Meeting the Great Bliss Queen

by Klein, Anne Carolyn

• ISBN13: 9780807073063
• ISBN10: 0807073067
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-12-01
• Publisher: Beacon Pr

Summary

How can women discover who they are? Do all women share certain essential qualities? Can people change themselves in fundamental ways? Or are our identities primarily shaped by environment, to be changed only from without? Of the many women searching for answers to these questions, relatively few have turned to Buddhism for insight. Yet, similar debates are central to traditional Buddhist thought. Is enlightenment already present in everyone, Buddhists ask, merely awaiting discovery? Or can it be developed only through cultivation of certain qualities? In this groundbreaking work, Anne Klein becomes the first scholar to put Buddhist and feminist thoughts on identity in conversation with each other. Despite the daunting barriers of geography, language, and culture that separate them, Buddhism and contemporary feminism have much to say to each other. Buddhist practices such as mindfulness - in which calm centering and keen awareness of change coexist - and compassion - in which the self is recognized as both powerful in itself and interdependently connected with all others - can be important resources for contemporary Western women. Likewise, feminism can expand the traditional horizons of Buddhist concerns to include social, historical, and psychological issues. The image and ritual of the Great Bliss Queen, an important Buddhist figure of enlightenment, form the unifying image of the book, modeling the practices and theory that can assist each of us in being at one with ourselves as well as fully open to engagement with others.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Preface	xiii
Terms of the Discussion
Introduction: Opening the Conversation and Meeting the Great Bliss Queen	3	(22)
Persons: Then and Now, Here and There	25	(36)
Practice and Theory
Mindfulness and Subjectivity	61	(28)
Gain or Drain? Compassion and the Self-Other Boundary	89	(34)
Self: One Exists, the Other Doesn't	123	(26)
Women and the Great Bliss Queen
Nondualism and the Great Bliss Queen	149	(21)
Becoming the Great Bliss Queen: Her Ritual	170	(25)
Inconclusion	195	(12)
Notes	207	(20)
Glossary	227	(56)
Bibliography	283	(20)
Index	303