Surveys both the part women have played in Buddhism historically and what Buddhism might become in its post-patriarchal future.

Description: Once upon a time, on grounds of both religion and common sense, people assumed that the earth was flat and that the sun literally rose and set each day. When newly developing knowledge made those beliefs untenable, giving them up was difficult. Today the belief that only one of the world's various religions is true for all people on earth is equivalent to the belief in a flat earth. Both notions have become untenable, given contemporary knowledge about religion. Even though many people are still troubled by the existence of religious diversity today, that diversity is a fact of life. Religious diversity should be no more troubling to religious people than the fact that the earth is round and circles the sun. This provocative book, based on the author's longtime practice of Buddhism and comparative study of religion, provides tools with which one can truly appreciate religious diversity as a gift and resource rather than as a deficiency or a problem to be overcome. After we accept diversity as inevitable and become comfortable with it, diversity always enriches life--both nature and culture.

This book adopts the format of the editors' previous book, Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. In that book, eight scholar-practitioners -- four of them Buddhist and four Christian -- explore their relationship to the great religious figure of the other tradition. Then the remaining contributors, two from each tradition, address themselves, rebuttal fashion, to the views expressed.

In the new book the subject is the differences and similarities between Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer. What can a Christian, for example, learn from the mental and physical rigor of Buddhist meditative practice? What can a Buddhist learn from traditional Christian prayer? Can one mix distinct religious identity (Christian) with practice techniques associated with another religion (Buddhist) without compromising the religious specificity of either the identities or the techniques?

As a practicing Buddhist for over twenty years, Rita Gross has been concerned with how Eastern wisdom traditions transform our lives and are themselves transformed by contact with the wisdom of the West. In her new book, Gross clears with autobiographical and methodological issues related to being a feminist Buddhist scholar-practitioner in North America. Next, she considers major "lifestyle" or social issues, arranged to proceed through the life cycle from conception to death and grieving. Here are such matters as population control, work and family, environmental ethics, and a personal approach to finitude and death. Finally, she turns to properly theological questions, such as immanence and transcendence in women's religious experience and expression, the use of goddess images in Buddhism, and several fascinating practices from Gross's own Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.

Rita M. Gross has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The essays in "A Garland of Feminist Reflections "represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory article, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions Gross has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These articles reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in Rita M. Gross's work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.

Rita Gross and Rosemary Radford Ruether have long been known for their feminist contributions to Buddhism and Christianity, respectively. In this book, they talk candidly about what these traditions mean to them in both their liberating as well as problematic aspects. Throughout the book, their life stories provide the rich soil, perhaps even the rationale, for their theological and spiritual development. Despite the marked differences in their life histories and their respective religious faiths, Gross and Radford Ruether achieve surprising unanimity on the paramount issue: what engaged Buddhism and enlightened Christianity can offer in the struggle to create a new future for the planet.

This book adopts the format of the editors' previous book, Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. In that book, eight scholar-practitioners -- four of them Buddhist and four Christian -- explore their relationship to the great religious figure of the other tradition. Then the remaining contributors, two from each tradition, address themselves, rebuttal fashion, to the views expressed.

In the new book the subject is the differences and similarities between Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer. What can a Christian, for example, learn from the mental and physical rigor of Buddhist meditative practice? What can a Buddhist learn from traditional Christian prayer? Can one mix distinct religious identity (Christian) with practice techniques associated with another religion (Buddhist) without compromising the religious specificity of either the identities or the techniques?