Abstract
The rising concern around climate change and other ecological crises has led to a positive interest in the pursuit of sustainability. At the same time, the scope and challenge of these threats has also led to a rise in climate despair and hopelessness. This book puts the two vital and intersecting discourses of sustainability and mindfulness into a stimulating dialogue. Jaoudi uses mindfulness as a metaphor for the wisdom traditions of the world’s religions generally, which can lead to enhanced self-knowledge and a transformation of the ways we interact with the world and thus promote sustainability and provide an antidote to environmental anguish.
Buddhist concepts of the four noble truths and the Eightfold Path provide the greatest structure to the book, but there is no singular, linear argument. Instead, J. continually intersperses a variety of concepts from Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Jewish, and Christian sources to demonstrate the interreligious resonance across wisdom traditions, such as: the four yogas in the Bhagavad Gita, Hildegard of Bingen’s idea of viriditas, the Dao in the Dao De Jing, the Self and the Witness of the Upaniṣads, the Boundless from Kabbalah, and the dark night of the soul in St. John of the Cross.
While the text segues quickly and occasionally repeats ideas, the author also extensively incorporates the work of artists and poets, the work and examples of contemporary religious leaders like Mohandas Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Martin King, and intimate details from her own personal life, which includes a rich and diverse experience of many cultures. In addition to questions of identity and spiritual wisdom, she also covers a range of applied sustainability questions, such as population and sexual ethics, gender and self-determination, and animal cruelty and food production.
The strength of this book is the range of ideas she introduces, the clear passion for bringing the transformative power of spiritual traditions to the fore, and the many anecdotes give the text a personal and fresh character. An instructor could use this text as a way to introduce key theological ideas and expand on them by investigating the primary sources more closely and adding further scholarly commentaries.