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Shodo Spring
Shodo Spring has belonged to the natural world for as long as she can remember. She grew up running half-wild in the fields and woods of northeastern Ohio, with early mornings on the shore of Lake Erie and long days outdoors alone in the woods and creeks. Civilized human society was more difficult. She studied physics hoping to understand the universe, then psychotherapy to understand humans, then Buddhism to free herself, all while voraciously reading in history, anthropology, archaeology, political science,
philosophy, and spirituality. She joined a series of political movements, finally focused on environment and environmental justice, what would be called deep ecology.
Along the way Shodo started one of the first battered women’s shelters, worked as a community organizer in inner-city Cleveland, trained to become a psychotherapist, and explored spirituality including Sufism, Dianic witchcraft, and shamanism, practiced nonviolent social change, and finally entered the practice of Zen Buddhism, which unlocked her internal cage. Shodo has two children and four young-adult grandchildren. She has practiced Zen for over forty years and taught for twelve. She still works part time as a psychotherapist.
Shodo’s written work includes Take Up Your Life: Making Spirituality Work in the Real World (Tuttle 1996), editing Shohaku Okumura’s The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo” (Wisdom 2018), numerous essays in anthologies, and an ongoing monthly blog.
Shodo’s ordination name means “right way” or “true path.” That path integrates activism with spiritual practice and deeply nourishing engagement with the earth. Shodo has participated in long retreats, public sitting meditation as activism, and walking hundreds of miles, including leading the 2013 Compassionate Earth Walk along the planned northern route of the KXL pipeline. Mountains and Waters Alliance expresses her vision of humans working with the beyond-human world to heal and regenerate life on earth. She lives on a small farm which serves as a learning laboratory for growing those relationships, and as a residential community of practice.
NONFICTION | ENVIRONMENTAL | BUDDHISM | Paperback – $17.95 | Publication Date: SEPTEMBER 2025 | 978-1961864306 | Dimensions: 6 x 9 | 150 Pages
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Open Reality: Meeting the Polycrisis Together With All Beings
by Shodo Spring
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Only modern humans have imagined ourselves as gods…
And come to the edge of destroying life on earth.
Open Reality speaks to the world behind and beneath our daily collective trauma. It opens practical possibilities for creating a shared, flexible culture that knows the natural world both as family and as a working partner. It invites the reader to a world of possibility. What if industrial civilization isn’t the best that humans can do? What if we weren’t alone in the world, but embedded in a universe of conscious, intentional, powerful beings?
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About Sea Crow Press
Sea Crow Press is an award-winning woman-run independent book publisher based on Cape Cod in Massachusetts committed to amplifying voices that might otherwise go unheard. We publish creative nonfiction, literary fiction, and poetry. Our books celebrate our connection to each other and to the natural world with a focus on positive change and great storytelling.