Standing in the Stream of Ancestors
reflections on lineage and karma, + a video guided meditation
October 17, 2024 / Full Moon
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 HoganThis time of year, with golden aspen and cottonwood leaves falling all around, my heart opens to the truth of impermanence. I feel a greater awareness of those who are no longer here but who live on within us in so many ways. As autumn deepens, a cluster of days remind us how thin the veil actually is between life and “death” – All Saints Day on November 1, All Souls Day on November 2, and Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, observed on November 1 and 2. These are all opportunities to remember those who came before us, our ancestors.
When I was growing up, this notion of having ancestors was not part of my awareness. I didn’t have much sense of my own biological ancestors. While three of my grandparents – my paternal grandmother and grandfather, and my maternal grandfather – were alive when I was a child, they were on the other side of the country and I saw them only once a year. Because I didn’t spend much time with them I didn’t hear many of their stories and didn’t have a strong feel for how they informed my life.
I felt a disconnect as well from the cultural traditions of those who came before me, something I believe is true for many of us who grow up white in America. In a sense, we are cultural orphans. Because assimilation is the name of the game and we are taught to value sameness more than difference, we lose touch with our ethnic roots. I remember a story my mom shared with me from her own childhood as a first-generation daughter of a Slovenian immigrant family. On her first day at school in the 1930s, the teacher told my mom’s older sister that she would have to change her name, Stanislava, to something that was more “American” and easier to pronounce. From that point on, my mom was known as Sylvia or Sue. She had to give up her Slovenian 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 Chicana/o. When I spent time with them and their families, I envied how strongly they were connected to something larger than themselves through their foods, language, and way of being in the world. I didn’t have that and felt a huge void.
When I started Zen practice one of the first things I noticed was how much emphasis is placed on lineage, the wise ones and teachers who came before us and who continue to support us. When we practice Zen we are stepping into a stream that goes back more than 2,500 years, and we are reminded of that each morning when we chant the names of the ancestors. The long list begins with Shakyamuni Buddha, moves through the patriarchs of India, then to China, then to Japan beginning with Eihei Dogen, and finally to the most recent ancestors for whatever lineage one is practicing within. When we take vows to follow the Buddha’s way, we receive a lineage chart. Thankfully there has been an important movement to include the names of the women ancestors, beginning with Mahapajapati. 1
CHALLENGES OF OUR ANCESTORS
Even as we receive many gifts from our ancestors, we can also inherit their wounds as well as other problematic aspects. In my own family, it was 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 from an intellectual viewpoint 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 having homelands stolen. There is growing evidence that this kind of historical trauma is physically transmitted from one generation to another. This is something to be aware of whether we are the ones who have inherited that trauma, or when we interact with someone whose ancestors have experienced the impact of racism and hatred over generations.
What would it be like if each time we spoke with another person we held an awareness of this lineage of ancestors that we both come from, almost as if we could see those folks sitting on each of our shoulders, bearing all the strengths as well as all the challenges that have come before us?
KARMA
We all have ancestors, and we will all be ancestors.
Even if we don’t have biological children, our deeds and the energy we have put into the world continues down through generations to affect those who come after us. Our legacy is not limited to after our death. In this very moment our actions and choices are creating an impact that ripples out into future weeks, months, and years. This is the Buddhist teaching of karma, that every action has a consequence. When we start living from a keen awareness of this truth, we tend to make our choices in a more intentional way.
A number of years ago, I made this guided meditation to connect with the gifts that we received from our ancestors, as well as to support us to more consciously step into what it means to be an ancestor ourselves. When I see it now it’s a bit like watching a past incarnation of myself – this was in the years before the pandemic, I filmed it in the backyard of a house I no longer live in. Still, perhaps you’ll find something in it to support your path.
It occurs to me that through our meditation practice, especially as we unfold it in a relationship with a teacher if we have one, we are continually connecting with a source of light both within us and beyond us. This transmission of the light is the intimacy and love that passes between teachers and students, between our ancestors and us. It is the thread that connects us all, throughout and beyond space and time. May we honor it well.
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If you’re interested in learning more about Zen ancestors, The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku is a collection of beautiful stories of warm-hand-to-warm-hand transmission of the Dharma, from teacher to student across 52 generations.
Loved reading this, Maia - I've quite recently got interested genealogy and it's given me a lot to chew over as I learn to situate myself in history. There's a spiritual dimension to learning the names of my ancestors, figuring out as much as I can about their lives, coming to honour them through that, and leaning into the sense of awe that comes when you realise you owe your existence to countless decisions, small and large, by an infinite number of people most of whom are now forgotten. I think English people, particularly on the left, can find it complicated to honour our heritage because so much of it involved the brutalisation and subjugation of other peoples (not least in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, so the word 'British' is complex and problematic too). At the same time, so many of our folk traditions have been marginalised to the point of being considered a bit niche, weird and even cringeworthy, so I have never really taken much pride or interest in my heritage and always found the idea of being English incredibly boring. It's only now I start to uncover some of the history that I realise the lives of ordinary people are anything but. I feel a certain relief and pride in learning that my ancestors were mostly very poor working people and thus part of the subjugated class rather than the subjugators, and feel I now have a personal stake in learning about an alternative history of Englishness that is more than just empire, a stiff upper lip and tea on the lawn.
This is so beautiful Maia, thank you. I practice in the plum village tradition and the focus on ancestory has been a revelation. I also love the idea we can heal ourselves not only for ourselves but also for all those who came before who perhaps didn’t get that chance. It’s so beautiful. The West has so much to learn from eastern traditions on this.