Wild Mind, Wild Earth

Our Place in the Sixth Extinction

By: David Hinton

Narrated by: David Hinton

Exploring the confluence of ancient Chinese spirituality and modern Western environmental thought, Wild Mind, Wild Earth reveals the unrecognized kinship of mind and nature that must be reanimated if we are to end our destruction of the planet.

Earth is embroiled in its sixth major extinction event—this time caused not by asteroids or volcanos, but by us. At bottom, preventing this sixth extinction is a spiritual and philosophical problem, for it is the assumptions defining us and our relation to earth that are driving the devastation. Those assumptions insist on a fundamental separation of human and earth that devalues earth and enables our exploitative relation to it.

In Wild Mind, Wild Earth, David Hinton explores modes of seeing and being that could save the planet by reestablishing a deep kinship between human and earth: the insights of primal cultures and those of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism of ancient China. He also shows how these insights have become well-established in the West over the last two hundred years through the work of poets, philosophers, and scientists. This offers marvelous hope and beauty—but like so many of us, Hinton recognizes that the sixth extinction is now an inexorable and perhaps unstoppable tragedy. And he reveals how those primal and Zen insights enable us to inhabit even the unfurling catastrophe as a profound kind of liberation. Wild Mind, Wild Earth is a remarkable and revitalizing journey.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 David Hinton (P)2022 Shambhala Publications

A beautiful and important essay

This is an outstanding text and read, a continuation to Hinton’s epic work that brings Dao and Chan to our minds today. This is ecology through love of the world and the rare beauty of one Du Mu poem which can indeed transform the world, at least the world of its - hopefully many - listeners.

insight into reality

david Hinton is in a category rarely reached by artist-intellectuals in our lifetime. wild mind, wild earth is myth shattering narrative of seeing beyond the conventions of society entirely beautifully written by whom I believe is the premier artist intellectual of our time rivaling the great poets and philosophers of ancient China. It is both relevant and entertaining with the deepest human and non human insight. With gratitude🙏