Buddhist Women Research Articles

Women in Japanese religions

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Why Study Women in Japanese Religions? 1 1. The Prehistorical Japanese Archipelago: Fertility Cults and Shaman Queens 5 2. Ancient Japanese Mythology: Female Divinities and Immortals 22 3. The Introduction of Buddhism: Nuns, Lay Patrons, and Popular Devotion 40 4. The Heian Period: Women in Buddhism and Court Ritual 56 5. The Medieval Period: Buddhist Reform Movements and the Demonization of Femininity 76 6. The Edo Period: Confucianism, Nativism, and Popular Religion 97 7. Imperial Japan: Good Wives and Wise Mothers 115 8. The Postwar Period: Nostalgia, Religion, and the Reinvention of Femininity 134 9. The Lost Decades: Gender and Religion in Flux 154 Conclusion 172 Questions for Discussion 177 Notes 181 Works Cited 205 For Further Reading 221 Index 227 About the Author 237

From Military Patriarchy to Gender Equity: Including Women in the Democratic Transition in Burma

From Military Patriarchy to Gender Equity: Including Women in the Democratic Transition in Burma The present transition of Burma, known as President Thein Sein’s initiative, has been started by the military regime in 2003 by seven-step road map. The recent development of current Burma is the last step of the roadmap. The entire design of the transition totally excluded the voice of women and lack of gender inclusion. Since after 2012 bi-election, people of Burma has been experienced the conflict that emerged from the violence in the form of communal ones along with the idea of nationalism. Now, such violence has come to reach the peak and individual rights of Buddhist women are being manipulated under this scenario.

Networks and Bridges: Nuns in the Making of Modern Chinese Buddhism

Buddhist women have been building modern Chinese Buddhism for over a century and have been instrumental in the globalization of Buddhism. This article focuses on how Chinese Buddhist nuns constructed new networks, and their role as “bridges” between eras, people, institutions, and regions in modern times. The first section contextualizes the “Buddhist Revival” in turn-of-the-century China, and highlights the reforms of Buddhist modernizer Taixu regarding Chinese Buddhist women, particularly in the field of education. The second section discusses several networks of Buddhist women spanning a time-period from the late nineteenth century to the present, including those of two eminent nuns, Longlian and Tongyuan. I also discuss some reasons for the evolution of Taiwan's flourishing order of nuns and highlight networks of Taiwan nuns connecting Taiwan, China, Japan, and Hong Kong. The mission of these nuns past and present has been education, the key to the development of the nuns’ order and to the flourishing of Chinese Buddhism today.

Religious Women and Modern Men: Intersections of Gender and Ethnicity in the Tale of Woman Huang

AbstractThe tale of Woman Huang recounts a pious Buddhist woman’s journey to the underworld to recite the Diamond Sutra for King Yama. Over the centuries since its inception in the Song dynasty (960–1279), it has spread throughout China, including to areas often considered non-Chinese because of their large ethnic minority populations. In the Dali region of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, some modern scholars who belong to the Bai nationality have presented the tale as a distinctive product of Bai culture. However, the versions of the tale they have recently published in collections of Bai literature differ significantly from versions of the tale that women’s lay religious associations in Dali use in their ritual practice. The latter express sympathy for Woman Huang, especially for the tension she faces between her religious piety and family roles, but do not invoke ethnicity; the former foreground ethnicity and present Woman Huang (and other religious women) as superstitious and antimodern. I use thes...

Sakyadhita International: Gender Equity in Ultramodern Buddhism

The nexus between religion and violence has been widely debated in the public sphere at the turn of the twenty-first century. Much of these discourses have centered on direct violence, and on terrorism in particular. Yet, structural violence also remains endemic within many religious traditions, including Buddhism. Buddhist women, and men, continue to challenge these gender inequalities in various ways, notably Sakyadita, the International Association of Buddhist Women founded in 1987, is committed to improving conditions for Buddhist women worldwide. This article investigates how Sakyadhita is promoting gender equity in global Buddhism. It explores Sakyadhita’s origin, and focuses on the 13th Sakyadhita Conference, to examine the role of religious social movements in advancing gender parity. It also proposes an innovative ultramodern Buddhism framework for understanding contemporary global Buddhism, building on existing Buddhist studies, critical feminist and sociological theories. While focused on a Buddhist women’s social movement, this article provides new knowledge that may assist diverse religious communities in addressing gender disparities both locally and internationally.

Women in Asian/Asian North American Religion: Whose Asian/Asian North America? Whose Religion?

Women in Asian/Asian North American Religion:Whose Asian/Asian North America? Whose Religion? Sharon A. Suh (bio) In thinking about how to engage a more nuanced dialogue between Asian/Asian North American feminist theologians and similarly racialized religious others, I begin this essay with some suggestions about how we might move forward after having taken a step back to consider possible roadblocks to thick engagements with and about gendered and racialized subjects across religious traditions. My concern is for the vexing phenomenon of the hyperinvisiblity of Asian/Asian North American lay Buddhist women in the broader discourses of Asian/Asian North American feminist theological reflections. I ask to what extent might Asian/Asian North American feminist theological reflections intersect, or not, with racialized and gendered experiences of Buddhism and argue that we might glimpse the possibility of a constructive interreligious and intercommunity engagement in earnest by intentionally soliciting and drawing non-Christian religious peoples and worldviews into the discussion. As a scholar of Buddhism in a Jesuit institution, my engagement with Asian/Asian North American Buddhist laywomen in Seattle has introduced me to nuanced ways to move beyond interreligious methods that recenter Christianity, scripturalism, and Western hegemony. Toward that end, I first offer a caution against repeating the tendency to view Buddhism as primarily a meditative practice and then seek to highlight one of the most significant Buddhist teachings for many of the Asian/Asian North American lay Buddhist women that I have had the honor of meeting over the past twenty years: karuna (compassion). In so doing, I argue that thinking with and through the gendered racialized lives of Buddhists can help us engage in a politics of solidarity. Despite the seeming ubiquity of meditation as the primary form of Buddhist practice, recent survey results of Asian American Buddhists from the 2012 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicate that 61 percent of respondents seldom or never meditate.1 This fact certainly does not make them nominal or inauthentic Buddhists ignoring practices found in the texts. Instead, the data corroborates that there are many ways of practicing Buddhism beyond meditation that include attending community services at the temple on special holidays, chanting sutras, offering food to monks and nuns, burning incense, and lighting votive candles and lamps to honor the deceased. The presumption that [End Page 137] meditation makes one an authentic Buddhist (a popular view many Western Buddhists hold) has had the effect of rendering nonmeditating Buddhists superfluous to “the tradition” and simplistic practitioners of a less than authentic religion. Yet, if as the Pew study on Asian Americans and religion indicates, most Buddhists engage in practices such as celebrating lunar new year, ancestor veneration, and observing the Buddha’s birthday and enlightenment, then it is perhaps these Buddhists and their forms of practice that should be invited to engage in the most fruitful and constructive kinds of dialogues about religion that take as a given embodied, raced, gendered, classed, and sexed experiences. Let’s Talk about Living, Gendered, Raced Buddhists Not Protestantized Buddhists The Buddhisms of Asian/Asian North Americans are often cast aside as popular devotional practices by the broader white Buddhists and also not considered serious religion by those with more Protestant leanings toward sola scriptura. Yet, for the many Japanese American Buddhist women that I have met in Seattle, it is the practice of everyday life and expressions of gratitude that arise from the recognition of interdependence that bring about significant spiritual transformation not meditation. For the Korean American Buddhist women and men I encountered in Los Angeles, meditation played little role in their religious lives; instead, it was communal engagement, devotional chanting, singing, and listening to dharma talks that comprised the majority of their practices.2 If not in the main worship hall of the temples, women were bowing in front of the statues of the various Buddhas found in many a Buddhist temple. Meditation simply did not hold pride of place in their Buddhist lives. Despite evidence to the contrary, there remains a significant racial divide found between popular and scholarly constructions of Buddhism as a meditative tradition and Asian/Asian North American Buddhists engaged in devotional worship. In a...

Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renouncer by Nirmala S. Salgado, and: Women in Pali Buddhism: Walking the Spiritual Paths in Mutual Dependence by Pascale Engelmajer, and: Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies ed. by Alice Collett (review)

Reviewed by: Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renouncer by Nirmala S. Salgado, and: Women in Pali Buddhism: Walking the Spiritual Paths in Mutual Dependence by Pascale Engelmajer, and: Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies ed. by Alice Collett Rita M. Gross BUDDHIST NUNS AND GENDERED PRACTICE: IN SEARCH OF THE FEMALE RENOUNCER. By Nirmala S. Salgado. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 319 pp. WOMEN IN PALI BUDDHISM: WALKING THE SPIRITUAL PATHS IN MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. By Pascale Engelmajer. London: Routledge, 2015. 137 pp. WOMEN IN EARLY INDIAN BUDDHISM: COMPARATIVE TEXTUAL STUDIES. Edited by Alice Collett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 274 pp. Recently, three books on gender and Buddhism, one on contemporary conditions and the other two mainly on classical Buddhists texts, have been released. They are being reviewed in order, from the least useful of the three to the most useful. Salgado’s book is by far the most difficult of the three to evaluate. Mainly, I find [End Page 226] it disappointing, but I wonder what I am missing. The book is about a topic in Buddhist studies and gender studies in religion that is definitely not reported and studied sufficiently—the lives and attitudes of Sri Lankan nuns, sometimes called dasa sila matas or ten precept “nuns,” who do not have and often do not want “higher ordination.” The same comment can be made about “nuns” in other forms of Buddhism that similarly lack “higher ordination” who, nevertheless, practice a lifestyle of monasticlike renunciation. The book is also very critical of the ways these women have been represented in scholarly literature. Thus, it should and could add significantly to our knowledge about Buddhist women. So what engenders the disappointment? First of all, this book is not elegantly or clearly written. Salgudo frequently criticizes other authors for using “globalatinized” speech, but her own book is replete with postcolonial and social scientific jargon to the point of being difficult to decipher in places. The book’s organization also presents difficulties. It is something of a patchwork of pieces that seem to have been written separately and not fully integrated into a through-composed book. The book is stridently ideological, especially when dealing with “secular, liberal feminists,” as she invariably characterizes Buddhist-feminist scholar-practitioners who write about Buddhist women or Buddhism and gender. If this book has a thesis or central theme, it is that much writing about Buddhist nuns does not accurately represent contemporary Asian nuns who lack “higher ordination,” their motivations for being nuns, or what matters to them about being nuns. It is claimed that this happens because those who write about Buddhist nuns are liberal feminists grounded in secular ideologies who have a colonialist agenda, regarding Asian nuns as in need of rescue by Western solutions. The first sentence of this paragraph may well be accurate for scholarly writings in English, but the second sentence paraphrases the ideology that mars this book. “Feminism” has become almost a swear word in some discourses. Because it is left undefined, the reader has no idea what Salgado means by the term. Let us analyze separately these two aspects of her book. Salgudo is correct that Western writers about Buddhist nuns tend to regard full ordination, the so-called higher ordination, very favorably, not because they are Westerners but because the “fourfold sangha,” consisting of fully ordained monks, fully ordained nuns, laymen, and laywomen, is the normative Buddhist sangha. This is not a controversial or a contested claim, despite the fact that “higher ordination” for women is either no longer available or available only with difficulty in two of three schools of Vinaya (monastic rules) in practice today. It is also correct that Western women who write about Buddhist nuns tend to wish Asian women were more favorably disposed to “higher ordination” than they currently are. They think that Buddhist nuns would be better off if full ordination were available to them, often noting that East Asian nuns, who have “higher ordination,” seem to be better educated and better supported economically than Theravada or Tibetan nuns, who do not have “higher ordination.” It is also the case that English language authors tend to...

Children of Buddha, or Caretakers of Women?

This paper deals with the self-understandings of ordained Buddhist women (nisō 尼僧, ama 尼) in contemporary Japan. Their situation is characterized by discrimination and limited access to clerical positions on the one hand and, with the exception of monastic nuns, by their lack of a clearly defined role on the other. Although the training required to attain the status of a fully ordained cleric is firmly regulated by each Buddhist school, ordained women’s subsequent way of life is not. They may be married and have their own families. They may be the head priestess of a temple, the wife of a temple priest, or work in a temple. They may live according to Buddhist precepts in private, or have secular jobs. Under these conditions, ordained women have found ways of empowering themselves by interpreting their role in accordance with their social contexts and by re-evaluating conservative conceptions of gender.

Legitimizing Legitimization: Tārā’s Assimilation of Masculine Qualities in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and the Feminist ‘Reclaiming’ of Theological Discourse

This essay examines how Tārā ‘reclaims’ the discourse of enlightenment for Buddhist women and feminist theologians. Despite universal concern for the liberation of all beings, Buddhahood in mainstream texts and narratives was confined to male deities and masters, or females that switched their genders in their final rebirth. Furthermore, Tārā’s senior male bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrî, overwhelmingly monopolized compassion and wisdom as the latters’ embodiments. This study proposes how Tārā’s theology gradually came to distinguish her from her male colleagues and reclaim the state of Buddhahood. Tārā is an unequivocally female Buddha in Vajrayāna Buddhism because she has managed to assimilate these theological virtues that were essentially reserved as masculine, correcting them as genderless qualities without identity. Tārā’s legitimization sets a concrete precedent for the title of ‘Buddha’ to be included amongst the categories of feminine faith and practice.

Exploring the interplay between Buddhism and career development: a study of highly skilled women workers in Sri Lanka

This article adopts a socio-cultural lens to examine the role of Buddhism in highly skilled women workers’ careers in Sri Lanka. While Buddhism enabled women’s career development by giving them strength to cope with difficult situations in work, it also seemed to restrict their agency and constrain their career advancement. The article argues, based on its findings, that being perceived as a good Buddhist woman worked as a powerful form of career capital for the respondents in the sample, who used their faith to combat gender disadvantage in their work settings.

Women's Religious Affiliation in the Jōdo Shinshū

AbstractHow can we talk about female religious professionals in a non‐celibate Buddhist tradition with no formal ordination or convents for nuns? Is there any distinction between laywomen and nuns? In this survey essay, I summarize the body of research on women in the Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land Buddhism) to highlight the importance of women's roles as wives and mothers to their identities as religious professionals. On the other hand, laywomen in this tradition are notable for their organization into all‐female confraternities, and later into modern women's associations, whose members were voracious consumers of religious educational literature. I conclude the essay by pointing the way for future scholarship on these subjects and exploring the potential contributions of this theme to our understanding of women in Buddhism more broadly.

BUDDHIST IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF BUDDHIST WOMEN’S NARRATIVES IN NAGPUR CITY

Indian women rarely observed as independent identity due to its caste hierachization. Thus a woman identity along with an identity of being lower caste simultaneously makes her a victim of a rigidly imbibed patriarchy and the caste system in our society. Lots of conversion had taken place to transform the life of human beings. But the investigative studies done on these kinds of religious conversions mostly focused on men and gave less importance on its impact on women identity. Among these conversions, Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism had succeeded to a great extent in providing a new respectable identity to many. Yet the status of Buddhist women, among the Buddhist community, remained the most unexamined part of this conversion. Thus, this paper tries to examine whether the Buddhist identity succeeded to provide a sense of self respect and equal status to Buddhist women or what extent the Buddhist identity stood able to replace their stigmatized identity in public sphere by investigating the narrative provided by the Buddhist women about their own identity.

Reversal of Female Power, Transcendentality, and Gender in Thai Buddhism: The Thai Buddhist female saint Khun Mae Bunruean Tongbuntoem (1895–1964)

AbstractRecently we have seen an increasing number of publications, mostly of an ethnographic nature, describing and discussing the significant religious roles and achievements of Thai Buddhist women, not only in the field of Buddhist education, and with regard to their monastic roles, but also in terms of their roles as accomplished Buddhist practitioners. This paper examines the changes occurring in the status and position of women in Thai Buddhist practice. In this regard I focus on the analysis of one of the first widely acknowledged female saints of modern Thai Buddhism: Khun Mae Bunruean Tongbuntoem (1895–1964). Khun Mae Bunruean has obtained her increasing reputation through the advanced meditative achievements which her followers believe she possessed. I use hagiographical accounts of her as a focal point to unravel and examine Thai beliefs in relation to female sainthood in present-day Thai Buddhism. This is done by discussing gendered hagiographical writing against the background of relevant canonical and post-canonical Pali texts that have exerted authority in religious discourses on gender by informing and nurturing Thai religious value systems. This textual research is complemented by the ethnographic examination of Thai Buddhist beliefs and venerational practices which cannot be found in authoritative Pali texts but which still play a significant role in the understanding of the particularities of female saints in modern Thai Buddhism. I do not confine myself to hagiographical accounts and venerational practices directly linked to gender, but also devote some attention to other conspicuous aspects, elements, and expressions of Mae Bunruean's sainthood and her veneration.

Why I Am Not a Buddhist Feminist: A Critical Examination of ‘Buddhist Feminism’

Feminist Buddhology is a burgeoning area of study, with many scholar-practitioners examining the interaction between Buddhism and feminist theory. Here I examine the contributions made by Buddhist Feminists and argue that, in general, Feminist Buddhology runs the serious risk of being ‘apologist’. I contrast the discrimination against women evident in Buddhist traditions with the claims of Buddhist Feminists that ‘Buddhism is feminism’ and ‘feminism is Buddhism’. In order to do so I provide a brief history or the position of women in Buddhism, an overview of Feminist Buddhology and lastly the beginnings of an alternate perspective from which we may interweave Buddhism and feminism, without an underlying apologist perspective.

Position of Women in Buddhism: Spiritual and Cultural Activities

The Buddha is a great benefactor of humanity. After the attainment of the Enlightenment in Bodhgaya and preaching First Sermon in Sarnath, the Buddha founded the order of Monks (Bhikkhusangha). This order of Monks increased and within forty five years of Buddha’s ministry it had spread throughout ancient India. But groundless belief of Brahmins is that woman is inferior to man. The position which the woman lost under the dominance of the Brahmins of the day evidently showed little sympathy for her. In this article I will explore the position of women considering their spiritual and cultural activities.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/afj.v4i0.12933 The Arts Faculty Journal Vol.4 July 2010-June 2011 pp.75-84

Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality (review)

Reviewed by: Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality Shi Zhiru, Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality. Edited by Eun-su Cho, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011, xiii, 210 p. Due to the paucity of written records, it is difficult to attempt historical reconstruction of the lives of Buddhist women in East Asia. Happily, in the last decade, book-length historical studies of female monasticism in China and Japan have appeared, notably Beata Grant's Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China (University of Hawai'i Press, 2008) and Lori Meeks' Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Pre-Modern Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010). Another first book is Elsie DeVido's short monograph, Taiwan's Buddhist Nuns (State University of New York Press, 2010), a historical study of contemporary nuns in Taiwan. In this range of studies, Korea is visibly absent from this burgeoning scholarship on female monasticism in East Asia. This is particularly odd at a time when nuns constitute half of the ordained population in the largest Korean Buddhist order, the Chogye-jong (p. 35). Two popular publications on Korean nuns have recently appeared (Martine Bachelor, Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practice, Syracuse University Press, 2006; Daehaeng Sunim, No River to Cross: Trusting the Enlightenment That's Always Right Here, Wisdom Publications, 2007). However, thus far there has been no book-length scholarly publication on the topic. Hence, Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality is a long overdue contribution, which bridges this lacuna in modern English-language scholarship. The book's eight chapters provide historical vignettes of the lives and work of Korean Buddhist women. Portrayals of their unwavering dedication, resourcefulness, and strength are contextualized within broader intellectual, political, and social environments. Chapter 1, the editor's Introduction, sets forth the scholarly and religious backgrounds for studying Korean Buddhist women. Eun-su Cho explains that the relative neglect of female practitioners [End Page 187] on the part of both scholars and practitioners of Korean Buddhism is the outcome of three obstacles: the dearth of primary textual sources; the nuns' tendencies to represent themselves through inherited traditional (and often sectarian) views; and the problematic of applying Western feminist or gender theories to Korean contexts. Chapter 2, also by Cho, gives a useful historical overview that coherently organizes the themes, chronological periods, or individual women in the other chapters into a broader religious history from the arrival of Buddhism to Korea in the fourth century up to the contemporary times. Cho addresses the question why female monasticism was able to outlive centuries of suppression during the pro-Confucian trends and the often anti-Buddhist sentiments of Chosŏn rule (1392-1910) and the four decades of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), to emerge as a vital force in contemporary Korea. While acknowledging the religiosity and strengths of women, she ultimately attributes the tenacious vitality of the female order to changes in Korean society, economy, and women's status (pp. 36-38). Chapters 3 and 4 analyze elite Buddhist nuns and laywomen of the Koryŏ period (935-1392). In Chapter 3, Young Mi Kim shows the reader glimpses of the religious opportunities and practices elite Buddhist nuns of Later Koryŏ had access to, whereas in Chapter 4, Tonino Puggioni turns to Koryŏ court ladies living abroad in China and explores their substantial contributions to local Korean Buddhist temples and communities. Using writings, letters, and even the epitaph of Chin-gak Hyesim (1178-1234), Young shows that this eminent Sŏn monk accepted female disciples to whom he imparted the technique of hwadu meditation. Hyesim taught that women could also achieve awakening on the grounds that all living beings regardless of their innate abilities could attain Buddhahood through hwadu meditation. As his teaching was contrary to the mainstream position of Sŏn teachers of his time, Hyesim represents "the most progressive male view about women's Buddhist practice in Korean history" (p. 9). Hyesim's relationship with his female disciples, including his written communication with them, is reminiscent of the Song dynasty Chan monk Dahui...

Embroidering Guanyin: Constructions of the Divine through Hair

Hair embroidery was a particular technique practiced by lay Buddhist women to create devotional images. The embroiderers used their own hair as threads and applied them on silk to stitch figures. This paper will analyze the religious connotation of hair embroidery, the ritual process and the techniques for making hair embroidery in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. By tracing its appearance in both literary texts and actual surviving objects, this essay will ask how and in what circumstances human hair was applied to embroidery? What was the significance of transferring one’s own hair onto an icon? How did hair embroidery combine women’s bodies (their hair) with a womanly skill (embroidery) to make a unique gendered practice in late imperial China?

Questions of ordination legitimacy for newly ordained Theravādabhikkhunīin Thailand

In Thailand the widespread assumption thatbhikkhunīordination has already been disrupted and that as a result Theravāda Buddhist women can no longer be ordained has been challenged by a group of women who have received the full monastic precepts from foreignsaṅghaand practise Theravāda Buddhism in yellow monastic robes. Public concerns have centred on whether suchbhikkhunīordinations are possible, and how women could becomebhikkhunīin a ‘correct’ way. Both supporters and opponents are often vocal in discussing ordination ceremony procedures, based on their interpretation of thevinaya, the monastic disciplines. This paper argues that it is not a matter of ‘right’ procedure, but rather of the authority of the religious institution or tradition that validates one's ordination. Even if a woman is ordained as abhikkhunīby the ‘right’ procedure, her status remains unstable unless the religious authority of her country sanctions her ordination. In other words, it is only a political decision made by a religious institution — in the case of Thailand, the NationalSaṅgha— that can reinstate ‘legitimate’bhikkhunīordination.

Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China (review)

Reviewed by: Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China Rita M. Gross Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China. By Beata Grant. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009. 241 pp. This painstakingly researched study presents the lives and writings of Buddhist women acknowledged by their spiritual teachers and peers to be accomplished Chan masters and genuine lineage holders. As such, it adds to a growing body of literature that is gradually giving us more accurate and complete knowledge about Buddhist women throughout the centuries and in the various forms of Buddhism. Because a lack of women teachers has always been, in my opinion, Buddhism's greatest downfall, a full account of seven women who were recognized as lineage holders and successfully ran convents is very good news indeed. Even better, these women left significant literary works, which means that we can read their own reflections and impressions of the world in which they lived, rather than only what men chose to record about them, as is so often the only material available to those who do scholarship about women and religion. [End Page 154] In a brief preface, the author details her main task. She wants to "present, rather than to re-present or re-create" these women (p. ix), to get as close as possible to the women themselves rather than to create a well-meaning fiction about them. Therefore, she translates extensively from their own writings. These writings themselves reveal the high regard in which these women Chan masters were held. At the time and place in which these women lived, only the most acknowledged Buddhist masters were considered qualified to leave a literary legacy for future generations. Granted, the vast majority of such Buddhist masters were men, but these women did leave behind their own writings, which is rare for the religious literature of almost every time and place. As is often the case with women who write in a highly patriarchal context, these women had internalized the language and norms of male-dominated Chinese Chan Buddhist culture, were considered to be honorary men, and even considered themselves to be honorary men, "or to use the Chinese term, da zhangfu (great gentlemen)" (p. viii). Nevertheless, there is a significant difference, which the book's author points out. In their own narratives, these women are the central characters, rather than in the background or at the margins of narrative, as they would have been in the much more usual accounts written by and about men. In her first chapter, the author sets out the context in which these seven acclaimed women Chan masters lived and wrote. First, the author is careful to point out the difference between the nuns about whom she will write and nuns as portrayed in popular fiction of the day. The nun of fiction was young, beautiful, and in the convent against her will. Grant also is careful to point out that there was also a courtesan culture in seventeenth-century China. In that culture, beautiful, educated, and talented "nuns" did entertain men who visited their "convents." Other factors were also important in allowing the flourishing of the women Chan masters about whom she will write. Times were turbulent, with dynastic changes causing confusion and difficulty. In such times, many were attracted to Buddhism and there was a significant revival of Chan Buddhism. There were many elite, well-educated women who began to participate in the literary culture and spiritual revivals of the times. Some of these women became nuns, entering convents by choice, not by compulsion, though some entered only after losing their husbands. Some of those women then became lineage holders— Chan masters in their own right. These women took their role very seriously and enacted it much as men did. They traveled widely, visiting male teachers and being visited by them. They engaged in fund-raising and ran convents. They named Dharma heirs of their own. And they wrote the same kind of literature that male Chan masters were expected to write. They recorded not only Dharma discourses but life narratives and poetry. In her second introductory chapter, the author discusses how women and nuns were...

Pregnancy planning among Buddhist and Muslim Thai women in southern Thailand

Background: The purpose of this study was to describe the factors associated with pregnancy planning and to compare pregnancy-planning scores among Buddhist and Muslim Thai women in southern Thailand. Method: Nine hundred and seventy-four pregnant women who met the inclusion criteria were asked to complete the pregnancy planning questionnaire while waiting to see the doctor at the antenatal care clinics of two public hospitals in Songkhla, Thailand. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Spearman’s rho correlation, one-way and two-way analysis of variance. Results: The findings of the study revealed that factors associated with pregnancy planning were age, current employment, income, marital status, number of pregnancy and number of children. For adolescent and advanced-age pregnant women, Muslims had significantly higher mean pregnancy-planning scores than Buddhists. Conclusions: These findings indicate that adolescent and advanced-age Thai Buddhist women require advice and interventions to support and facilitate their decision-making regarding pregnancy. Thai Muslim women should be advised about the number and spacing of the children they plan to have.