| Mindfully Green: a personal and spiritual guide to whole earth thinking
by Kaza, Stephanie
Description
In this wise and compassionate book (full of ‘all the impossibly gnarly problems that face us on this planet’), featuring a foreword by Susan Murphy, Stephanie Kaza helps awaken in the reader a state of ‘green practice’. She describes this as a skilful propensity to become aware and creative towards the engulfing environmental disaster of our time without becoming paralysed. While practical approaches to an eco-responsible lifestyle offer important first steps, it is critical that we ground these actions in a broader understanding so that we can effect real change in the world.
The ‘green practice path’ helps us find a personal connection with green living that will sustain us on our journey. It allows us to deeply sense the generosity of the earth and develops in us the desire to respond in kind, with actions that are born from gratitude and love for the planet that gave us life itself.
In this book, Stephanie Kaza offers a simple, Buddhist-inspired philosophy for undertaking environmental action in real, practical and effective ways. Her wise insights help us discover new ways to think more deeply about our impact on the natural world, engage in environmental change, and make green living a personal practice based in compassion and true conviction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie Kaza is Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont and a leading Buddhist teacher. She is coeditor (with Kenneath Kraft) of Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddist Environmentalism and the editor of Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume.
REVIEWS
The scientists have spoken but facts have not been enough. Ecological systemware collapse threatens the Earth and the wellbeing of all her global citizens. What is needed now is a change of heart, a coming home to the values and ethical framework that will reawaken in all of us a reverence for life and a passion to pursue it. Kaza’s thoughtful book is a critical contribution to this process.
—Senator Christine Milne, Australian Greens.
Stephanie Kaza is one of the wisest, kindest, and most sensible people I know, and this book is a perfect distillation of all those qualities. It will be of immense value to anyone looking for ways to live less in opposition to the forces of nature and community (which is the way of our consumer society) and more in their embrace. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy.
“In a time when imperatives to save the earth rain down upon us, Stephanie Kaza offers a votive of wisdom—a path to self where we can hold the impossible dilemmas of our day in the heart of generosity, not fear; compassionate service, not guilt. Mindfully Green is a balm to the spirit, food for the long road ahead to a restored and honored planet.”
—Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest
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