Zen Women: Beyond Maidens & Macho Masters

Grace Schireson; Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

This landmark presentation at last makes heard the centuries of Zen's female voices.

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 a view of a more balanced Dharma practice.

It is one that is especially applicable to our complex lives, embedded as they are in webs of family relations and responsibilities, as well as the challenges of love and work.

PART ONE of this book describes female practitioners as they are often portrayed in the classic literature of "Patriarchs' Zen" as:

• "tea ladies," bit players in the drama of male students' enlightenments,
• "iron maidens," tough-as-nails women always jousting with their male counterparts,
• women who themselves become "macho masters," teaching the same Patriarchs' Zen as men.

What's the history of women in Zen?

PART TWO presents a different take -- a view of how female 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?
• How did they feel as they were trying to fit into this male practice environment?
• 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 did their teaching consistently differ from that of male ancestors?

PART THREE explores how women's practice provides flexible and pragmatic solutions to issues arising in contemporary Western Zen centers. More:

• Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters (paperback, illustrated, 2009, foreword by Miriam Levering and blurb by Joan Halifax)