The Great Spring by Natalie Goldberg

The Great Spring by Natalie Goldberg

What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing.

The great spring of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example. It also refers to enlightenment: obstructions shatter, pain cracks open, previously resisted truth releases, an acceptance of transiency flows through.

Natalie Goldberg shares the moments that have sprung from her own life of writing, teaching, and Zen practice - moments of searching, wandering, zigzagging, losing, and leaping where she has found herself and her voice. In this audio, we watch as Natalie makes positive effort for the good - one of the guiding rules of her writing life - and we see that if we can stay attentive in our lives, even in the middle of the ruins, we can hear the sound of a songbird in a Paris chestnut tree. Whether we know if the song comes from inside us or out doesn't matter.

13 of the 22 essays in the book have been previously published (often in a different form). Those publications include Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, Five Points, and Creative Nonfiction.

Natalie Goldberg is a poet, a teacher, a writer, and a painter. She has been a Zen Buddhist student for 24 years, has trained intensely with Katagiri Roshi for 12 years, and is ordained in Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing. Writing workshops based on the principles provided in Writing Down the Bones are taught by Natalie Goldberg across the country. Wild Thought, Long Silent Highway, Banana Rose, and Living Color are among her other works.