Mountain Rain Zen Community 2024 Practice Period

Living in Indra’s Net: teachings from the Avatamsaka Sutra and Beyond

Suggested Reading: listed in approximate order of reference in the course of practice period

The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, by Thomas Cleary. available for download online: Click here
Little Pilgrim by Ko Un. A wonderful fictionalized rendering of the last book of the Avatamsaka Sutra on the pilgrimage of Sudhana, written by the great Korean poet, Ko Un. Out of print. Used copies may be available. For PDF click here.
A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis by Susan Murphy. An Australian Zen teacher shares wisdom from the Zen tradition and from Aboriginal elders. Also Murphy’s previous book, Minding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis.
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant. Wildfire and the climate crisis through the story of the Fort McMurray fire of 2016.
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, by Thich Nhat Hanh.
The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know about Each Other by Raja G. Kouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson. Two men committed to finding common ground, compassion and sanity. Listen to their dialogue at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v_KGKCR3l0.
Huayan Buddhism and the Phenomenal Universe of the Flower Ornament Sutra, by Taigen Dan Leighton: click here
Painting Enlightenment, by Paula Kane Robinson Arai, an exposition on the work of artist Iwasaki Tsuneo, who expressed the Heart Sutra through amazing and beautiful art and calligraphy. click here
The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry. Edited by Maria Popova
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan. An unusual memoir—one man’s life amidst Indra’s Net.
What I Mean to Say: Remaking Conversation in our Time by Ian Williams. Based on the 2024 CBC Massey Lectures by an insightful Black Canadian novelist and poet, with a wry and humorous touch.
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer. Connection between global warming and the eating patterns and industrial agriculture of the global north.
The Weather Says: poems by Catherine Owen. Poems in conversation with the weather.
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer. How do we respond to great works of art by deeply flawed human beings, and by extension how do we hold the deep flaws of those we love?
Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction by Thom Van Dooren. An Australian environmental philosopher takes an ecosystem (Indra’s Net) view of extinction through five case studies , including on endangered vultures in India.
All that Breathes documentary film directed by Shaunak Sen about two brothers in Delhi, India who set up a rehabilitation facility for black kites, small hawks devastated by pollution and razor-sharp kite strings used for kite-fighting. Streaming on HBO.
Deep Water: The World in the Ocean, by James Bradley. Ocean ecosystems, global warming and human interactions.
The Lichen Museum by A. Laurie Palmer. The artist/writer explores symbiosis through lichen.
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. The Indra’s Net of fungi.