A Fire Runs through All Things

At a time of climate emergency, Zen koans show us how crisis itself can reveal the regenerative openness of life, mind, and being.

PubWest 2023 Book Design Award (Silver)

A Fire Runs through All Things explores how Zen koans, a tradition of holistic inquiry based on "encounter stories" from East Asia's most radical Buddhist tradition, can guide us through the climate crisis. Susan Murphy posits that koans help us enter the realm of not-knowing, from which acceptance and possibility freely emerge. These koans offer intimate, mythic, artful, playful, provocative, humorous, and fierce methods to engage with the work of protecting and healing our world.

The koans initially direct our focus toward ourselves and the very nature of "self." Until we perceive "self" as an open question rather than an unquestioned certainty, we remain external observers, attempting to engineer solutions to the "climate crisis," unaware that we exist within a reality without an outside—a vast ocean of transformative energy. Are we willing to relinquish our desire for absolute control and fearlessly navigate our intense feelings about a suffering earth?

In addition to employing dozens of traditional and new koans, Murphy highlights the lesser-known Zen resonance with the world's oldest continuous body of indigenous wisdom, encapsulated in the nuanced Australian Aboriginal word Country. Drawing on her collaboration with Uncle Max (Dulumunmun) Harrison, a respected Yuin Elder, Murphy demonstrates how this ancient source of intelligence corroborates the aliveness of the earth and the kinship of all beings.