. Also apparently, ever since he was a young man, Penor Rinpoche had prayed to meet the reincarnation of Ahkön Lhamo, the Tibetan yogini who with her brother had founded his own lineage, the Palyul sect, back in 1652. He had already met the reincarnation of Ahkön Lhamo's brother, a Tibetan who was teaching in Oregon.

When Jetsunma first saw the five-foot-three-inch Tibetan master, she burst into tears. "Now I'm not the sort of person who usually does this sort of thing, you understand. I'm a hard-headed lady. I'm from Brooklyn, for heaven's sake! But I just could not pull myself together. I cried and cried. I just looked at him and thought, 'That's my heart . . . That's my mind . . . That's everything.'" Penor Rinpoche then went with Jetsunma back to her house where he interviewed all of her students in great depth, probing to find out exactly what she had been teaching them. When Jetsunma herself asked the lama where her teaching was coming from, he said, "In the past you were a great bodhisattva, a person who works throughout all time to liberate sentient beings. You have attained your practice to the degree that in every future lifetime you will not forget it. You will always know it; it will always come back to you. It is in your mind and will not be forgotten." He then proceeded to tell her that she had to buy a center. "You're going to think you can't afford it," he said to her, "but you will find a way. Have faith. It will be all right eventually. . . . Buy the one with the white pillars in the front." After he left, they looked for property and, remarkably, the center they found had six white pillars all along the front. A year later, Jetsunma went to visit Penor Rinpoche at his monastery in southern India, where he officially gave her her new name, Ahkön Lhamo, saying, "I now recognize you as the sister of Kunzang Sherab. Her name was Ahkön Lhamo. In that life she and Kunzang Sherab cofounded the Palyul tradition. I recognize you as her incarnation." He also handed her another certificate, authorizing her to teach. "This is important," he said. "People will say you haven't been studying the dharma, that they have never heard of you. They will not understand. With this paper no one will doubt that you are capable of teaching the dharma."

When she returned to America, she formally assumed her new identity and began to teach Buddhism. Some of her followers found the change disconcerting and left, but most survived the transition. In 1988, Penor Rinpoche returned to Washington and conducted an official enthronement of Jetsunma. It received wide media attention, covered by newspaper reporters and television crews, and was featured in the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post and People magazine.

In 1994 Jetsunma was further recognized by Lama Orgyen Kusum Lingpa as an incarnation of Lhacham Mandarawa, the Indian spiritual consort of Padmasambhava, the tantric master who established the Buddha's teaching in Tibet. While still maintaining her main temple in Poolesville, Maryland, Jetsunma now lives in Sedona, Arizona, where she spent the last year on "semi-retreat." I interviewed her there last April.

I had wanted an excuse to interview Jetsunma for a long time now, and finally I had one: What could be more compelling than to ask an "American dakini" about the relationship between gender and enlightenment? After asking her organization innumerable times to send us a video of Jetsunma teaching, we began to wonder why it was that her always friendly students never seemed to get around to actually putting it in the mail! In the meantime, a little research revealed that Jetsunma seems to be quite a controversial figure in Western Buddhist circles. First, a highly respected Buddhist journalist told us that the American Buddhist establishment, which is largely comprised of well-educated, upper-middle-class white people, considers Jetsunma to be "white trash" because of her blue-collar roots! This rather bizarre comment really piqued our curiosity. Then we found a Buddhist scholar who called her "a new age bimbo cashing in on a lucrative trend." Amidst the swirl of our ever growing confusion, her video finally arrived. Upon watching it, it soon became clear that Jetsunma was an unusually passionate and inspired teacher who seemed to be appealing to the listeners' very soul. I watched her video several times, trying to make sense out of why it was that she had attracted so much criticism. And yet, no matter how much I tried to see her as the opportunistic prima donna she was accused of being, time and again all I could see was bodhicitta, a deep and powerful compassion that was literally heart-wrenching. Still, as I traveled to Sedona, I couldn't help but be troubled by the echo of her critics' protestations.

The woman I met there was disarmingly free from pretense. Not only that, she was radiant, clear, simple and unwavering in her strong vulnerability. Ironically, for a woman who has been condemned for her vanity because of her unapologetic adherence to maintaining her feminine appearance-she is known for the great care she gives to her hair and nails-what she emanates powerfully transcends any notion of gender. At the end of the interview, when I asked her point-blank about her critics' accusations, she never lost her composure and seemed genuinely surprised that there was so much controversy, while at the same time making it clear that the only thing she cared about was her students' liberation. Indeed, she said, "I feel that knowing that I would die for them, knowing that I care for them to the nth degree, empowers me to do whatever is necessary, and that's the basis of the agreement I have with my students."

I don't know all the facts of Jetsunma's story, but it is intriguing that even though world-famous, highly revered, master lamas of the modern era have been accused of far greater detours from the straight-and-narrow than this Jewish-Italian bodhisattva, many in the Buddhist community seem much less forgiving of her. Is it because she is a woman? This is one of the questions I wanted to ask her. And in the following interview, I did my best to give this American dakini a hard time, for I really did want to know the answers to some very tough questions. She didn't disappoint me.

Andrew Cohen: In general, women don't speak with the kind of confidence and authority about enlightenment and the spiritual path that you do. In our last issue, on self-mastery, we spoke with developmental psychologist Beverly Slade about how, in our culture, women often shy away from publicly demonstrating their own competence and authority. She said, "They find that people are threatened by their ability and may want to avoid them. Given women's position in the culture at large, they probably regularly face people who are trying to undermine them, because people are threatened by competent women." What has your experience been? Do you find that because you're a woman who has been recognized as a great teacher and who also speaks with unusual confidence and authority, people are threatened because of that?

Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo: My experience with the gender question has been pretty interesting. When I was first recognized, upon performing the actual crowning ceremony, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche said, "Many Westerners have been wondering: 'Where are the women in Tibetan Buddhism?' Now I've answered their questions." And at that time he said something that was very interesting and that helped to explain why we don't see women conventionally being recognized as heads of monasteries. In Tibet, he said, normally the dakinis [female enlightened beings] would often stay in retreat or they would have a small, select group of students and would tend to be isolated off by themselves, whereas the men would stay and run the monasteries. So the women's lineages were not followed as well as the men's. And many of these women didn't even write or read; they had oral traditions. So they weren't literate in that sense, but they were considered very high tantric masters.

Now when I was recognized and enthroned, my experience was that the traditional monks had a kind of squeamishness or almost discomfort around me. When I went to the monastery in India, His Holiness did an amazing, wonderful offering ceremony. He introduced me to all of the monks and said, "This is the cofounder of our lineage. She's come back." And all the monks then came up and offered prayer scarves. And it was interesting; some of the monks had this amazing surrender because here was this dakini and that was that. But the other monks actually felt a little embarrassed, not accustomed to being around women, not sure how to act. Many of them stumbled over their words and almost walked up backwards so that you wouldn't know whether they were coming or going. And having asked other teachers about it, I found out it's just fairly rare for a woman to be held up in that way.

But in terms of how Americans and other Westerners acted-actually, His Holiness once said to me: "Because I have recognized you and I have the right and the responsibility to do so, there will never be any conflict with any Tibetan teacher or practitioner who knows who I am. But," he said, "actually, your own kind, the Westerners, will probably crucify you."

AC: Has that been your experience?

JAL: I've had both.

AC: Is it because you're a woman?

JAL: I think so. When I was first discovered, I was a very Western woman, as I still am now. I used to paint my nails, I had makeup on-which I don't do anymore-I had all these unusual characteristics that one doesn't associate with a teacher. And so there was a lot of criticism questioning whether I was spiritual or worldly. And at first I tried to please everyone. I tried to ascertain what the expectations were for me. I was kind of naïve in that way, just wondering what it was that people wanted in a spiritual teacher. And I discovered that people had problems with women who were "womanly," who were very feminine in their presentation. They also had problems with the fact that I wasn't a nun, that I was married.

AC: But Nyingma [the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism] lamas have often been married. It's not against the rules.

JAL: Male Nyingma lamas. It's easier to think of married male lamas than it is to think of married female lamas, for some reason.

AC: And haven't many great dakinis been described as being ravishingly beautiful and also sexually attractive?

JAL: Tara [a revered Tibetan deity] herself is seen with beautiful adornment. And she has taken a vow that said, "When I appear in the world, I will appear in this way so that beings can understand that all can approach the dharma. And I will always appear as a woman." So there's definitely precedent for that, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, it's another matter.

AC: It seems, from what I've read, that from the very beginning of your teaching career you have never pretended to be other than who you are. You said, "This is who I am," and you were always unapologetic about it. And when Penor Rinpoche recognized you, that was part of the package; everything was really on the table.

JAL: Yes, exactly. It was really on the table, and it was very unusual. During the enthronement ceremony, His Holiness even allowed news stations to come in and film it. He said, "This has never happened before. And the reason why I've done this is that you were born as a Westerner, as a woman. Obviously that's where your mission lies." In the beginning I asked my teachers what they thought I should do-how I should change or what should happen. And they suggested that I wear dharma clothing such as chubas [Tibetan dresses] and things like that, which I usually do when I'm teaching. But what I found was that there's no point in not being natural. There's no point in faking yourself and becoming something else because then you're just allowing discursive thought or conceptualization to basically run your life. What I came to eventually is that this is my job. My job is not to be a traditional Tibetan teacher. If that was my job, I would have come as a traditional Tibetan. I feel that my job is to be a bridge between Easterners and Westerners. I'm very good at translating abstract ideas, and I feel that the reason why I appear in the way I do is that other women and men who are Westerners and have no plans to change their culture or their cultural affiliation need to know that it's possible for them also.

And personally I have no attraction to the Tibetan culture. All of the other Western Tibetan teachers I know are crazy about it. They all dress up in dharma duds and they walk the company walk and talk the company talk. But I really don't. And I don't feel sorry about that. I think that's for Easterners.

AC: How does Penor Rinpoche feel about that? Does he respect your independence and your interest in bringing the Buddha-dharma to the West in a way that is as free from cultural overlays as possible?

JAL: Well, at first he sort of suggested that I become more traditional. He said, "Not many dharma teachers paint their nails red; maybe you should go for pink or something like that." He tried to modify a little bit. Then after a while I said, "Well, Rinpoche, you know, I'm an Italian American. This is how my people dress. I would feel stupid not being like this. This is my way." And he absolutely understood it.

AC: To me, that brings up an interesting question and the question is: What is the relationship between enlightened mind and expressions of gender? What's the relationship between emptiness, or freedom from all notions of self, and culturally prescribed norms for the expression of masculinity and femininity? Some teachers of enlightenment have stressed the need to abandon any identification with self-image. For example, there are men and women monastics who shave their heads and abandon all worldly possessions in order to leave behind attachment to culturally prescribed images of masculinity and femininity. And then there are others like yourself or the great J. Krishnamurti, who was known for giving a great deal of attention to maintaining his always elegant appearance. I honestly think this is a very intriguing question. What is the relationship between inner freedom and the desire to express one's masculinity or femininity in a conventional yet unselfconscious way? What's the relationship between emptiness and beautiful nails? Does the path to enlightenment, which is freedom from all notions of self, ultimately demand that we all unconditionally abandon any attachment to gender and care for our appearance, or is there room in enlightenment for a demonstration of masculinity and femininity that expresses beauty and dignity?

JAL: I like your use of the word "room." I like to think that the path to enlightenment is a bit more spacious than it is confined by a lot of absolutely this's and absolutely that's. Fundamentally, I feel that when bodhisattvas [those dedicated to the attainment of enlightenment for the benefit of all beings] come into the world to do a job, they do it in the best way that they can. I think they appear in a way that is not foreign, a way that speaks to us. If the bodhisattva comes to teach Westerners, then it would be appropriate to appear as a Westerner. If the bodhisattva comes to teach Easterners, then it would be appropriate to appear as an Easterner. I could never say that there's a direct relationship between lipstick and emptiness, but I could never say that there is no relationship between lipstick and emptiness.

AC: What do you think the relationship is, though?

JAL: I'd have to say that the relationship is. There is just no other way to look at it.

AC: It's an intriguing question because if someone was established in the enlightened mind or a liberated view, they would be, at least theoretically or ideally, free from any and all attachment to notions of self. So then the question is: What does that look like? Obviously there are some very rigid ideas that have come to us from the East.

JAL: I can say that a person who dresses up as a renunciate, who doesn't wear makeup and wears robes, can sometimes actually be in a position of increasing the strength of their ego because they are so virtuous and are so convinced of it. And the same thing can happen when a person dresses up in clothes "to die for." So I hold the whole appearance issue kind of lightly. I feel like I'm not grabbing on to it in one way or the other. For me, there would be a level of discomfort if I were to radically change the way I dressed. The women I grew up with wore hoop earrings. They all wore lipstick. They had a 'do. For me to not do that seems more effortful and more concerned with sticking to a rigid code. It seems like putting on some sort of elaborate disguise. To me it seems to be easier, better, more natural to dress the way I came and to just be the way I am.

AC: What if a man or a woman came to you and asked to be your student and, after observing them over a period of time, it became apparent to you-let's say, for example, it was a woman-that they seemed to be too invested in their appearance, in the way that they dressed, in the way that they moved, in the way that they walked and talked, and they seemed to express an overidentification with their own feminine nature. Would you tell them to question it?

JAL: If I saw that there was too much ego clinging and too much self-absorption, sure, I would always address that. I wouldn't indicate to them how they should dress. Except in one case. Actually, one of my nuns, before she became a nun, was a really sharp dresser. She was one of those "outfit" persons. She always looked really sharp and wore all the cool things. And even after she became a nun, her shirt over her shantab [robe] would always match her socks. And I did talk about identity issues with her. She was the only person I've ever told how to dress. She's very beautiful, very exotic-looking, and she realized that most of the suffering in her life was because of her identification with her looks and her sexuality and so forth. And so eventually it came to the point where she decided to become a nun.

AC: She came to that decision on her own? You didn't encourage her?

JAL: Well, I encourage by my high esteem for the ordained. I have tremendous esteem for them. And even my teachers have said, "How is it that you're a laywoman and yet so many of your students go for ordination?" I really think it's because I hold monks and nuns in such high esteem. I feel that, however I appear, in my heart I'm a nun.

AC: A renunciate.

JAL: A renunciate. A nun. Yes, in my heart.

AC: And a definition of that would be?

JAL: A definition of that would be someone who is so completely bound to the spiritual expression that there really isn't much else going on. So, in "pure view," you could say that was an ordained person.

AC: Do you think that it's possible for a human being to come to a point in their spiritual evolution where they're finally freed from any fixation on or attachment to their gender identity while at the same time not in any way avoiding or denying the fact of their maleness or their femaleness?

JAL: Absolutely. I feel that as we move farther in our practice and we come to the point where we awaken to the natural state, in that natural state, by definition, there is no gender. There is no bias whatsoever. For instance, supposing that I had come to that state-now I'm still a woman and I still dress like one, but the whole question of gender identity doesn't seem like an issue that should be taken up. It simply is what it is. It has no particular emphasis. But you wouldn't fight against it either.

AC: How does gender identity express itself in someone who's no longer particularly identified with the fact of their gender?

JAL: I think it expresses itself naturally for the world we live in. I feel that bodhisattvas who are in the state where they're no longer identified take on the demeanor and the ideas and concepts of the society that they come to. And since in this society it is natural to identify with either one gender or the other, I believe that's why it happens. In a sense, a bodhisattva, an awakening being, would be like somebody who doesn't smoke going into a room full of smokers. They come out smelling like it, and they even breathe a little bit of it, but they don't themselves have that habit.

AC: This is something that personally intrigues me a lot. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? Most of the ideas that we have about who we are in relationship to gender are culturally imposed, so it's a big question. What does it mean to be a liberated human being, and what does liberation have to do with the expression of gender? So much of our identification with gender, whether we're male or female, has to do with the fact that we're always living up to culturally imposed shoulds-"Because I'm a woman, I should be a particular way," "Because I'm a man, I should be a particular way"-and most of the time, this so inhibits the individual that they really have no idea what the natural expression of their own gender would be. So, to me, it would seem that an expression of gender that is liberated would have to be entirely free from this kind of self-consciousness.

JAL: I agree with you completely. And peculiar questions like, "Should I be more male? Should I be more female? Should I dress up? Should I dress down?" I think, to be perfectly frank, are questions that have to do with the tightness of our minds and our conceptual proliferation-that habitual tendency to constantly compare everything and make notes and put things in boxes. That quality of mind, that tightness of mind, is not synonymous with liberation. It is preliberation, so all of those ideas are also preliberation. I think with liberation comes a certain spaciousness, a certain acceptance, a certain floatingness-without meaning spaced out-a certain ease of expression. Everything is looser and more spacious. Our habitual tendencies are not so automatic, so tight and so kicked in that we have to identify with something!

AC: You're a teacher of the Buddha-dharma. There is much to suggest that the Buddha felt that women were spiritually inferior to men. In the Pali Canon [a scriptural record of the Buddha's early teachings], the Buddha is reported to have said, "Ananda, if women had not obtained the Going Forth from the house life into homelessness in the Law and Discipline declared by the Perfect One [acceptance into the Buddha's monastic order], the Holy Life would have lasted long, the Holy Life would have lasted a thousand years. But now, since women have obtained it, the Holy Life will last only five hundred years. Just as when the blight called gray mildew falls on a field of ripening rice, that field of ripening rice does not last long, so too, in the Law and Discipline in which women obtain the Going Forth, the Holy Life does not last long." It is also traditionally held that in the monastic community that formed around the Buddha, the most newly ordained male novice monk was to sit in a superior position to the most senior female nun. This seems to suggest that women definitely had a second-class role. Now Buddhism is becoming more and more popular in the time that we're living in, and more and more women are being attracted to the Buddhist path for many good reasons. But personally, what I've always found interesting is that often this particular question of the Buddha's bias or apparent bias-we can't really know for sure-is something that many women never really deal with. Because the Buddha has been called the "Perfect One," his enlightenment was supposed to be complete and perfected. And the point is, if one such as he had such strong notions of gender bias, then it seems that we would have to conclude that either his understanding or his realization wasn't perfect, or there was something true about what he was saying and we needed to come to terms with it. How do you feel about this statement?

JAL: Well, my understanding-and this is something that I have discussed with some of my teachers and with khenpos [Tibetan scholars]-is that the Buddha taught in stages. Lord Buddha taught perfectly and appropriately for the context that he was in. And to take a teaching out of its original context and isolate it may be inappropriate. At that time, there were cultural realities that were practically insurmountable. The Buddha was dealing with many caste structures, not only gender. He was accepting into his ranks untouchables-telling Indians that untouchables could be touched. There were many, many issues happening in his time that he was really right against. And the gender issue was one of them. Back then in India, women were still getting burned with their husbands when their husbands died. The prejudice was there; it was predisposed. The cultural difference between men and women was so extreme that if it were automatically the case that women were put in the same position as men, I don't think it would have been allowed. I don't think it would have been okay. I think that things had to happen in a progressive, stage-by-stage way. Later on, through the evolution of the path, Buddhism developed all the way up to the tantric and Vajrayana elements in which males and females were exactly equal.

AC: Okay, but the only thing is, if it's true that the Buddha actually said this, then apparently he felt that if he allowed women into the sangha [monastic community], what he was trying to do was going to be severely impacted for the worse. Because according to the canon he literally said, "My teaching won't last a thousand years. It will last only half as long." Now he did it anyway, so obviously he cared more about the liberation of women than about whatever detrimental effect he felt that women were going to have. But if the canon is correct, then I think we still have to come to terms with this dilemma: Either he was right that women are spiritually inferior or he had a wrong view.

JAL: No, I don't think either one is correct. I feel that he was speaking to the time. When the Buddha appears on the earth in whatever form, it's like the medicine that's given as an antidote to whatever suffering is there. And I feel that was absolutely pure, absolutely correct at that time. It was meant to grow and engage the way that it did. And I think the view has grown and developed and we've come to understand it better. I don't think he was mistaken and I don't think he held women as inferior. I think his enlightenment was perfect.

AC: The Tibetan Buddhist system has also been accused of being extremely patriarchal, with a structure that traditionally keeps women in second-class positions. One of the most outspoken critics of that system even went so far as to say that "the patriarchal structure of Tibetan Buddhism literally depends upon the subjugation of women." Even though historically there indeed have been renowned female tantric masters, for the last five hundred years, strong female tantric voices have largely disappeared from public view. As a female representative of that tradition, what has your observation been? Is Tibetan Buddhism a man's world?

JAL: I have to say that I really don't agree with the view that women are subjugated under the Tibetan system. Guru Rinpoche [Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism] himself has said that, in fact, in the tantric tradition, it is women who have the highest potential for liberation. He has said that culturally, throughout time, women have been trained in such a way that spiritual surrender is easier for them. Letting go of certain fixed, rigid things to stand on is easier for them.

AC: Are you saying that the Tibetan monastic system isn't held together by a patriarchal structure at all?

JAL: The Tibetan monastic system is. But the left hand of that monastic system is another system of dakinis who are held very, very highly. In fact, in thangkas [Tibetan Buddhist paintings], when you see a representation of someone practicing tantra, while you'll never see a male practicing alone, you will see dakinis practicing alone. And the reason why is that the woman is considered to be a display or an emanation of primordial wisdom. She's held in very high regard. I think the people who are saying that the monastic system is so oriented toward males understand only one aspect of it.

You have to understand, each of us is viewing the situation with our own preconceived ideas and prejudices. I think if I were inclined to feel demoted as a woman or less than as a woman, perhaps I would see that male superiority, but I don't. I do see that traditionally the form has the man on the throne in the monastery, but I don't in my practice or in any other way see a male superiority. For instance, when most males are enthroned, they are enthroned with the crown of their lineage. When I was enthroned, I was enthroned with the crown of the five primordial wisdoms. From one perspective, you could say, well, maybe the five primordial wisdoms are much higher than the male lineage crown. But I just don't think there is any value in looking at it in that way. The male is the head of the lineage-that's how the Buddha appears in the world. The woman with the five primordial wisdoms as her crown-she's the dakini. These are all the appearance of the Buddha. How can they be unequal? To me, the Buddha appears. Period. That's the event. We're sitting here with our cultural bias and our gender bias and we're looking at that and we are interpreting it. "He gets to sit on the throne. She gets to sit in the cave." And we put our meanings on that. But I'm telling you, the only event that occurs is that the Buddha has appeared, and that's how I see it. I would be unfaithful to my practice if I tried to distinguish and make one higher than the other.

AC: In a previous issue of WIE, we spoke with Buddhist scholar Miranda Shaw about gender roles in the practice of Tibetan tantra, which is considered by many to be a powerful and even essential vehicle for reaching enlightenment. She made the intriguing statement that in tantric practice, conventional male/female gender relationships are reversed and, specifically as part of the practice of sexual yoga, the primary role of men is to serve women, acting as their devotees, servants and even slaves. In tantric practice, Shaw writes, men are to "take refuge in the vulva of an esteemed woman" and are to literally worship her as a goddess. By worshipping her in this way, she told us, "He's also realizing his innate divinity and his Buddhahood; only he believes that the proper expression of his Buddhahood is to honor her divinity. In this worldview, it is the role of the female to channel enlightened energies, the energy of transformation, into the world in a powerful way. It is the role of the male to be the recipient of those energies and to honor them and their source." According to Shaw, that is the tantric view. In your own experience as a dakini and an incarnation of Mandarawa, perhaps the most renowned Tibetan yogic consort of all time, are women the source of enlightened energy for themselves and for men?

JAL: Wow! Well, I can't say that I agree with her interpretation. I don't feel that men actually worship and become enslaved to women. I think that what really happens is that there is a mutual recognition of the view. The female and the male become inseparable; they become unable to practice fully without one another. They are a unit in union. They are primordial emptiness and its display, inseparable. And that being the case, there is a mutual viewing of one another as that. The dakini recognizes the daka [male counterpart of a dakini] as the source of her energy; the daka recognizes the dakini as the source of his energy. It is a symbolic picture of primordial emptiness and the display or emanation of that emptiness, like the sun and the sun's rays: completely inseparable. Any words or any thoughts that separate them or put one higher than the other are simply conceptual proliferation and really have no place in that kind of practice.

AC: In general, what do you see as the fundamental differences between men and women on the spiritual path? Do men have any particular advantages over women on the path to enlightenment? Do women have any particular advantages over men?

JAL: Yes and yes. I really feel that I understand and vibe with what Guru Rinpoche said about women having, through our cultural experience, been trained in surrender a little bit better. This is simply my own observation. But in looking at the great weight of the male population as practitioners and as people in our world today, I do think that men are having a little problem with their footing. I think that certain things have been expected of them and that they haven't known how to get beyond that. There are certain kinds of strengths that men are supposed to have and certain ideas that men have as to how to have those strengths. And sometimes they can be counterproductive to getting past our exterior ego identity.

AC: Do you mean that certain culturally imposed ideas about manhood become obstacles to liberation?

JAL: Yes, I think they do. Men are expected to be strong, they're expected to be controlled, they're expected to be producers. And judging from a lot of the students I have taught, I think that psychologically a lot of men have to go through a period where they have to accept this intuitive, spiritual, feminine part of their natures in order to go even one step farther. But that's not really something women have to do. We're taught that's okay for us, so we don't so much feel that we have to get to that point before we let go. I think if there is a difference, it isn't because there's any fundamental potency or strength that either gender has over the other. I think the two are equal and meant to function in union. But I do feel that culturally, men have been biased toward a more materialistic life than women have.

AC: So do you feel that because it's more culturally accepted for women to be intuitive and vulnerable, they therefore have less to let go of on the spiritual path?

JAL: I definitely think that's a factor, but again, you have to take everybody case by case.

AC: In the Buddhist teaching, enlightenment is said to be directly related to the recognition of the inherent emptiness or insubstantiality of a separate personal self. In a previous issue of WIE, the renowned Indian woman sage, Vimala Thakar-the only person who the great J. Krishnamurti ever asked to teach-spoke in detail with us about her observation that women tend to have greater difficulty letting go of attachment to a personal sense of self than men do. She said, "Nothingness, nobodyness, emptiness-even the intellectual understanding of this-frightens women. Because of our physical vulnerability, because of our secondary role in human civilization, on a subconscious level, there is fear. If I mature into nonduality, into nothingness, into nobodyness, what will happen to my physical existence? Will it be more vulnerable? Will I be able to defend myself in case of difficulty, in case of some attack against me? Consciously, intellectually, women understand everything because regarding the brilliance of the brain, there is no distinction such as male and female. But psychologically, at the core of their being, is this fear." In my own experience as a teacher I have also noticed that women do seem to have greater difficulty than men in letting go of the habit of what I call the personalization of their experience. Now I certainly don't mean to imply that this means men, as a gender, tend to be fearless heroes who are willing to jump into emptiness and abandon any and all notions of self at the drop of a hat. Men and women struggle with the same fear of nonexistence. But it's been my experience or my impression that women seem to have greater difficulty being able to see directly into the impersonal nature of all human experience than men do. As a woman and as a teacher of enlightenment, is this also your experience?

JAL: At a certain point in our path, there's a kind of grieving that both men and women have to go through. When we leave the party and begin to really practice renunciation, begin to practice recognition of what samsara [cyclic existence] really is, there's a grieving that comes from that. And I think for men and women it's a different grief. I think that men have to let go of certain kinds of expectations that are made of them and that they have of the world. And I think that women have to grieve about the letting go of another kind of expectation, which is a more personal one. Women are culturally biased toward being in relationship to, and so their best way of understanding themselves is in relationship to. However, at a certain point in our practice, when that grieving is finished, we are every bit as capable of allowing that to pass, and approaching the ground view and letting go of identification with self-nature as being inherently real. I think at a certain level of practice, after that grieving is done, our abilities are equal.

AC: Would you consider that to be, relatively speaking, quite a high level of practice?

JAL: Yup. (Laughs)

AC: In this issue, in addition to exploring the relationship between gender and spirituality, we're also looking into the relationship between sexual orientation and the path to enlightenment. In our time, there are many gays and lesbians who view their experience of sexual orientation as the very basis of the spiritual path. Do you think that giving spiritual relevance to sexual orientation is a help or a hindrance on the path to enlightenment?

JAL: I think maybe I should speak personally about my experience with this whole issue. First of all, I'd like to say that I have been very disturbed by the way in which some of the conventional religions that are present in our time have kind of lopped off their gay population and considered them not fit and inappropriate and bound for someplace bad. I feel a tremendous amount of grief about that. When I developed the temple and even before His Holiness recognized me, I made it very, very clear that any sexual orientation did not preclude being a member of my temple. I made it very clear that whether you were gay or straight, tall or short, thin or fat, it didn't matter to me at all. When that word got out, a lot of people who were gay who were looking for a spiritual home took refuge in my temple. I now have some nuns who are gay. They're not practicing, of course. They're celibate.

Now my experience has been that, of the people who came to my temple at first, some of the ones who were suffering the most were a lot of the gay people. They were deeply ingrained in finding an identity and gathering it around themselves and making a box out of it. It was as if they were less free than those who didn't feel the need to find an identity. They were just encumbered by this need.

AC: They were encumbered by their gay identity?

JAL: Yes. Not by their homosexuality itself, but by the need to express it in one way or another, or to not express it-either coming out of the closet or not coming out of the closet-whatever their phenomena were about that. That was what oppressed them, not their sexual proclivity. And what I've tried to do is to let them know that they shouldn't put themselves under such pressure to express themselves in one way or another but rather they should identify with the original nature that we're trying to reveal. I feel that people have to be who they are. In the same way that I didn't want to lose my Jewish-Italian American identity and start wearing Tibetan chubas, I don't expect my gay practitioners to act like straight people or to lose their sense of gayness. But I feel that just as being a Jewish-Italian American is not going to get me enlightened, neither is being gay going to get them enlightened. My feeling is that we all have to drop that stuff and go for it!

AC: What you're saying has also been my observation-that often a gay identity tends to be just another expression of ego. That doesn't mean that one has to necessarily deny one's sexual preference. But one has to maybe question the ego's investment in any particular sexual preference.

JAL: Totally. That's totally it. What keeps us from functioning as awakened beings is the fundamental belief in self-nature being inherently real. Self-nature as defined by anything-gender bias, sexual bias, emotional, cultural, anything. Whatever form it takes. So in giving that any validity, any lip service-what's the point? We've already got that in the world. Let's move away from it.

AC: Father Basil Pennington, a highly respected Trappist monk, whom we also interviewed for this issue, made an intriguing statement about the relationship between spiritual freedom and sexual orientation. He feels that "all men and women are ultimately bisexual and that therefore, a person who is really free knows that he or she is bisexual and can relate with others in whatever way is appropriate, that they're not bound by any particular sexual orientation." In your experience, is Father Pennington on to something when he says that there's a direct relationship between spiritual freedom and liberation from a rigid adherence to any particular sexual orientation?

JAL: He is absolutely dead on. Absolutely correct. Because again, the bodhisattva, when it appears in the world, appears in the form of compassion, in whatever form is needed. So if you need a banana, the bodhisattva is going to appear as a banana. If you need a person with a certain kind of orientation, the bodhisattva is going to appear in that way. I really think that at a certain level, the bottom line, the only thing that matters is the bodhicitta [aspiration to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings]. The only thing that matters is the appearance of compassion in the world.

AC: So would you agree with his assertion that if someone is free, they know they're bisexual and that would be expressed in whatever ways are appropriate?

JAL: I would say that if a person is free, they know that the human condition is to be sexual and they don't have a determined bias as to how that sexuality should be expressed. However, I wouldn't say that a person knows himself to be bisexual. To recognize yourself as bisexual is, I would say, a preliberated state. If you are free, you can't even recognize the concept of bisexual. A person who's truly liberated isn't going to spend all that much attention on thinking about what box to put their sexuality in. If you are free, your sexuality, like anything else, is an adornment that you wear in order to be of benefit to others.

AC: So in this way of looking at it, the expression of one's sexuality would somehow have to be for the sake of someone else?

JAL: As a bodhisattva, everything is for the sake of all sentient beings. I think that for a person who is a liberated bodhisattva, if it were required for them to be homosexual at a certain point in time, that would not be a foreign concept. I think that would be a perfectly okay thing to do because that's the way the bodhicitta would appear. I feel for myself that if it were needed for me to function in a homosexual way, I'm sure I could. I'm sure I would. And that would be part of my sexuality. It would be real.

AC: Marpa, the guru of Milarepa, one of the most revered Tibetan yogis of all time, is widely known to have been a fierce and demanding teacher. Tales of his ferocity in the service of his disciples' liberation are legendary. Not only did he repeatedly humiliate Milarepa but he even was known to beat him physically in order to awaken him to his own true nature. You too have a reputation for being a fierce and demanding teacher and have even been criticized for the lengths to which you have been willing to go to keep your students on the straight and narrow. The whole notion of crazy wisdom, meaning that the teacher will go to any lengths necessary to awaken his or her students-including that which often appears to be incomprehensible to the unawakened mind-is revered by Tibetans as a powerful method of spiritual instruction. Some of the most widely respected male Tibetan teachers of our time have been accused of far greater abuses of their disciples than you have, and yet the Buddhist world at large seems to be much less forgiving in your case than in theirs. Is there a double standard in place? Does the fact that you're a woman make it unacceptable for you to be a fierce and uncompromising teacher? Or are your critics correct in saying that sometimes you go too far?

JAL: I have to say that I don't have a particular view on the subject except that in looking at each student individually I see that each one of them has a particular capacity and a particular set of obstacles. And sometimes, something really unusual or outrageous might be the very thing that provides the hook on to the path, or the very thing that provides some amazing ripening. When it happens that this kind of student comes together with a teacher who is capable of seeing it and maybe delivering what is needed there, I think that is the most fortunate of circumstances. I think that is an outrageously rare thing and an outrageously fortunate set of circumstances. So when that has happened, I have dived on it. But my teachers have also done that with me.

AC: They've been very fierce with you?

JAL: One time when I was newly recognized, my teacher was extremely wrathful with me and it was about something that never even happened. It was so outrageous and it tore me up so badly but it also, I think, added years on to my life because health obstacles that were happening to me disappeared like magic after that. So I believe that sometimes those two circumstances come together and when they do, it is the teacher's responsibility to take advantage of them. There have been circumstances where I have gone to amazing lengths to befriend and stay with and hook on to the path some student of mine, to the point where the other students will say, "Gee, you didn't do that for me!" But that's just because of the way the karma has ripened. That's because at that moment in time, there was a window and there was a way to go through it. When one of my nuns was first ordained, a series of things happened where I really took her to task and yelled at her. It upset her very badly and yet the very next day she was totally able to see it, and there was an amazing change after that. I don't think a person should make an issue about such things. I think that once a student entrusts themselves to a teacher and trusts that teacher to the degree that they have confidence in their qualities, then at that point, you kind of have to make a deal that it's not always going to be roses; sometimes you're going to hear things you don't want to hear and it's going to be painful. And it's a student's responsibility to somehow let that input come into their lives.

AC: Someone engages in a committed relationship with a teacher of enlightenment because they're saying that they want their ego killed. So that's not necessarily going to be a painless process. I mean, most of the time, it's actually horrendous. And it's very hard, it seems, for most people to make that kind of commitment where they say, "This is it."

JAL: Right. And it's difficult to teach in that way, with that kind of passion, in a world where it has become very fashionable for people to file lawsuits about everything. Anytime anyone goes to a counselor, I guarantee that counselor will find out that they have been abused. That's kind of the popular thing. The idea that people are being victimized or being abused is very much in style. To write a really hip pop psychology article, you've got to talk about abuse, and sexual abuse if you can! You know, at a different time, in a different place, it would be different. Even in my family-Italian Americans are very tough on their kids-but they're also very loving and very friendly. It's the way a mother shows how much she loves that child that she is willing to not be a good guy in a particular situation.

AC: Right.

JAL: And I'll tell you, I have been willing not to be a good guy in a situation that I thought would protect a student. I think of myself as being like a Jewish-Italian mother in that way. If I do come to a point where I show wrath toward a person, at the same time I'm feeling so much love for them. I feel like you don't have the right to show wrath to a person if you don't know how much you love them. And I feel that knowing that I would die for them, knowing that I care for them to the nth degree, empowers me to do whatever is necessary, and that's the basis of the agreement that I have with my students. They know that if the time comes that they need it, they're going to hear from me. I have a number of students who are recovering alcoholics. Now they're monks and nuns. One woman, whom I love dearly and think very highly of, not too long before she met me was living as a homeless person under a bridge, an alcoholic. And now when I see her wearing the robes of the Buddha, and I think about what it took-how much wrath and how much love and how much of everything it took to get her to that point where she's not only not under the bridge but she's benefiting others-when I see something like that, you know, I think this is an amazing opportunity. This is fantastic. And I don't think I could live with myself if I hadn't taken advantage of that. I don't think I could live with myself if I hadn't been strong, if I hadn't been wrathful, if I hadn't said, "Sit down. Listen. Now I'm going to tell you the truth." I don't think I could watch someone pass through their neuroses if I have a karmic connection with them and not do something about it. I feel that every karmic connection I have with a student is an opportunity. I feel that I have a passion about that opportunity and I'm going to take it. And I'm not going to apologize.

I want to thank Vickie Mackenzie for allowing me to quote liberally from her chapter on Jetsunma in her fascinating book Reborn in the West.

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Get Over It!
A Men's Movement Pioneer Calls for the End to "The Gender Game"
An interview with Sam Keen
by Craig Hamilton

Introduction

Sam Keen
"The idea of total liberation is a bad and very destructive idea," the gruff voice on the other end of the line announced, adding, "One of the things I frankly don't like about your magazine is the holding up of these people who are supposedly 'in the absolute' and totally liberated." While our commitment to investigative journalism often finds us in unexpected territory, I had to admit that this was a new one. Not five minutes into what was scheduled to be a one-and-a-half-hour interview, and already our magazine and the very aspiration on which it is built were under fire. Fortunately, I thought to myself, I hadn't called Sam Keen to ask him about his views on enlightenment. And having discovered firsthand that he was not a man to mince his words, I was all the more eager to ask this modern-day master of myth-one of the most influential figures in today's burgeoning men's spirituality movement-our questions on the role and influence of gender in spiritual life.

Our introduction to Keen's work had come only a few months before when, while beginning our research into gender and spirituality, we picked up his book Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man. A rich, almost lyrical blending of autobiographical anecdote and psychological theory, the book-which in the early nineties had served as a rallying point for thousands of men bent on breaking free of the culture's male mythos-soon had us under its spell. For several weeks, our basement sauna was transformed into a private sweat lodge of sorts, as the male members of our editorial team gathered there by evening with our spiritual teacher to read aloud Keen's riveting analysis of the social and cultural influences that have molded the psyche of late twentieth-century man. Having each managed to miss out on all but the broadest strokes of the men's movement, we found our own experience often powerfully illuminated by Keen's detailed tour through the rites of war, work and sex-the three arenas he feels have come to define our conceptions of what it means to be a man in today's world.

Using his own pilgrimage as a template, in the book Keen also goes to some length to outline what he sees as the way ahead for modern men. Not content with the popular men's movement mantras, "embracing our feminine side" or "unleashing the wild man within," he points somewhere between these two extremes to a redirecting of "the fierce warrior energies . . . that men have honed for centuries . . . toward the creation of a more hopeful and careful future." In his "new vision of manhood," he leaves little room for the endless self-centered probing that many associate with "men's work," calling instead for a new breed of heroic, passionate and "virile" men to rise up and take responsibility for confronting the ecological and social crises of our times.

By his own description, Keen is a "philosopher of the sacred." Hailing from the likes of Harvard and Princeton, with a string of advanced degrees in philosophy and theology, he has authored over a dozen books and has for years been a prominent figure in the American human potential movement. It was through his experiences leading workshops at Esalen Institute, as a contributing editor for Psychology Today, and as cofounder of a men's group called SPERM (Society for the Protection and Encouragement of Righteous Manhood) that he began to formulate many of the ideas that would fill the pages of his books.

In the larger body of his work, Keen informed me, Fire in the Belly is perhaps best characterized as his answer to the psychological dilemmas of modern man and, as such, is not in itself focused primarily on the spiritual dimension of life. It was only in his 1994 book Hymns to an Unknown God that Keen attempted to chart the waters of the spiritual quest-a journey he sees as common to both sexes-which only can begin after the psychological "wounds of gender" have been healed. Describing the book, he writes: "[It] is a map of the path we travel together, when the questions of masculinity and femininity, male and female roles, have been left far behind." Keen's approach to spirituality, along with Jungian analysis and many body-centered "transpersonal" therapies, does not count itself among those spiritual paths aiming for final enlightenment, but falls instead under the broad umbrella of what has come to be called "sacred psychology." Attempting to bring the individualistic ideals of Western humanism into a spiritual context, Keen and other authorities in this increasingly popular school of thought point to a life of meaning found not in surrendering to a God greater than oneself, nor in an effort to slay the ego through the renunciation of self-centered impulses, but through a personal confrontation with one's own existential questions and a reckoning with the shadow-world of one's unconscious. Keen writes: "My quest . . . is driven primarily by a personal-existential need to discover how I fit within the scheme of things, not by a . . . need to understand how human beings fit within the cosmos. . . . The dignity and meaning of my life involve the discovery and creation of my way, my truth, my destiny." Although some traditional enlightenment teachings do find expression in Keen's work, the ultimate goal of spiritual life as he defines it is not the dissolution of the separate sense of self, but the empowering of it.

During the course of our conversation last spring, Keen related some of the details of his own personal struggle first to prove his manhood and later to shed the rigid notions of masculinity in which he found himself bound. Having spent the better part of his life going against his own deeply sensitive nature, he recounted, it was only when a therapist pointed out to him that his "manliness is [his] sensitivity" that he was able to begin to make his own "journey beyond gender."

Having heard Keen's description of this pivotal moment in his search, it struck me as perhaps slightly ironic that his phone manner seemed to fall somewhere on the spectrum between John Wayne and General Patton. In the course of our conversation, Keen made it clear that he does not suffer fools-or opposing viewpoints-gladly, as he forthrightly shared his informed and often scathing critique of everything from radical feminism to Jungian psychology to the very men's movement which gave him his fame.

And while I can't deny that I was still glad I wasn't interviewing him about enlightenment, there was nonetheless something about the straightforwardness, and even boldness, with which he spoke that I couldn't help but appreciate. For one meets few people who have lived their questions as Keen has. And his thinking on many of the central themes surrounding our inquiry into gender and spirituality showed not only an unusual clarity and precision but a passionate conviction and a refreshing depth and breadth of hard-earned common sense.

WIE: In Fire in the Belly, you call upon men to undertake a spiritual journey that culminates in "the celebration of a new vision of manhood." What defines this journey, as you see it?

SAM KEEN: Well, a large part of my work is focused on the way in which the myths of a culture shape and inform the way we live, the way we think about ourselves and the way we feel. What I'm doing in Fire in the Belly is dealing with the myth of gender and specifically with the myth of male gender. And you have to understand that when I talk about a spiritual journey in that context, I'm not talking about a total spiritual journey; I'm talking about only one aspect of it. My ultimate message for the men's movement or, as far as that's concerned, the women's movement, with regard to spirituality and gender is: Get over it! Because the spiritual journey starts on the other side of gender.

Now let me say what I mean by that because I think my perspective is different from that of most people. I've got to start with the idea of myth, that a myth is like the software that is inserted into us by the society, by our family. Nature gives us certain hardware. There's male hardware and there's female hardware. But the moment we're born, people start shoving these software disks in, saying, "Here's what a real man is. Here's what it means to be a man. Here's what it means to be an American man," and things like that. That's what gender is. And those gender divisions, for roughly the last four thousand years, have been largely circulating around warfare. The division between men and women has been the division between warriors and nurturers. The male has been artificially conditioned to be tough, to be aggressive, to be hostile, to be willing to either kill or die for the tribe. The most poignant symbol of this, of course, is circumcision, which is a way of saying that to be male is to be wounded and to be willing to be wounded, whereas the female has been conditioned to be the servant of the warriors, the bearer of the children, the nurturer of the society, and in that sense to be inferior to the male. So when we're talking about gender, we're largely talking about injuries that have been done to male persons and female persons in the effort to perpetuate a way of life based upon warfare, aggression, domination and control. And all of that, from the point of view of the life of the spirit, is a mistake. It's this we have to rise above in order to begin to have any notion of what the spirit is.

WIE: Would you say, then, that the spiritual path is the same for men as for women? Or is it different?

SK: I would say it's the same, although it demands that we get over different illusions. The male has got to get over the illusions of manhood, and the woman has to get rid of the illusions of womanhood, to go beyond them, to go beyond the cultural stereotypes that have shaped them and to realize that, at the level of the life of the spirit, there isn't a difference-that it's equally difficult for us to transcend those things, to grind up the whole shadow, to delve into our unconscious and to transcend our conditioning. I think of the life of the spirit, in a sense, as that which begins to emerge on the far side of the mythologies that have shaped and informed us.

The first place I can remember that this question was raised was many, many years ago when Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian, wrote an essay about pride, about how we have to get over pride because pride is a chief sin. And a woman who must have been one of the first feminist theologians wrote and said, "Wait a minute, that may be true for men. But it's not true for women. Women, by and large, have a problem of low self-esteem, of not having enough pride because that's what the culture has done to them; it says that you're second class." So in that sense, there is a different emotional agenda that attaches to a woman freeing herself and a man freeing himself, just in large terms.

Let me tell you another way in which this topic is talked about that I think will distinguish how I think about it differently from other people. Of course, Western spirituality has until recently been almost exclusively male in its metaphors. The metaphor of "God the Father" is perhaps the strongest example. And Mary Daly came along some twenty-five years ago and said, "This is a big mistake. Talking about God the Father is just a way to smuggle your politics and your sense of male gender superiority into theology." It was like dropping a bombshell into theology because suddenly you realized that these male-biased metaphors really said that "masculine" traits, such as control and reason, were better than "feminine" traits. Like all males, I resisted her stuff in the beginning. Then I began to realize she was absolutely right about it. But the problem is that the feminists then said, "Oh, God the Father. That's right. That's a baaad way to talk. Now, let's talk about God the Mother. Let's talk about the Goddess." Now, I think that Mary Daly should be as critical of that as she has been of the notion of God the Father. We do not begin to get on a spiritual journey until we go beyond the gendered metaphors for God. For instance, tell me what in the world it could possibly mean to say Mother Nature? What's motherly about it as opposed to fatherly or brotherly? It's a metaphor, and it's a metaphor whose time has passed as far as I'm concerned. I say that we need to get beyond that and to get back to the much more basic kinds of metaphors of knowing, of compassion, of loving.

The second book I wrote was called Apology for Wonder. Aristotle says that philosophy begins in wonder. The same thing is true about the life of the spirit. The life of the spirit begins in wonder, the wonder that there is anything, the sense of gratitude to be in a world that is filled with all of these marvels. And if the life of the spirit begins in wonder and awe, then what could it possibly mean to say that's either male or female? It's irrelevant. Maleness and femaleness are irrelevant to the basic fact that there is this marvelous universe.

WIE: You were speaking about how we all have strong ideas of what it means to be a good or real man or a good or real woman, ideas that have been implanted into us by culture. And while people generally tend to put a lot of energy into trying to live up to that gender ideal, spiritual liberation teachings stress that we have to be willing to give up all of our preconceived ideas and live in a state of perpetual unknowing, a condition of genuine openness to the discovery of what is. One of the things we're exploring in this issue is what this kind of unknowing would mean in relation to our gender identity. Would it be possible, for example, for an individual to come to a point in their spiritual development where they were completely freed from any fixation on gender differences while at the same time felt no need to avoid or deny whatever differences might actually exist?

SK: Well, yes and no. In the first place, the idea of total liberation is a bad and extremely destructive idea.

WIE: It is?

SK: Yes, because it's something to aim at that you're never going to hit. To be free from the crippling effects of gender is a good ideal and we should work in that direction, but you're also always living within a society where those distinctions are operative and continue to be wounding to you and to others. And part of what it means to live the life of the spirit is to work to overcome that. But no matter how far you go, you're always going to have an unconscious, you're always going to have a shadow, you're always going to have something that has the tendency to draw you back into those distinctions because you were formed that way in the beginning. In a sense, it's sort of a countercultural act to get free of them.

So in terms of the notion of total liberation, I don't have the foggiest idea what that would mean. One of the things I frankly don't like about your magazine is the holding up of these people who are supposedly "in the absolute" and totally liberated. I don't know whether you remember, but for many years I was the person at Psychology Today who interviewed all these gurus. And so I've had a good bit of experience with a fair number of them-Chögyam Trungpa, Oscar Ichazo, Muktananda and others. And if these are all examples of people who are totally liberated, I say give me slavery because they were people with enormous illusions and who were cultivating enormous illusions in their followers. By and large almost all of them were totally unclear about three important things: sex, money and power. And they could play like they were liberated as long as they had a whole cult of disciples who did everything for them except wipe their asses-and probably that, too. And most of them were on enormous power trips. So I think the idea of total liberation is sort of like the idea of perfection. It's an idea that is more crippling than helpful.

WIE: But in your chapter "Taking the Measure of Man" in Fire in the Belly, you write about the "Hall of Exemplars," about the extraordinary men and women who, in their rare demonstration of "elemental virtue[s]," stand as "harbingers of hope" for all of us who aspire to live a greater life. You state that what's significant about these men and women is that "their lives are our strongest evidence that human beings are spiritual creatures, that we are able to transcend the conditioning of both biology and culture." So what I'm asking you is: What does it mean to transcend biological and cultural conditioning, specifically where gender is concerned?

SK: Well, let me take one of my good examples: Georgia O'Keeffe. Now, Georgia O'Keeffe, right from the beginning, did not follow the path that one was supposed to follow to be a nice girl. She wasn't sugar and spice and everything nice. She wasn't getting the coffee for anybody. She wasn't asking anybody how she should draw. Right from the beginning of her life, she had a vision and she pursued it. And she pursued it in such a way that she broke many of the taboos of her time. When she wanted to marry Stieglitz, she got married; when she needed to be in New Mexico, she went to New Mexico. Today that would not be all that shocking, but back then it was pretty radical stuff.

WIE: So in this sense of the word "transcendence," you're not speaking about an absolute transcendence as it's been conceived by the great mystical traditions, but more specifically about a willingness to break with the status quo?

SK: Well, yes, but it's about self-understanding, too. And, you know, there are millions of quiet exemplars to look to as well. As a matter of fact, I have much more trouble looking at the official examples than I do at unofficial ones. We all salute these official sort of semi-saints but, I mean, who knows what the Dalai Lama does on the side?

WIE: Coming back to the question of gender differences, a number of contemporary thinkers and practitioners have asserted that women are, by nature, predisposed to pursue a path of immanence-which involves deeply connecting to their bodies and to the cycles of nature and finding the sacred in relationship-while men tend to seek transcendence of all that is worldly, to look beyond themselves for the sacred mystery that lies at the source of all existence. Seemingly in support of this idea are certain religious traditions that adhere to a kind of tantric model in which there are strictly defined spheres that are said to be divinely ordained for men and women. In Orthodox Judaism, for example, the men devote themselves to study and prayer and the women are expected to find their spiritual fulfillment in bearing children and maintaining the sanctity of the home. According to this paradigm, it is only by each sex giving themselves wholeheartedly to the fulfillment of these preordained roles and then coming together in their differences that divine union can be achieved and God's will can become manifest on Earth. Do you feel that this notion of distinct paths for men and women bears out in practice?

SK: No. I think that's sort of like saying it's intrinsic and God-given that women should wear skirts and men should wear pants. I think it's just about as culturally conditioned as that. I mean, come on, give me a break! Women are more immanent than men?! Tell that to van Gogh! Tell it to Audubon, tell it to John Muir, tell it to Agassiz, tell it to any of the poets. I don't know where people get off making this kind of generalization! I mean, what could that possibly mean? I'm sitting here, as a matter of fact, this very moment, looking out my window at the stream and the beautiful greens with the sun on them-so I guess that kind of makes me like a woman!

Almost every year I take groups into Bhutan. It's marvelous because there you see that men and women, especially in rural areas, practically do almost exactly the same things-the same kind of work. Their bodies even look kind of the same. And it's not a big deal. You get the sense that sexuality and everything goes much more easily. I don't ever hear anybody saying anything that would be vaguely like, "a real man does this or a real woman does that." There are some role divisions in the society, of course. Male monastics are uppermost in the establishment. And there are some put-downs of women in the tradition, including the assertion that it's harder for women to get enlightened and things of that kind. But I just think that generalizations like that are repressive. And let me tell you why I think they're repressive, why I'm so passionate about this idea.

As a young man, I was unusually sensitive. I loved birds, I loved nature and I was sensuous. And gradually it occurred to me that this was something I had to be ashamed of, that it was kind of sissy. So I put that stuff away for a long time. Through my teenage years I took Charles Atlas courses and learned to wrestle to toughen myself up so I could be a man. And it wasn't until I began trying to work through some of these ideas that I began to realize, in retrospect, what bullshit that was, what destructive cultural stereotyping it really was. When this first really began to open up for me was actually during a bioenergetics session with Stanley Keleman. I was going with a woman at the time who was giving me all kinds of trouble. I just wasn't manly enough for her, in my view. And Stanley looked at me one day and said, "You don't get it, do you? You just don't get it. Your manliness is your sensitivity." And I realized I had been misidentifying where my "Sam Keen" strength was all along, that all these "feminine" parts that I had thought were not worthy of me were really where the juice of my life was, and that I had to learn to be more accepting, more surrendering and softer and more sensuous.

So I think that those notions are really destructive to individual people. In my seminars, I frequently have women come up and talk about how deeply shamed they are because they're aggressive, competent women and they maybe even look kind of manly. They say, "I have all this competence and everything else but, you know, I just feel like maybe I'm not feminine enough." And I look at them and I say, "You look like a pretty attractive woman to me. What do you mean?" They say, "Well, you know, I'm not x, y and z, and all these other things." You see, it's injurious to put these kinds of cookie cutters over ourselves.

WIE: It seems to be common practice today to label qualities such as compassion, receptivity, sensitivity and intuition as "feminine" and qualities such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, ambition and reason as "masculine." Near the end of Fire in the Belly, in writing about what you call "the gender game," you speak at length about these binding polarities that have come to define our conceptions of gender. You state: "Manliness and womanliness are both defined by a process of decision, and denial. Each gender is assigned half of the possible range of human virtues and vices. . . . We do not know what human beings would be like if encouraged to develop their innate promise without the systematic crippling effect of the gender game."

SK: Yeah, well, in the first place, I go on to say there that I think that no self-respecting person who's thought about these things should ever use the word "masculine" or "feminine" and attach any kind of general predicates and virtues to it. That's just nonsense. It's time to get rid of that stuff. It may be helpful on the spiritual journey to ask myself the question: How have I been crippled by my effort to become a man or a real man, or a woman or a real woman? That's not a bad question to begin with. But there is a far, far more important question which is far more subtle and that is: Who am I? Who is Sam Keen and what does he experience and what does he need to do and where are his injuries? So much of my approach is the effort to go beyond mythology to autobiography, to take my own story and the uniqueness of my own situation, my own gifts and my own wounds, with a kind of ultimate seriousness. In other words, to put it metaphorically, God does not issue something to me that says, "To whom it may concern," nor does he say, "To all men" or "To all women" or "Directive to twentieth-century man." No, the still, small voice addresses me with my name: Sam Keen, do this. Sam Keen, experience that. It's individually tailored, you see. And the fact is that my way of being a man is probably different from your way of being a man. And it's my task to find out what that is. I'm always going to be a man. Biologically, I'm going to be a man. I have the male equipment. But what that means is going to be so governed by my own experience as to be something that would be almost totally, perhaps, strange to you.

WIE: Along these lines, at another point you state, "Far better to remain with the real mystery of man and woman than the false mystification of the masculine and the feminine." What do you mean by "the real mystery of man and woman?"

SK: I don't know. I know what the false mystery is. The difference between a false mystery and a real mystery is that you can tell what a false mystery is, but I'm not sure that you can ever say what the true mystery is. It's like when I'm in the presence of a woman who has gone beyond the gender crippling stuff in herself, and I am at least endeavoring to go beyond it in myself, and we face each other, no longer as masculine and feminine, but as unique individuals, then there is the real mystery of that other person. I think I said in the book it's sort of like what Satchmo said when somebody asked him what jazz is; he said, "Man, if you don't know, I could never tell you."

WIE: Jungian psychology holds that within each of us, male or female, there are both masculine and feminine energies, which need to be brought into balance if we are to become whole. For instance, Marion Woodman in her book Leaving My Father's House states, "We all function with these two different energies. As health and growth depend on both dark and light, so maturity depends on an inner balance between yin and yang, Shakti and Shiva, being and doing." Do you agree with this notion that a fundamental polarity of masculine and feminine energy exists in the psyche?

SK: No, I think it's boring-it's a boring idea. I could put it this way. There are two kinds of people: those who divide the world up into two columns and those who don't. I am a person who does not believe in setting the world up in terms of two columns and then saying, "But you see, there's a little of the yin in the yang and a little of the yang in the yin, and we have to get the two columns together." Well, why start with two columns? Why start with making your basic concepts about the human psyche goose-step along? I think that's intellectual tyranny. It's not helpful! It is helpful for me to say, "Now, Sam, what are you experiencing?" It's helpful for me to sit quietly in meditation and try to get in a witness space and to identify my feelings and images. It's totally unhelpful for me to say, "Now I've gotta get my yin balanced with my yang! Am I too yang or too yin?" And again, to label these virtues and/or vices as masculine and feminine is part of the problem. Don't start with an artificial separation. Think in different categories. If all I can think of is, "I've got to do this or that," if all I think of is masculine or feminine, it's a shotgun to my head. That's why I don't like Jungianism-just like I detest the idea of archetypes.

WIE: Why is that? There are more than two of those.

SK: All right. Let's take the most recent thing. Tell me what the archetypes of man are?

WIE: The king, the warrior, the lover and the magician.

SK: Now, the idea is that these archetypes are different ways of structuring our experience that we all somehow have to go through. To show you how ridiculous that is, let's go back to the earliest notion in the West of what constituted the dignity of a human being, which was what? The citizen. In the Greek world, the word for "idiot," as a matter of fact, meant somebody who was not a citizen. Now tell me, why isn't the citizen in the archetypes? Because the Jungians are apolitical, because they're interested in inner psychodrama. They're not interested in the transformation of the world. You see, if those are the four archetypes, then we don't have to worry about what's happening in Kosovo or anywhere else. That's just stuff that's going on over there. We don't have to worry about the educational system deteriorating because that's something citizens worry about. Give me a break! King as an archetype?! That's why we came to this country-to get rid of those archetypes! That's what America was all about, "Screw kingship! Screw dominion!" And the warrior? That's the hair of the dog that bit us. That's what's been driving us all along. If the Jungians would say, "There are endless numbers of metaphors that help us to understand ourselves, and here are four," I'd say, "That's a good start. Now give me five or six. How about giving me, oh, garbageman." Now, that's a good archetype, right, because isn't half of the problem cleaning up the trash in our psyche? Well, sure it is! Separating the wheat from the chaff, you know. Or how about fool or hobo or wanderer or friend? How about friend! Now, that's an interesting archetype. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics has a great deal to do with friendship, philia. I'm not much of a fan of Jungian thought because it ignores two things: politics and the body. They're largely a disembodied movement.

WIE: It seems as though much of the men's movement has centered around Jungian thought.

SK: That's right. It has. And I don't think it's helped them.

WIE: In this issue, in addition to exploring the relationship between gender and spirituality, we're also looking into the relationship between sexual orientation and the path to liberation. In our time, there are many gays and lesbians who view their experience of sexual orientation as the very basis of their spiritual path, a path employing unique forms of practice and worship. Some advocates of a distinctly gay spirituality have even suggested that because the male and female polarities are theoretically more fully integrated and balanced in homosexuals, theirs is an inherently superior form of spiritual practice. Andrew Harvey, one prominent spokesperson of this view, states that "in earlier times . . . homosexuals . . . were seen as sacred-people who, by virtue of a mysterious fusion of feminine and masculine traits, participated with particular intensity in the life of the Source." What do you think of the notion that sexual orientation constitutes the basis for a distinct and separate spiritual path?

SK: I don't like it at all. I think that sexual orientation is an individual thing that shouldn't be politicized. And I don't think, in that sense, it should be spiritualized, either. In the life of the spirit, the question isn't whether somebody is gay or straight. From a spiritual perspective, I think that's meaningless. In the life of the spirit, the question is whether you're loving or unloving, and to what degree you can enter a relationship with the fullness of who you are. And this theoretical construct that the polarities are more balanced in gays and lesbians? Well, who says that and by what possible jump can we get there? Maybe they just don't have the polarities. To make gay or lesbian a category is itself a sin. It's a mistake and a sin. I have friends who are largely homoerotic who would never call themselves gay. And people who are homoerotic are as different from each other as people who are heterosexual are. I'm all for anybody being able to do what it is that they want with any consenting adult of either gender, but let's not raise it to the level of something superior. Let's not make homosexuality or heterosexuality spiritually superior. It's not the issue.

WIE: In our research for this issue, we also came across the idea among Jungian psychologists, some feminists and a number of contemporary spiritual thinkers that our ultimate human potential is the realization of a kind of androgyny in which all human qualities find equal expression in everyone, regardless of gender. Describing the fruition of the spiritual path as the birth of what he calls the "sacred androgyne," Harvey, again, writes: "The main mystical traditions agree that this birth of a new being can only take place through a long, arduous, and increasingly conscious intermarriage of the masculine and the feminine within each one of us, male or female," and that "only such an intermarriage can give birth to the sacred, androgynous, free child of the Source that is potential in each of us." Do you agree with Harvey's view? Is the fullest expression of our spiritual potential the realization of androgyny?

SK: HO HUM. I mean, why try to press every old idea into service? Why not try to think about things differently? The idea of androgyny is just the romantic myth taken into the interior. "Oh, boy. Finally, now, the man in me and the woman in me are going to get together and have this marvelous romance and I'm going to be whole." It's like thinking with wooden blocks. I mean, that idea comes up all through the alchemical tradition, and it was okay to talk about it then. But isn't it time to think creatively, to get some new categories, new ways of thinking, instead of just trying to knit new wool on these old needles?

WIE: You brought up Mary Daly earlier. She and other radical feminists hold that most if not all of the ills in our individual psyches and in society at large are the result of the overwhelming influence of men-male values, attitudes and dispositions-on everything from the structure of government and commerce to the structure of language. Citing the widespread, catastrophic effects of patriarchy on not only the status of women but on the quality of life on this planet, they call for a return to a gynocentric spiritual culture with values and institutions akin to those of the peaceful, agrarian world that existed thousands of years ago. Is Mary Daly right? Would placing all power in the hands of women be enough to bring about a peaceful, harmonious culture rooted in deeply spiritual values?

SK: Yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean, you know what they did to build the pyramids-they went out and they got union labor and they asked for volunteers because it was all a "cooperative culture." And in those matriarchal cultures, they also asked people if they wanted to be human sacrifices because they were nice and kindly in those days. You know . . . it's the chalice and the blade.

What all of that really is is a disguised rewriting of history in order to do male bashing. Men and women have been in this thing together all along. If you want to bash patriarchy, you can bring it right up to the modern era and speak about how these brutish men, these terrible men, went over to Vietnam and killed all those people. I mean, they were nineteen-year-old kids who had no more choice about what they did than Mary Daly did. Anytime that you put the blame on one of the genders, you have rendered the other inferior. If it's true that men just dominated women all that time and women had no power, then they probably needed to be dominated.

WIE: Do you think putting the blame on men is a complete misappropriation?

SK: Yes. But I also want to say that I do believe that Mary Daly is one of our great prophetesses. I have learned enormous amounts from her. I want to affirm so much of her analysis, but I don't want to affirm her anger. It takes a good deal of courage for a man to really read Mary Daly and to open himself up to her arguments. Many of them are brilliant and are necessary medicine to help most men to understand the injuries that women have experienced in this culture. But there are certain feminists whose anger gets in the way of their clarity.

WIE: I think they would argue that they've got a lot to be angry about.

SK: And they do. They do.

WIE: In your view, what does it mean to go beyond gender?

SK: Again, it means get over it! This question of gender is something, by and large, to be gotten over, to get on the other side of. I don't ask myself the question: Am I a man? Am I manly enough? I ask myself the question: What am I about? In other words, I think we need to stop making gender a primary way of asking the question: Who am I?

WIE: What do you think becomes possible within the individual and between human beings when we do "get over it," as you put it?

SK: Well, I would ask-and this question is at the very center of Buddhism and Christianity-What does it mean to be wise and compassionate? That's a hard question for me to answer. In my daily life, how do I be wise and compassionate in relationship with my wife when I'm in conflict, or with my children or my friends? What do I do about Kosovo and my government to be a decent human being? This is an age in which, somebody said, you have to become heroic just to be decent! And that isn't a gender question. What's injuring the world here isn't gender. In America, women are just as injurious to the world as men are. They're out there in the malls. The mall is where we vote about values. Why did we do what we did in Iraq? So we could drive to the mall. And again, I think what I object to about your magazine is the lack of the real political kinds of questions. All afternoon you haven't asked me anything about the politics of gender.

WIE: Well, our magazine is about enlightenment.

SK: Well, that's what's wrong with it, then. Frankly, that's what's wrong with it. It's kind of narcissistic. There's a lot of spiritual narcissism, I think. Now, that's not to sa