Casting Indra’s Net:
Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community
A heartfelt call and primer for community oriented models of wellbeing in our age of polarization and turmoil.
“A rallying cry for civility — to start repairing the world and ourselves.”
— Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier
“Casting Indra’s Net calls us to live out of—and into—the best parts of who we are. Because we are all kin, Sibling Ayo urges us to return to our basic goodness and choose mutuality over brutality time after time, moment after moment, breath upon breath.”
—Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands
“For anyone looking for a way forward in the face of incessant polarization and violence in our global community, Casting Indra’s Net is a call to compassionate action cultivated in deep introspection and contemplation.”
— Rev. Dr. Alisha Tatem, Program Director of Congregational Leaders at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies
“Yetunde draws on her rich experience to apply spiritual practice (much of it Buddhist) to the contemporary tragedy of what she calls “mobbery”…Ths is a challenging and courageous book.”
— Norman Fischer, author of When You Greet Me I Bow
“Casting Indra’s Net invites us to be remade, as by a homecooked meal you didn’t know you needed, prepared by kin you mistook for strangers. This book is a gem that mirrors the jeweled possibilities in all of us.”
— Chenxing Han, author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists
Casting Indra’s Net IN THE PRESS:
Publisher’s Weekly: Rocking with Prince as a Theologian
Writer’s Digest: Listen Deeply to What People Say
Spirituality & Practice: Appreciation for the transformative power of Prince’s music.
WGN-TV: Religion News: New book explores Christian end times, devotion and other spiritual themes in Prince's music
Spirituality & Health: The Spiritual Teachings of Prince
Vårt Land (Norway): Guds budbringer forkledd som sexmaskin and Kristeligt Dagblad (Denmark)
Interfaith America: This Easter, Consider the Gospel of Prince
ABOUT THE BOOK
Creating compassionate communities takes more than good will—it requires a dedication to respecting cultural differences while remembering the fundamental spiritual kinship that exists between all people. Activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Ayo Yetunde creatively unpacks this condition through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels.
She offers a practice path that acknowledges our deep challenges—challenges that increasingly give rise to the temptation of group violence, which she calls mobbery— while showing exactly how we can still listen, learn, and heal together. Drawing inspiration from the Black liberation tradition and from stories from various religions, Yetunde recasts Indra’s Net as the network in which we all have the choice either to succumb to our impulses toward division and brutality or renew our civility and love for each other.
The more than 20 practices in Casting Indra’s Net include:
Five commitments for healthy, nonviolent living
Guided contemplations
“Mirroring” and “twinning” other people
Tonglen and lovingkindness meditations
Affirmations
