Rita M. Gross (1943–2015)

Contents:

Overview: Buddhist practice, feminism, and social concern

Part 1. The Road Less Chosen: Becoming a feminist Buddhist Scholar-Practitioner
Introduction: Autobiography and feminist method
1. The Female Body and Precious Human Birth: An Essay on Anger and Meditation
2. Crying in the Prophetic Voice as a Buddhist Feminist
3. Why Me? Reflections of a Wisconsin Farm Girl Who Became a Buddhist Theologian When She Grew Up
4. Passion and Peril: Transgressing Boundaries as a Feminist Buddhist Scholar-Practitioner

Part 2. Soaring and Settling Buddhism Engaged in Contemporary Social Issues
Introduction: Meditation, Impermanence, and Social Change
5. Soaring and Settling: Riding the Winds of Change
6. Helping the Iron Bird Fly: Western Buddhists and Issues of Authority
7. Interdependence and Detachment: Toward a Buddhist Environmental Ethic
8. Finding Renunciation and Balance in Western Buddhist Practice: Work, Family, Community, and Friendship
9. Buddhist Values for Overcoming Pro-natalism and Consumerism
10. Children, Children's Rights, and Family Well-being in Buddhist Perspective
11. Impermanence, Nowness, and Non-judgment: Appreciating Finitude and Death

Part 3. Buddhist Perspectives in Feminist Theology
Introduction: What Is Buddhist Theology?
12. Immanence and Transcendence in Women's Religious Experience and Expression: A Nontheistic Perspective
13. Some Buddhist Perspectives on the Goddess
14. The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism: Reflections of a Buddhist Feminist
15. "I Will Never Forget to Visualize That Vajrayogini Is My Body and Mind"
16. Life-giving Images in Vajrayana Buddhist Ritual… (mere)

Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism
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Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism
by Rita M. Gross
3.86 ·
Rating details · 96 ratings · 11 reviews
This book surveys both the part women have played in Buddhism historically and what Buddhism might become in its post-patriarchal future. The author completes the Buddhist historical record by discussing women, usually absent from histories of Buddhism, and she provides the first feminist analysis of the major concepts found in Buddhist religion. Gross demonstrates that the core teachings of Buddhism promote gender equity rather than male dominance, despite the often sexist practices found in Buddhist institutions throughout history… (mere)

An academic book on the reconstruction of Buddhism from a feminist perspective. This is the sort of book that has a small but devoted audience (I loved it). Gross argues meaningfully for the revalorization of women within Buddhism, first outlining a "usable" past that illustrates how Buddhism has had a place for women, and then outlining the ways that Buddhist precepts do not inherently denigrate the female. Throughout the book she clearly operates from a position as both an "insider" and an "outsider", owning her biases and not giving in to the fallacy that purity in approach is required (or even possible).

One of the arguments most likely to stay with me addressed the potentially fruitful relationship between Buddhism and feminism. Gross argues that Buddhism can be too complacent in simply accepting non-ideal situations, and that Buddhists can learn from feminism's willingness to act to change "things as they are". She also argues that feminists become emotionally exhausted when progress is inevitably slow, and that feminism can learn from Buddhism's methods that teach how to do the right thing while being minimally emotionally invested in the rewards it will bring. The restorative synergy here is palpable, and the excitement that Gross brings to uniting these disciplines is contagious.

Notably for me, in addition to being highly insightful, this book is highly heteronormative. It is quite frankly shocking how unselfconsciously the book assumes a purely straight human being, especially given that its purpose is to deconstruct assumptions of a purely male human being. A place for women in Buddhism is not dependent on whether one accepts the philosophy that male and female represent two halves of a sexual and spiritual whole -- Gross succeeds in everything except articulating that final point.

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Five years later, having read Stephen Batchelor's Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, I have a better sense of Tibetan Buddhism, and I now believe my criticism of Gross was misaligned. Within the tenets of Buddhism that Gross practices, I am now convinced that an argument for feminism can only rest in femaleness's role in supporting maleness, and that her approach in this book was thus justified, and perhaps (though I am unqualified to judge) hers is the only reasonable approach. (However, I am inclined to try to subtract the Hindu cultural backdrop and cultural infusion of Tibetan tradition as something that necessarily bled into the original teachings, and as such, I am still unconvinced that maleness or heteronormativeness is fundamental to the ideas and practices taught by Siddhartha Gautama / intrinsically Buddhist.)… (mere)