Exploring the Issues of Women and
the Feminine in Mahayana Buddhism
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In this talk, Dr. Jan Willis will introduce the broad but dramatic change in Buddhist literature ushered in by the advent of the Prajnaparamita texts and the revalorization of the "mother-figure" in Mahayana Buddhism. She will then address the newly imagined portrayal of the feminine and the female in the Tibetan traditions, providing examples by speaking of a few exemplary paradigms and women practitioners, for example, the Goddesses Prajnaparamita and Tara, as well as Yeshe Tsogyal, Gelongma Palmo, and Machik Labdron.
About Dr. Jan Willis
Jan Willis’s distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of Buddhism spans over fifty years, including thirty-six years at Wesleyan University. She comes from Birmingham, Alabama where she marched 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, race and Buddhism, meditation, and hagiography. In 2000, Time magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.”
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.
About Dr. Jan Willis
Jan Willis’s distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of Buddhism spans over fifty years, including thirty-six years at Wesleyan University. She comes from Birmingham, Alabama where she marched 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, race and Buddhism, meditation, and hagiography. In 2000, Time magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.”
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.
WOMEN OF WISDOM
Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women
Over the course of a year, Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women will highlight and celebrate women teachers and practitioners in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The programs in this series spotlight the history and impact of women in Buddhism and share the wisdom stewarded by a range of female lineage holders, teachers, scholars, monastics, and lay practitioners.
The series coincides with the 35th anniversary of the founding, by two women, of Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in San Francisco. Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women hopes to contribute to ongoing efforts to support global programming featuring female Buddhist teachers and scholars and presenting topics of importance to women on the Buddhist path.
Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women
Over the course of a year, Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women will highlight and celebrate women teachers and practitioners in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The programs in this series spotlight the history and impact of women in Buddhism and share the wisdom stewarded by a range of female lineage holders, teachers, scholars, monastics, and lay practitioners.
The series coincides with the 35th anniversary of the founding, by two women, of Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in San Francisco. Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women hopes to contribute to ongoing efforts to support global programming featuring female Buddhist teachers and scholars and presenting topics of importance to women on the Buddhist path.
Registration:
Advanced registration is required.
We offer all Dharma teachings and center events on a “dana” basis. This means we’re grateful for your generosity but there is no required cost to attend and no one is turned away for lack of funds. Suggested donation amounts are provided, and we welcome you to offer what you can to help us sustain our programming and make the dharma and events like this possible. And of course, ordained sangha (ordained nuns and monks) are always welcome free of charge.
If you're not donating at this time but would like to attend, please email [email protected].