Books
Awake in the Wild:
Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self Discovery
In Awake in the Wild, Mark Coleman invites us to meditate as the Buddha instructed, at the foot of trees, in forests. These teachings and practices help connect readers with an age old forest meditation tradition that discover the heart of awakening amidst the blessings of the natural world. Here we become intimate with nature as the ultimate teacher, guide, a perennial source of wisdom.
Awake in the Wild tempts us to turn off our computers, and leave the confines of our homes, offices, and cars, to step outside into the majestic beauty that abounds in the wilderness. Remarkably, many of us never touch the earth or go out into the great outdoors to breathe fresh air, so we do not reap its rich offerings. By spending time in nature, not only do we reduce stress and improve physical health, but we learn how to develop a mindful awareness that is at the heart of every spiritual journey.
Spiritual practitioners everywhere are looking to not only find ways to connect their inner meditative work with the environmental crisis and global warming but are also wanting to connect their inner journey with the beauty of the natural world to learn from the teachings of nature just as the Buddha did. Buddhist teacher and wilderness meditation guide Mark Coleman directly addresses these issues.
The teachings and practices of this book help readers not only to develop a meditation practice in nature but it is also a way to open the heart to compassion what is happening to the earth. Meditating in a redwood forest, on a deserted pristine Alaskan beach, amidst New England Fall foliage touches something much deeper than just an idea about the environment. It gets into your bones. You begin to care for it and love it like a loved one. Mark teaches that there is no better way to address the environmental crisis than help people re-establish their care, connection and love of the natural world. Through living contact with nature we also cannot help but make mindful choices that benefit, rather than harm, the environment.
Meditation in Nature reveals:
- A way to discover our profound inter-connection with the web of life.
- How effortlessly a mindful awareness can arise
- How insight into impermanence, selflessness, interdependence and death are readily accessible in the natural world.
- Practices that reveal how to address our environmental concerns
How meditation in nature counteracts
despair and alienation, and
inspires joy, love and compassion calm, peace, clarity and
understanding.
Appreciation for Mark’s book
"Mark Coleman’s words carry us along like a clear-running mountain stream
into the beauty of nature, the power of silence, and the depth of meditative
awareness. His great love of the wilderness opens us to the liberating
dharma of the natural world. This book is a joy to read."
Joseph Goldstein,
author of One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism
"Mark Coleman shows us how mindful awareness
tools can open the sacred book of nature and a help us to breathe the invigorating
air of wakefulness, extending meditation far beyond the cushion and into the great
outdoors of life itself."
Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha
Within
“This important new work uses nature to illuminate
truths that can change our life: the poignancy and the opportunity of
transience, the value of loving even that which we cannot control, the
importance of opening beyond what we have been comfortably enclosed by.”
Sharon
Salzberg, author of Faith
"With simple, self-effacing clarity, Mark Coleman walks us into our senses.
With such a guide, freshness of mind returns, and we rediscover a pearl
of great price: the life-changing gift of pure attention."
Joanna
Macy, author Coming Back to Life