BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER’S QUARTERLY 115
ONE SUMMER NIGHT in 2018, I found myself sitting in a
small restaurant in Larung Gar, one of the largest centers for
Buddhist learning in the world, slurping noodles and chatting
away with a Tibetan Buddhist nun. I had been asking her about
her role as an editor in several collections of writings by and
about Buddhist women, about life as a nun at Larung Gar, and
more. She asked me questions as well, mostly about gender in
the US and mainland China; she was particularly interested in
the history of the suffragette movement and in Roe v. Wade.
At the end of our four-hour conversation, I asked her, “Would
you consider yourself a Buddhist feminist?” To my surprise, she
replied, “No. I am a Buddhist, not a feminist. But I’d like to
help advance the cause of women in whatever way I can.”
Her answer is a reminder that even though she and many
other nuns work in education and publishing programs that aim
to empower women and promote gender equality, it would be
an oversimplification to label their effort as feminist. Rather,
in order to understand their work, we need to look deeper into
the context in which Buddhist women have been living, think-
ing, and supporting each other; we need to make sense of their
gender discourse in their own terms. Fortunately, Karma Lekshe
Tsomo’s new edited volume, Buddhist Feminisms and Feminini-
ties, addresses exactly this concern. Keeping in mind that grand
narratives can easily ignore or overlook the centrality of the spe-
cific conditions in which people live, this context-sensitive inves-
tigation emphatically appreciates localized traditions, resisting
the tendency to make sweeping statements.Buddhist Feminisms and
Femininities
edited by
Karma Lekshe Tsomo
SUNY Press, 2019
354 pages; $26.95The Uneasy Dialogue between
Buddhism and Feminism
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