A powerful collection of essays on race and gender in contemporary Buddhist practice by one of the leading thinkers in the area.
Jan Willis was among the first Westerners to encounter exiled Tibetan teachers abroad in the late sixties, instantly finding her spiritual and academic home.
TIME Magazine named her one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium," both for her considerable academic accomplishments and for her cultural relevance. Her writing engages head-on with issues current to Buddhist practitioners in America, including dual-faith practitioners and those from marginalized groups.
This collection of eighteen scholarly and popular essays spans a lifetime of reflection and teaching by Willis. Grouped in four sections--Women and Buddhism, Buddhism and Race, Tantric Buddhism and Saints' Lives, and Buddhist-Christian Reflections--the essays provide timeless wisdom for all who are interested in contemporary Buddhism and its interface with ancient tradition.
"This collection of essays by Jan Willis, penned over thirty years of study, teaching, and practice, is destined to become an authoritative resource in Buddhist scholarship and thought. Willis challenges many of our preconceptions, but asks no more and no less than what the Buddha asked: come, see, and experience for yourselves."
--Sharon Salzberg, author of
Lovingkindness and
Real Happiness "From Birmingham to Bodhgaya, Jan bridges worlds like no other. Her essays are treasures of wisdom born from a remarkable life richly lived."
--Matthew T. Kapstein, author of
Reason's Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought "This book is a blessing for us all--across cultures, across genders, across traditions."
--Larry Yang, author of
Awakening Together: The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community
Jan Willis's distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of Buddhism spans fifty years, including thirty-six years at Wesleyan University. Coming from Birmingham, Alabama, a child of Jim Crow, she marched there with Dr. King in 1963. She first met Tibetan Buddhists in India and Nepal when she was nineteen. While traveling through Asia during the early 1970s, she became a student of Lama Thubten Yeshe, who encouraged her academic pursuits. She went on to earn degrees in philosophy and Indic and Buddhist Studies from Cornell and Columbia Universities, and has published widely on Tibetan Buddhism, women and Buddhism, Buddhism and race, Buddhist meditation, and hagiography. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the United States for five decades. In 2000 Time magazine named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millenium."
She is the author of
The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation;
On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi;
Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition;
Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist--One Woman's Spiritual Journey;
and the editor of
Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet.
