Birding with Buddha

Buddha with bird, CC*BY Ekke

Contemplating Nature

I finished Birding with Buddha this month. It is designed to accompany the course I taught this spring, and it's not really meant to stand alone, but see notes below to acquire a free copy.

It was a modest undertaking and yet it has taken me awhile. I taught it first as a course, Zen Birding, in 2011, and again this spring, as Birding with Buddha, my research project for a Master's Degree in Contemplative Education from Naropa University. I refined it a lot over the last three years, partly as a result of the things I learned teaching it. But I read so many wonderful articles and books over the course of my studies at Naropa that I knew would enrich the text immeasurably, that it's a very good thing that I was able to make it my research project and stretch out the time to sit with it, so to speak. I know it is better for the time I've spent at Naropa.

Now what?

I really don't know. That's supposed to be a good thing. It is what it is.

If you would like a copy of Birding with Buddha

Birding with Buddha is available in the iBookstore, or you can download it here. I wrote the book in iBooks Author, so it is formatted for the iBooks reader. If you visit this page and press and hold the link in Safari on your iPad or other device with iBooks reader installed, Safari should give you the option to open the file with iBooks. But if you access the link from your computer, whether Mac or PC, just download it and either sync it to your iPad iBooks reader or email it to yourself and open the attachment on the iPad with iBooks. Best of luck!

A pdf is available too, even though it is not so good an alternative. The sounds in Chapter 3 do not play in the pdf format. I would suggest that the reader listen to any bird sounds in place of the recordings -- whatever is chirping outside your window.