Patricia Bennage

Participants walking while meditating (kinhin) around Mount Equity Zendo

Zen Seeds Reflections of a Female Priest

By Tim Blangger, The Morning Call, July 01, 2006

Patricia Bennage arrived in Japan in the mid 1960s as a classically trained dancer. She wanted to learn Japanese culture and its Noh Theater, which includes ceremonial dance. When her graduate studies ended, she faced a difficult decision.

Would she stay in Japan and teach English as a second language, one of the few jobs non-Japanese could hold in the country? Or, would she return to the United States and continue her career as a classical dance instructor?

As it turns out, she choose neither, opting for a third path, a literal and figurative journey that would end when she became one of the few women Zen Buddhist priests in 1989 and one of only a very few Western women to have studied Zen Buddhism in Japan.

Bennage is now the abbess, or head, of the Mount Equity Zendo near Williamsport.

Once she made her choice to stay in Japan and study Buddhism, Bennage went on a Zen-like trek to the 88 Buddhist temples scattered around the country.

She had no agenda, no itinerary and no goal beyond her desire to ''follow the Zen path in earnest,'' she says.

She eventually found a teacher. ''He lived in a small temple made out of soy sauce vats turned upside down,'' Bennage, 67, recalls.

The meditation hall was an old bus with the seats removed. Bennage thought, ''If this is a temple, there is nothing holding me back.''

Bennage stayed for a year, living in her own small hut, which was also constructed from recycled soy sauce vats.

''It was about six feet in diameter, enough room for a futon and a small desk. There were three hooks in the ceiling to hang your sitting robe, your work robe and your ceremonial robes,'' she says.

Creature comforts were minimal. There was no central heating, no hot water. When the weather got cold, Bennage wore a pair of uninsulated rubber boots.

The temple was poor and survived on donations of food and basic materials, including rice bowls and robes.

''If you have a heart for the [Zen] way, you'll always have enough to eat and enough to wear,'' Bennage was told.

''That was very clear cut. My only conditions for [Zen] practice were that I should sit down and shut up and live,'' she says.

After a year her teacher, Omori Sogen Roshi, sent her to a women's monastery in a larger city.

''I needed to blend in with others,'' she says. She describes the years she spent in her second temple as ''deep Zen boot camp.''

''Luckily, I had lived in Japan for several years at that point. I knew the language. I knew the dialects. Ballet discipline also helped. You don't get to be a paid dancer unless you stick to it. [Dancing] is very competitive. You have to be constantly learning or you don't last.''

The monastery experience taught Bennage to be more sympathetic. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, she was a minority in Japan and the experience offered her a first-hand glimpse into how it feels to be different, the ''other'' in society. It was something she wouldn't have experienced if she had returned to the United States rather than pursuing her Zen Buddhist training.

Bennage spent eight years at the women's monastery before she left and began her senior training, which took another four years.

Her studies included the five precepts of Buddhism: Don't kill, don't steal, don't indulge in sexual misconduct, don't lie and don't take intoxicants.

''I was very, very, very lucky,'' she says of her becoming a Zen priest.

''If I hadn't found a teacher, my life might have been very different and I don't think it would be as fulfilling.''

Once she took her Buddhist vows, or precepts, and completed her senior roshi training, her name became Patricia Dia-En Bennage Roshi.

Bennage returned to the United States in 1989 and slowly helped establish a Zen temple, the Mount Equity Zendo, in a small Quaker village about 20 miles east of Williamsport in Lycoming County. Zendo is a hall used for meditation.

''When I left the United States, [President] Kennedy had been assassinated.

When I returned, the Berlin Wall had fallen. A lot had changed,'' Bennage says.

She decided to return in part because she was the eldest and only daughter of an elderly mother who ''would likely need my help at some point,'' Bennage recalls.

Having her mother move to Japan was out of the question. ''There was no central heating. There was no television'' for her to watch, says Bennage ''I also realized there were enough Japanese teachers in Japan, and not enough Zen teachers in America. I was needed more back home, so I thought I should be able to open a temple here.''

When Bennage came home, her mother was living in an apartment in the former Quaker manor, which would eventually become Mount Equity.

Bennage gave Buddhist instruction in a small room in the apartment she shared with her mother to students she collected through word-of-mouth.

As the circle of students grew, Bennage decided to rent the property at Mount Equity.

She was formally installed as the abbess of Mount Equity in 1995 when a delegation of some 40 Japanese priests and officials arrived at the former Quaker village for the ceremony.

''When I returned [to the United States], my mother was a tremendous help. She did grocery shopping. She sewed napkins. She helped with the dishes. She'd sit in with meditation with us.

''She passed away last year, but she was such a gregarious, outgoing person. People saw her as a bridge. I'm forever grateful,'' Bennage says.