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Woman Awake: Women Practicing Buddhism
Because women have been conditioned to live according to traditional feminine values—conformity, passivity, and surrender of the self—they often feel powerless to transform their lives and afraid to lose their sense of worth. In Woman Awake , Christina Feldman suggests that it is possible for women to break out of their negative patterns and accept themselves as they really are. With a growing awarenss of the dignity of all life and its connection with them, women can overcome the social conditioning and myth-making that overwhelm and oppress them.
For those women new to Buddhist meditation, Christina Feldman offers sensitive and valuable guidelines on breathing and relaxation—stressing, above all, that learning to understand, appreciate, and value themselves is the first step toward women's creative and joyful integration with the world.
For those women new to Buddhist meditation, Christina Feldman offers sensitive and valuable guidelines on breathing and relaxation—stressing, above all, that learning to understand, appreciate, and value themselves is the first step toward women's creative and joyful integration with the world.
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 28, 2025
This is a misleading title. You might think it's a cultural study on women in Buddhism but it's actually an incredibly informative, feminist perspective directed to women regarding Buddhist theology. The teachings in here are applicable to anyone. My buddy passed this to me and thought it would resonate even though I'm nonbinary. She was so right.
In Buddhist tradition, women that pursue spirituality are given a pat on the head and told that, if they are lucky, they will be reincarnated as a man. Feldman's views dismantle those views of women as cultural conditioning and that misogyny ultimately goes against Buddhist teachings. For example, in pursuit of interconnectedness, why would enforcing dualities in gender be useful?
Feldman sees Buddhism as an active practice that doesn't work if you hide in temples and ignore the world - the "unnatural divorce" of spirit and nature. In the ending of suffering, it is not just personal suffering, but the connected suffering of all life. Femininity stresses relationships and love, this is the way to express that.
I've been framing this around Aristotle's virtue of the means, that virtue is something is in the middle. Broadly speaking Buddhism speaks to men, men are taught to seek connection and let go of power to become more spiritual. These are the cultural messages women already receive - women instead need to learn when to pull back from a connection, when to call upon their own power. It's not that men or women are naturally this or that, but cultural conditioning, so this is a book that talks about a path toward enlightenment for AFAB people.
I haven't read much of Buddhism that hasn't been framed with a Western and/or a feminist lens, so I can't speak on how effective of authentic this text is but I do feel like what she writes passes the "common sense" check and has given me a lot to think about. Fantastic resource, highly rec'd.
Note: Feldman is writing from the Theravaden tradition.
In Buddhist tradition, women that pursue spirituality are given a pat on the head and told that, if they are lucky, they will be reincarnated as a man. Feldman's views dismantle those views of women as cultural conditioning and that misogyny ultimately goes against Buddhist teachings. For example, in pursuit of interconnectedness, why would enforcing dualities in gender be useful?
Feldman sees Buddhism as an active practice that doesn't work if you hide in temples and ignore the world - the "unnatural divorce" of spirit and nature. In the ending of suffering, it is not just personal suffering, but the connected suffering of all life. Femininity stresses relationships and love, this is the way to express that.
I've been framing this around Aristotle's virtue of the means, that virtue is something is in the middle. Broadly speaking Buddhism speaks to men, men are taught to seek connection and let go of power to become more spiritual. These are the cultural messages women already receive - women instead need to learn when to pull back from a connection, when to call upon their own power. It's not that men or women are naturally this or that, but cultural conditioning, so this is a book that talks about a path toward enlightenment for AFAB people.
I haven't read much of Buddhism that hasn't been framed with a Western and/or a feminist lens, so I can't speak on how effective of authentic this text is but I do feel like what she writes passes the "common sense" check and has given me a lot to think about. Fantastic resource, highly rec'd.
Note: Feldman is writing from the Theravaden tradition.
October 2, 2010
It’s interesting. Women have come so far when it comes to equality but it would seem that the more things change the more they stay the same. Even those of us who consider ourselves empowered, educated, and in charge of our own spiritual selves, still find obstacles not only culturally but also in our own hidden beliefs. It’s as if the world wants to erase all the things feminine, that somehow if we do not rid ourselves of everything “female” and become men, we aren’t worthy. There’s something really ridiculous about that.
Woman Awake is an eye opener. When I meditate, I never think that perhaps my meditation is somehow less than a man, that the best I can do is show myself worthy of becoming a man next life. Yet, this was the author’s experience as she followed her own spiritual path. Time and time again, she was told that basically she was a trained monkey and although clever her efforts were humorous.
Shocking as this picture is, the author is absolutely right when she suggests that we women probably do the most damage to ourselves. We settle. We wait for permission to take care of ourselves, including our spiritual health. We feel that we have to choose between motherhood and fulfilling work. Most importantly, we don’t recognize the gifts that women have given to the world.
Woman Awake is an eye opener. When I meditate, I never think that perhaps my meditation is somehow less than a man, that the best I can do is show myself worthy of becoming a man next life. Yet, this was the author’s experience as she followed her own spiritual path. Time and time again, she was told that basically she was a trained monkey and although clever her efforts were humorous.
Shocking as this picture is, the author is absolutely right when she suggests that we women probably do the most damage to ourselves. We settle. We wait for permission to take care of ourselves, including our spiritual health. We feel that we have to choose between motherhood and fulfilling work. Most importantly, we don’t recognize the gifts that women have given to the world.
August 3, 2024
A must read for anyone looking to understand women’s spirituality from a feminist perspective or anyone wanting to develop a more feminist-based spirituality.
May 14, 2012
The subtitle of Christina Feldman’s book, “Woman Awake,” is “Women Practicing Buddhism.” That is an unnecessarily limiting subtitle. Feldman’s book, while informed by her study and practice in Buddhism, is an essential read for any woman on any spiritual path.
While Feldman is an Insight Meditation teacher, she emphasizes the need for women to examine their relationship to authority and to institutional structures, to be willing to step outside of the paths that have been made by men and to be willing to risk losing the affirmation and safety they crave — ultimately to find their own power, strength, and grace.
“The spiritual woman is a woman of joy, who knows what it means to trust in herself. She lives her spirituality and, free from fear, she rejoices in her own uniqueness,” Feldman writes. By doing that we transform the world and not only ourselves. Feldman holds that the singular characteristic of women’s spirituality is the “unwavering understanding that deep realisation does not demand transcendence of this life and all it holds,” but that this life is the classroom for achieving liberation.
The journey toward transformation that Feldman describes is not an easy one. It requires questioning every belief we have, every belief we are encouraged to have, every one that we encounter from others. Feldman does the best work I’ve seen from any spiritual teacher in addressing the personal, spiritual, and societal components of awakening.
The book’s seven chapters provide an outline for a deep and powerful practice, including meditation guidelines and suggested contemplations on several topics. While much of the book isn’t explicitly Buddhist — she refers to uncovering you “inner mystic,” for example — Feldman employs a very Buddhist emphasis on meditation as a tool for self-inquiry: “To undertake a period of meditation is to offer a gift to yourself. It is an act of caring for your own well-being and consciously nurturing inner connection.”
Employing the idea of fairy tales — Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, etc — as an example of societal conditioning, Feldman shows how women in particular are taught to assume an identity that is “presentable and acceptable” rather than one that is genuine. “The beginning of our own liberation is awakening from the fantasies that limit our lives and bind us to a belief in incompleteness,” she writes. When we live according to those fantasies, we become estranged from what she calls “inner awareness” but what could be described as buddha nature, bodhicitta, or basic goodness, in more traditional Buddhist terms.
Awareness is the antidote to the subtle and often unexamined limits we live by, Feldman contends. By becoming aware of our conditioning — both from our personal histories and society — we can untangle the spiritual knots that bind us. She describes how we can work on that in three chapters that lead to progressively deeper examinations.
I love this book. I relate to her spirit, to the way she bristles at the limits she encounters when studying in a monastery, to how alone she feels in questioning the institutional sexism she finds in Buddhism. Her journey is deeply internal, but it also looks outward at how the world affects us and how we affect the world.
In the chapter “Spiritual Resources,” Feldman talks about the dangers of letting the path become overly intellectual and rational, addressing a situation that I’ve found in my own study. In fact, she articulates a lot of issues that I have felt as a woman studying Buddhism but have not had the words — or support — to express. She describes studying in a monastery and being bothered by the subservient roles assigned to women, only to be told to work with her reaction to the “form.” I’ve never been to a monastery, but I’ve met that attitude.
This is an honest, wise, radical look at what it means to be a woman on a Buddhist path — or any path toward spiritual awakening. The writing’s repetitive at times, but not discouragingly so. It’s relatively short — 125 pages — but it has enough depth to keep you contemplating for a long time.
While Feldman is an Insight Meditation teacher, she emphasizes the need for women to examine their relationship to authority and to institutional structures, to be willing to step outside of the paths that have been made by men and to be willing to risk losing the affirmation and safety they crave — ultimately to find their own power, strength, and grace.
“The spiritual woman is a woman of joy, who knows what it means to trust in herself. She lives her spirituality and, free from fear, she rejoices in her own uniqueness,” Feldman writes. By doing that we transform the world and not only ourselves. Feldman holds that the singular characteristic of women’s spirituality is the “unwavering understanding that deep realisation does not demand transcendence of this life and all it holds,” but that this life is the classroom for achieving liberation.
The journey toward transformation that Feldman describes is not an easy one. It requires questioning every belief we have, every belief we are encouraged to have, every one that we encounter from others. Feldman does the best work I’ve seen from any spiritual teacher in addressing the personal, spiritual, and societal components of awakening.
The book’s seven chapters provide an outline for a deep and powerful practice, including meditation guidelines and suggested contemplations on several topics. While much of the book isn’t explicitly Buddhist — she refers to uncovering you “inner mystic,” for example — Feldman employs a very Buddhist emphasis on meditation as a tool for self-inquiry: “To undertake a period of meditation is to offer a gift to yourself. It is an act of caring for your own well-being and consciously nurturing inner connection.”
Employing the idea of fairy tales — Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, etc — as an example of societal conditioning, Feldman shows how women in particular are taught to assume an identity that is “presentable and acceptable” rather than one that is genuine. “The beginning of our own liberation is awakening from the fantasies that limit our lives and bind us to a belief in incompleteness,” she writes. When we live according to those fantasies, we become estranged from what she calls “inner awareness” but what could be described as buddha nature, bodhicitta, or basic goodness, in more traditional Buddhist terms.
Awareness is the antidote to the subtle and often unexamined limits we live by, Feldman contends. By becoming aware of our conditioning — both from our personal histories and society — we can untangle the spiritual knots that bind us. She describes how we can work on that in three chapters that lead to progressively deeper examinations.
I love this book. I relate to her spirit, to the way she bristles at the limits she encounters when studying in a monastery, to how alone she feels in questioning the institutional sexism she finds in Buddhism. Her journey is deeply internal, but it also looks outward at how the world affects us and how we affect the world.
In the chapter “Spiritual Resources,” Feldman talks about the dangers of letting the path become overly intellectual and rational, addressing a situation that I’ve found in my own study. In fact, she articulates a lot of issues that I have felt as a woman studying Buddhism but have not had the words — or support — to express. She describes studying in a monastery and being bothered by the subservient roles assigned to women, only to be told to work with her reaction to the “form.” I’ve never been to a monastery, but I’ve met that attitude.
This is an honest, wise, radical look at what it means to be a woman on a Buddhist path — or any path toward spiritual awakening. The writing’s repetitive at times, but not discouragingly so. It’s relatively short — 125 pages — but it has enough depth to keep you contemplating for a long time.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews