As I mentioned in a recent post, I've been reading Zen teacher Grace Schireson's book Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters. Here Grace Schireson discusses Zen convents and how they adapted Zen training practices for the specific abilities and cultural circumstances of women:

Studying the process of adaptation -- maintaining the intent of practice while appropriately varying the form -- can be useful for Western practitioners. For example, while most meditators face the wall or the floor in front of them, at times the nuns of Tokeiji temple practiced meditation in front of a mirror, a practice especially suitable for deconstructing a woman's attachment to her physical self-image, whether positive or negative. Addressing some of our culturally specific more stubborn Western delusions through adaptation is currently underway in the West. These adaptations, versus a rigid imitation of our Asian teachers, are an important component of our developing Western Zen practice. Studying women's adaptations may assist us in completing the transplantation of Zen to the West.

Let's discuss --

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Zen Women and the Path of Adaptation originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 21:59:29.

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Distance running and other strenuous exercise can lead to a state referred to as the "runner's high" and lead people to a meditative state that is both powerful and healing.

At Tricycle blog, James Shaheen has a post on the parallels between hostility toward Japanese-Americans during World War II and hostility toward Muslims in the United States today. As you may know, in one of the more shameful acts of American history, during World War II ethnic Japanese living in the western coastal states were forced into internment camps. A majority of the internees were U.S. citizens.

That much I knew, but I learned from reading James's post that some nativist organizations like the Anti-Asiatic Association and the Asian Exclusion Association also protested the building of Buddhist temples as well as Japanese Christian churches. I did a little more digging and learned that Jodo Shinshu priests were arrested by the FBI and imprisoned separately from the internment camps. (Jodo Shinshu is the largest Japanese Pure Land school.) The priests were targeted for arrest because they were community leaders.

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Buddhism and the Japanese Internment originally appeared on About.com Buddhism on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 13:38:09.

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