Women of Wisdom [Paperback]

Tsultrim Allione (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2000

Women of Wisdom is an exploration and celebration of the spiritual potential of all women, as exemplified by the lives of six Tibetan female mystics.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tsultrim Allione is one of the first American women to be ordained a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. But blazing a trail for Buddhist women in the West required models of great women practitioners. In the first book of its kind, Allione brings together the biographies of six women mystics in this strong but little known Tibetan tradition. Make that seven women, as Allione expands her own spiritual autobiography into 80 pages in this new printing. The dakini principle, the principle of feminine transformation, pervades each of these stories. A woman is beaten by her husband and father-in-law and has her son taken from her but later comes face-to-face with the boddhisattva Tara and becomes a great teacher. A wife who has always dreamed of practicing the dharma splits from her husband and travels the land receiving teachings. A poor cow herder is given a long-hidden sacred text and becomes a dakini herself. A spiritual biography embodies a teaching, and these stories enchant while transmitting wisdom. --Brian Bruya

Review

"One best books to bring out the riches of the feminine in Buddhism. Filled with inspired stories, Women of Wisdom is truly a classic." --Jack Kornfield

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Snow Lion Publications; Revised edition (September 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559391413
• ISBN-13: 978-1559391412
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars excellent stories, flawed analysis, August 8, 2009

By 

Matthew Gindin - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Women of Wisdom (Paperback)

This is a very valuable book in my opinion, both for the stories of Tibetan yoginis and the personal stories Tsultrim Allione shares. The stories of her own life are also fascinating.
Readers should be warned, however, that the analysis of Buddhist history in the preface and introduction is flawed. Tsultrim Allione seems mostly to rely on feminist histories and theory and her own speculations when discussing things like the Buddha's attitude towards women, the attitude towards women of the early male Sangha, and the roots of Indian and Tibetan tantra.I want to be clear that I have no problem with feminist scholarship per say, and I completely support the resurrection of the female monastic tradition and the full integration of women's participation and perspectives in Buddhist culture.
My issues with Tsultrim Allione's analysis are too many to go into here but I'll mention some examples. When Allione discusses the Buddha's attitude towards women she quotes a Mahayana Sutra (one written to encourage women to aspire towards rebirth as men) where the Buddha says women have more defilements then men. From a historical point of view this makes little sense; no scholar would accept this sutra as written by the historical Buddha. Of all the Mahayan sutras this particular sutra is one of the least likely, in fact, to have much of a connection to Siddhartha Gautama. In the Pali sutras, which have a greater claim to represent the historical Buddha's words, the Buddha explicitly denies that women have more defilements then men (he says they have an equal chance of attaining enlightenment (arhatship)- this would not be the case if they had more defilements). In another Pali sutra the Buddha denies that there is any distinction in worth among beings based on birth, and specifically says "not in the eyes, ears, etc....and not based on sexual characteristics" is there any distinction. The Buddha hesitated to admit women to the monastic orders because he said it would shorten the life of the order if he did; he did not say this was because of any defect in women and although we automatically assume, based on our cultural assumptions, that he said this for sexist reasons, the sutra does not explicitly state its reasons. Allione says the Buddha hesitated due his perception that women were insatiable sexually and would crave motherhood. I am not sure where she got this from; the Buddha does not say that is his reasoning in any sutra. He does mention the dangers of masculine sexual desire in many places and the nuns rules contain several rules to protect them from rape by monks or laymen. It sounds like this speculation of Allione's is based on the motifs in ancient Indian literature that present women this way. This is a complex issue but I'll leave it at that.
Second Allione makes other historical errors about the birth and development of Tantra. She states that Indian Tantra viewed the feminine as active and the masculine as passive and Tibetan Tantra viewed the feminine as passive and the masculine as active and speculates that this change in status may be due to Tibetan patriarchal biases.
This is a problematic analysis for a number of reasons for anyone who has studied Hindu and Buddhist tantra in India and Tibet. 1) Tibetan and Indian Buddhist Tantra both viewed the feminine as the ultimate principle: emptiness, or wisdom (which Allione characterizes oddly as "passive), and the masculine as upaya- skillful means or compassionate action. Allione's speculation that the source of this symbolism is Tibetan patriarchy is a result of unclear analysis and an example of the type of analysis that occurs in several places in the introductory material. This symbol does not stem from Tibet but from India. 2) Allione writes as if the feminine=wisdom; masculine=skillful means symbol is a downgrading of femininity compared to the Hindu femine=shakti/prakriti (energy, nature) and masculine=shiva (transcendent consciousness). This does not hold up to scrutiny. In most Hindu symbolism the God is clearly superior to his shakti, the energy that he emanates. (Sometimes they are equal and sometimes Shakti is primary to be fair, as in Kali Tantras). In most Hindu thought stillness is superior to activity, the idea that activity is superior to passivity is a western bias!
Lastly, skillful means rely on wisdom to be effective in Buddhist thought. If either wisdom or skillful means has to be regarded as primary or superior, the Buddhist tradition clearly sees wisdom as primary. Therefore the fact that the wisdom principle is feminine if anything is an upgrade in the symbolization of the feminine, not a reduction. For an amazingly clear and impeccable discussion of these issues, see Judith Simmer-Brown's "Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism".
Although I could write a whole book as a rejoinder to other unfortunate errors in Allione's otherwise wonderful book, I have one last minor correction and I'll close my yap. In the intro Allione writes that the Buddha taught that "all experience is tainted with suffering" and seeks to eliminate that suffering; and contrasts that with the superior Wiccan view of life (quoting Starhawk) which transcends suffering through acceptance of it as part of the fabric of life. The Buddha never said that all experience is suffering (see [...]). He said, simply put, that unenlightened experience is suffering and enlightened experience is not. If all experience was tainted with suffering, what would be the point of teaching a path to the end of suffering? This is a common misquote and misunderstanding of Buddhist teachings, see the article above for further clarification.
Just to be clear I would not argue that Buddhism has not been corrupted by patriarchal cultures, resulting in women being denied full access to monastic life and spiritual teachings. It has been and still is. But I think it is very important to be accurate about where sexism has and does occur, both out of respect to the tradition and its past teachers, and so that when we move to address these things are efforts are not pointed in the wrong direction, and we do not throw out babies with bathwater. Also faith in the Buddha and other pre-modern masters might be needlessly strained if we think they were more blinded by sexism than they in fact were.
With the caveat emptor aside, I recommend this book for its stories of Tsultrim Allione's path and the path of these other remarkable practitioners.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sustained by the voices of other women, February 27, 2006

By 

Leslie Barnett - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Women of Wisdom (Paperback)

There is a hunger among women practitioners for the stories of other women who have gone on before them. Often these stories have been lost or over time turned to silence.

Tsultrim Allione, founder of Tara Mandala, a 600 acree retreat center in South West Colorado, sets out with this book to reclaim some of those lost voices. She was initiated on this journey with the death of her daughter from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Prior to becoming a mother to four children, Tsultrim had been one of the first American women to take vows. For four years she lived in the Himalayas as a nun devoted to in depth practice. Later she returned her vows and became a mother and with the death of one of her twins began the search for stories to sustain her during unbearable times.

In Women of Wisdom she uncovers and chronicles the stories of several of the more well-known women practioners, saints, and delogues, but what is particularly compelling is her own story. She writes openly and honesty with remarkable ease.

It is a must for anyone who wrestles with integrating Buddhist practice with the demands of a modern life.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine explanations & elucidations of yogini biographies, March 11, 2005

By 

Neal J. Pollock (VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Women of Wisdom (Paperback)

This is a lovely collection of sacred biographies of Tibetan Buddhist yoginis. The author, a former Buddhist nun, provides an extensive introduction including an autobiographical account-virtually a 7th biography. She provides much valuable information about the Buddha families, biography vs. sacred biography or hagiography, and Tibetan traditions and terminology such as delogs (people who die and come back to life), Togdens (Tibetan yogis), etc. The six sacred biographies included here vary considerably in length (2 are quite long and 4 are rather short) and in nature (some include much more hyperbole and others are more historical). The author states on p. 54 that "Goodness is not necessarily truth." She also provides a prolog and extremely valuable endnotes for each chapter, suggesting that (p. 215) the reason for embedding teachings into a biography is to make them come to life.

She also provides psychological explanations for a number of otherwise fantastic descriptions and activities, frequently based upon the writings of Jung's disciple Esther Harding:
p. 147: "When we think of a demon, we generally think of an external spirit which attacks us, but Machig realized the true nature of demons is the internal functioning of the ego...all four demons are thought-processes which block a state of clear, unattached awareness."
p. 195 note 62: "If we understand the serpentine underwater Nagas as a manifestation of Machig's unconscious, as part of her own mind, this assumption being based on the idea that our environment is a manifestation of our karma and our own projection." Other contemporary books support such a view: Loren Pederson's "Dark Hearts," George Weinberg's "Invisible Masters," & John Sanford's "Invisible Partners."

Further, she also clears up the ambiguity about Tibetan Buddhist practitioners consuming meat:
p. 194 note 54: "the Buddha did not teach strict vegetarianism, but rather that all meat one eats should have passed through at least three hands before a Buddhist should consume it...if a Tantric practitioner eats the meat of an animal with awareness and transcendent insight into the true nature of reality, this creates a connection between the animal and the yogi, and therefore the animal will have a much better chance of reaching a higher rebirth than if it had not been killed and offered to the yogi or yogini. Also...it symbolizes going beyond the limitations of vows and conventional `goodness,' and transformation of poison and dangerous substances into a means for enlightenment. Therefore a big piece of meant would be an appropriate offering for a Tantric initiation." Interestingly, this practice parallels that of Kabbalah where practitioners raise the spiritual level of animals by eating them with proper kavvanah (mystical intention).