Jan Willis - Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra

For half a century this wise professor-scholar, conscious feminist, deeply dedicated practitioner, and icon of genuine diversity has taught Buddha Dharma. The beautiful fruit of her work is visible here.

Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart

Jan Willis has practiced, reflected, and taught at one of the most important crossroads of American Buddhist life the intersection of the activism of the Civil Rights movement and feminism, of Buddhist meditation with authentic Tibetan masters, and of the academic translation of Buddhism. This collection of her pioneering essays reveals her at once as a brilliant visionary, a pristine scholar, a heartfelt Vajrayna practitioner, and an incisive social commentator in the twenty-first century. What ties these together is her wise heart.

Judith Simmer-Brown, Distinguished Professor of Contemplative and Religious Studies, Naropa University, and author of Dakinis Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism

Wisdom flows from every page of Jan Williss Dharma Matters. Her clarity of thought and insight remarkably expands the academic discourse of Buddhism into sacred conversations about gender, Buddhism, and race. Her art of storytelling and her voice bring Buddhism to life in a new way that offers hope for the present day and keeps the tradition alive for practitioners across the planet. Her scholarship sings with a deep resonance that rocks the soul and awakens the heart-mind. This powerful collection of essays is a cherished gift reflective of an incredible life of scholarship, spiritual activism, and devoted practice.

Melanie L. Harris, American Council of Education Fellow and Professor of Religion and Ethics at Texas Christian University, author of Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics

This new book by Dr. Jan Willis is not only a must-read for all Buddhists interested in an unbiased inside look at gender issues in Buddhism; it is a delightful read that jumps off the page.

Glenn Mullin, author of twenty-five books on Tibetan Buddhism

This wonderful collection of essays and studies testifies not only to Professor Williss achievements as a scholar with multiple interests but also, in the more personal essays, to her dedication to teaching and her role as a pioneering African American Buddhist whose call for greater inclusiveness in American Buddhism is always enfolded in love, compassion, and plain human decency.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, translator and scholar

For longtime fans of Jan Willis such as myself, it is a treat to have these essays gathered in one place. Her style of fine scholarship coupled with her unique personal touch and lifelong experiences will also delight new readers. There are important and even urgent issues discussed in these pages; the section on Buddhism and race is a rare contribution to a field with far too few resources for concerned practitioners and researchers.

Sarah Harding, Tibetan translator and author of Machiks Complete Explanation

In Dharma Matters, Dr. Willis weaves together personal, historical, cultural, religious, and universal wisdom, eloquently and tenderly offering a textured tapestry of intelligence and transformation. In this heartwarming and sagacious book, we are invited to recognize the green and golden threads of women and race wrapped in the warmth and timeless wisdom of the Dharma.

Ruth King, author of Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out

Jan Willis beloved teacher, learned scholar, pioneering practitioner-translator, cultural activist is a national living treasure. With magisterial grace, wit, insight, wisdom, and compassion, she ranges in these eighteen diverse essays over vitally important topics of gender, Dharma, race, tantra, and liberation. In a rare yet inclusive achievement, she has kept faith with all her ancestors.

Gaylon Ferguson, PhD, Acharya and Core Faculty in Religious Studies, Naropa University

This collection of essays by Jan Willis, penned over thirty years of study, teaching, and practice, is destined to become an authoritative resource in Buddhist scholarship and thought. Willis challenges many of our preconceptions, but asks no more and no less than what the Buddha asked: come, see, and experience for yourselves.

SHARON SALZBERG,

author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

Jan Willis was among the first Westerners to encounter exiled Tibetan teachers abroad in the late sixties, instantly finding her spiritual and academic home. TIME magazine named her one of six spiritual innovators for the new millennium, both for her considerable academic accomplishments and for her cultural relevance. Her writing engages head-on with issues current to Buddhist practitioners in America, including dual-faith practitioners and those from marginalized groups.

This collection of eighteen scholarly and popular essays spans a lifetime of reflection and teaching by Willis. Grouped in four sections Women and Buddhism, Buddhism and Race, Tantric Buddhism and Saints Lives, and Buddhist-Christian Reflections the essays provide timeless wisdom for all who are interested in contemporary Buddhism and its interface with ancient tradition.

From Birmingham to Bodhgaya, Jan Willis bridges worlds like no other. Her essays are treasures of wisdom born from a remarkable life richly lived.

MATTHEW T. KAPSTEIN,

author of Reasons Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought

This book is a blessing for us all across cultures, across genders, across traditions.

LARRY YANG,

author of Awakening Together: The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community

Foreword by Charles Johnson

Jan Willis is an intellectual and spiritual pioneer. Her beautiful and important memoir, Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist One Womans Spiritual Journey, is, as I wrote when I reviewed it for Tricycle, a twenty-first-century slave narrative rendered in Buddhist terms. In other words, it is something new and groundbreaking in the literature of black America. I have referred often to this remarkable, very influential woman in my essays, and sometimes I wondered if we were separated at birth we were born the same year, earned advanced degrees in philosophy, survived the racially turbulent late 1960s when we were college students, and found refuge in the Buddhadharma she in the Tibetan lineage and me in the Soto Zen tradition. But oh, how I wish I had after twenty-two years of study her mastery of Sanskrit and Eastern languages!

I feel honored to be able to call Jan Willis a friend, my beloved sister in the Dharma, but even more important, I see her as being one of my cherished teachers because, as she writes in this books introduction, teaching has been, and continues to be, the central focus of my life. In the eighteen essays that comprise Dharma Matters, she indeed teaches with lucidity and upyakaualya, skillful means. And in her life, her daily practice, she models for all of us metta, or lovingkindness, as a scholar, educator, writer, and person with much earned wisdom.

Her own teacher, Lama Thubten Yeshe, understood her importance in the buddhaverse. In a delicious story Willis tells in Dreaming Me, when she and Yeshe were in Nepal, they noticed from the upper deck of his Kopan monastery a group of Western students in the courtyard below them. Suddenly, writes Willis, Lama Yeshe grabbed my arm and began calling out to all of them below. In a booming voice, he called, Look, all of you! Look! Look! You want to see womens liberation?