The Zen rebels: obscure hermits and existential reformers (part 21). Zen Female Masters - Mugai Nyodai

"In this way and that I tried to save the old pail  
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break 
Until at last the bottom fell out.  No more water in the pail!  No more moon in the water!"

This was Mugai Nyodai's awakening, from the accident of spilling the water from the broken bamboo pail, seeing the reflection of the moon dissipate as the water disbursed so there was no reflection of the moon.  In this moment of her realization and enlightenment, the penetration of the mind that Nyodai was able to obtain, by the spilling of water, began as an arduous process.  Whilst being with the Zen Buddhist nuns of Hiromi, who offered her shelter and protection.  Nyodai's early duties  was to cut wood and provide water for the small monastery.  She fell into a state of suffering, in trying to understand why she could not attain enlightenment after viewing the nuns meditating and seemingly at peace in their zazen poses.  Nyodai was fascinated by this and after many conversations with the nuns of Hiromi it was an older nun that Nyodai confined in, detailing her distress and growing paranoia, which understandably would be attributed by her peasant roots.  That her suffering now in this life will be transfered onto the next.  Seeing, what a young and damaged woman perceived as an admiration, while Nyodai viewed aspects of the Zen nuns self discipline, she felt was completely unattainable for herself as an uneducated laywoman.  It was when the older nun who explained to Nyodai that was she has viewed, with the other nuns in deep mediation via zazen, is that they are from all walks of life, from the laywomen to the upper class courtesan.  To seek is suffering, to wish and attain is a falsehood.  The Buddha nature is within, to which zazen clears away all wandering thoughts of pain and suffering as one moves from past to present, with no fears of a tomorrow.  To not theorize the words of Buddha nor the masters, yet in respect of its teachings, it is just to sit and be silent.  This is illumination of the self, beyond the male and female and its material expectations.  Nyodai took the nun's advice and with earnest she began practicing zazen, a young woman who could not read or write, in all retrospection may have been a former prostitute.  Wounded and caught between thoughts of pain with its suffering.   

And when Nyodai reached enlightenment with the fable of her spilling water in the moonlight, she attained the point of Nirvana, the wandering thoughts ceased he mind became still, disciplined, focused onto the single point.  The here-and-now of life.  Within this present, there is no other.  No more pain and suffering.  Limit desire and more so appeasement of the Karmic, it is of a single moment that should be reconciled in self realization.  In the years that followed Nyodai maintained her fixture as a Buddhist nun under the Rinzai School, later in her life she was able to become a disciple of the great Chinese Zen master Wuxue Zuyuan, who later granted her the most significant aspect in the history of Japanese Zen; to become his spiritual matriarch and heir.  Nyodai, attains the title of Abbess of Keiaiji Convent, which was the head monastery of the Five Mountain Rinzai Zen complexes at that time in the 13th Century Japan. 

 Mugai Nyodai (d.1298)