Review: Buddhism Through American Buddhist Womens Eyes

This newest series of essays written by American Buddhist women, by Karma Lekshe Tsomo is one of a number of such volumes introducing and promoting womens roles in the current formation of Buddhism in America and worldwide. Other important volumes include Sandy Bouchers Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism, Lenore Friedmans Meetings with Remarkable Women: Buddhist Teachers in America, Ellen Sidors A Gathering of Spirit: Women Teaching in American Buddhism, and Karma Lekshe Tsomos Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha. These books all have similar aims to highlight female teachers in America and show the feminization of Buddhism in America. This list of volumes, however, are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s. With this new book, Karma Lekshe Tsomo introduces us to new teachers and teachings among Buddhist women in America. This volume in particular aims to give women a chance to express themselves on the Dharma and their experiences of adapting and implementing the teachings in their daily lives (13).

The list of contributors includes female monastics, lay meditation teachers, and ! women wh o have incorporated Buddhist principles into their work. More well-known names such as Jacqueline Mandell, Ayya Khema, and Karma Lekshe Tsomo, have full-length pieces. The book contains excerpts from a retreat for women at St. Marys Seminary in California in 1989. The purpose of the retreat was to discuss issues for American Buddhist women in all the many Buddhist traditions. Karma Lekshe Tsomo finds that although American Buddhist women have not been practicing for very long as they are almost all new Buddhists, their words and perspectives may be more fresh and dynamic (157).

Topics in the essays in this volume include those that focus not on the practice of sitting meditation, and in fact, formal meditation is downgraded in order to highlight Buddhist principles applicability in daily life. Essays discuss parenting, understanding dying and grief, abortion, alcoholism, addiction, being in relationships, helping mothers and pregnant women and others. One of the most successful pieces is Chapter 12 The Monastic Experience, which discusses female monasticism from many different perspectives: Shingon in Japan, Zen in America, FoGuang Shan in America, vipassana meditation nun in Burma, and Tibetan Buddhist nun. Here each person describes their unique experiences in each tradition and yet the similarities of being a female Buddhist monastic are still apparent.

These works show what women can offer the emerging Buddhist communities in English-speaking countries a Buddhism that is more integrated into daily life applying Buddhism to real-life difficult situations.