Despite barriers of language and culture, Buddhism and contemporary feminism have much to say to each other. Both appeared on the Western intellectual scene at about the same time, both focus on self and identity, and both are dedicated to the fruitful interaction of theory and experience in regard to those questions. The ritual of the Great Bliss Queen, an important Buddhist figure of enlightenment, unifies the book, modeling practices that can help us to be both at one with ourselves and open to engagement with others.

Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self, Anne C. Klein, Paperback, Snow Lion Publications, 2008, 307 Pages, $18.95

Anne Carolyn Klein is professor and chair of Religious Studies at Rice University. She has studied Buddhist philosophy and practice with a variety of Asian scholars and meditation masters since 1971, including nearly three years of fieldwork in India, Nepal, and Tibet. Her other books include Knowledge and Liberation, Path to the Middle, and Unbounded Wholeness. She lives in Houston, Texas.

	Contents: Meeting the Great Bliss Queen
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Preface	xiii
I.	Terms of the Discussion
	1. Introduction: Opening the Conversation and Meeting the Great Bliss Queen	3
	2. Persons: Then and Now, Here and There	25
II.	Practice and Theory
	3. Mindfulness and Subjectivity	61
	4. Gain or Drain? Compassion and the Self-Other Boundary	89
	5. Self: One Exists, the Other Doesn't	123
III.	Women and the Great Blisss Queen
	6. Nondualism and the Great Bliss Queen	149
	7. Becoming the Great Bliss Queen: Her Ritual	170
	8. Inconclusion	195
	Notes	207
	Glossary	277
	Bibliography	283
	Index	303