In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that it isn’t enough to change our behaviour to avert environmental catastrophe – we must rekindle our spiritual bond with the natural world. From gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence, Armstrong draws themes from the world’s religious traditions to offer practical steps to reconnect you with nature.

Speaking to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about environmental destruction, or searching for new actions to save our planet, Sacred Nature will uncover the most profound connections between humans and the natural world.

‘A lamentation in the key of Greta Thunberg, with undertones of Carl Jung’ Wall Street Journal

‘Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely commentators on religion’ Alain de Botton

‘KAREN ARMSTRONG IS A GENIUS’ – A.N. Wilson, author of The Victorians and Winnie and Wolf

In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that if we want to avert environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour: we need to learn to think and feel differently about the natural world – to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature.

For most of human history, and in almost all the world’s cultures, nature was believed to be sacred, and our God or gods to be present everywhere in the natural world. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in modern times, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom: it also set in train the destruction of the natural world.

Taking themes that have been central to the world’s religious traditions – from gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence – Armstrong offers practical steps to help us develop a new mindset to reconnect with nature and rekindle our sense of the sacred.

Sacred Nature reveals the most profound connections between humans and the natural world. It speaks to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about the destruction of our environment, and searching for new ways of thinking to shape the action needed to save our planet.

‘One of our best living writers on religion’ Financial Times

‘Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion’ Alain de Botton

In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. The Quran, the Torah and the Bible are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths.

But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world’s religions be able to curtail arrogance and intolerance. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us.

‘Magisterial? A dazzling accomplishment’ New York Times

‘Glorious? Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time’ A.N. Wilson, New Statesman

‘Her work has a broad sweep and that is extremely important’ TLS

Buddhism is a faith that commands over 100 million followers throughout the world. Buddha stands with Christ, Confucius and Mohammed as someone who revolutionised the religious ideas of his time to advocate a new way of living.

Since Buddhism promotes no personal god, Buddhism, writes Armstrong, ‘is essentially a psychological faith’. In our own age of secular anxiety, she shows that it has profound lessons to teach about selflessness and the simple life.

All that is known about Buddha comes from a collection of ancient writings that fuse history, biography and myth. Karen Armstrong distils from these the key events of Buddha’s life: his birth as Siddhartha Gotama in the fifth century BC and his abandonment of his wife and son; his attainment of enlightenment under the Banyan tree (the moment he became a buddha, or enlightened one; his political influence; the divisions among his followers; and his serene death. Armstrong also introduces the key tenets of Buddhism: she explains the doctrine of anatta (no-soul) and the concepts of kamma (actions), samsara (keeping going), dhamma (a law or teaching that reflects the fundamental principles of existence) and the idealised state of nibbana (literally the ‘cooling of the ego’).

Karen Armstrong’s short book is a magnificent introduction to the life and thought of this most influential of spiritual thinkers.