Endorsements
This book of beautiful, contemplative reflections offers keen insights into the deep, underlying roots of the convoluted network of crises we face both as individuals and as members of a single global community. The path out of our impasse, out of this overwhelming “polycrisis,” Shodo argues, does not lie in more sophisticated technologies or more finely tuned policies but in a recognition of our kinship with—indeed, our identity with—the totality of life on this planet and the entire ever-unfolding mystery of the cosmos. She proposes not only theoretical principles to guide us, but also practical exercises to literally return us to our senses. Only by acknowledging these fundamentals and embodying them in our personal lives and in our relationships will we be able to emerge from our predicament and find the life of deep fulfillment and planetary flourishing for which we all yearn. The book provides one more torch of hope to guide us out from the darkness of despair.
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist scholar and author and translator of many books
This brave and important book has found its way into our hands and our hearts just in time. Please read. We need the wisdom of Shodo’s deep practice and insight in the times we are facing. A must read today.
Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
and author of many books including Standing at the Edge,
Being With Dying, and The Fruitful Darkness.
Open Reality expresses well how we lost our way and became the only animal to evolve which destroys its own habitat, and is capable of inhumane treatment of all species. In particular, I loved this tragically true statement: Humans have known forever that we are small in a large universe. Only modern humans have imagined ourselves as gods, all-powerful. And only with this fantasy have humans come to the edge of destroying life on earth. Yet we call this the only way to live.
This is a book about possibility and hope – so much needed – as we go forward uniting humanity to survive, while learning to live in harmony with ourselves and Nature, our life-supporting environment in a holistic world. It is never in any human’s enlightened self-interest to damage another human or our environment.
Allan Savory, Ecologist and President, Savory Institute and Savory Global
Open Reality offers a credible antidote to the despair that deflates our creative powers and disconnects us from each other. It reminds us of who humans are, have been, and can be again, and imagines a respectful loving and working relationship with the other beings who share this earth.
Kritee Kanko, Zen teacher and environmental scientist
Shodo Spring invites us to reshape reality—not by deploying AI and carbon nanofibers, but by nurturing our deep roots in nature and Indigenous wisdom. This book can help us awaken from the nightmare that is modern industrial life; every chapter is a not-so-gentle nudge.
Richard Heinberg, Author of Power: Limits and Prospect for Human Survival,
The End of Growth, and other books.
“My thanks to Shodo for these thoughtful reflections on how we might go where we need to go. To read them is to walk together through the polycrisis with a compassionate spiritual friend.”
David Loy, author of Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis
and other books.
If we are the least bit aware of the degradation of our shared home — planet Earth — then we might be stuffing or projecting that fear somewhere. How might we use our emotions more productively for a life of joy and life giving interconnectivity? Zen priest Shodo Spring, in communion with non-human and human beings, interprets the wisdom of the beings and the ages for those of us who have forgotten that we know how to live peaceably with Earth’s inhabitants.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Th.D., Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship
and Community and other books.
Rich like layer cake, and half poetry, Shodo Spring’s Open Reality invites the reader to respond internally and through relationships to the unraveling of civilization and its unsustainable complexities. As the polycrisis of her subtitle stimulates Big Tech to reopen mothballed nuclear plants to power AI, it leaves most sentient people in some level of despair. Shodo inverts that pain to show it as loss and lack of connection—to the mystery, the soul, fellow humans, and the rest of the living world from which we are inseparable.
Hopeful and deeply pragmatic, she shares insights from her Zen practice as an ordained priest, from her community activism, and from the land which sustains her. I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I’ve taught the design of permanent culture (permaculture) for more than 30 years, and convey it as an unending, infinite, and practical connection between the heart and the world, which heals them together. This magnificent, joyful work expands our understanding of that connection, as it affords us many tools, pathways, resources, and gentle encouragement to enrich our shared reality beyond the failing structures of history.
Peter Bane, founder/publisher of Permaculture Design magazine,
author of The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country.
Executive Director, Permaculture Institute of North America.
Permaculture teacher for 30+ years.
We cannot have peace, sane lives, a planet not doomed due to the lack of imagination that currently hurtles all of life to a future and final catastrophe, until we become possessed and informed by an imagination that, small as we are, helps life to nurture life in all its diverse expressions. In this book, so warm and intimate with our world, Shodo Spring gives us that imagination, and here’s the kicker: She reminds us that there is nothing imaginary in what she provides; living in concert with the imagination of a peaceful, sane, and life-loving world that includes human beings is, as the saying goes, as old as the hills.
It can be as actual as your foot touching spring grasses, the wind on your skin awakening memories and dreams, the rains that brighten your spirit and your eyes. The gift of the author’s beautifully articulated vision and guiding voice helps all of us to imagine, understand and remember, even in this industrial age, how we may take our place, together with all living things, so that life’s joyful and miraculous way may continue and be maintained. Unwrap this gift, open it up, and see.
Peter Levitt, poet, translator,
and founding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle
in British Columbia.
Dogen Zenji said that what buddhas and ancestors transmit is “disporting oneself freely in Jijuyu-Samadhi [self-enjoyment samadhi].” True practice is not work, not even seeking enlightenment, but playing freely. Shodo’s book brings this essential teaching into the reality of today’s world, using history and stories to help us change our own framework from work to play, even in crisis.
Shohaku Okumura, Founder of Sanshin Zen Community,
author of Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts,
The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo,”
and numerous other commentaries and translations.
With spare and simple language, Shodo Spring addresses the fact that “[s]omething is waking up in us”. This is a book for those already awakened with insights and some tools for “changing the story” at a time when it is “impossible to go back, and the way forward is not clear”. Shodo’s easy prose acknowledges the generational traumas of civilization’s genocides, traumas for perpetrators and victims alike, but refrains from blame and shame to ask, “how can I live with integrity and grace, being of benefit to the world around me rather than being part of the problem?”
Gathering together tools for thinking new responses to old questions, the book contains a useful list of resources for other kinds of storytellers. Well-cited words from uncivilized elders and civilized scientists are made available to begin spinning variations on the theme of universal kinship, consciousness, and care. Blending insights from her many years of engagement with Buddhist, Indigenous, and scientific practices, The Shape of Reality captures elements of an emerging story that gives form to a safe, if uncertain place from which to situate society in a never-ending open.
Courtney Work, Associate Professor,
Ethnology, National Chengchi University,
and author of Tides of Empire: Religion, Development,
and Environment in Cambodia.
The Shape of Reality is Open offers us an open-hearted and unflinching challenge: get into right relationship with everything. Somehow this book looks backwards, forwards, and directly at the present all at once. It is a warm invitation into the hope, practice, and possibility of radical ecological transformation.
Ben Connelly, Zen priest and
author of Inside the Grass Hut and other books.