Voices of Courage and Insight

Buddhism and Women is a broad title, but it has a particular focus. The book, edited by Darcy Flynn and published by the Buddhist Society Trust, is an anthology of articles and essays from The Middle Way, the venerable journal of the Buddhist Society in the UK. The Buddhist Society was founded in 1924, and Buddhism and Women is a celebration of its 100th birthday.

In her introduction, Flynn writes, “The collection offers a rich feminine perspective on a wide range of Buddhist teachings. I want to share it to provide encouragement and insight in our practice. I want the reader to rejoice in the accomplishments of the women who have written these texts and share the history of their contribution to the Buddha Dharma.” 

The essays were written by twenty-five Buddhist women—scholars, practitioners, and teachers—and were published in The Middle Way between 1932 and 2023. Most pieces are preceded by a brief biography of a page or two about the author, written specifically for this collection by Darcy Flynn. Some of the essays are themselves biographical or autobiographical, and I must admit, as one who loves personal stories, those are my favorites. 

Throughout the book, we see the authors in their historical context and often learn startling information about remarkable lives, like Freda Bedi, born in 1911 to a working-class family in England. She married a fellow student at Oxford, a Sikh and a Marxist. They settled in India, joined Gandhi’s independence movement, Freda became a nonviolent saboteur, and they both served time in prison—all this before Freda met a Burmese master and took up Vipassana meditation. Later, she became a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, lived and worked in Tibetan refugee camps in India, and founded a school for young lamas.

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Through my studies, reading, and editing work, I have become familiar with the stories and writing of women who practiced with the Buddha, with women in ancient China and Japan, as well as contemporary Buddhist teachers whose lives overlapped with mine, like the late Charlotte Joko Beck and Maurine Stuart. I particularly appreciate that many of the women represented in Buddhism and Women are from a period that is relatively unpopulated in my own knowledge—women who were born in the last half of the 19th century and who taught and wrote in the early 20th century.

Here are eccentric and courageous women, most of them European or American, defying convention and often traveling alone in Asia, like the independent adventurer Alexandra David-boNéel (see Tricycle, Fall 2024), born in France in 1868, who was, among other things, an anarchist, a professional opera singer, the director of a casino, and a Theosophist. Her interest in Buddhism took her to Asia, where she lived and traveled for many years, studying with various teachers. She adopted a young Tibetan lama as her son, and he traveled with her as her assistant and companion for forty years until he died in 1955.  

Here are eccentric and courageous women, most of them European or American, defying convention and often traveling alone in Asia.

David-Néel wrote an article for The Middle Way in 1932 titled “Does Buddhism Respond to the Needs of Today?” Whenever “today” is, this question is urgent. She writes, “It is very regrettable that a number of scholars should persist in considering the study of Oriental philosophy as simply a cultured pastime … incapable of any useful end. … The present condition of the world does not permit of us spending our time in intellectual diversions devoid of practical social results.” I’m with you, Alexandra!

Many of the earlier essays are theoretical, describing and commenting on traditional Buddhist texts and practices. The Middle Way brought British readers an understanding of Buddhist teachings when there were few English translations of Buddhist texts. Fortunately for us here in the United States, books about Buddhism in English have greatly proliferated in the last half-century. I can learn about the three bodies of the Buddha not only from books on my bookshelf but also on the internet, so I appreciate how precious an essay explaining this subject was in 1936 when The Middle Way published it. The more recent essays talk more about practice than theory, like the clear zazen instruction from the activist and contemporary teacher Roshi Joan Halifax. “The strength of your spine allows you to uphold yourself in the midst of any condition. You can remind yourself of this strength by silently saying, ‘Strong back.’ ” This helps me, even though I’ve been sitting zazen for fifty years.

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I was surprised and interested to learn from Buddhism and Women that many of the earlier contributors came to Buddhism through Theosophy, a spiritual tradition established in the 19th century and based partly on Buddhist teachings. Theosophy was more widespread than Buddhism in early-20th-century England, so it’s not surprising that it became a stepping stone to Buddhist scholarship and practice.

In the early 20th century, women seriously interested in Buddhism often set out on their own to practice in Japan or India because it was hard, if not impossible, to find a temple, sangha, or Zen center in the US or Britain. Ruth Fuller Sasaki, the well-known translator of Buddhist texts, was one of these. Her story is an example of what is wonderful about this book. 

Sasaki was born in 1892, grew up in Chicago in a privileged family, and became a serious student and scholar of Zen in Japan. Toward the end of her life, she became the abbot of Ryosen-an in Kyoto, a temple she had established where Westerners could come and train. In her essay for this collection, “A Zen Student’s Experience and Advice,” Sasaki talks about going to Kyoto when she was 40 to study Zen meditation. Her account shows the interweaving of her great privilege with her deep devotion to arduous Zen practice. She writes: “I was able to take a Japanese house with Japanese servants, and to take up the study of Zen at Nanzenji, one of the large Zen temples in Kyoto. For three and a half months, I lived alone, except for my servants and my interpreter-secretary, spending from six to twelve hours a day in meditation.” 

Obstacles to women’s practice remain, but it’s easier now for women to have access.

After a few weeks, she was allowed to go to the evening meditation in the zendo with the monks, and when the time came, she attended the weeklong sesshin. She writes: “I went at three in the morning and remained all day, eating the same food and living as nearly as possible the same regime of meditation, sutra-chanting, and relaxation as the monks. I cannot convey to you the happiness and reality of those three months of my life.” Her lifestyle was very different from what we know today, but the advice part of her essay gives simple, helpful, and straightforward zazen instructions similar to what I was taught when I started sitting. She was told to count the breaths up to ten and then begin again. “Keep your mind on the breath and on that alone. When other thoughts come in, do not try to get rid of them but just keep on counting. A willful attempt to keep away other thoughts seems only to make for more disturbance. Just keep patiently coming back to the counting.”

The instructions she received from her Japanese roshi at a temple in Kyoto in 1933 are just what Sojun Mel Weitsman (1929–2021), abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, told me when I started sitting in my 30s. I was a single mother, living without a single servant, in a chaotic group house in Berkeley, in my native land, where I spoke the local language. It comforts me that even under such different circumstances, on different continents, in a different time, we were taught the same practice. 

Obstacles to women’s practice remain, worse in some places than others, but it’s easier now for women practitioners (and for men too) to have access to teachers, teachings, and a sangha. Thanks to the Buddhist Society Trust, Buddhism and Women, and most of all to Darcy Flynn for bringing us this cornucopia of varied and inspiring voices. If you open the collection at random, you will meet a brave dharma sister who was willing to go beyond the cultural norms of her day in order to share her hard-won understanding of the path.