Open Reality: Meeting the Polycrisis
Together With All Beings
by Shodo Spring
Only modern humans have imagined ourselves as gods...
And come to the edge of destroying life on earth.
SUMMARY Open Reality speaks to the world behind and beneath our daily collective trauma. It opens practical possibilities for creating a shared, flexible culture that knows the natural world both as family and as a working partner. It invites the reader to a world of possibility. What if industrial civilization isn’t the
best that humans can do? What if we weren’t alone in the world, but embedded in a universe of conscious, intentional, powerful beings?
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.
—ALLAN SAVORY, ECOLOGIST AND
PRESIDENT, SAVORY INSTITUTE AND SAVORY
GLOBAL
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 THE AUTHOR OF MANY BOOKS,
INCLUDING STANDING AT THE EDGE, BEING WITH
DYING, AND THE FRUITFUL DARKNESS
Shodo Spring invites us to reshape reality—not by deploying AI
and carbon nano"bers, 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 PROSPECTS FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL, THE
END OF GROWTH, AND OTHER BOOKS
This book of beautiful, contemplative re!ections o"ers 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 #nely 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 theoret‐
ical principles to guide us, but also practical exercises to literally
return us to our senses.
—VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI, BUDDHIST SCHOLAR AND
THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR OF MANY BOOKS
The gift of the author's beautifully articulated vision and
guiding voice helps us to imagine, understand, and remember—
even in this techno-industrial age—how we may take our place
together with all living things, so that life's joyful and miraculous
way may be maintained. Unwrap this gift, open it up, and see.
—PETER LEVITT, AUTHOR, TRANSLATOR, AND
EDITOR OF MANY BOOKS, INCLUDING
FINGERPAINTING ON THE MOON, YIN MOUNTAIN,
AND THE ESSENTIAL DOGEN
Open Reality o"ers a credible antidote to the despair that
de!ates 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, CLIMATE SCIENTIST, ZEN
TEACHER AND COFOUNDER OF BOUNDLESS IN
MOTION
Open Reality o!ers us an open-hearted and un"inching chal‐
lenge: 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 possi‐
bility of radical ecological transformation.
—BEN CONNELLY, ZEN PRIEST AND AUTHOR OF
INSIDE THE GRASS HUT, MINDFULNESS AND
INTIMACY, AND OTHER BOOKS
With spare and simple language, Shodo Spring addresses the
fact that “something is waking up in us.” Shodo’s easy prose
acknowledges the generational traumas of civilization’s geno‐
cides for perpetrators and victims alike. Refraining from blame
and shame, The Shape of Reality gathers together tools from
Buddhist, Indigenous, and scienti%c practice to ask new ques‐
tions about old problems.
—COURTNEY WORK, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
ETHNOLOGY, NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY,
AND AUTHOR OF TIDES OF EMPIRE
Shodo Spring’s Open Reality invites the reader to respond inter‐
nally and through relationships to the unraveling of civilization
and its unsustainable complexities. Hopeful and deeply prag‐
matic, she shares insights from her Zen practice as an ordained
priest, from her community activism, and from the land which
sustains her.
—PETER BANE, FOUNDER/PUBLISHER OF
PERMACULTURE DESIGN MAGAZINE, AUTHOR OF
THE PERMACULTURE HANDBOOK: GARDEN
FARMING FOR TOWN AND COUNTRY, AND
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PERMACULTURE
INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA
My thanks to Shodo for the thoughtful re!ections 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 MANY OTHER BOOKS
If we are the least bit aware of the degradation of our shared
home – planet Earth – then we might be stu"ng 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, AUTHOR OF CASTING
INDRA'S NET: FOSTERING SPIRITUAL KINSHIP AND
COMMUNITY
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, AUTHOR, TRANSLATOR,
AND EDITOR OF MANY BOOKS, INCLUDING LIVING
BY VOW AND THE MOUNTAINS AND WATERS
SUTRA
Shodo Spring is a Soto Zen priest and dharma heir of Shohaku Okumura. Before encountering Zen in 1983 she had studied physics and social work, and practiced as a psychotherapist. She met the Dharma through Dainin Katagiri in Minnesota, studied at San Francisco Zen Center, and finally trained with Okumura Roshi. She was interim priest at Anchorage Zen Communityin 2010-11 and volunteered with Brahmavihara Cambodia in 2014.
In 2004 Shodo organized public sitting outside the political conventions and joined a group walking between them, from Boston to New York. In 2006 she walked the Texas-Mexico border with Claude Anshin Thomas in the American Zen Pilgrimage. After receiving Dharma Transmission, she organized and led the 2013 Compassionate Earth Walk, a 3-month spiritual walk along the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route in the Great Plains. That walk began with a vision and has shaped her whole life since.
Currently Shodo sits monthly Antaiji-style sesshins in the tradition of her lineage, and has founded Mountains and Waters Alliance to work together with all beings for the welfare of the whole earth. She lives on a farm, apprenticing herself to the plants, waters, animals and earth, learning to be human. She spends time with her children and grandchildren.
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