Michaela Mross, LMU Munich/Komazawa University:
This book is a rich ethnographic study on the religious practices of twelve devoted Japanese Buddhist women associated with the Aichi Zen nunnery in Nagoya....
Bringing Home Zen is an essential reading for those who miss the perspective of Buddhist laywomen in Japanese Buddhist studies; to overlook this aspect means to ignore an important part of contemporary Buddhism in Japan. Students and scholars of Buddhism, Zen, and ritual studies will leave this book with an enriched understanding of the diversity and complexity of Japanese contemporary Buddhism as well as on the healing function of rituals.
Jessica Starling, University of Virginia:
Written in an affective, poetic prose, Arai's book explores the private "healing rituals" of contemporary Japanese laywomen.... [T]he book will be very accessible to readers without any background knowledge of Buddhism or Japanese culture, and may be of interest to those curious about the potential medical effects of religious practice. It will also be valuable for scholars or laypersons interested in learning about how Zen doctrine plays out in everyday contexts, in what we might call the "practical theology" of laywomen and nuns in contemporary Japan.
Gina Cogan, Boston University:
Arai paints a fascinating picture of the lives of her consociates. The close relationships she developed with these women enable her to describe in detail not only their ritual practices, but their everyday lives, their struggles, and their creative pursuits, making this work an important contribution to the growing body of literature on contemporary Zen.... Bringing Zen Home should be of interest not only to scholars in Japanese Buddhism, but also to those interested in ritual studies and in the relationship between religion and healing.
Rita Goss, University of Wisconsin:
This book speaks to two main audiences: those interested in gender and religion and those interested in Japanese religion and culture, especially the role of Zen Buddhism in that culture.... The book is... a rich representation of the subtleties of Japanese religious culture, which are very difficult to capture in book format.
Bringing Zen Home broadens our idea of Zen in a welcome and enlightening way. It also contributes significantly to a range of developing new academic fields, from women’s religious studies to the study of therapeutic ritual and everyday “domestic” religion. But this is not just a work of excellent and original scholarship; it is also a book of wisdom, the wisdom of generations of Japanese women who have found relief from their everyday sufferings in the “therapeutic” worldview and meditative ritual practices of Zen. The book is also written in a lucid and graceful style and so may well itself possess the “healing power” of drawing readers into a state of dokusho zanmai (reading samadhi).
It’s glorious to hear all the voices in Bringing Zen Home—to feel the common yearnings, the different responses to them, and the ways that host and guest can blend into each other. These women’s prayers, their outer and inner pilgrimages, and their understandings have entered the vast net of interconnectedness, and we have the pleasure of receiving their communications, heart-mind to heart-mind.
Essential reading for those who miss the perspective of Buddhist lay women in Japanese Buddhist studies; to overlook this aspect means to ignore an important part of contemporary Buddhism in Japan. Students and scholars of Buddhism, Zen, and ritual studies will leave this book with an enriched understanding of the diversity and complexity of Japanese contemporary Buddhism as well as on the healing function of rituals.
In Bringing Zen Home, Arai shows, through her relationships with 12 Japanese Buddhist women over 14 years, that Soto Zen's teachings are also at the root of a paradigm for healing in the home.... This excellent ethnographic study has relevance beyond its field.
