Dr. Paula Arai talks with Dana about being brought up by her Japanese mother, and how she realized the way that she embodied Buddhism in her body and mind not through intellectual study or what Westerners view as formal practice, but through the simple actions and embodied guidance of her mother.

PAULA ARAI (she/her) (Ph.D., Buddhist Studies, Harvard University) holds the Eshinni & Kakushinni Chair of Women and Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Steeped in ethnographic research, she takes an embodied approach to her work and finds poetic immersive storytelling a potent medium for conveying experiences of transformative healing.

Her publications include:

Women Living Zen (Oxford University Press)
Bringing Zen Home (University of Hawaii Press)
Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra (Shambhala Publications)
The Little Book of Zen Healing: Japanese Rituals for Beauty, Harmony, and Love (Shambhala Publications)

Explore her website to read some of Paula's poetry, stay up to date on appearances, and learn more about her.


Your host

REVEREND DANA TAKAGI (she/her) is a retired professor of Sociology and zen priest, practicing zen since 1998. She spent 33 years teaching sociology and Asian American history at UC Santa Cruz, and she is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies.