Although Buddhism emphasizes that attachment to the body causes suffering, the body can be seen as a vehicle leading to enlightenment. Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon have collected 33 essays on this paradox. In chapters on suffering, nature, gender, devotional practices, and self, female students of Buddhism explore the paradox of embodiment through examinations of sickness, disability, pain, suffering, childbirth, menopause, addiction, aging, the beauty myth, and much more.

Some of the more interesting essays are those by Joan Iten Sutherland who reveals that "healing is not the elimination of disease, but a falling in love with the poignancy of being alive"; Joan Tollifson on disability as an opportunity to work on the desire to be different; Katherine Thanas on hearing the voice of the body; Bobby Rhodes on performing prostrations as a physical manifestation of Buddhist practice; China Galland on addiction and recovery; and Charlotte Joko Beck on meditation as an occasion "to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment."