What is sentience? If we're to ask the question directly, perhaps a good place to seek an answer is with a great teacher.

This week, it's our honor to welcome and share the Earth wisdom of the joyful Dr. Susan Murphy. Susan is a Roshi, a learned teacher in the tradition of Zen Buddhism. She is the founding and resident teacher of the Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia. And, as a writer, radio producer and film director, she’s considered one of the most important global voices in the Ecological Buddhism, or "Ecodharma" movement.

Roshi Susan is the author of the splendid book Minding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planentary Crisis (Penguin Random House, 2014), a Zen response to the great ecological crisis of our time – climate change.

Please enjoy this open and generous sharing from Susan about sentience, our kinship relationship with non-human animals – and everything else in the cosmos – and the impossibility of separating our human existence and experience from that of the Earth.

Sentient Planet is an independent production, created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!

Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.

Interstitial music: "Last Day on Earth" by Stellardrone.