The relationship between body and mind has always been a topic of speculation, and spirited discussion. The authors of the pieces contained in this anthology address be problem from the unique dual perspective of being women and being students of Buddhism. 'We spend our lives in bodies, and if we realize anything: we care to call 'enlightenment, it's in our bodies; ln this book we wanted to address a tendency we've both observed for spiritual seekers to leave be body behind. From our study of the dharma we are clear that the body is not the ultimate truth, and that attachment to it causes suffering. But still, we don't simply leap into the realm of the Absolute. The Absolute is here, we say, in each embodied moment-when we breathe, when we sweat, when we bleed, when we feel desire'-from the Editors' Introduction.
Lenore Friedman is the author of Meetings with Remarkable Women Buddhist Teachers in America. Susan Moon is editor of Turning Wheel, the magazine of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and author of The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi.

Being Bodies, Leonore Friedman & Susan Moon, (Editors), Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 240 Pages, $17.95

Lenore Friedman is a psychotherapist in private practice in Berkeley, California. She has been interested in Buddhism since the late 1950s and has practiced Buddhist meditation since the late 1960s.

Susan Moon is the editor of Turning Wheel: The Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She is the author of The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi and coeditor, with Lenore Friedman, of Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment.

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xi

Part One: Body as Suffering
Joan Iten Sutherland: Body of Radiant Knots 3
Darlene Cohen: The Only Way I Know to Alleviate Suffering 10
Joan Tollifson: Enjoying the Perfection of Imperfection 18
Barbara Gates: A Mama Raccoon in the Net of Indra 25
Barbara Brodsky: No Eye, Ear, Nose... 35
Katherine Thanas: Hearing the Voice of the Body 43
Naomi Newman: About Death 48


Part Two: Body as Nature
Kuya Minogue: Running the Bush 50
Linda Chrisman: Birth 59
Connie Batten: Midlife Sacrament 65
Lenore Friedman: Aging as a Russian Doll 71
Helena Norberg-Hodge: Our Body and Our Economy 78

Part Three: Body as Gender
Fran Tribe: Piecing Together a Life 87
Rita M. Gross: Anger and Meditation 90
Linda Ruth Cutts: Breaking through the Concrete 90
Jisho Warner: What Do Lesbians Do in the Daytime 90
Maylie Scott: Celibate 115

Part Four: Body as Vehicle
Bobby Rhodes: Bowing to the Great Mirror 125
Ruth Zaporah: Dance: A Body with a Mind of Its Own 128
Phyllis Pay: Meeting Vajrayogini 133
Anne C. Klein: Grounding and Opening 139
Casey Hayden: Body on the Line 148
Michele Martin: On the Other Side of Attachment 153
Pema Ch�dr�n: Three Methods for Working with Chaos 163

Part Five: Body as Self
Jan Chozen Bays: Embodiment 171
Michele Mcdonald-Smith: Of Mud and Broken Windows 173
Toni Packer and Lenore Friedman: Tracking the Two Bodies 178
China Galland: The Formless Form: Buddhism and the Community of Recovery 185
Linda Hess: Craving 197

Furyu Nancy Schroeder and Grace Dammann: A Conduit for Love: Adopting a Positive Daughter 207
Julie Henderson: Tulku 216
Susan Moon: The Lonely Body 223
Charlotte Joko Beck: Our Substitute Life 230

About the Contributors 235
Credits 241