Author: Hildegard Diemberger
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231143214
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
In the fifteenth century, the princess Chokyi Dronma was told by the leading spiritual masters of her time that she was the embodiment of the ancient Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, known in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt Female Pig. After suffering a great personal tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her royal status to become a nun, and, in turn, the tantric consort of three outstanding religious masters of her era. After her death, Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples recognized a young girl as her reincarnation, the first in a long, powerful, and influential female lineage. Today, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the Samding monastery and is a high government cadre in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Hildegard Diemberger builds her book around the translation of the first biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded by her disciples in the wake of her death. The account reveals an extraordinary phenomenon: although it had been believed that women in Tibet were not allowed to obtain full ordination equivalent to monks, Chokyi Dronma not only persuaded one of the highest spiritual teachers of her era to give her full ordination but also established orders for other women practitioners and became so revered that she was officially recognized as one of two principal spiritual heirs to her main master. Diemberger offers a number of theoretical arguments about the importance of reincarnation in Tibetan society and religion, the role of biographies in establishing a lineage, the necessity for religious teachers to navigate complex networks of political and financial patronage, the cultural and social innovation linked to the revival of ancient Buddhist civilizations, and the role of women in Buddhism. Four introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and four concluding chapters discuss the establishment of the reincarnation lineage and the role of the current incarnation under the peculiarly contradictory communist system.
When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty
Author: Hildegard Diemberger
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231143214
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
In the fifteenth century, the princess Chokyi Dronma was told by the leading spiritual masters of her time that she was the embodiment of the ancient Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, known in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt Female Pig. After suffering a great personal tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her royal status to become a nun, and, in turn, the tantric consort of three outstanding religious masters of her era. After her death, Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples recognized a young girl as her reincarnation, the first in a long, powerful, and influential female lineage. Today, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the Samding monastery and is a high government cadre in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Hildegard Diemberger builds her book around the translation of the first biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded by her disciples in the wake of her death. The account reveals an extraordinary phenomenon: although it had been believed that women in Tibet were not allowed to obtain full ordination equivalent to monks, Chokyi Dronma not only persuaded one of the highest spiritual teachers of her era to give her full ordination but also established orders for other women practitioners and became so revered that she was officially recognized as one of two principal spiritual heirs to her main master. Diemberger offers a number of theoretical arguments about the importance of reincarnation in Tibetan society and religion, the role of biographies in establishing a lineage, the necessity for religious teachers to navigate complex networks of political and financial patronage, the cultural and social innovation linked to the revival of ancient Buddhist civilizations, and the role of women in Buddhism. Four introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and four concluding chapters discuss the establishment of the reincarnation lineage and the role of the current incarnation under the peculiarly contradictory communist system.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231143214
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
In the fifteenth century, the princess Chokyi Dronma was told by the leading spiritual masters of her time that she was the embodiment of the ancient Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, known in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt Female Pig. After suffering a great personal tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her royal status to become a nun, and, in turn, the tantric consort of three outstanding religious masters of her era. After her death, Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples recognized a young girl as her reincarnation, the first in a long, powerful, and influential female lineage. Today, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the Samding monastery and is a high government cadre in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Hildegard Diemberger builds her book around the translation of the first biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded by her disciples in the wake of her death. The account reveals an extraordinary phenomenon: although it had been believed that women in Tibet were not allowed to obtain full ordination equivalent to monks, Chokyi Dronma not only persuaded one of the highest spiritual teachers of her era to give her full ordination but also established orders for other women practitioners and became so revered that she was officially recognized as one of two principal spiritual heirs to her main master. Diemberger offers a number of theoretical arguments about the importance of reincarnation in Tibetan society and religion, the role of biographies in establishing a lineage, the necessity for religious teachers to navigate complex networks of political and financial patronage, the cultural and social innovation linked to the revival of ancient Buddhist civilizations, and the role of women in Buddhism. Four introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and four concluding chapters discuss the establishment of the reincarnation lineage and the role of the current incarnation under the peculiarly contradictory communist system.
Choosing My Religion
Author: Stephen J. Dubner
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780061132995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Choosing My Religion is a luminous memoir, crafted with the eye of a journalist and the art of a novelist by New York Times Magazine writer and editor Stephen J. Dubner. By turns comic and heartbreaking, it tells the story of a family torn apart by religion, sustained by faith, and reunited by truth.
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780061132995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Choosing My Religion is a luminous memoir, crafted with the eye of a journalist and the art of a novelist by New York Times Magazine writer and editor Stephen J. Dubner. By turns comic and heartbreaking, it tells the story of a family torn apart by religion, sustained by faith, and reunited by truth.
Gender, Power, and Talent
Author: Jinhua Jia
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
During the Tang dynasty (618–907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners in their own right. Some achieved remarkable accomplishments: one wrote and transmitted texts on meditation and inner cultivation; another, a physician, authored a treatise on therapeutic methods, medical theory, and longevity techniques. Priestess-poets composed major works, and talented priestess-artists produced stunning calligraphy. In Gender, Power, and Talent, Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses distinguished themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. She describes the life journey of priestesses from palace women to abbesses and ordinary practitioners, touching on their varied reasons for entering the Daoist orders, the role of social and religious institutions, forms of spiritual experience, and the relationships between gendered identities and cultural representations. Jia takes the reader inside convents and cloisters, demonstrating how they functioned both as a female space for self-determination and as a public platform for both religious and social spheres. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature and proposes new methodologies for the growing field of gender and religion.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
During the Tang dynasty (618–907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners in their own right. Some achieved remarkable accomplishments: one wrote and transmitted texts on meditation and inner cultivation; another, a physician, authored a treatise on therapeutic methods, medical theory, and longevity techniques. Priestess-poets composed major works, and talented priestess-artists produced stunning calligraphy. In Gender, Power, and Talent, Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses distinguished themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. She describes the life journey of priestesses from palace women to abbesses and ordinary practitioners, touching on their varied reasons for entering the Daoist orders, the role of social and religious institutions, forms of spiritual experience, and the relationships between gendered identities and cultural representations. Jia takes the reader inside convents and cloisters, demonstrating how they functioned both as a female space for self-determination and as a public platform for both religious and social spheres. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature and proposes new methodologies for the growing field of gender and religion.
She Who Became the Sun
Author: Shelley Parker-Chan
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1250621798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner Astounding Award Winner Lambda Literary Award Finalist Hugo Award Finalist Locus Award Finalist Otherwise Award Finalist "Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything “I refuse to be nothing...” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1250621798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner Astounding Award Winner Lambda Literary Award Finalist Hugo Award Finalist Locus Award Finalist Otherwise Award Finalist "Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything “I refuse to be nothing...” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Echoes of Enlightenment
Author: Suzanne M. Bessenger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019062468X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
Echoes of Enlightenment explores the issues of gender and sainthood raised by the recently discovered "liberation story" of the fourteenth-century Tibetan female Buddhist practitioner Sönam Peldren. Born in 1328, Sönam Peldren spent most of her adult life as a nomad in eastern Tibet until her death in 1372. She is believed to have been illiterate, lacking religious education, and unconnected to established religious institutions. For that reason, and because as a woman her claims of religious authority would have been constantly questioned, Sönam Peldren's success in legitimizing her claims of divine identity appear all the more remarkable. Today the site of her death is recognized as sacred by local residents. Suzanne Bessenger draws on the new-found biography of the saint to understand how the written record of the saint's life is shaped both by the hagiographical agendas of its multiple authors and by the dictates of the genres of Tibetan religious literature, including biography and poetry. She considers Sönam Peldren's enduring historical legacy as a fascinating piece of Tibetan history that reveals much about the social and textual machinations of saint production. Finally, she identifies Sönam Peldren as one of the earliest recorded instances of a historical Tibetan woman successfully using the uniquely Tibetan hermeneutic of deity emanation to achieve religious authority.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019062468X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
Echoes of Enlightenment explores the issues of gender and sainthood raised by the recently discovered "liberation story" of the fourteenth-century Tibetan female Buddhist practitioner Sönam Peldren. Born in 1328, Sönam Peldren spent most of her adult life as a nomad in eastern Tibet until her death in 1372. She is believed to have been illiterate, lacking religious education, and unconnected to established religious institutions. For that reason, and because as a woman her claims of religious authority would have been constantly questioned, Sönam Peldren's success in legitimizing her claims of divine identity appear all the more remarkable. Today the site of her death is recognized as sacred by local residents. Suzanne Bessenger draws on the new-found biography of the saint to understand how the written record of the saint's life is shaped both by the hagiographical agendas of its multiple authors and by the dictates of the genres of Tibetan religious literature, including biography and poetry. She considers Sönam Peldren's enduring historical legacy as a fascinating piece of Tibetan history that reveals much about the social and textual machinations of saint production. Finally, she identifies Sönam Peldren as one of the earliest recorded instances of a historical Tibetan woman successfully using the uniquely Tibetan hermeneutic of deity emanation to achieve religious authority.
The Woman Who Would Be King
Author: Kara Cooney
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307956784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power. Hatshepsut—the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne—was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. Her failure to produce a male heir, however, paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut out-maneuvered the mother of Thutmose III, the infant king, for a seat on the throne, and ascended to the rank of pharaoh. Shrewdly operating the levers of power to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh, Hatshepsut was a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention. She successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific building periods. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power—and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307956784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power. Hatshepsut—the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne—was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. Her failure to produce a male heir, however, paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut out-maneuvered the mother of Thutmose III, the infant king, for a seat on the throne, and ascended to the rank of pharaoh. Shrewdly operating the levers of power to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh, Hatshepsut was a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention. She successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific building periods. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power—and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
Woman, Church and State
Author: Matilda Joslyn Gage
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 570
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 570
Book Description
Women Struggling For a New Life
Author: Ai Ra Kim
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438409001
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Kim explores the religious impact, particularly that of the Korean Methodist Church, on the lives of Korean immigrant ilse (first generation) in the United States. To most of these women, America is new soil, and they need to adjust to a different cultural and social environment. Consequently, they may be confused and frustrated. As a community center, the Korean church plays a significant role in their lives. Kim examines the church, to determine if it is helpful or detrimental to these women as they adjust to their lives in the United States. Although the history of Korean immigrants in the United States is almost 100 years old, resources about Korean immigrants, particularly women, are scarce. These women have long been invisible and unheard in American society as well as in the Korean community and church. Their experiences as minority women and their painful struggle for survival in patriarchal Korean churches reflect not only the plight of women but also genuine human struggle.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438409001
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Kim explores the religious impact, particularly that of the Korean Methodist Church, on the lives of Korean immigrant ilse (first generation) in the United States. To most of these women, America is new soil, and they need to adjust to a different cultural and social environment. Consequently, they may be confused and frustrated. As a community center, the Korean church plays a significant role in their lives. Kim examines the church, to determine if it is helpful or detrimental to these women as they adjust to their lives in the United States. Although the history of Korean immigrants in the United States is almost 100 years old, resources about Korean immigrants, particularly women, are scarce. These women have long been invisible and unheard in American society as well as in the Korean community and church. Their experiences as minority women and their painful struggle for survival in patriarchal Korean churches reflect not only the plight of women but also genuine human struggle.
The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons
Author:
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295748362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
The Lady of Linshui—the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood—is still venerated in south China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Her story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in the eighth century and blossomed in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) into vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. The full-length novel The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates Chen Jinggu’s lifelong struggle with and eventual triumph over her spirit double and rival, the White Snake demon. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth, and in its dramatization of the contradictory nature of Chinese divinities. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women, and the structure of families and local society.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295748362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
The Lady of Linshui—the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood—is still venerated in south China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Her story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in the eighth century and blossomed in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) into vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. The full-length novel The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates Chen Jinggu’s lifelong struggle with and eventual triumph over her spirit double and rival, the White Snake demon. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth, and in its dramatization of the contradictory nature of Chinese divinities. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women, and the structure of families and local society.
Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004375880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Book Description
This volume sets out to explore the world of domestic devotions and is premised on the assumption that the home was a central space of religious practice and experience throughout the early modern world. The contributions to this book, which deal with themes dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, tell of the intimate relationship between humans and the sacred within the walls of the home. The volume demonstrates that the home cannot be studied in isolation: the sixteen essays, that encompass religious history, the histories of art and architecture, material culture, literary history, and social and cultural history, instead point individually and collectively to the porosity of the home and its connectedness with other institutions and broader communities. Contributors: Dotan Arad, Kathleen Ashley, Martin Christ, Hildegard Diemberger, Marco Faini, Suzanna Ivanič, Debra Kaplan, Marion H. Katz, Soyeon Kim, Hester Lees-Jeffries, Borja Franco Llopis, Alessia Meneghin, Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, Cristina Osswald, Kathleen M. Ryor, Igor Sosa Mayor, Hanneke van Asperen, Torsten Wollina, and Jungyoon Yang.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004375880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Book Description
This volume sets out to explore the world of domestic devotions and is premised on the assumption that the home was a central space of religious practice and experience throughout the early modern world. The contributions to this book, which deal with themes dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, tell of the intimate relationship between humans and the sacred within the walls of the home. The volume demonstrates that the home cannot be studied in isolation: the sixteen essays, that encompass religious history, the histories of art and architecture, material culture, literary history, and social and cultural history, instead point individually and collectively to the porosity of the home and its connectedness with other institutions and broader communities. Contributors: Dotan Arad, Kathleen Ashley, Martin Christ, Hildegard Diemberger, Marco Faini, Suzanna Ivanič, Debra Kaplan, Marion H. Katz, Soyeon Kim, Hester Lees-Jeffries, Borja Franco Llopis, Alessia Meneghin, Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, Cristina Osswald, Kathleen M. Ryor, Igor Sosa Mayor, Hanneke van Asperen, Torsten Wollina, and Jungyoon Yang.