ZEN PEOPLE TALK A LOT about how great the Buddhist ancestors are. I used to take a dim view of the whole business of honoring ancestors. I loved my grandparents, but not because they were “ancestors.” When I first began to practice Buddhism in my thirties, I was impatient with the emphasis on the “lineage,” a long list of dead men’s names from India, China, and Japan. About fifteen years ago, thanks to pressure from women practitioners and our male allies, we began chanting the names of women ancestors as well as men in our formal Zen services, a historic turn. But in my early days, I thought the lineage a dusty business, like a pile of tattered diplomas on crumbling parchment, having nothing to do with me or my life.
Now I realize that the ancestors are my lifeblood. We are all made of the ancestors who came before us, those who bore us and those who bore the ones who bore us, all the way back through the generations to Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather Amoeba. Some of our ancestors may not have been admirable people, but we come from them, too, whether we like them or not. People who are adopted may not know who their blood ancestors are, but we come not only from blood ancestors, but also from the people who raised us, who taught us to look both ways before we crossed the street and how to tie our shoes.
