In This Body, In This Lifetime: Awakening Stories of Japanese Soto Zen Women

Available for the first time in English, an intimate look into the private lives and spiritual experiences of 30 nuns and laywomen practicing under pioneering female Zen master Sozen Nagasawa Roshi in World War II-era Japan. Born in 1888, Sozen Nagasawa Roshi was a pioneer of women’s monastic Zen practice in Japan. With a profound wish to become a nun from a young age, she persevered through the extreme social pressures and material difficulties facing women of her generation to become an abbess who trained hundreds of students (primarily women), won equal rights for Japanese nuns, and established organizations to support nuns and laywomen practitioners. Known for her compassion and fierceness, Nagasawa Roshi used a rigorous koan practice to guide her students to kensho (enlightenment). As more and more students awakened, she asked them to write about their experiences. These stories were initially published in a Japanese magazine and subsequently compiled into a book published in Japan called Collection of Experiences in Zen Practice. In This Body, In This Lifetime is a selection of 30 of these first-person accounts, exclusively from women and appearing for the first time in English. These stories offer an intimate look into the personal lives and spiritual determination of women who longed to end their suffering and awaken to their true nature despite the obstacles they faced. A rare glimpse into Zen practice in World War II–era Japan, these inspiring women confront loss, grief, food shortages, air-raid sirens, and a cultural crisis with grit and courage as they persist in their efforts to end their suffering and the suffering of all.