Women Living Zen

Women Living Zen
Title Women Living Zen PDF eBook
Author Paula Kane Robinson Arai
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 266
Release 1999-08-26
Genre Religion
ISBN 019512393X

Download Women Living Zen Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Although many Buddhists have made concessions to contradictory religious and social expectations during the twentieth century, these Zen nuns spent much of the century advancing their traditional monastic values by fighting for and winning reforms of the sect's misogynist regulations."--BOOK JACKET.

Zen Women

Zen Women
Title Zen Women PDF eBook
Author Grace Schireson
Publisher Simon and Schuster
Pages 321
Release 2009-11-10
Genre Religion
ISBN 0861719565

Download Zen Women Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

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.

Bringing Zen Home

Bringing Zen Home
Title Bringing Zen Home PDF eBook
Author Paula Arai
Publisher University of Hawaii Press
Pages 281
Release 2011-09-30
Genre Religion
ISBN 0824835352

Download Bringing Zen Home Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Healing lies at the heart of Zen in the home, as Paula Arai discovered in her pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen. She reveals a vital stream of religious practice that flourishes outside the bounds of formal institutions through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and common materials are used in inventive ways. For example, polishing cloths, vivified by prayer and mantra recitation, become potent tools. The creation of beauty through the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement become rites of healing. Bringing Zen Home brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses. She also discovers a novel application of the concept of Buddha nature as the women honor deceased loved ones as “personal Buddhas.” One of the hallmarks of the study is its longitudinal nature, spanning fourteen years of fieldwork. Arai developed a “second-person,” or relational, approach to ethnographic research prompted by recent trends in psychobiology. This allowed her to cultivate relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability over many years to inquire into not only the practices but also their ongoing and changing roles. The women in her study entrusted her with their life stories, personal reflections, and religious insights, yielding an ethnography rich in descriptive and narrative detail as well as nuanced explorations of the experiential dimensions and effects of rituals. In Bringing Zen Home, the first study of the ritual lives of Zen laywomen, Arai applies a cutting-edge ethnographic method to reveal a thriving domain of religious practice. Her work represents an important contribution on a number of fronts—to Zen studies, ritual studies, scholarship on women and religion, and the cross-cultural study of healing.

Women Living Zen

Women Living Zen
Title Women Living Zen PDF eBook
Author Paula Kane Robinson Arai
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 266
Release 1999-08-26
Genre Religion
ISBN 0195344154

Download Women Living Zen Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In this study, based on both historical evidence and ethnographic data, Paula Arai shows that nuns were central agents in the foundation of Buddhism in Japan in the sixth century. They were active participants in the Soto Zen sect, and have continued to contribute to the advancement of the sect to the present day. Drawing on her fieldwork among the Soto nuns, Arai demonstrates that the lives of many of these women embody classical Buddhist ideals. They have chosen to lead a strictly disciplined monastic life over against successful careers and the unconstrained contemporary secular lifestyle. In this, and other respects, they can be shown to stand in stark contrast to their male counterparts.

Living Zen [Second Edition]

Living Zen [Second Edition]
Title Living Zen [Second Edition] PDF eBook
Author Robert Linssen
Publisher Pickle Partners Publishing
Pages 524
Release 2016-10-21
Genre Religion
ISBN 1787201112

Download Living Zen [Second Edition] Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Living Zen is that rare achievement, both a survey of the rich history of Zen Buddhism and a guide to the practice of this most demanding and effortless art of being. The distinguished Belgian scholar Robert Linssen offers a sage corrective to the idea that the Zen way is available only to those prepared to sit life out under the Bodhi-Tree. Gently but insistently he undermines this typically Western view; inviting and enabling us, as Christmas Humphreys puts it in his preface, to take “the leap from thought to No-thought, from the ultimate duality of Illusion/Reality to a burst of laughter and a cup of tea.” “Linssen’s aim throughout this penetrating book is to encourage his readers to outgrow the cocoon of self-centered thought and feeling. The core of the book lies in its lucid analysis...and in the meaning which it gives to the true attention, focused undesirously in the immediate present, which can dissolve the endless distractions of the fear-conditioned ego.”—The Times Literary Supplement “Robert Linssen finally gives a sensible explanation of what Zen is all about.”—Saturday Review “An excellent study.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Being Black

Being Black
Title Being Black PDF eBook
Author Angel Kyodo Williams
Publisher Penguin
Pages 225
Release 2002-01-08
Genre Religion
ISBN 1101199458

Download Being Black Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"Honest, courageous... Williams has committed an act of love."—Alice Walker "A classic."—Jack Kornfield There truly is an art to being here in this world, and like any art, it can be mastered. In this elegant, practical book, Angel Kyodo Williams combines the universal wisdom of Buddhism with an inspirational call for self-acceptance and community empowerment. Written by a woman who grew up facing the challenges that confront African-Americans every day, Being Black teaches us how a "warrior spirit" of truth and responsibility can be developed into the foundation for real happiness and personal transformation. With her eloquent, hip, and honest perspective, Williams—a Zen priest, social activist, and entrepreneur—shares personal stories, time-tested teachings, and simple guidelines that invite readers of all faiths to step into the freedom of a life lived with fearlessness and grace.

The First Free Women

The First Free Women
Title The First Free Women PDF eBook
Author Matty Weingast
Publisher Shambhala Publications
Pages 161
Release 2020-02-11
Genre Religion
ISBN 0834842688

Download The First Free Women Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

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.