Women and Buddhist Philosophy, Jin Y Park

This is a very good book. You can find it here.

In one sense, the book is a biography of Kim Iryôp, a writer and Korean women's movement turned Buddhist monk. Iryôp was a pioneer of critique of patriarchy in Korea, and senior Zen Buddhist nun.

But the book is more ambitious than this. As the title indicates, Park wants to investigate women and their relation to Buddhist philosophy. Incorporating the work of various philosophers, including Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Tanabe, Park begins to answer the following questions:
How do women engage with philosophy and Buddhist philosophy? Is women's marginal position in society comparable to Eastern philosophy's marginal position within academic philosophy? How closely related are feminist and existential questions? Is Buddhism as patriarchal as the society it emerges in? Do Buddhist stories of gender fluid Buddhas and bodhisattvas have any relevance at all to whether Buddhism is a patriarchal system of practice? Why have post-colonial Japanese and Korean philosophers struggled so much with the question of whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy? Does this struggle show a distinction that is culturally located and has been unhelpful, even hurtful, to those who didn't contribute to the original distinction between philosophy and religion? Is philosophy primarily a theoretical practice or do biographical and story based accounts, as in Iryôp's Reflections of a Buddhist Nun, also constitute philosophical thought? Can we, in good faith, call an early Korean women's movement activist's life a failure because they became a Buddhist recluse, or because their life ended in tragedy, when these criticisms are identical to those levied against these women by Korean patriarchal society during their lifetime?

The above questions feature more heavily (or rather, explicitly) as the book progress, which made a great experience to reconsider the earlier chapters, and hence Iryôp herself.

You can find a discussion of this book during the fourth episode of the Buddhist Philosophy Podcast.

Edit: oh, one more thing. I always love and appreciate when an author gives lots of references so that you can dive further into whichever thinkers they mentioning in passing that you find interesting. Park does this very well.

A Critique of Western Buddhism

This book does what it promises.
It gives a damning critique of Western Buddhism, and outlines a 'ruin' of Buddhism. 'Ruin' is an analogy Wallis uses for re-orientation of Buddhism to something which is barely recognizably Buddhist; a non-subjugating form of practice and theory which openly declares that itself as an ideology, which limits it's own scope, and which fully faces up to the consequences of its claims.

This is a very difficult book that needs to be taken on its own terms. Wallis used many tools of continental philosophers (Laruelle, Lacan, Zizek, Eagleton, Nietzsche, Freud and many more) for his critique. These writers use quite slippery concepts, and so much of Wallis' employment of these concepts are too. So, to understand much of this book requires quite careful attention. I was quite relieved when i watched the discussion of this book at Harvard where Wallis himself admitted, upon rereading the work with some distance, that he was also struck by how difficult it is. Some sections are much more so than others - chapter 7 and the end of chapter 4 are very hard, whereas chapters 1 and 6 were crystal clear. Other reviewers are probably correct that a reasonable familiarity with Buddhist materials (traditional and western contemporary), Lacanian psycho-analysis, and 20th century continental philosophy (particularly Laruelle) will go a long way toward making this an easier read.

The Harvard discussion, episode 3 of the Buddhist Philosophy Podcast, and mindful cranks podcast episode with Wallis are helpful resources to ascertain some of the book's meaning.

But, like many philosophers, Wallis' sometimes aloof presentation is forgivable thanks to the brilliance of his thought and argument. Wallis' use of ideas like 'conceptual parapraxis' and 'principle of sufficiency' really spoke to me, and are abound with areas for further application. The crowning achievement in the book is the critique of 'socially engaged' Buddhists; this takes the book beyond merely a critique of modernist buddhism/mindfulness that we've already seen from the likes of Zizek, Purser, and Thompson.

Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy by Jay Garfield

You won't find a better start point for engagement between Buddhism and western philosophy. Garfield brings his expertise in both to convincingly show that western philosophy will be far better off if it engages with Buddhist philosophy.

Garfield's breadth of knowledge is somewhat mind-blowing. Particularly in the western tradition, he is as comfortable talking about the continental greats (Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche) as the analytic giants (Wittgenstein, Kripke). Garfield's study under Tibetans has equipped him well for a deep understanding of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophical tradition, although Garfield openly admits Chinese and Japanese Buddhist philosophy isn't his expertise.

Rather than an introductory text to Buddhist philosophy, which usually fail to gain any traction outside area and religious studies departments, Engaging Buddhism outlines an approach to engaging with Buddhist philosophy. You can listen to a discussion of this book during the first and second episodes of the Buddhist Philosophy Podcast.