Saffron Road

Every year, thousands of women choose to become Buddhist nuns. As they make this commitment, they become part of a long tradition of spirituality that stretches back through the centuries and now embraces the radical possibility that the next Dalai Lama could be a woman. In The Saffron Road, award- winning journalist Christine Toomey follows in the footsteps of earlier generations of nuns to trace the historical spread of the religion, from a solitary order in a remote area of India in the 6th century BC to 1950s San Francisco, where the Beat Generation first popularised Zen philosophy, to the globally- renowned practitioners of mindfulness of today...Combining travelogue, history, interviews, and personal reflection, The Saffron Road opens the door on the rarely glimpsed world of ritual and discipline, reflection and enlightenment.