FORUM | HEAR OUR VOICES 49
problems, and if no one else was going
to fix it, I decided I had to fix it. But the
greatest lesson I’ve learned about leader-
ship is to raise up others, to learn how
to share leadership with other people,
and to find the areas where other people
might be capable and show them it’s
okay to share that capability.
Honestly, I hate to do everything
myself. I’m the eldest child, so I always
had to do everything; as I’ve gotten older,
I’ve felt like I need to retire from doing
everything. So I’ve had to work on find-
ing the capabilities of others. I have to
teach others to learn how to respond to
what they see, because I see, as a Bud-
dhist, that our practice is about response,
and about relationship, and how we put
those two together.PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: I also get a
lot of joy from sharing—sharing power,
sharing authority, training other teach-
ers, training people to take leadership in
the sangha. I often say we’re a sangha of
leaders, not followers, because I really
believe that the idea of altruistic enlight-
ened intent, or bodhicitta, empowers us
to take responsibility for ourselves and
our world. I try to train my sangha in
that way.MYOAN GRACE SCHIRESON: I remember
my teacher telling me to teach my sangha
a specific thing—a hard thing—and my
saying, “Well, I’m sure someone else can
teach it.” But he insisted, “No, you needto do this.” I didn’t want to be disliked
for being bossy and being an authority,
and I thought, Oh shit, I have to do this.
This is a problem. I’m going to have
to be disliked. It’s still painful for me;
people still dislike me when I have to
stand up as the teacher. I don’t know any
particular practice that magically makes
it go away. It’s still uncomfortable.NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSON: Early on,
I took on the practice of saying yes at
times when I would have preferred not
to be visible. I decided I was just going
to say yes to all things that were asked of
me, as long as they were reasonable and
teaching oriented. “Sub for this person—
give a talk on a Wednesday night.” This
person everybody’s coming to see is not
going to be there, and you are going to
disappoint them by being there—nobody
said that, of course, but I knew that
would happen. I told myself to just do it
anyway. I think that resolve was really a
good training. It forced me to make my
way through whatever teaching situation
I was in and to stay steady in the middle
of it.PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: It seems to
me we have exaggerated stereotypes out
there of women Buddhist teachers, which
makes it all the more important to see
actual human women teaching and mod-
eling the whole range of characteristics
that are possible. With Ani Dawa, what
was especially potent for me was that