Buddhist Women Across Cultures

Karma Lekshe Tsomo is Instructor of Buddhism at Chaminade University and Degree Fellow at the East-West Center. She has written several books including Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women, also published by SUNY Press, and most recently, Living and Dying in Buddhist Cultures (with David W. Chappell).

"The topics of women and feminist interpretation have become very important in many academic fields in the humanities and social sciences. Buddhist studies is no exception. Indeed, the feminine, women, sexuality, and gender have virtually become a subfield in Buddhist studies. So, the topic of this book is important in its own right but also for what it contributes to other fields. What strikes me as especially valuable about this volume is its relatively synoptic/inclusive nature, thereby giving it a very timely role in the current literature on Buddhism, women, and sexuality." — Donald K. Swearer, author of The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia"What I like most about this book is the scope—feminism/Buddhism—in cross- cultural contexts. There is no other book like it. Buddhist Women Across Cultures articulates vital strands of the process which the author so aptly terms the 'feminization of Buddhism.'"This is the only anthology that really works with these issues from cross-cultural and feminist perspectives. This insight makes the anthology stand out in the rapidly growing area of Buddhism/feminism—perhaps the key book to reconfigure the field at present and for some time to come." — Jeffner Allen, State University of New York at Binghamton

• PrefaceMahaprajapati's Legacy: The Buddhist Women's Movement: An IntroductionKarma Lekshe TsomoPart I: Buddhist Women in Asian Traditions South Asian Traditions1. The Female in BuddhismElizabeth J. Harris 2. Buddhist Women in India and Precolonial Sri LankaLorna Dewaraja 3. Restoring the Order of Nuns to the Theravadin TraditionSenarat WijayasundaraEast Asian Traditions4. The Red Cord Untied: Buddhist Nuns in Eighteenth-Century ChinaBeata Grant 5. Japanese Buddhist Nuns: Innovators for the Sake of TraditionPaula K. R. Arai 6. Can Women Achieve Enlightenment? A Critique of Sexual Transformation for EnlightenmentHae-ju Sunim (Ho-Ryeon Jeon)The Tibetan Tradition7. Tibetan Buddhist Women Practitioners, Past and Present: A Garland to Delight Those Wishing InspirationJanice D. Willis 8. Pregnancy and Childbirth in Tibetan CultureSarah Pinto 9. Change in Consciousness: Women's Religious Identity in Himalayan Buddhist CulturesKarma Lekshe TsomoPart II: Contemporary Buddhist Women Forging Identity10. Conception and the Entry of Consciousness: When Does a Life Begin?Cait Collins 11. East, West, Women, and SelfAnne C. Klein 12. Appropriate Treasure? Reflections on Women, Buddhism, and Cross-Cultural ExchangeSara ShneidermanShaping New Traditions: Unity and Diversity13. Comparing Buddhist and Christian Women's ExperiencesKarma Lekshe Tsomo 14. Aung San Suu Kyi: A Woman of Conscience in BurmaTheja Gunawardhana 15. A Model for Laywomen in Buddhism: The Western Buddhist OrderDharmacharini Sanghadevi 16. Feminism, Lay Buddhism, and the Future of BuddhismRita M. GrossEpilogueKarma Lekshe TsomoBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex