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Widening Circles: A Memoir
In this absorbing memoir, well-known eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, and deep ecology activist /teacher Joanna Macy recounts her adventures of mind and spirit in the key social movements of our era. Macy's autobiography reads like a novel as she relates her multi-faceted life experiences and reflects on how her marriage and family life enriched her service to the world.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Joanna Macy
59 books432 followersDr. Joanna Rogers Macy (1929-2025), activist, ecologist and author, was one of the pioneers of engaged Buddhism. Her online work includes the article "World as Lover, World as Self"; "Bestiary" (an ode to wildlife); Nuclear Guardianship, her testimony at the World Uranium Hearings in Salzburg, 1992; and The Vegan Vision, on the ethics of a vegan diet. Her other books include Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems, World as Lover, World as Self and Rilke's Book of Hours.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
September 15, 2010
This is one of the most extraordinary autobiographical journeys I've taken...the way Joanna Macy reflects on her journey and relates it to the Dhammachaka is profound. The wisdom and candidness in which she conveys her life story and unfoldment makes me want to queue this book up for read number two.
April 21, 2026
A moving telling of one person's journey to build for herself and for us a synthesis of personal and social growth and change, this book told a story of someone with whom it would have been fun to become and be friends. I especially appreciated the biographical reminders that people change and learn and grow -- she was a CIA employee, for example, before becoming dedicated to defending life internationally. I also enjoyed how she shared some aspects of her personal life -- e.g., (eventually) ethical nonmonogamy (and also cooperative housholds) -- as meaningful but not as social identities or as the focus of author's life or purpose.
10 When Ouie shouted and pounded his pulpit, it wasn't to scold people for being sinful so much as to wake people up to being loved.
18 I hardly expected God to conform to my notions of what God should do. On the contrary, when I didn't surround him with demands and expectations, there was more space -- space where we both could breathe and be real.
The God I was reading about in the Bible did not seem very spacious. He wanted to be good and obedient, period. [...] Neither allowed much room for fallibility or grief.
19 "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy-laden." [...] That invitation did not alter the circumstances of my life; it removed no hardships. Yet it changed everything.
31 If "everybody's lonely," maybe everybody belongs as well.
38 If we are connected enough to belong to each other [...] then we're connected enough to hurt each other -- a lot.
[...] The guilt I felt was not for hating Papa [...] but for what I let that hatred do to me. I let it close me in. That resentful self-enclosure was ultimately such a denial of life that it made me an accomplice to the world's suffering.
42 I always ended up talking about the cross [....] I spoke of the fears and defeats that seem inseparable from our lives, and of the grace that can happen when we stop denying our pain and let it reveal our connection with God and with each other.
45 This notion of atonement, as some settling of accounts in a cosmic ledger, struck me as silly. When I argued that the cross only "saves' through what it challenges us to know about ourselves, my two fundamentalist classmates looked at me blankly.
51 Yet my refusal to pray brought no freedom; it only triggered a sense of hopelessness. I had hit a monumental dead end.
62 Here the wildness inside me and the tenderness that tore me were married. Hence the laughter and the languor; yet at the edges, there was terror too -- of the lies and the longing that waited in the wings.
68 Thoughts and feelings became clearer to me when shared with him.
69 "I have one prayer for you. [...] May you ever see the other as a stranger." [...] the spiritual necessity of not being fooled by familiarity. <>
76 If a hole appears, just walk through it [....] You'll never be lost because this emptiness is central to life [....]
87 They are smiling at me, I thought to myself in disbelief. It is not I who have been forced from my homeland, seen my loved ones and teachers tortured, killed. [...] Yet I am the one they are smiling at, as if to reassure me, as if to tell me that at the heart of it all and in this moment there is joy.
93 I could learn a lot from this woman. Confidence, for one thing -- the marriage of serenity with sheer nerve.
98 As I gasped with shock and breathed hard to contain the grief and rage that exploded in me, Choegyal turned to look at me with eyes that shone with unshed tears.
"Poor Chinese," he said. "They make such bad karma for themselves."
102 Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering, which is held to be tanha or craving. [...]
"Tanha is a specific form of desire, the desire to pull apart from the rest of life and seek fulfillment through those bottled-up segments of being we call our selves, " I read. "It is the will to private fulfillment, the ego oozing like a secret sore..." Every few lines, to let the words sink in, I would life my eyes, let my gaze wander down the packed couch. "We strap our faith and love and destiny to the puny burros of our separate selves which are certain to stumble and give out ... Prizing our egos, coddling them, we lock ourselves inside...."
103 The world from which I could not protect myself became a world I was free to enter -- to be. [...] The self was neither to be vaunted nor overcome, neither to be punished nor improved --- it needed only to be seen through, like a bubble that would eventually pop.
105 My mind was as slippery as an eel. Continually it escaped my grasp, slithered into memories and conjectures. It seemed addicted to reliving past events and rehearsing future ones; what was gone and what had not yet arrived drew it like a magnet. I was shocked and appalled to discover how little I stayed in the present moment - maybe five percent of the time? Had I always lived my life in absentia? [...]
"Stop saying 'I' in that way when talking about your experience." She explained that using the first person pronoun to categorize yourself works like cement, anchoring passing feelings into a kind of permanence. It was more accurate, she pointed out, to say "judgment is happening" or "sloth is occur-ring" or "fears are arising." Her admonitions helped me recognize the burden of a solidified self, of its everlasting carping and goading — and the burden began to lift a little.
[...] Here, you lucky girl, is a whole system designed to help you liberate yourself from the prison cell of ego. Here is a place of silent, loving people to protect and encourage you as you begin to dismantle it. "Oh blessings on the Dharma," I hummed to myself, then quickly noted: "thinking, thinking" and "excitement is happening." Even in delight the mind kept wanting to go off on its own, to slip out of the harness of Bare Attention. But that actually presented no problem: I was discovering that even lapses were grist for the mill — just more events to note, sooner or later, when the mind was reeled in.
[...] it seemed I was nothing more than an increasingly rapid flow of experiencing. As I held the flow in focus, that was all I seemed to be: a torrent of sensations and thoughts arising and fading away. Nothing else.
109 It was good to be reminded that I didn't need to approve of life's arrangements. My likes and dislikes did not change the way things were, and often only got me in trouble. What a relief to recognize that! Seng T'san's lines suggested more than stoical resignation, more than a self-protective refusal to care about things. They evoked the quality of presence I had seen in the Tibetans and tasted in moments of staipatthana practice: a wide-open availability to immediate experience before the mind interposed its judgments. <>
121 <> It was about surrendering to the authority of life's connection with itself.
125 Some years later we would learn how to talk with each other about our loving other people -- and it would be a relief when we did, clearing the heart, deepening the sense of alliance.
128 The civil rights work and these anti-war actions helped me take even more seriously than before the mystical openings I had experienced on the train to Pathankote, and in Dougga and Zembra, and at the Friends Meeting in Lagos. What now seemed most important in social change work was not how brave or brilliant you were, but where you drew the confines of your life. Was it circumscribed by your social role or the color of your skin or your political views? Or was the aliveness, the heartbeat, present everywhere, waiting to link up? For me to understand this, spiritual studies appeared more relevant than ever.
[...] Maybe I could find a way to translate the Buddha's understanding of self -- or non-self -- into a Western mode, to help my countrypeople come home to each other and play their part in building a world not based on fear.
132 I would hear Martin Heidegger's dictum that "we are in a time of a double lack and a double Not, the No-more of the gods that have fled and the Not-yet of the god that is coming." <>
135 Wisdom is not about bits and pieces, she said, it's about relationship. [....] she brought forth in new words the Buddha's central teaching: the dependent co-arising of all phenomena. That's why her scriptures became known as the Second Turning of the Wheel.
To unglue the Abhidharmist's logic, she spoke in paradoxes. As you lead all beings to nirvana, the ultimate release from suffering, you lead them nowhere. Nirvana is no separate place. All is empty, there is no solid ground to stand on, but you can fly in that emptiness. It can hold you as the sky holds the birds.
136 We can all be bodhisattvas -- the Mother of all Buddhas was quite emphatic on this point. That's because we are, by our very nature, interdependent with all life and engendered by relationships. So we are perfectly capable of treating others as ourselves and of opening to the world as to our own hearts.
141 [...] that is exactly what a mystical experience is like! [...] "It's like being a synapse in the mind of God."
142 Back then, with the Tibetans, I saw the Dharma as a luminous way of being, a selfless ground for serenity and compassion. Later, with Prajna Paramita, I discovered that this way of being grew out of a very distinctive understanding of reality. That the ground of being is fluid. That it is empty of everything but relationships. Now here came general symptoms theory with a similar vision of reality [...]
143 "Instead we're moving to a process view, where everything arises through interaction and nothing depends on a first cause, aloof from change." I even told the seminar that, back in sixth-century India, the Buddha had made the same move.
Was it really true that the Buddha cut loose from any first cause? From all hierarchies in the structure of reality? That question drove me back to the earlier texts, which first set forth the doctrine of dependent co-arising.
144 Thich Thien Chau glanced at me and smiled. "Dukkha doesn't mean that everything is bad, just that everything is not perfect." Then he added, as if to reassure me, "It also doesn't mean that we are too attached; pain comes from the actions of others, too."
145 [....] reminding me to venture into the dark, to get lost, so as to be found by that which needs to be known.
148 [...] a neat little division of roles. Fran would play strong and sane, and I would play crazy. [...] "He's anxious, too" was the import of Esther's words, "but if he can't admit it, his anxiety gets projected onto you. And you've fallen for it, you've played your part. To a real extent you've been carrying his emotional life as well as your own."
With sudden relief, I recognized this was true. And almost as quickly I saw that it was also true of most married couples I knew: the wife was carrying the emotional life of the marriage and simultaneously denigrating herself for being "too" emotional. Later, when I began learning and expounding general systems theory, this marital dynamic became one of my favorite examples of a positive, or deviation-amplifying, feedback loop.
153 The main fascination, I think, was its moral coherence: here people were living in accordance with what they believed was true and important in their world. No wonder they were having such a good time.
159 "Oh, Rinpoche, now I am understanding so much!"
"Aahh," he breathed, smiling on me affectionately, with infinite patience. When I paused, after rattling on some more, he simply asked: "Does this help you to increase in compassion?"
[...] He said, "It is not your getting knowledge or even enlightenment that matters. It is your wanting it for the sake of all beings."
162 "The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary. We need this first one [...] because it provides us the fuel, it moves out to act on behalf of other beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So we need the second as well, which is insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. It lets us see that the battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through ever human heart. We realize that we are interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see."
169 A law requiring double hulls would cut oil spills in half, I learned, but the oil companies were blocking it.
172 "[...] the certainty of a future is lost to us now. I don't know how to live with that loss without going numb, or crazy. Jim, the very meaning of your work, like mine, is based on the assumption that generations will come after us."
173 I kept thinking, we have to find a way to live in this planet-time without closing our eyes to what we're doing. Both systems theory and Buddhist practice helped. I remembered how open systems restructure themselves in response to challenge. In order for new values, new organizing principles to emerge, they undergo "positive disintegration." In our evolution, we have been through this process many times; it is inevitably disorienting. To survive, the system just needs to stay open to feedback.
Vipassana practice seemed designed for that purpose. It had taught me that we're perfectly capable of sustained attention to the flow-through of experience, including the failing condition of our world and the despair that evokes. Vipassana provided me no haven from the world and no protection from my sorrow, but that was why I trusted it and found that it could steady me.
181 I remembered the first "weapon" of the Shambhala warrior: karuna, or compassion. Hadn't I understood, as Choegyal Rinpoche told me the old prophecy, that it meant to be unafraid of the suffering of the world and its beings -- even our own?
188-9 (share w/Tosha) [...] Buddhist teachings in the light of general systems theory. [...]
Since both bodies of thought see change as the prevailing feature of reality, can steadiness be found in change itself? Maybe the early Buddhists focused attention on the body's decay because life in those times seemed so steady and unchanging. Today, battered as we are by shocks and future-shocks, we need no reminders of transiency. Instead we need to learn to feel steadiness in the beat, constancy in the flow, so that change can be ridden smoothly like a wave.
190 It was that sense of homecoming, in the golden glow on the faces along the western sea, that made me begin to cry. [...] the thought arose that with this experience of time, you need no haven or final rest to strive for. You make your home in the very midst of change.
197 "[...] But if you want to bring everyone with you, ah, that takes a long time." He had no interest in becoming an arhat, an enlightened saint, in this life. There was too much to do. He seemed to want a lot of company when he walked through the gates of nirvana.
199 I remembered what the poet M.C. Richards had said once about solitude: "Learn to move in the world as if it were your lover."
211 Prajna Paramita, our interconnectedness with all beings, was at least as real as the bombs and empty bellies. So I felt her breathing, which coincided with mine, and I settled into the power of her presence. Along with her authority, I now opened to her love for these people, whom she saw as her bodhisattva sons and daughters. And it eclipsed my fear of them.
[...] They spoke of the arms race, the famines, the extinction of species not with statistics or analyses, but with heartbreak and dread. I ached with respect for them.
212 I saw more clearly what we had come together to do. The first weapon of the Shambhala warrior -- compassion -- would teach us not to be afraid of our pain for the world. With the second weapon -- insight -- we would see our interconnectedness with all life, and the power to act that arises from our mutual belonging.
[...] I wanted them to understand that this work we were doing was more than emotional catharsis, that it was about opening to the web of life and its self-healing power.
213 This was not about shedding our pain for the world, but about learning to use it as proof of connection and source of strength.
214 We met to hammer out a definition of its purpose: "to acknowledge and explore our deepest responses to threats to life on Earth, in ways that overcome numbness and paralysis and open us to the power of our interconnectedness in the web of life."
253 It wasn't fair to the future to leave the choices -- and the knowledge these choices demand -- on the shoulders of bureaucrats and company engineers, whose decisions are inevitably distorted by short-term interests.
264 (bourgeois v working class ethics?) "But what we can do is look together at the two main ways we respond to collective suffering. The suffering of a people can bring forth from them new strengths and solidarity. Or it can breed isolation and conflict, turning them against each other. There is always a choice."
vitality of natural world: 11, 171
shame/hidden emotions: 16
public speaking: 41
unsatisfying faith: 50
vitality of spiritual life: 95
"the habit of enjoying each others' company": 125 top
"almost inevitably, curiosity turned into empathy": 126
disillusioned by US foreign policy: 127
limitations of nuclear family: 152, 155 (response in practice), 186
judged: 215
social engagement vs despair (despair work as different but related to grief work): 174, 180, 181, 185, 191, 210, 215, 223, 224 (council of all beings), 253, 254
10 When Ouie shouted and pounded his pulpit, it wasn't to scold people for being sinful so much as to wake people up to being loved.
18 I hardly expected God to conform to my notions of what God should do. On the contrary, when I didn't surround him with demands and expectations, there was more space -- space where we both could breathe and be real.
The God I was reading about in the Bible did not seem very spacious. He wanted to be good and obedient, period. [...] Neither allowed much room for fallibility or grief.
19 "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy-laden." [...] That invitation did not alter the circumstances of my life; it removed no hardships. Yet it changed everything.
31 If "everybody's lonely," maybe everybody belongs as well.
38 If we are connected enough to belong to each other [...] then we're connected enough to hurt each other -- a lot.
[...] The guilt I felt was not for hating Papa [...] but for what I let that hatred do to me. I let it close me in. That resentful self-enclosure was ultimately such a denial of life that it made me an accomplice to the world's suffering.
42 I always ended up talking about the cross [....] I spoke of the fears and defeats that seem inseparable from our lives, and of the grace that can happen when we stop denying our pain and let it reveal our connection with God and with each other.
45 This notion of atonement, as some settling of accounts in a cosmic ledger, struck me as silly. When I argued that the cross only "saves' through what it challenges us to know about ourselves, my two fundamentalist classmates looked at me blankly.
51 Yet my refusal to pray brought no freedom; it only triggered a sense of hopelessness. I had hit a monumental dead end.
62 Here the wildness inside me and the tenderness that tore me were married. Hence the laughter and the languor; yet at the edges, there was terror too -- of the lies and the longing that waited in the wings.
68 Thoughts and feelings became clearer to me when shared with him.
69 "I have one prayer for you. [...] May you ever see the other as a stranger." [...] the spiritual necessity of not being fooled by familiarity. <>
76 If a hole appears, just walk through it [....] You'll never be lost because this emptiness is central to life [....]
87 They are smiling at me, I thought to myself in disbelief. It is not I who have been forced from my homeland, seen my loved ones and teachers tortured, killed. [...] Yet I am the one they are smiling at, as if to reassure me, as if to tell me that at the heart of it all and in this moment there is joy.
93 I could learn a lot from this woman. Confidence, for one thing -- the marriage of serenity with sheer nerve.
98 As I gasped with shock and breathed hard to contain the grief and rage that exploded in me, Choegyal turned to look at me with eyes that shone with unshed tears.
"Poor Chinese," he said. "They make such bad karma for themselves."
102 Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering, which is held to be tanha or craving. [...]
"Tanha is a specific form of desire, the desire to pull apart from the rest of life and seek fulfillment through those bottled-up segments of being we call our selves, " I read. "It is the will to private fulfillment, the ego oozing like a secret sore..." Every few lines, to let the words sink in, I would life my eyes, let my gaze wander down the packed couch. "We strap our faith and love and destiny to the puny burros of our separate selves which are certain to stumble and give out ... Prizing our egos, coddling them, we lock ourselves inside...."
103 The world from which I could not protect myself became a world I was free to enter -- to be. [...] The self was neither to be vaunted nor overcome, neither to be punished nor improved --- it needed only to be seen through, like a bubble that would eventually pop.
105 My mind was as slippery as an eel. Continually it escaped my grasp, slithered into memories and conjectures. It seemed addicted to reliving past events and rehearsing future ones; what was gone and what had not yet arrived drew it like a magnet. I was shocked and appalled to discover how little I stayed in the present moment - maybe five percent of the time? Had I always lived my life in absentia? [...]
"Stop saying 'I' in that way when talking about your experience." She explained that using the first person pronoun to categorize yourself works like cement, anchoring passing feelings into a kind of permanence. It was more accurate, she pointed out, to say "judgment is happening" or "sloth is occur-ring" or "fears are arising." Her admonitions helped me recognize the burden of a solidified self, of its everlasting carping and goading — and the burden began to lift a little.
[...] Here, you lucky girl, is a whole system designed to help you liberate yourself from the prison cell of ego. Here is a place of silent, loving people to protect and encourage you as you begin to dismantle it. "Oh blessings on the Dharma," I hummed to myself, then quickly noted: "thinking, thinking" and "excitement is happening." Even in delight the mind kept wanting to go off on its own, to slip out of the harness of Bare Attention. But that actually presented no problem: I was discovering that even lapses were grist for the mill — just more events to note, sooner or later, when the mind was reeled in.
[...] it seemed I was nothing more than an increasingly rapid flow of experiencing. As I held the flow in focus, that was all I seemed to be: a torrent of sensations and thoughts arising and fading away. Nothing else.
109 It was good to be reminded that I didn't need to approve of life's arrangements. My likes and dislikes did not change the way things were, and often only got me in trouble. What a relief to recognize that! Seng T'san's lines suggested more than stoical resignation, more than a self-protective refusal to care about things. They evoked the quality of presence I had seen in the Tibetans and tasted in moments of staipatthana practice: a wide-open availability to immediate experience before the mind interposed its judgments. <>
121 <> It was about surrendering to the authority of life's connection with itself.
125 Some years later we would learn how to talk with each other about our loving other people -- and it would be a relief when we did, clearing the heart, deepening the sense of alliance.
128 The civil rights work and these anti-war actions helped me take even more seriously than before the mystical openings I had experienced on the train to Pathankote, and in Dougga and Zembra, and at the Friends Meeting in Lagos. What now seemed most important in social change work was not how brave or brilliant you were, but where you drew the confines of your life. Was it circumscribed by your social role or the color of your skin or your political views? Or was the aliveness, the heartbeat, present everywhere, waiting to link up? For me to understand this, spiritual studies appeared more relevant than ever.
[...] Maybe I could find a way to translate the Buddha's understanding of self -- or non-self -- into a Western mode, to help my countrypeople come home to each other and play their part in building a world not based on fear.
132 I would hear Martin Heidegger's dictum that "we are in a time of a double lack and a double Not, the No-more of the gods that have fled and the Not-yet of the god that is coming." <>
135 Wisdom is not about bits and pieces, she said, it's about relationship. [....] she brought forth in new words the Buddha's central teaching: the dependent co-arising of all phenomena. That's why her scriptures became known as the Second Turning of the Wheel.
To unglue the Abhidharmist's logic, she spoke in paradoxes. As you lead all beings to nirvana, the ultimate release from suffering, you lead them nowhere. Nirvana is no separate place. All is empty, there is no solid ground to stand on, but you can fly in that emptiness. It can hold you as the sky holds the birds.
136 We can all be bodhisattvas -- the Mother of all Buddhas was quite emphatic on this point. That's because we are, by our very nature, interdependent with all life and engendered by relationships. So we are perfectly capable of treating others as ourselves and of opening to the world as to our own hearts.
141 [...] that is exactly what a mystical experience is like! [...] "It's like being a synapse in the mind of God."
142 Back then, with the Tibetans, I saw the Dharma as a luminous way of being, a selfless ground for serenity and compassion. Later, with Prajna Paramita, I discovered that this way of being grew out of a very distinctive understanding of reality. That the ground of being is fluid. That it is empty of everything but relationships. Now here came general symptoms theory with a similar vision of reality [...]
143 "Instead we're moving to a process view, where everything arises through interaction and nothing depends on a first cause, aloof from change." I even told the seminar that, back in sixth-century India, the Buddha had made the same move.
Was it really true that the Buddha cut loose from any first cause? From all hierarchies in the structure of reality? That question drove me back to the earlier texts, which first set forth the doctrine of dependent co-arising.
144 Thich Thien Chau glanced at me and smiled. "Dukkha doesn't mean that everything is bad, just that everything is not perfect." Then he added, as if to reassure me, "It also doesn't mean that we are too attached; pain comes from the actions of others, too."
145 [....] reminding me to venture into the dark, to get lost, so as to be found by that which needs to be known.
148 [...] a neat little division of roles. Fran would play strong and sane, and I would play crazy. [...] "He's anxious, too" was the import of Esther's words, "but if he can't admit it, his anxiety gets projected onto you. And you've fallen for it, you've played your part. To a real extent you've been carrying his emotional life as well as your own."
With sudden relief, I recognized this was true. And almost as quickly I saw that it was also true of most married couples I knew: the wife was carrying the emotional life of the marriage and simultaneously denigrating herself for being "too" emotional. Later, when I began learning and expounding general systems theory, this marital dynamic became one of my favorite examples of a positive, or deviation-amplifying, feedback loop.
153 The main fascination, I think, was its moral coherence: here people were living in accordance with what they believed was true and important in their world. No wonder they were having such a good time.
159 "Oh, Rinpoche, now I am understanding so much!"
"Aahh," he breathed, smiling on me affectionately, with infinite patience. When I paused, after rattling on some more, he simply asked: "Does this help you to increase in compassion?"
[...] He said, "It is not your getting knowledge or even enlightenment that matters. It is your wanting it for the sake of all beings."
162 "The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary. We need this first one [...] because it provides us the fuel, it moves out to act on behalf of other beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So we need the second as well, which is insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. It lets us see that the battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through ever human heart. We realize that we are interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see."
169 A law requiring double hulls would cut oil spills in half, I learned, but the oil companies were blocking it.
172 "[...] the certainty of a future is lost to us now. I don't know how to live with that loss without going numb, or crazy. Jim, the very meaning of your work, like mine, is based on the assumption that generations will come after us."
173 I kept thinking, we have to find a way to live in this planet-time without closing our eyes to what we're doing. Both systems theory and Buddhist practice helped. I remembered how open systems restructure themselves in response to challenge. In order for new values, new organizing principles to emerge, they undergo "positive disintegration." In our evolution, we have been through this process many times; it is inevitably disorienting. To survive, the system just needs to stay open to feedback.
Vipassana practice seemed designed for that purpose. It had taught me that we're perfectly capable of sustained attention to the flow-through of experience, including the failing condition of our world and the despair that evokes. Vipassana provided me no haven from the world and no protection from my sorrow, but that was why I trusted it and found that it could steady me.
181 I remembered the first "weapon" of the Shambhala warrior: karuna, or compassion. Hadn't I understood, as Choegyal Rinpoche told me the old prophecy, that it meant to be unafraid of the suffering of the world and its beings -- even our own?
188-9 (share w/Tosha) [...] Buddhist teachings in the light of general systems theory. [...]
Since both bodies of thought see change as the prevailing feature of reality, can steadiness be found in change itself? Maybe the early Buddhists focused attention on the body's decay because life in those times seemed so steady and unchanging. Today, battered as we are by shocks and future-shocks, we need no reminders of transiency. Instead we need to learn to feel steadiness in the beat, constancy in the flow, so that change can be ridden smoothly like a wave.
190 It was that sense of homecoming, in the golden glow on the faces along the western sea, that made me begin to cry. [...] the thought arose that with this experience of time, you need no haven or final rest to strive for. You make your home in the very midst of change.
197 "[...] But if you want to bring everyone with you, ah, that takes a long time." He had no interest in becoming an arhat, an enlightened saint, in this life. There was too much to do. He seemed to want a lot of company when he walked through the gates of nirvana.
199 I remembered what the poet M.C. Richards had said once about solitude: "Learn to move in the world as if it were your lover."
211 Prajna Paramita, our interconnectedness with all beings, was at least as real as the bombs and empty bellies. So I felt her breathing, which coincided with mine, and I settled into the power of her presence. Along with her authority, I now opened to her love for these people, whom she saw as her bodhisattva sons and daughters. And it eclipsed my fear of them.
[...] They spoke of the arms race, the famines, the extinction of species not with statistics or analyses, but with heartbreak and dread. I ached with respect for them.
212 I saw more clearly what we had come together to do. The first weapon of the Shambhala warrior -- compassion -- would teach us not to be afraid of our pain for the world. With the second weapon -- insight -- we would see our interconnectedness with all life, and the power to act that arises from our mutual belonging.
[...] I wanted them to understand that this work we were doing was more than emotional catharsis, that it was about opening to the web of life and its self-healing power.
213 This was not about shedding our pain for the world, but about learning to use it as proof of connection and source of strength.
214 We met to hammer out a definition of its purpose: "to acknowledge and explore our deepest responses to threats to life on Earth, in ways that overcome numbness and paralysis and open us to the power of our interconnectedness in the web of life."
253 It wasn't fair to the future to leave the choices -- and the knowledge these choices demand -- on the shoulders of bureaucrats and company engineers, whose decisions are inevitably distorted by short-term interests.
264 (bourgeois v working class ethics?) "But what we can do is look together at the two main ways we respond to collective suffering. The suffering of a people can bring forth from them new strengths and solidarity. Or it can breed isolation and conflict, turning them against each other. There is always a choice."
vitality of natural world: 11, 171
shame/hidden emotions: 16
public speaking: 41
unsatisfying faith: 50
vitality of spiritual life: 95
"the habit of enjoying each others' company": 125 top
"almost inevitably, curiosity turned into empathy": 126
disillusioned by US foreign policy: 127
limitations of nuclear family: 152, 155 (response in practice), 186
judged: 215
social engagement vs despair (despair work as different but related to grief work): 174, 180, 181, 185, 191, 210, 215, 223, 224 (council of all beings), 253, 254
April 2, 2015
I loved reading Joanna Macy's memoir, which covers her life from birth through her early 60s. Her life is inspiring, thought-provoking, and adventurous. She mentions and provides some insight into the ups and downs of her family life, but she does not delve much into details - probably to protect her family, which I totally respect. However, it leads her life to seem too good to be true at times.
However, I was certainly filled with admiration for her. She has an amazing capacity to throw herself into life - leading to her becoming very engaged with many people and projects and studies throughout the world where she was able to apply her compassion, intelligence, and many talents. I mostly felt like she was a kindred spirit - like me, only more so: my best qualities and longings magnified, unleashed. It made me think about my past and the experiences and parts of my temperament that have limited me.
I will be attending a workshop with Joanna in September. She is 86 now and still going strong. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism, forging a healing relationship with our planet, social justice, and learning about an amazing woman.
However, I was certainly filled with admiration for her. She has an amazing capacity to throw herself into life - leading to her becoming very engaged with many people and projects and studies throughout the world where she was able to apply her compassion, intelligence, and many talents. I mostly felt like she was a kindred spirit - like me, only more so: my best qualities and longings magnified, unleashed. It made me think about my past and the experiences and parts of my temperament that have limited me.
I will be attending a workshop with Joanna in September. She is 86 now and still going strong. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism, forging a healing relationship with our planet, social justice, and learning about an amazing woman.
April 1, 2017
This is the activist's version of Eat, Pray, Love. It is a deep, powerful and facinating true story of Macy's life which spans coutries, religions, philosophies, social movements and true loves. It is amazing how many expereinces she has had in her lifetime! Very inspirational!!
November 16, 2025
Joanna's writing captures an inspiring and inspirational life full of reflection, intention, progression, and activism. From a broad lens of theology, systems thinking, deep ecology, and collective activism, Joanna has created movements and joined many others to build a bridge between reconciling modern ways of life with the beings and ecosystems needed to keep a balanced and thriving planet. In the wake of nuclear bombs and fallout, the military industrial complex, and oppression, Joanna and her family enveloped different cultures and ways of living throughout the world. She and John Seed created the Council of All Beings to bring back into the picture our extended kin and the impacts that humans have on ecosystems. A valuable read, beautifully written with many Buddhist teachings and thought provoking parallels into our own ways of living.
November 9, 2021
Reading this book at this point in my life meant so much to me! Especially witnessing Joanna struggle with anxiety even at later points in her life after so much spiritual and self work made me realize it wasn't something that ever really goes away, but something that you learn to manage better.
Her journey has been so incredible and I consider her a mentor and a guide just from taking in all the wisdom and lessons this book had to offer.
Her journey has been so incredible and I consider her a mentor and a guide just from taking in all the wisdom and lessons this book had to offer.
May 29, 2019
Having read her book on climate change, "Active Hope", I wanted to know more about this writer and in "Widenig Circles", I have found a great writer and historian. This book reads like a good historical fiction, although it is totally nonfiction. Her autobiography contains the elements that have created her as an exceptional human being and activist extraordinaire.
July 18, 2019
I found the beginning of this book to be more engaging then the last 1/4. Joanna certainly is an interesting person, traveling and writing of her adventures. She is brutally honest And doesn’t hold back in describing life as an activist in countries all over the world. The last 1/4 of the book dragged a bit for me, as it was less personal and more of a resume of her work.
December 24, 2019
This is the second time I have tried to get through this book. I got over half way this time. Another reviewer said that they liked the idea of Joanna Macy books much better than the actual reality of them. I totally agree with this. While there were some things I liked, over all I didn't care for this book. Eventually I got tired of trying to drag myself through to the end.
March 27, 2022
Maybe the most important book I've read in the last decade, Macy's memoir provides stories to live by and a road map for how to live and stay active, honoring the earth and its beings, in dark times.
May 11, 2026
loved getting to know joanna macy more - i've loved her translations of Rilke for years and wow, she has lived a rich, exciting life. it bolsters my courage to know she was still doing wildly independent, adventurous, contemplative things into her old age.
June 7, 2018
Engaging account, filled with wonderful anecdotes and reflections. Inspiring and informative.
June 26, 2020
A fascinating life of a passionate former CIA analyst/peace activist/ecologist/Buddhist mystic.
October 30, 2021
The author shared about her life which was far from the average in my humble opinion. Interesting but not what I expected. A little disjointed.
January 29, 2022
A mandatory read for every young person who seeks to live a life of great purpose and service to the world.
July 31, 2025
Life changing, if you consider Joanna Macy a teacher. The depth and breadth of her journey, and the insights she found along the way, is remarkable. Brought tears to my eyes almost every chapter.
April 16, 2026
Such an incredible and sprawling life, really enjoyed getting to know her more deeply
October 13, 2013
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
But I give myself to it.
I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don't know:
am I a falcon, a storm,
or a great song?
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours
- translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
The above poem is the source of the title for Joanna Macy's memoir, Widening Circles. Macy has led a pretty amazing life, and I liked how she describes becoming a more open-minded person, even though she doesn't necessarily fully embrace traditional concepts of God or of re-incarnation despite her long-standing allegiance to Buddhism and Christianity before that. Humanist is more how I would describe her.
The author calls attention to a problem I have with more eastern religions/philosophies -- that closing oneself off from the world to be pure and in prayer/meditation doesn't seem to accomplish much in the physical real-world plain of our existence here and now. I could really appreciate that she came around to doing so many activist things. Seems to have a good bit in common with Unitarians and Friends.
Overall, this is a well-written, thoughtfully-reflective book, one I can readily recommend to philosophically-minded persons, especially those who have ever struggled with despair in the face of the seemingly colossal, contemporary societal and environmental problems. I did lose some respect for the author when she admitted that both she and her husband were not monogamous in their marriage, and were not initially forthcoming and truthful with each other on this. However, I set my judgementalness aside, and was able to appreciate her life-long search for God, meaning, and the higher self that connects all of life.
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
But I give myself to it.
I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don't know:
am I a falcon, a storm,
or a great song?
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours
- translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
The above poem is the source of the title for Joanna Macy's memoir, Widening Circles. Macy has led a pretty amazing life, and I liked how she describes becoming a more open-minded person, even though she doesn't necessarily fully embrace traditional concepts of God or of re-incarnation despite her long-standing allegiance to Buddhism and Christianity before that. Humanist is more how I would describe her.
The author calls attention to a problem I have with more eastern religions/philosophies -- that closing oneself off from the world to be pure and in prayer/meditation doesn't seem to accomplish much in the physical real-world plain of our existence here and now. I could really appreciate that she came around to doing so many activist things. Seems to have a good bit in common with Unitarians and Friends.
Overall, this is a well-written, thoughtfully-reflective book, one I can readily recommend to philosophically-minded persons, especially those who have ever struggled with despair in the face of the seemingly colossal, contemporary societal and environmental problems. I did lose some respect for the author when she admitted that both she and her husband were not monogamous in their marriage, and were not initially forthcoming and truthful with each other on this. However, I set my judgementalness aside, and was able to appreciate her life-long search for God, meaning, and the higher self that connects all of life.
June 5, 2013
I heard Joanna Macy in an interview with Krista Tippett on On Being and fell in love with her. A wise woman, she converted to Buddhism, became an environmental and peace activist, and a translator of Rilke. My favorite part of the conversation was her discussion of Rilke, the meaning she has found in his poetry, the impact he has had in her life, and her reading of several poems. Unfortunately, this was not discussed at all in her memoir.
I loved the beginning--the first pages are exquisite. She talks about a maple tree at her grandparents farm where she would spend the summer and the way the light would filter through the leaves and the way she would feel settled and still when she climbed it. It becomes an object of intense emotional importance to the young Joanna.
Her later life was fascinating too--she lived in India, Africa, and Tibet, plus spent time in Sri Lanka. I got a bit bogged down in her descriptions of Buddhism because of some of the specialized terminology, and the end didn't have as much resonance for me as the early chapters, but overall, a lovely memoir.
I read this over the last couple of months in bits and pieces.
I loved the beginning--the first pages are exquisite. She talks about a maple tree at her grandparents farm where she would spend the summer and the way the light would filter through the leaves and the way she would feel settled and still when she climbed it. It becomes an object of intense emotional importance to the young Joanna.
Her later life was fascinating too--she lived in India, Africa, and Tibet, plus spent time in Sri Lanka. I got a bit bogged down in her descriptions of Buddhism because of some of the specialized terminology, and the end didn't have as much resonance for me as the early chapters, but overall, a lovely memoir.
I read this over the last couple of months in bits and pieces.
February 26, 2015
Devoured this book in the first two weeks of the new year. I'd like to write a letter to Joanna to thank her for this book. It wove together so many of the paths I've been down and so many of the questions I've had in the past five years. I could identify with so many parts of her journey, listening to her was like replaying parts of my own short adult story. I wonder if everyone feels this sort of resonance because Macy herself is so open and vulnerable and human? It seemed like more than that to me... not everything, but many things -- the travel, the exploration of systems theory (in my case network theory), attraction to Buddhism, questioning of cultural standards like monogamy, risk-taking, cooperative endeavors -- and the way all these things fit together for her -- the way she wrote about it made me shiver with recognition. She was blessed with many opportunities, graced with the strength to take advantage of them, the curiosity to learn through her life, and great capacity to love and connect. An inspiration!
November 19, 2016
This book was so interesting to me. I loved it. One of my favorite parts:
"What happened then felt so primordial, and so important somehow for the ongoing order of things, that I imagined at moments whole populations gathered below our window beating drums and cymbals. Clearly, this physical call and response was the primary phenomenon of the cosmos. How else do the planets swing so steadily in orbit, how else do the starfish attach to their rocks? Here the wildness inside me and the tenderness that tore me were married. Hence the laughter and the languor; yet at the edges, there was terror too - of the lies and the longing that waited in the wings. It fit my sense of life's seriousness that there should be this outlawed and irrefusable dimension."
"What happened then felt so primordial, and so important somehow for the ongoing order of things, that I imagined at moments whole populations gathered below our window beating drums and cymbals. Clearly, this physical call and response was the primary phenomenon of the cosmos. How else do the planets swing so steadily in orbit, how else do the starfish attach to their rocks? Here the wildness inside me and the tenderness that tore me were married. Hence the laughter and the languor; yet at the edges, there was terror too - of the lies and the longing that waited in the wings. It fit my sense of life's seriousness that there should be this outlawed and irrefusable dimension."
April 25, 2008
...joanna's honesty in her memoir is both inspiring and unsettling at times. the trust that she places in the vulnerability life brings is simply wonderful-the reader joins joanna through her many life changes and varying paths of philosophy, belief, and practice. perhaps the most inspiring (and deeply unsettling at some moments) is the lack of apology found in joanna's voice. she speaks her truth in hopes that the truth does not destroy...
anyone with interest in the origins of the peace corps, the civil rights' movement, anti-nuclear organizations, nonviolence campaigns, and buddhist theology will learn valuable lessons from joanna's history shared in widening circles.
anyone with interest in the origins of the peace corps, the civil rights' movement, anti-nuclear organizations, nonviolence campaigns, and buddhist theology will learn valuable lessons from joanna's history shared in widening circles.
May 25, 2012
So inspiring. Renewed my commitment to conservation work and reinforced the importance of it. Reawakened my interest in Tibetan Buddhism and the benefits of its practice. Reminds me that there are so many options as far as how we define ourselves and how we choose to live; and that many of them are outside of boxes.
Joanna Macy is one of the few true heroes to emerge from American culture in modern times. I can't wait to read more of her work.
Joanna Macy is one of the few true heroes to emerge from American culture in modern times. I can't wait to read more of her work.
July 22, 2008
Very interesting autobiography. Somebody of my generation with a very different life experience. I admire what she has done and admire her husband for sticking with her. Certainly someone who has been on the eco/Buddhist lecture circuit if not the originator of same. For the most part well written and fascinating as her circles widen.
November 29, 2015
Macy is an interesting person and has had a fascinating life. I would probably have ranked her higher except for the sense of her throughout the book of her "neediness" (that why she embarks on all of these interests is not so much intellectual but attempt to fill some void) and her utter unawareness of that.
March 13, 2016
A marvelous, honest memoir from a teacher on Buddhist philosophy, system theory and deep ecology. I picked up this book because I had been reading another book of hers - "Active Hope". The memoir follows her spiritual transformation and her call to create a better world through new programs to heal the climate, address poverty and nuclear systems that destroy creation and people's lives.
January 5, 2008
I like the IDEA of Joanna Macy's books so much better than the real thing. She's an amazing theorist, but not such a great writer. I was very excited by the first 80 pages or so, and then I got bored.
December 28, 2007
Wonderful autobiography of a thoughtful, heartful individual whose life spans the last half of the 20th century and reflects and responds deeply to what is going on in the world.
October 14, 2008
A fascinating spiritual memoir.
March 5, 2009
Joanna Macy is one of my heroes, and in this autobiography she explains how she developed her amazing compassionate perspective on the world and social justice activism.
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