Soaring and Settling - Buddhist Perspectives on Social and Theological Issues (Paperback, 9901st ed.)

As a practicing Buddhist for over twenty years, Rita Gross has been concerned with how Eastern wisdom traditions transform our lives and are themselves transformed by contact with the wisdom of the West. In her new book, Gross clears with autobiographical and methodological issues related to being a feminist Buddhist scholar-practitioner in North America. Next, she considers major "lifestyle" or social issues, arranged to proceed through the life cycle from conception to death and grieving. Here are such matters as population control, work and family, environmental ethics, and a personal approach to finitude and death. Finally, she turns to properly theological questions, such as immanence and transcendence in women's religious experience and expression, the use of goddess images in Buddhism, and several fascinating practices from Gross's own Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.