Women in Buddhism

Readings on the history of women in Buddhism.

Rita Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy (seminal and classic).

Rita Gross, Buddhism Beyond Gender (written at the end of her life, after decades of thinking deeply on these matters).

Wendy Garling, Stars at Dawn (women in Shakyamuni Buddha’s life as they appear in the early suttas).

Beata Grant, Daughters of Emptiness (lives and poems of Chinese Buddhist nuns, mostly Zen nuns going back to the 5th century and extending into the early 20th).

Susan Murcott, The First Buddhist Women (lives and poems of the early Buddhist nuns in the time of the Buddha, e.g., the Therigatha; other translations of the Therigatha have appeared since).

Beata Grant, Zen Echoes (translates classic koans and commentaries from three women Zen masters from the 17th century).

José Ignacio Cabezón, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (academic essays including: Miriam Levering on how women practitioners were perceived/received in the Sung, an essay on abortion in contemporary Japan, and two essays on male homosexuality in Buddhism. And more.)

Martine Batchelor, Women in Korean Zen: Lives and Practices (on her experience as a French woman practicing with the great Korean nun Son-gyong Sunim, who was Batchelor’s teacher/mentor in her nun training plus her teacher's biography - wonderfully communicating what it was really like for serious Korean Buddhist women practitioners in the 20th century).

Enkyo O’Hara and Joan Halifax, Most Intimate: A Zen Approach to Life's Challenges (Teachings on Intimacy with self and other and the fundamentally non-dual nature of Zen).