Walking, I am listening to a deeper way.
Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.
Be still, they say. Watch and listen.
You are the result of the love of thousands.
Linda Hogan (Native American writer)
Near where I live in Northern New Mexico, cottonwood and aspen trees are making their beautiful autumn transition from green to gold. Soon the leaves will return to the earth. My heart opens to the truth of impermanence this time of year, and I am aware of those who are no longer here but who live on within us in so many ways.
Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is a traditional Mexican holiday to remember the ancestors. Zen Buddhism also emphasizes being part of a stream of ancestors, a lineage of wise ones and teachers who came before us and who continue to support us.
For many of us, though, this ancestral awareness doesn’t come naturally. Growing up, I didn’t feel much connection to my biological ancestors. Three of my grandparents were alive when I was a child but they lived on the other side of the country and I only saw them once a year. They sent birthday and Christmas presents, we talked on the phone every so often, but I didn’t experience them as an integral part of my life. Beyond that, it never occurred to me that ancestors who had lived generations before me had any relevance.
Like many of us who grow up white in the United States, I had also lost touch with my ethnic and cultural roots. Assimilation is the name of the game in the US, and for the most part, we are taught to value sameness more than difference. I remember a story my mother told me from her childhood as a first-generation daughter of an immigrant family from Slovenia. On her first day at school, the teacher informed my mom’s oldest sister that my mom’s name—Stanislava—would need to be changed to something more “American” and easier to pronounce. From that point on my mom was known as “Sue.” She had to give up her name to be part of this idea of what it means to be American.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area and the majority of my friends were Chicano/a. I envied how strongly they were connected to something bigger than themselves, through food, language, and way of being in the world. I didn’t have that and felt a huge void. Sometimes I wonder if that need to establish an identity that has been lost through this process of assimilation is one of the seeds of white supremacy.
When I started Zen practice, one of the first things I noticed was the emphasis on lineage and ancestors. When we practice Zen, we step into a stream that goes back more than 2,500 years and we are reminded of that in morning chants as we recite the names of the ancestors. The long list begins with Shakyamuni Buddha, moves through the patriarchs in India, then to China, then to Japan beginning with Eihei Dogen, and finally to the most recent ancestors in whatever lineage one is practicing within.
The Denkoroku is a collection of beautiful Zen stories about these ancestors, and of the warm-hand-to-warm-hand transmission of the Dharma through 52 generations—see The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku (Wisdom Publications 1996) translated by Francis Dojun Cook. More recently there has been an important movement to chant the names of women ancestors, beginning with Mahapajapati (see “Chanting Names Once Forgotten” by Grace Schireson).
Even as we receive gifts from our ancestors, we can also inherit their wounds as well as other problematic aspects. In my own family, I’ve found it painful to acknowledge some of the attitudes that my German grandmother held toward certain ethnic groups. When I heard her making disparaging comments about Jews and people of color, I was too young to understand what was going on intellectually but I knew in my bones something didn’t feel right.
Historical trauma happens when we come from a people who have collectively experienced some kind of trauma, including genocide, slavery, and racism. There is growing evidence that this kind of trauma may be physically transmitted from one generation to another through epigenetics, the process by which environmental and behavioral factors can alter the way a gene is “read” by our body.
Buddhist practice offers us an opportunity to hold all this in our awareness. What would it be like if each time we spoke with another person we considered the lineage of ancestors that both of us come from? Imagine if each of us could see those ancestors sitting on our shoulders, bearing their strengths as well as challenges. Imagine how much more compassion and skillfulness we might use in our speech with each other.
We all have ancestors, and we will all be ancestors. Even if we don’t have biological children, our choices continue through future generations and affect those who come after us. Our legacy is not limited to after our death. In this very moment our actions create an impact that ripples out into future weeks, months, and years—this is the Buddhist teaching of karma. When we start living in awareness of this truth, we make our choices in a more intentional way.
What an amazing opportunity we have. What kind of ancestor do you want to be?
References
Jōkin, Keizan. 1996. The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku. Trans. Francis Dojun Cook. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
See more
Chanting Names Once Forgotten: The Zen Women Ancestors Document (Lion’s Roar)
Related features from BDG
Bon Odori: A Dance with the Ancestors
For the Ancestors and for Peace: A Conversation with the Organizers of “May We Gather”
The Good Ancestor
Women of Buddhism
Listening to Ourselves and Our Teachers
