Stone Nest

In the tradition of the ancient Chinese poets who went to the mountains to be closer to nature and themselves, Richard Collins delivers these dispatches from his mountain retreat called Stone Nest in Sewanee, Tennessee. As a Zen monk, teacher, and abbot, Collins pays tribute and attention to the art of nature and the nature of art, always with a questioning sensibility that asks: what more do the voices of mountains and waters have to tell us? How can we listen to and truly see what is all around us? How can we live our lives with authenticity and daring, yet with compassion and concern for all beings, sentient or not? Stone Nest explores the seasons of the mind and its responses to the seasons of a particular patch of land and the journey one has taken in time and space to settle there. How do poetry and painting, philosophy and religion, sensation and memory distort and disclose the gifts of the natural environment? The title captures the kind of comfort we can expect when we make a rugged landscape our home and meditation hall.