Why Buddha Touched the Earth

Shortly before his death, John Lennon called himself a “Zen Pagan.” With this he gave an excellent name to a religious trend that goes back at least as far as Henry David Thoreau, who wrote of his love and respect for both the ancient nature god Pan and the Buddha.

The connection between Buddhism and nature spirituality is ancient. According to legends of the Buddha's enlightenment, in his hour of need he asked the Earth to bear him witness, rather than appealing to a heavenly deity. Over the centuries Buddhism influenced and was influenced by nature religions like Taoism and Shintō, and its introduction to the West came partly by the work of spiritual nature writers like Thoreau and Gary Snyder. Occultists like Aleister Crowley and H.P. Blavatsky played key roles in both Buddhist and Pagan history.

Why Buddha Touched the Earth: Zen Paganism for the 21st Century investigates these connections. It combines rigorous historical research with lively and practical discussions of mysticism, magic, meditation, ethics, and the future of religion.

What appears here is a preview. I'm placing some sample draft chapters here for review by friends and other curious parties. Please feel free to leave intelligent feedback. Proselytizing will, of course, be deleted.

Please note that these are drafts: Typos are present. Ideas are not yet fully formed.

(I have not included references and sources in the posts here, but they will be included in the book -- there are many footnotes in the sections dealing with Pagan history. This is meant to be a popular rather than academic work, so I haven't always gone back to primary sources. But on the other hand, the web has made a surprising and delightful number of old books easily available -- many thanks to Google Books, to the Internet Sacred Text Archive, and to Project Gutenberg!)

Here's the table of contents, with links to early sample drafts for some chapters: