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“Make this book your friend,” says Arianna Huffington.
James Thornton’s Nature, My Teacher, is a powerful guide to being human in a time of eco-crisis.
In Nature, My Teacher, poet, lawyer and founder of top global environmental group ClientEarth, James Thornton offers a meditation on being alive while the planet fights to survive. He explores topics such as memory, climate anxiety, and human consciousness through a series of short essays, arranged into twelve “books”, each closing with a poem and a photo to leave readers in a reflective space.
As a Zen priest from Los Angeles, James contemplates what he has learnt from observing and listening to nature, and shows that when the planet is hurting, we too feel its pain.
The way this book is opening hearts and minds is remarkable. Arianna Huffington found it “powerful and moving”, Zen abbot and author Joan Halifax sums: “A profound guide to discovering the great wisdom in the natural world, this book…is a treasure for all”.
"Powerful and moving. Make this book your friend. It gives wise and insightful counsel, and is bursting with love for the natural world. I will be returning often to its pages." - Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
"A profound guide to discovering the great wisdom in the natural world, this book by James Thornton is a treasure for all." - Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
"James Thornton is an environmental hero of the highest order. James’s extraordinary book Nature, My Teacher is captivating, mesmerising, and manages to capture so beautifully our true relationship with the natural world. This is a hugely important book." - Ben Goldsmith, author of God is an Octopus
"This marvellous, poetic collection of insights is full of humility, wisdom and wonder. Some are satirical, some joyous, some uncomfortably challenging and some just plain sad. But weaving through all of them is Thornton’s irrepressible faith in humankind. “Help me do something about it”, he says, when writing about the dwindling of the natural world. And then he offers a beautiful roadmap for how we can find the resources inside ourselves to do just that. Unmissable." - Gabrielle Walker, author of Antarctica
"This is a beautiful, important and uplifting book. In it James Thornton lays out his love for the planet in a way that is thought-provoking and lyrical, a spacious blend of prose and poetry flavoured with the subtleties of the author’s Zen training. I came away inspired by the wisdom I had encountered in these pages and by the unmistakable aftertaste of compassion." - Antony Osler, author of Stoep Zen
| Introduction | 15 |
| The Book of Nature | 16 |
| The Book of Self and Other | 44 |
| The Book of Memory | 62 |
| The Book of Questions | 80 |
| The Book of Mind | 98 |
| The Book of Millions of Years | 114 |
| The Book of Compassion Arising | 128 |
| The Book of the Warming Earth | 144 |
| The Book of Anxiety | 160 |
| The Book of Unapologetic Rest | 184 |
| The Book of Simple Wants | 196 |
| The Book of Things I Need to Remember | 210 |
| Endnotes | 229 |
| Acknowledgments | 231 |