Buddhism beyond Gender: Liberation from Attachment to Identity

Rita M. Gross

Mac 2018 · Shambhala Publications

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A bold and provocative work from the late preeminent feminist scholar, which challenges men and women alike to free themselves from attachment to gender. 

At the heart of Buddhism is the notion of egolessness—“forgetting the self”—as the path to awakening. In fact, attachment to views of any kind only leads to more suffering for ourselves and others. And what has a greater hold on people’s imaginations or limits them more, asks Rita Gross, than ideas about biological sex and what she calls “the prison of gender roles”? Yet if clinging to gender identity does, indeed, create obstacles for us, why does the prison of gender roles remain so inescapable? Gross uses the lenses of Buddhist philosophy to deconstruct the powerful concept of gender and its impact on our lives. In revealing the inadequacies involved in clinging to gender identity, she illuminates the suffering that results from clinging to any kind of identity at all.

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RITA M. GROSS (1943–2015) was Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies in Religion at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. An important figure in the study of women in religion in general, she was also a Vajrayana Buddhist practitioner and teacher, appointed a lopon by Mindrolling Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche.  She is the author, coauthor, or editor of eleven books, including her classic Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism.