Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dogen in an Age of Ecological Crisis

FINALIST for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Philosophy category

Meditating on the work of American poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder and thirteenth-century Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen, Jason M. Wirth draws out insights for understanding our relation to the planet’s ongoing ecological crisis. He discusses what Dogen calls the Great Earth and what Snyder calls the Wild as being comprised of the play of waters and mountains, emptiness and form, and then considers how these ideas can illuminate the spiritual and ethical dimensions of place. The book culminates in a discussion of earth democracy, a place-based sense of communion where all beings are interconnected and all beings matter. This radical rethinking of what it means to inhabit the earth will inspire lovers of Snyder’s poetry, Zen practitioners, environmental philosophers, and anyone concerned about the global ecological crisis.