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ENGAGED BUDDHIST WOMEN l 1093 1965” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1987). Vicki L. Crawford , Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (1990). Constance Curry, Joan C. Browning, Dorothy Dawson Burlage, Penny Patch, Teresa Del Pozzo, Sue Thrasher, Elaine DeLott Baker, Emmie Schrader Adams, and Casey Hayden, Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (2000). Jonathan L. Entin, “Viola Luizzo and the Gendered Politics of Martyrdom,” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 23 (2000): 249–268. Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (1979). Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (1998). Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC (1998). Rosemary Skinner Keller, ed., Spirituality and Social Responsibility: Vocational Vision of Women in the United Methodist Tradition (1993). Lynn Olson, Freedom’s Daughter’s: Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 (2001). Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (1997). Rosetta E. Ross, “From Civil Rights to Civic Participation,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 28.1–2 (Fall 2000–Spring 2001): 39–77. Rosetta E. Ross, “Religious Responsibility and Community Service: The Activism of Victoria Way DeLee,” in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, ed. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross (2000). Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights (2003). Bettye Collier Thomas and V. P. Franklin, Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the CivilRights and Black Power Movements (2001). ENGAGED BUDDHIST WOMEN Judith Simmer-Brown ENGAGED BUDDHISM IS a loosely organized movement of social engagement that originated in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, applying the social teachings of Buddhism to the current realities of militarism, imperialism, globalization, and development in Asian countries. This movement has been likened to the Christian Liberation Theology movement, active especially in Latin America. The term Engaged Buddhism (engagé in French) is attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh, a Western-educated Vietnamese monk who published a book by that title in 1963 describing the inseparability of meditation and “merit work,” or service to the poor. Women’s influence is documented in the writing of Chan Khong, a social worker who eventually became a Buddhist nun and associate of Nhat Hanh. Upon meeting the famous teacher in 1959, she wrote, “I expressed concern that most Buddhists did not seem to care about poor people. I said that I did not believe that helping poor people was merely merit work. In fact, I did not feel that I needed any merit for my next life. I wanted to help free people from their suffering and be happy in the present moment” (Cao, 25). Nhat Hanh promised to support her work “according to the Buddhist spirit” through writing, teaching, and public speaking. During their long association, Sister Chan has worked tirelessly with the casualties of war in her country, providing food, medical care, and comfort to the many displaced people. Later, in exile in France, she proved to be a resourceful fund-raiser and supporter of refugees, an advocate for political change in her homeland, and a builder of community for Vietnamese and Western Buddhists at Plum Village in southern France. The keystone for Engaged Buddhism is the interdependence of all things, so that the suffering of others is also one’s own suffering, and the violence of others is also one’s own violence. Social engagement is seen as a natural extension of this understanding; the inner work of meditation practice in inseparable from the outer work of alleviating the suffering of all sentient beings. The Engaged Buddhist movement relates directly to the ideal of the bodhisattva (“awakened-heart being”), whose spiritual path is dedicated to the happiness of all. The Engaged Buddhism movement, active in many countries of Asian Buddhist heritage, communicates through the International Network of Engaged Buddhists founded by Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand. In the late twentieth century, Engaged Buddhism was immeasurably enriched with the emergence of Buddhism in the West, where it became a broadly based ecumenical movement of Buddhists from many different traditions, cultural settings, and political approaches in order to integrate Buddhist meditation and ritual practices with social activism. The interaction of Asian and Western “convert” Buddhisms has created an environment of increasingly sophisticated approaches that integrate contemplative practice and social activism. There is an ongoing debate among North American Buddhists about what...

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