Download or read book Women in Buddhism written by Diana Y. Paul and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1985-04-23 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In seeking to explore the interrelationships between, and mutual influence of, varieties of sexual stereotypes and religious views of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Women in Buddhism succeeds in drawing our attention to matters of philosophical importance. Paul examines the 'image' of women which arise in a number of Buddhist texts associated with Mahayana and finds that, while ideally the tradition purports to be egalitarian, in actual practice it often betrayed a strong misogynist prejudice. Sanskrit and Chinese texts are organized by theme and type, progressing from those which treat the traditionally orthodox and negative to those which set forth a positive consideration of soteriological paths for women. . . . In Women in Buddhism, Diana Paul may be forcing our consideration of the problem of female enlightenment. Thus the main purport and accomplishment of her scholarship is revolutionary."—Philosophy East and West

Download or read book Buddhist Feminisms and Femininities written by Karma Lekshe Tsomo and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silver Medalist, 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Religion (Eastern/Western) Category This groundbreaking book explores Buddhist thought and culture, from multiple Buddhist perspectives, as sources for feminist reflection and social action. Too often, when writers apply terms such as "woman," "femininity," and "feminism" to Buddhist texts and contexts, they begin with models of feminist thinking that foreground questions and concerns arising from Western experience. This oversight has led to many facile assumptions, denials, and oversimplifications that ignore women's diverse social and historical contexts. But now, with the tools of feminist analysis that have developed in recent decades, constructs of the feminine in Buddhist texts, imagery, and philosophy can be examined—with the acknowledgment that there are limitations to applying these theoretical paradigms to other cultures. Contributors to this volume offer a feminist analysis, which integrates gender theory and Buddhist perspectives, to Buddhist texts and women's narratives from Asia. How do Buddhist concepts of self and no-self intersect with concepts of gender identity, especially for women? How are the female body, sexuality, and femininity constructed (and contested) in diverse Buddhist contexts? How might power and gender identity be perceived differently through a Buddhist lens? By exploring feminist approaches and representations of "the feminine," including persistent questions about women's identities as householders and renunciants, this book helps us to understand how Buddhist influences on attitudes toward women, and how feminist thinking from other parts of the world, can inform and enlarge contemporary discussions of feminism.

Download or read book Zen Women written by Grace Schireson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark presentation at last makes heard the centuries of Zen's female voices. Through exploring the teachings and history of Zen's female ancestors, from the time of the Buddha to ancient and modern female masters in China, Korea, and Japan, Grace Schireson offers us a view of a more balanced Dharma practice, one that is especially applicable to our complex lives, embedded as they are in webs of family relations and responsibilities, and the challenges of love and work. Part I of this book describes female practitioners as they are portrayed in the classic literature of "Patriarchs' Zen"--often as "tea-ladies," bit players in the drama of male students' enlightenments; as "iron maidens," tough-as-nails women always jousting with their male counterparts; or women who themselves become "macho masters," teaching the same Patriarchs' Zen as the men do. Part II of this book presents a different view--a view of how women Zen masters entered Zen practice and how they embodied and taught Zen uniquely as women. This section examines many urgent and illuminating questions about our Zen grandmothers: How did it affect them to be taught by men? What did they feel as they trying to fit into this male practice environment, and how did their Zen training help them with their feelings? How did their lives and relationships differ from that of their male teachers? How did they express the Dharma in their own way for other female students? How was their teaching consistently different from that of male ancestors? And then part III explores how women's practice provides flexible and pragmatic solutions to issues arising in contemporary Western Zen centers.

Download or read book Buddhism beyond Gender written by Rita M. Gross and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and provocative work from the late preeminent feminist scholar, which challenges men and women alike to free themselves from attachment to gender. At the heart of Buddhism is the notion of egolessness—“forgetting the self”—as the path to awakening. In fact, attachment to views of any kind only leads to more suffering for ourselves and others. And what has a greater hold on people’s imaginations or limits them more, asks Rita Gross, than ideas about biological sex and what she calls “the prison of gender roles”? Yet if clinging to gender identity does, indeed, create obstacles for us, why does the prison of gender roles remain so inescapable? Gross uses the lenses of Buddhist philosophy to deconstruct the powerful concept of gender and its impact on our lives. In revealing the inadequacies involved in clinging to gender identity, she illuminates the suffering that results from clinging to any kind of identity at all.

Download or read book Stars at Dawn written by Wendy Garling and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contemporary and provocative examination of the life of the Buddha highlighting the influence of women from his journey to awakening through his teaching career--based on overlooked or neglected stories from ancient source material. In this retelling of the ancient legends of the women in the Buddha’s intimate circle, lesser-known stories from Sanskrit and Pali sources are for the first time woven into an illuminating, coherent narrative that follows his life from his birth to his parinirvana or death. Interspersed with original insights, fresh interpretations, and bold challenges to the status quo, the stories are both entertaining and thought-provoking—some may even appear controversial. Focusing first on laywomen from the time before the Buddha’s enlightenment—his birth mother and stepmother, his co-wives, and members of his harem when he was known as Prince Siddhartha—then moving on to the Buddha’s first female disciples, early nuns, and to female patrons, Wendy Garling invites us to open our minds to a new understanding of their roles.

Download or read book The First Free Women written by Matty Weingast and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Ancient Collection Reimagined Composed around the Buddha’s lifetime, the Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) contains the poems of the first Buddhist women: princesses and courtesans, tired wives of arranged marriages and the desperately in love, those born into limitless wealth and those born with nothing at all. The original authors of the Therigatha were women from every kind of background, but they all shared a deep-seated desire for awakening and liberation. In The First Free Women, Matty Weingast has reimagined this ancient collection and created a contemporary and radical adaptation that takes the essence of each poem and highlights the struggles and doubts, as well as the strength, perseverance, and profound compassion, embodied by these courageous women.

Download or read book Figures of Buddhist Modernity in Asia written by Jeffrey Samuels and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-07-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces contemporary Buddhists from across Asia and from various walks of life. Eschewing traditional hagiographies, the editors have collected sixty-six profiles of individuals who would be excluded from most Buddhist histories and ethnographies. In addition to monks and nuns, readers will encounter artists, psychologists, social workers, part-time priests, healers, and librarians as well as charlatans, hucksters, profiteers, and rabble-rousers—all whose lives reflect changes in modern Buddhism even as they themselves shape the course of these changes. The editors and contributors are fundamentally concerned with how individual Buddhists make meaning and display this understanding to others. Some practitioners profiled look to the past, lamenting the transformations Buddhism has undergone in recent times, while others embrace these. Some have adopted a “new asceticism,” while others are eager to explore different religious traditions as they think about their own ways of being Buddhist. Arranging the profiles according to these themes—looking backward, forward, inward, and outward—reveals the value of studying individual Buddhists and their idiosyncratic religious backgrounds and attitudes, thus highlighting the diversity of approaches to the practice and study of Buddhism in Asia today. Students and teachers will welcome sections on further readings and additional tables of contents that organize the profiles thematically, as well as by tradition (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), region, and country.

Download or read book The Hidden Lamp written by Zenshin Florence Caplow and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hidden Lamp is a collection of one hundred koans and stories of Buddhist women from the time of the Buddha to the present day. This revolutionary book brings together many teaching stories that were hidden for centuries, unknown until this volume. These stories are extraordinary expressions of freedom and fearlessness, relevant for men and women of any time or place. In these pages we meet nuns, laywomen practicing with their families, famous teachers honored by emperors, and old women selling tea on the side of the road. Each story is accompanied by a reflection by a contemporary woman teacher--personal responses that help bring the old stories alive for readers today--and concluded by a final meditation for the reader, a question from the editors meant to spark further rumination and inquiry. These are the voices of the women ancestors of every contemporary Buddhist.

Download or read book Becoming Guanyin written by Yuhang Li and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2024 Geiss-Hsu Book Prize for Best First Book, Society for Ming Studies The goddess Guanyin began in India as the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, originally a male deity. He gradually became indigenized as a female deity in China over the span of nearly a millennium. By the Ming (1358–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) periods, Guanyin had become the most popular female deity in China. In Becoming Guanyin, Yuhang Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion, arguing that women used their own bodies to echo that of Guanyin. Li focuses on the power of material things to enable women to access religious experience and transcendence. In particular, she examines how secular Buddhist women expressed mimetic devotion and pursued religious salvation through creative depictions of Guanyin in different media such as painting and embroidery and through bodily portrayals of the deity using jewelry and dance. These material displays expressed a worldview that differed from yet fit within the Confucian patriarchal system. Attending to the fabrication and use of “women’s things” by secular women, Li offers new insight into the relationships between worshipped and worshipper in Buddhist practice. Combining empirical research with theoretical insights from both art history and Buddhist studies, Becoming Guanyin is a field-changing analysis that reveals the interplay between material culture, religion, and their gendered transformations.

Download or read book Cave in the Snow written by Vicki Mackenzie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How an Englishwoman has become a Buddhist legend and a champion for the rights of women to attain spiritual enlightenment.

Download or read book Poems of the First Buddhist Women written by and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Therīgāthā is one of the oldest surviving literatures by women, composed more than two millennia ago and originally collected as part of the Pali canon of Buddhist scripture. These poems were written by some of the first Buddhist women—therīs—honored for their religious achievements. Through imaginative verses about truth and freedom, the women recount their lives before ordination and their joy at attaining liberation from samsara. Poems of the First Buddhist Women offers startling insights into the experiences of women in ancient times that continue to resonate with modern readers. With a spare and elegant style, this powerful translation introduces us to a classic of world literature.

Download or read book Meetings with Remarkable Women written by Lenore Friedman and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1987 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book celebrates the flowering of women teachers in American Buddhism. Lenore Friedman has profiled some of the remarkable women who have been teaching Buddhism in the United States. The seventeen women she writes about vary in background, personality, and form of teaching. Some of them have maintained close ties with their inherited tradition while infusing it with a warmth and softness closer to their own nature. Others have sloughed off inherited forms and are finding new ways of practicing and transmitting the dharma that are more compatible with Western experience. Together they represent the growing trend in American Buddhism that will surely affect the development of Buddhism in the West for years to come.

Download or read book Dakini Power written by Michaela Haas and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pema Chödrön, Joan Halifax, and ten other female Tibetan Buddhist teachers share inspiring personal stories, revealing how we can embody Buddhist wisdom and overcome everyday challenges What drives a young London librarian to board a ship to India, meditate in a remote cave by herself for twelve years, and then build a flourishing nunnery in the Himalayas? How does a surfer girl from Malibu become the head of the main international organization for Buddhist women? Why does the daughter of a music executive in Santa Monica dream so vividly of peacocks one night that she chases these images to Nepal, where she finds the love of her life in an unconventional young Tibetan master? The women featured in Dakini Power—contemporary teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, both Asians and Westerners, who teach in the West—have been universally recognized as accomplished practitioners and brilliant teachers whose life stories demonstrate their immense determination and bravery. Meeting them in this book, readers will be inspired to let go of old fears, explore new paths, and lead the lives they envision. Featured here are: Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche (This Precious Life) Dagmola Sakya (Princess in the Land of Snows) Jetsun Tenzin Palmo/Diane Perry (Into the Heart of Life) Pema Chödrön/Deirdre Blomfield-Brown (When Things Fall Apart; Start Where You Are) Khandro Tsering Chödron (late aunt of Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying) Thubten Chodron/Cherry Greene (Buddhism for Beginners; Taming the Mind) Karma Lekshe Tsomo/Patricia Zenn (Buddhism Through American Women ’s Eyes) Chagdud Khadro/Jane Dedman (P ’howa Commentary; Life in Relation to Death) Sangye Khandro/Nanci Gay Gustafson (Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga) Roshi Joan Halifax (Being with Dying) Lama Tsultrim Allione/Joan Rousmanière Ewing (Women of Wisdom; Feeding Your Demons) Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel (The Power of an Open Question)

Download or read book Buddhism After Patriarchy written by Rita M. Gross and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys both the part women have played in Buddhism historically and what Buddhism might become in its post-patriarchal future. The author completes the Buddhist historical record by discussing women, usually absent from histories of Buddhism, and she provides the first feminist analysis of the major concepts found in Buddhist religion. Gross demonstrates that the core teachings of Buddhism promote gender equity rather than male dominance, despite the often sexist practices found in Buddhist institutions throughout history.

Download or read book Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions written by Bhikkhu Analayo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned scholar-monk writes accessibly on some of the most contentious topics in Buddhism—guaranteed to ruffle some feathers. Armed with his rigorous examination of the canonical records, respected scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo explores—and sharply criticizes—four examples of what he terms “superiority conceit” in Buddhism: the androcentric tendency to prevent women from occupying leadership roles, be these as fully ordained monastics or as advanced bodhisattvas the Mahayana notion that those who don’t aspire to become bodhisattvas are inferior practitioners the Theravada belief that theirs is the most original expression of the Buddha’s teaching the Secular Buddhist claim to understand the teachings of the Buddha more accurately than traditionally practicing Buddhists Ven. Analayo challenges the scriptural basis for these conceits and points out that adhering to such notions of superiority is not, after all, conducive to practice. “It is by diminishing ego, letting go of arrogance, and abandoning conceit that one becomes a better Buddhist,” he reminds us, “no matter what tradition one may follow.” Thoroughly researched, Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions provides an accessible approach to these conceits as academic subjects. Readers will find it not only challenges their own intellectual understandings but also improves their personal practice.

Download or read book Receiving the Marrow written by Eido Frances Carney and published by . This book was released on 2012-08 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dogen's great spiritual teachings are the foundation of Soto Zen. For the first time, contemporary American women Zen masters in the Soto tradition, join together to reach within Dogen's mind to make his masterpieces accessible and practical for those seeking deeper realization and understanding.

Download or read book Himalayan Hermitess written by Kurtis R. Schaeffer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration to compose one of the most forthright and engaging spiritual autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition. Her life story is the oldest of only four Tibetan autobiographies authored by women. It is also a rare example of writing by a pre-modern Buddhist woman, and thus holds a unique place in Buddhist literature as a whole. Translator Kurtis Schaeffer prefaces the text with an illuminating study of the life and times of Orgyan Chokyi and an extended analysis of the hermitess's view of the relation between gender, suffering, and liberation. Based almost entirely on primary Tibetan documents never before translated, this fascinating book will be of interest to those studying Buddhism, gender and religion, and the culture of the Tibetan world.