Joanna Macy - World as Lover, World as Self: 30th Anniversary Edition

Brilliant, visionary, and essential, this is one of the wisest and most important Buddhist-inspired books of our era. Joanna Macy is a master, and her powerful, heart-centered work is a blessing, showing us how to transform ourselves and the world.

Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart

With this modernized offer of World as Lover, World as Self, Joanna Macy unveils an ancient set of roots for our work to transform the future. As we learn to wield the weapons of compassion and insight to fulfill our destiny, Macy weaves the spirit work of Buddhism into our community and activism work, helping us grasp where we are in the Great Turning.

adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy

As a son of West African soils, I know how to recognize an elders voice. Let me tell you: an elders voice cracks with a humble vitality more compelling than truth, more urgent than caution, more liberating than prediction. Joanna Macy writes with that familiar lilt of prophecythe stern kind of speaking that kindles spaces for new kinds of movements, comings and goings previously thought impossible. The kind of writing that softly bewilders, emancipating us from our significatory prisons and their exhausting anxieties. From within the spinning gyres of civilizational impasses, in a pandemic-inflected time when the world seems to be kicking back against the presumptuousness of human centrality, when everything seems to be collapsing, Joanna Macy sings a song to urge us not to run away, not to shrink away from these material irruptions, but to open our hearts and anchor our bodies to a world so sensuously alive that it could only be described as a lover. May we never outgrow our elders.

Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences

I think this book will need to be reissued every few years, as long as there are still people on the planet trying to figure out how to make it all somehow come out okay. Its as powerful as it ever wasmaybe more so.

Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org

World as Lover, World as Self is essential reading. The new, thoroughly reimagined thirtieth anniversary edition, however, takes essential to another level. This new edition weaves together Macys decades-old wisdom with fresh insights that speak directly to our troubled times. As Macy astutely notes, we have entered the bardo a space between worlds where the line between the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning is razor-thin. What better guide could we have in this moment than Macy herself, who draws deeply from the three wells of engaged Buddhism, deep ecology, and systems theory to bring us clear-eyed visions of how to build a sustainable society? Offering both insights for scholars and guidelines for activists, Macy teaches us to ground in gratitude, acknowledge pain, see with new eyes and commit to doing the transformative work to which each of us is distinctly called.

Rebecca Kneale Gould, environmental studies, Middlebury College

Thirty years after its original publication, the wisdom in these pages remains timeless and universal while the message has become even more pressing. As we face increasing catastrophes due to the climate crisis, Joannas teachings become even more critical. We need this book now more than ever.

Kazu Haga, author of Healing Resistance

Thank you! Its such a blessing to have Joannas timeless handbook for the Buddhist social activist available in an updated form. Here she coaches us in the broad view of interdependence, the skillful actions for right now, and the visionary future of compassionate engagement for the suffering planet.

Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown, Naropa University, and author of Dakinis Warm Breath

What a treasure to have Joanna Macys clear and compassionate thinking between the covers of a book. She is no armchair traveler in the realms of Buddhist philosophy and social commitment. These pages are worldly wise with experience, and earth wise with care. What a brilliant teacher this is, and what a wonderful pleasure the learning.

Susan Griffin, author of Women and Nature

Joanna Macys life radiates out to touch and enliven every cell within our larger, spherical Body. By giving herself with such abandon to the very presence of the present moment, Joannas tears and her joylike those of any genuine bodhisattvareverberate backward and forward through time to nourish all moments within the broad life of the breathing Earth.

David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

World as Lover, World as Self is a lamentation, a praise song, and a map. Whoever dares, as Joanna Macy does, to love so deeply must be a descendent of the Mother of All Buddhas. In these darkest times, this book is an inextinguishable light.

Deena Metzger, author of Writing for Your Life

Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (with Molly Brown)

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess Were in without Going Crazy (with Chris Johnstone)

Pass It On: Five Stories That Can Change the World (with Norbert Gahbler)

Widening Circles: A Memoir

Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems

Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings (with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess)

Dharma and Development: Religion as Resource in the Sarvodaya Self-Help Movement

Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age

Despairwork

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Translations of Rainer Maria Rilke, with Anita Barrows

Rilkes Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilkes Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus

A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilkes Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

* * *

Also see A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time (edited by Stephanie Kaza)

Parallax Press

2236B Sixth Street
Berkeley, California 94710
parallax.org

Parallax Press is the publishing division of Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, Inc.

1991, 2007, 2021 by Joanna Macy

All rights reserved

Printed in Canada

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Edited by Stephanie Kaza

Cover photograph Jnis Grodums

Cover and text design by Katie Eberle

Composition by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Macy, Joanna, 1929 author. | Kaza, Stephanie, editor.

Title: World as lover, world as self : 30th anniversary edition / Joanna Macy ; edited by Stephanie Kaza.

Description: Third edition. | Berkeley : Parallax Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Draws on a lifetime of wisdom to offer a re-focus on the natural world, where readers can find the strength and spiritual nourishment to envision a new future for humanity built on a sustainable relationship with the earthProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021000922 (print) | LCCN 2021000923 (ebook) | ISBN

9781946764843 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781946764850 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: BuddhismSocial aspects. | Human ecologyPhilosophy.

| System theory.

Classification: LCC BQ4570.S6 M33 2021 (print) | LCC BQ4570.S6 (ebook)