Exploring the place of Women in the Soto Zen Lineage
In our long service of bowing and chanting, we recite the “Names of Buddhas and Ancestors” – beginning with the Seven Buddhas Before Buddha, and ending with the founder of our Soto Zen School, Eihei Dogen, and his two immediate successors who established the lineage of teachers that we now honor. All of these are male. In fact, we used to call them “Buddhas and Patriarchs”. In recent years, much research and collaboration by a group of Zen teachers and scholars have created a parallel document, a women ancestors document. What does it mean to have a separate women’s lineage? Why are there no women in the lineage we do chant – or are there? And what does Dogen have to say about women, gender, and separation?
Rev. Choro with Sensei Inryu in 2015
Rev. Choro Carla Antonaccio is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest ordained in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi by her teacher, Roshi Josho Pat Phelan. She began formal practice in 1999 at Chapel Hill Zen Center where she has been a resident practitioner since 2005. Rev. Choro has trained at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, San Francisco Zen Center City Center, and Green Gulch Farm. She was Shuso for the Chapel Hill Zen Center community in 2016.