Feminist Buddhism as Praxis: Women in Traditional Buddhism

Abstract

Feminist Buddhism as Praxis Women in Traditional BuddhismThis paper discusses a project the author has been engaged m since 1994 with women in the Japanese Buddhist community who are working across sectar ian boundaries to recreate a Buddhism that goes beyond patriarchy.While the celibacy prized by many Buddhist orders that profess renunciation of sec ular married life has resulted in oppression of women, this paper points out that women face similar problems even in the laicized Shin school.The paper describes various perspectives that women of tms project have adopted in their feminist critiques of Buddhism and their movement to remake Bud dhism for today, and argues that the question of whether traditional Buddnist orders can overcome their predicament depends upon whether the men can open themselves to hear the women's voices of protest.The paper shows that this project can also contribute to a critique of the Eurocentric feminist ver sion of Buddhism that informs the understanding of some European and American feminist scholars in this field.k e y w o r d s : p r ie s t ly m a r r i a g e -jizoku -bomorin z s o /fe m a le p r ie s t -shukket r a n s s e c t a r ia n n e t w o r k i n g Kawahashi Noriko is Associate Professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. 3.Lists of the obligatory duties of priests' wives in the various schools contain such items asc cassis tance to the chief priest, education of the children or successor, exemplar for parishioners, protection, maintenance, and prospering of the temple, teaching of parisnioners， " and so on, but the duties actu ally required of them are defined more or less entirely by the first two items.

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