Learning Love from a Tiger explores the vibrancy and variety of humans’ sacred encounters with the natural world, gathering a range of stories culled from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mayan, Himalayan, Buddhist, and Chinese shamanic traditions. Readers will delight in tales of house cats who teach monks how to meditate, shamans who shape-shift into jaguars, crickets who perform Catholic mass, rivers that grant salvation, and many others. In addition to being a collection of wonderful stories, this book introduces important concepts and approaches that underlie much recent work in environmental ethics, religion, and ecology. Daniel Capper’s light touch prompts readers to engage their own views of humanity’s place in the natural world and question longstanding assumptions of human superiority.
Daniel Capper is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Southern Mississippi and the author of Guru Devotion and the American Buddhist Experience.
“Unique, wide ranging, and beautifully written, this powerful plea for more mutually constructive relationships offers an appreciation of the natural world and our neighbors in the nonhuman universe. Learning Love from a Tiger respects cultural differences and religious sensibilities even as it challenges human-on-human oppression.”
Paul Waldau, Professor of Anthrozoology, Canisius College
“Capper’s complex and timely work addresses the multifaceted ways that religions and nature shape each other. He points out that the results are often fraught with ambivalence, an important conclusion that leaves the reader without simple answers. This book both introduces various religious traditions and delves into the complicated environmental issues that intersect, in sometimes unanticipated ways, with religion.”
Laura Hobgood, Professor of Environmental Studies and Religion, Southwestern University
320 pp.6 x 9Illus: 25 b/w images
9780520290419$70.00|£59.00Hardcover
Apr 2016