“I read a book that changed my life,” says Claudia Hosso Politi. The Overstory–a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about inter-connection between human beings and the natural world, especially trees–sparks wonder and a new passion for nature in Hosso. She relates “homo-centrism,” the destructive worldview that subjugates the rest of creation to human desires, to Buddhism’s focus on egocentrism as the force that turns the wheel of Samsara. Though Hosso says there is a “profound and subtle” difference between her fleeting sense of wonder and her new passion for trees, her eyes remain open to a dimension of reality that she didn’t see before her encounter with Richard Powers’ book.
