The Age of Waiting

“Ravaged jungles, extinction, our own death, these familiar fears. But held in unknowing, they turn more intimate, far stranger, wind-blown and insistent whispers that open in our heart, dream lines across the anthropocene. Everywhere Douglas Penick looks — in world literature, old religions, his own mind — he finds their hints and clues and fragments and images, brief memories. He invites us into the same bold practice of vigorous waiting. There are hidden pathways here. Please come in.”

— Kidder Smith Translator of Sun Tzu: The Art of War

"A brilliant, compassionate, heart-breakingly written, woven, acknowledgement of the unimaginable Anthropocene rolling toward us. As Douglas says, “We are being carried forward into a disturbed and disturbing unknown.” But this is not a book of gloom and doom, as he writes, “We must move forward.” And he does so with insight and wisdom, with Buddhist stories, with the life of the Buddha, with turning points in his life with his Teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, and with touching, telling alightings from his own life from childhood until his aging (slightly) now. Well worth anything you can give to its reading, musing, in this vast humming, in this “Ocean of Buddhas.”   

— Zentatsu Richard Baker