FORUM | HEAR OUR VOICES 51can we make that into an opportunity
and a practice? I don’t think it’s always
an easy thing to do.
MYOKEI CAINE-BARRETT: From the sense
of my intersectionality—being Black,
Japanese, and a woman—it’s been very
odd at times. My first rebellion in Japan
was when all the women were serving
tea, and I flat-out refused to do it unless
the men of my same rank were required
to do it as well. So they haven’t quite
known what to do with me when I show
up. My role models, in many instances,
are some of the younger Japanese female
priests who are now making steady
strides toward being leaders in their
temples. They’re doing things quietly, but
it’s garnering a lot of attention.
REBECCA LI: You’re talking about
resisting or not conforming to the gender
norm given to us in a dharma commun-
ity. It’s challenging, because we engage
in the practice of cultivating humility,
and you don’t want to be seen as saying,
“Oh, this is below me.” But a lot of the
“women’s work” is understood to be
lesser, associated with a lesser status. As
women dharma teachers, we have to jug-
gle these in our minds.
MYOAN GRACE SCHIRESON: I wanted to
bring up one more obstacle, which is if
you’re married and your husband is a
practitioner. Wherever I went, people
would assume that my husband was
senior to me, that he was a teacher and
I was the wifeykins. This caused a lot of
tension in our marriage. It was hard for
him, as a man, to acknowledge this kind
of entitlement he was receiving. Even
when we went to Japan and with our
primitive Japanese explained that I was
the senior, they’d start bowing to him as
a senior. And he had to say, “No, no, it’s
her.” If you appear with a man and he’s
your husband, people are very uncom-
fortable with what they see as a reversal
of power.PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: Thank
you—that’s a vulnerable thing to share,
but I think it’s such a common experi-
ence. If I appear with another lama who
is of equal rank, people often assume
that I’m his consort. Otherwise, why are
we together? I was really surprised at first
when that started happening, and now
I’ve gotten used to it. Or they just assume
I’m the sidekick.MYOKEI CAINE-BARRETT: We’ve been
calling for a training for priest spouses. It
was originally called “priest’s wife train-
ing,” but then there was a gay couple
and also my husband, so there were two
men in the class with all the rest of theseSARAH DOJIN EMERSON DR. KIMLE KALSANG KAMALA MASTERS DIANE MUSHO HAMILTON KAREN MAEZEN MILLER