Wendell Berry advocates many Buddhist concerns, such as reverence for life, peace, moral steadfastness, loyalty and interconnectedness.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky born award winning writer, farmer, and  naturalist following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. His essays and poems are a call to living in harmonious communion with nature.

The Peace of Wild Things calls to mind the traditional Buddhist exploration of nature as a means to shut out the noise and distractions of daily life giving one the opportunity to come face-to-face with oneself within the larger context of the peaceful setting of the cosmos.

He is an advocate of small scale farming and actively refutes the concept that one place should be exploited, spoiled or destroyed, for the sake of another place. His major themes include sustainable agriculture, connection to place, fidelity, reverence, and interconnectedness.

On the subject of interconnectedness in his essay Standing by Words (1983) he writes, “”Nothing exists for its own sake, but for a harmony greater than itself which includes it. A work of art, which accepts this condition, and exists upon its terms, honors the Creation, and so becomes a part of it.”

Listen Here to Berry’s highly moral and rational argument “Against the Death Penalty.”

Listen Here to “The Peace of Wild Things.”

Listen Here to “The Want of Peace.”