Gender and the Greening of Buddhism

Abstract

Despite its popularity and appeal for many, ecofeminism has been criticized for essentializing and romanticizing women's roles as close to nature thereby reproducing colonialist and biologically determinist discourses that contribute to discrimination. In response there have been attempts to defend ecofeminism, arguing that such critiques are hyperbolic and that we need ecofeminism more than ever (Philips and Rumens 2016). In a climate of renewed interest in ecofeminism, I ask why is it that some faith traditions are represented to a far greater extent in ecofeminist literature than others? I pick up on this discrepancy within ecofeminism's engagement between different religions through examining Buddhist responses to gender and ecology. In the paper I adopt a theory of ultramodern Buddhism, developed by Halafoff and Rajkobal (2015), to understand Buddhism in the contemporary era. Three main research questions are addressed: 1) to what extent has 'green Buddhism' been gendered?; 2) why has there has been virtually no attempt to bring together feminist analysis with responses to Buddhism and environmentalism? Why have they been approached separately?; and 3) in what ways are Buddhist women (and men) combining gender analysis and environmentalism in practice in reference to or outside the framework of ecofeminism? To better understand why a Buddhist ecofeminism has not been named and claimed by Buddhists in either the West or Asia, there is a need for local level empirical studies that examine subjective understandings of relationships between gender and environmentalism in the lives of ultramodern Buddhist practitioners rather than assuming a standard ecofeminist position as the primary reference point.

Reimagining Modern Education: Contributions from Modern Japanese Philosophy and Practice?

“…Divergences, where they exist, perhaps lie in the degree to which relatio is mediated by language (Rose), the degree to which female is afforded an essential status (concerns raised in Tomalin, 2017, p. 467), and the emphasis placed on remembering and recovering from the destruction of the past: To what degree might this attachment to history block us from living relations in the present?…”

Anticipating Other Worlds, Animating Our Selves: An Invitation to Comparative Education

“…But it resonates very intimately with the European “pagan” practices and indigenous traditions, Chinese philosophy, as well as decolonial and ecofeminist thought in terms of practicing nondualistic and relational modes of knowing and being. 13 While there have been virtually no attempts to bring together feminist analysis with responses to Buddhism and environmentalism (Kaza, 1993; Tomalin, 2017)—let alone “paganism” or indigenous thought—I will braid them together through speculative thinking in an attempt to reimagine education around a series of ‘ and if … ? ’ questions.…”