CAVE IN THE SNOW: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment by Vicki Mackenzie
The daughter of a fishmonger from London's east end, Ani Tenzin Palmo became a spiritual leader and champion of the right of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment. In 1976, she secluded herself in a remote cave in the Himalayas where for 12 years she faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, floods and rockfalls. She emerged with a determination to build a convent in India to revive the Togdenma lineage, a long-forgotten female spiritual elite.
CHOOSING SIMPLICITY: A Commentary on the Bhikshuni Pratimoksha by Venerable Bhikshuni Master Wu Yin, trans. by Bhikshuni Jendy, ed. by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron
Choosing Simplicity discusses the precepts and lifestyle of fully ordained nuns within the Buddhist tradition. The ordination vows act as guidelines to promote harmony both within the individual and within the community by regulating and thereby simplifying one's relationships to other sangha members and laypeople, as well as to the needs of daily life. Observing these precepts and practicing the Buddhadharma brings incredible benefit to oneself and others. Since the nuns' precepts include those for monks and have additional rules for nuns, this book is useful for anyone interested in monastic life.
COURTESANS AND TANTRIC CONSORTS: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual by Serinity Young
The wisest teachings of Buddhism say that one must move beyond gender. But, as Serinity Young shows in this enlightening work, the rhetoric of Buddhist texts, the symbolism of its iconography, and the performative import of its rituals, all tell different, and often contradictory, stories. In Courtesans and Tantric Consorts, Serinity Young takes the reader on a journey through more than 2000 years of biographical writings, iconographic depictions, and ritual practices revealing the colorful mosaic of beliefs that inform Buddhist views about gender and sexuality.
DAKINI'S WARM BREATH: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown
This book length discussion of dakinis the "sky-dancer" semi wrathful spirit woman shows how the dakini, within the context of tantric practice, is both the practitioner's ultimate guide and innermost spiritual subjectivity. This text should supersede all previous explorations of the dakini principle. Demonstrates how the dakini symbolizes levels of personal realization: the sacredness of the body, both female and male; the profound meeting point of body and mind in meditation; the visionary realm of ritual practice; and the empty, spacious qualities of mind itself.
Women played major roles in the history of Buddhist China, but given the paucity of the remaining records, their voices have all but faded. In Daughters of Emptiness, Beata Grant renders a great service by recovering and translating the enchanting verse -- by turns assertive, observant, devout -- of forty-eight nuns from sixteen centuries of imperial China. This selection of poems, along with the brief biographical accounts that accompany them, affords readers a glimpse into the extraordinary diversity and sometimes startling richness of these women's lives.
[...] This celebration of Mother's Day is very much in accordance with the Buddhist tradition. If you are familiar with Buddhist prayers, they often begin with something like "May all sentient beings, my mothers, who are lilmitless like the sky, experience happiness. May all sentient beings, my mothers, who are limitless like the sky, experience total joy and be separated from suffering." We always emphasize "mothers, who are limitless like the sky" in our prayers.
THE FEMININE FACE OF BUDDHISM by Gill Farrer-Halls
This book celebrates the contribution of women to Buddhism. From Mahamaya, the Buddha's mother, to contemporary Buddhist women, this book honors Buddhist feminine archetypes and acknowledges women's teachings and experiences. It also documents the critical role they have played, and are playing, in the development of Buddhism through their lives, their work, their meditation and Buddhist practice, and their art.
FEMININE GROUND: Essays on Women and Tibet ed. by Janice D. Willis
"Brings to the fore in one volume the voices of the major Western women scholars of Tibetan Buddhism...an outstanding resource for the student of women and Buddhism."--Pacific World
Six western women scholars and practitioners explore issues of "women" and "the feminine" in Tibet. These critical and provocative essays discuss female role models, the nun's life, and gender and role identity as these manifested in Tibet. Contents: Jan Willis writes on Dakini: Some Comments on its Nature and Meaning and on Tibetan Anis: The Nun's Life in Tibet; Rita Gross on Yeshe Tsogyel: Enlightened Consort; Janet Gyatso on Down with the Demoness; Miranda Shaw on An Ecstatic Song by Laksminkara; Barbara Aziz on Moving Towards a Sociology of Tibet; and Karma Lekshe Tsomo on Tibetan Nuns and Nunneries.
HIMALAYAN HERMITESS: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun Kurtis Schaeffer
Himalayan Hermitess is a vivid account of the life and times of a Buddhist nun living on the borderlands of Tibetan culture. Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration, defied tradition, and composed one of the most engaging autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition.
"IF EACH COMES HALFWAY" MEETING TAMANG WOMEN IN NEPAL, CD with original Tamang songs by Kathryn S. March
For twenty-five years, Kathryn S. March has collected the life stories of the women of a Buddhist Tamang farming community in Nepal. In If Each Comes Halfway,she shows the process by which she and Tamang women reached across their cultural differences to find common ground. March allows the women's own words to paint a vivid portrait of their highland home. Because Tamang women frequently told their stories by singing poetic songs in the middle of their conversations with March, each book includes a CD of traditional songs not recorded elsewhere. Striking photographs of the Tamang people accent the books written accounts and the CDs musical examples.
Top of page 
Go Back One Page