This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm grateful to the San Francisco Zen Center for inviting me to give this talk and to all of you for being here. You know, wherever here may be these days, right? Here used to mean something, but now it means many, many things. It's lovely to see so many friends and familiar names here as well. So as Kodo-san said, you know, here for me is Western Massachusetts in the traditional homeland of the Nonotuck people in a city that's now called Northampton. And so I'd like to acknowledge and pay homage to the Nonotuck and to the neighboring indigenous nations, the Nipmuc and the Wapanoag to the east, the Mohegan and the Pequot to the south. the Mohican to the west and the Abenaki to the north.

[01:02]

We pay homage and give thanks to the native people and elders who are here with us today. So today's talk is going to be a bit of a hybrid talk, a little bit of Dharma and a little bit of literature, because that's sort of me, right? And we can talk about whether there's actually, you know, a meaningful difference between those, and if so, what those differences might be. But I'd like to talk about my new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, and some of the elements, you know, both the Buddhist elements as well as the personal elements that went into the writing of the book. And then I'd like to invite your questions and move on to, I hope, more of a dialogue or conversation. And we can talk about the novel or about Zen and fiction, about Zen as a creative practice, whatever you'd like.

[02:06]

But I'd like to start by invoking Dogen Zenji, the founder of our Soto Zen lineage, and to share my favorite passage of Genjo Kon, which I'm sure you know. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things of the world. When actualized by the myriad things, the body-mind of self and the body-mind of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues to express itself endlessly. And I love this quote because while Dogen is describing the practice and study of Zen, he also describes perfectly my experience of writing fiction, at least writing fiction on a good day. And one of the things that I've noticed about my fiction writing is that I seem to write novels in pairs.

[03:14]

The first two novels that I wrote, My Year of Meats and All Over Creation, were both about food and the environment. My Year of Meats was about a filmmaker who gets a job making a Japanese TV show sponsored by a U.S. meat industry lobby group. And Oliver Creation is a novel about a potato farming family in Idaho. And they're run-ins with large agribusiness and the PR around genetically modified potatoes. So I kind of went from, you know, meat to potatoes. Both books are concerned with the way food is grown and marketed. And both books grow out of my political and environmental concerns, as well as my personal experiences working for decades in commercial television. So the next two novels, which you might be familiar with, A Tale for the Time Being and The Book of Form and Emptiness, form another pair.

[04:21]

And both of these books have explicitly Buddhist themes. And again, I could argue that all novels have Buddhist themes, but in these two novels, the Buddhism is more explicit. A Tale for the Time Being is an exploration of Buddhist notions of time and being, you know, as the title indicates. And it's a response to Dogen's fascicle uji, time being or being time. The Book of Form and Emptiness is an exploration of Buddhist notions of emptiness and form of space and matter. And it's a response to the Heart Sutra. and also to the Zen teachings about insentient beings. Specifically, you know, the question, do insentient beings speak the Dharma? Both books are about young people struggling with mental health issues. Both books are about reading and writing and the power of storytelling. And both books grow out of my spiritual concerns as well as my personal experiences.

[05:31]

To study the Buddha way is to study the self, right? To write a novel is to study the self. So it's like the pairs of books are in conversation with each other. I finish one book, but I'm still interested in the questions it raised, and maybe I feel I haven't done a good enough job answering them, and so then I have to write a second book, right? So the second book kind of grows naturally from the first. So the Book of Form and Emptiness, you know, for anyone who practices Buddhism, the title is a bit of a spoiler, right? The phrase Form and Emptiness comes from one of our central Mahayana Buddhist canon teachings, the Mahayana Prajnaparamita Hradaya Sutra, or in English, the Great Perfect Wisdom Heart Sutra. And as you know, the narrator of the sutra is Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. And Avalokiteshvara is called, you know, Guan Ying in China and Kannon in Japan.

[06:35]

And the two Chinese characters used to write the name of the bodhisattva are the characters Kan, meaning to see or to observe, to perceive, and the character On, meaning meaning sound, right? So kanon is also known as the sound observer, right? The one who perceives the cries of the world. And kanon is a bit of a shapeshifter, right? Changing names and forms, manifesting both as male and female as they travel from country to country. So I'm going to assume that they go by they, them pronouns, and I'll refer to them as such. You know, as we know from our chant, the sutra begins with Avalokiteshvara, who is sitting in meditation and during a state of deep samadhi, has a great realization about the nature of reality. And then they describe this insight, this realization to Shariputra, you know, one of the Buddha's main disciples.

[07:35]

O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness. Emptiness itself, form. Or in Japanese, shari-shi, shiki-fu-i-ku, ku-fu-i-shiki, shiki-soku-zei-ku, ku-soku-zei-shiki. So Avalokiteshvara is expressing their awakeness, their awakening to the reality of emptiness, the sunyata of all phenomena and existence. And the title of the novel comes from this, comes from this understanding of the nature of form and emptiness, which then resonates throughout the story. And writers are often asked about the genesis of a book, where ideas come from, where inspiration comes from. And I never know quite how to answer this question because it's never just one thing. It's more like a constellation of random factors or elements that...

[08:40]

It can include many things, you know, books that I've read or, you know, conversations that I've overheard in a coffee shop or, you know, something I hear on the news, maybe a link to a website that my husband, Oliver, sends me. For anybody who's read the Book of Form and Emptiness, I think you know. Sorry, anybody who's read the, I get them confused, A Tale for the Time Being, you know Oliver, right? And he knows a lot of different things. Often, a book will come from something I've done, especially something I've done I regret and that I want to understand better. And I found that remorse is a great seed or maybe it's more of a fertilizer for novels. Sometimes it's some kind of niggling existential question. That's been bothering me, you know, about the nature of reality, you know, what's real. And this is certainly a question that has come up for me a lot ever since 2016, right?

[09:42]

So all of these things, right, kind of come together. Oh, I forgot something else, Dharma Talks, right? Dharma Talks are a wonderful source of inspiration for novels. And, you know, I'm biased, but I would recommend especially Norman Fisher's Dharma Talks, you know. And as Kodo mentioned, Norman is my teacher. And my last two novels were, you know, deeply inspired by Norman's Dharma talks, you know, and the thoughts that, you know, that they gave rise to, you know, particularly during that period of Zazen, like right after the Dharma talk, you know, and. particularly, you know, particularly during Sashin, right? I find lots of thoughts arise at that time. You know, not that I'm writing novels during Sashin, right? I wouldn't do that, at least not intentionally. You know, but novels have a way of writing themselves. They emerge from the midst of all of these random elements and factors which come together and constellate.

[10:48]

And from this constellation, you know, a fictional world starts to take shape and the novel starts to speak. And I say speak because novels often come to me as voices, right? It's sometimes the voice of a character. Sometimes it's the voice of the book itself. And since this is a book about voices, I'll start by reading just the first few pages of the Book of Form and Emptiness to give you a sense of, you know, who these voices are and what they sound like. I hope this is okay to do, to read from one's novel in a Dharma talk, but I think it makes sense in this case. Okay. In the beginning. book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake.

[11:57]

From there, a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being. A book must start somewhere, and this one starts here. boy. Shh, listen. That's my book, and it's talking to you. Can you hear it? It's okay if you can't, though. It's not your fault. Things speak all the time, but if your ears aren't attuned, you have to learn to listen. You can start by using your eyes, because eyes are easy. Look at all the things around you. What do you see? A book, obviously, and obviously the book is speaking to you. So try something more challenging. The chair you're sitting on? The pencil in your pocket? The sneaker on your foot? Still can't hear? Then get down on your knees and put your head to the seat, or take off your shoe and hold it to your ear.

[12:59]

No, wait, if there are people around, they'll think you're mad, so try it with the pencil first. Pencils have stories inside them, and they're safe as long as you don't stick the point in your ear. Just hold it next to your head and listen. Can you hear the wood whisper? The ghost of the pine? The mutter of lead? Sometimes it's more than one voice. Sometimes it's a whole chorus of voices rising from a single thing, especially if it's a made thing with lots of different makers. But don't be scared. I think it depends on the kind of day they were having back in Guangdong or Laos or wherever, and if it was a good day at the old sweatshop. If they were enjoying a pleasant thought at the moment when that particular grommet came tumbling down the line and passed through their fingers, then that pleasant thought will cling to the whole. Sometimes it's not so much a thought as a feeling, a nice warm feeling, like love, for example, sunny and yellow. But when it's a sad feeling or an angry one that gets laced into your shoe, then you better watch out because that shoe might do crazy shit, like marching your feet right up to the front of a Nike store, for example.

[14:10]

where you could wind up smashing the display window with a baseball bat made of furious wood. If that happens, it's still not your fault. Just apologize to the window, say I'm sorry to the glass, and whatever you do, don't try to explain. The arresting officer doesn't care about the crappy conditions at the bat factory. He won't care about the chainsaws or the sturdy ash tree that the bat used to be, so just keep your mouth shut. Stay calm. Be polite. Remember to breathe. It's really important not to get upset, because then the voices will get the upper hand and take over your mind. Things are needy. They take up space. They want attention, and they'll drive you mad if you let them. So just remember, you're like the air traffic controller. No, wait, you're like the leader of a big brass band made up of all the jazzy stuff of the planet. And you're floating out there in space, standing on this great garbage heap of a world with your hair slicked back and your natty suit and your stick up in the air, surrounded by all the eager things.

[15:17]

And for one quick, beautiful moment, all their voices go silent, waiting till you bring your baton down. Music or madness, it's totally up to you. The book. So, start with the voices then. When did he first hear them? When he was still little? Benny was always a small boy and slow to develop, as though his cells were reluctant to multiply and take up space in the world. It seemed he pretty much stopped growing when he turned 12, the same year his father died and his mother started putting on weight. The change was subtle, but Benny seemed to shrink as Annabelle grew. as if she were metabolizing her small son's grief along with her own. Yes, that seems right. Okay, I think I'll stop there.

[16:22]

So, as you can see, the narrator says, of the Book of Form and Emptiness is the Book of Form and Emptiness. And the novel is structured as a dialogue between the book and its protagonist, Benny. And through their dialogue, through this shared act of storytelling, the two of them are quite literally speaking each other into existence. They're emerging from this dialogue. And this is a kind of realization through And it's something that I always associate with Zen koan literature, which is often or maybe even always structured as a kind of dialogue. So this dialogue, relationship, co-creation, co-emergence, it's a kind of performance or acting out of this truth that we know of as dependent co-arising.

[17:29]

Only a Buddha and a Buddha. And then just to give you a very brief summary of the book, you know, Benny is traumatized by the loss of his father. And in the aftermath of this death, he starts to hear voices, right? And the first voice he hears is his father Kenji's voice calling his name. And later he starts to hear other voices belonging to, you know, just random things in the house. You know, a piece of wilted lettuce, you know, old... container of yogurt. These things which seem to be speaking to him. He doesn't understand exactly what these things are saying, but he understands their feeling tone. And this is very disturbing to him. His mother, Annabelle, is a media monitor. And she works from home, spending her days clipping and scanning newspapers and monitoring social media, making dubs of radio and television news shows. So it's as if the cries of the world are literally pouring into their house.

[18:31]

And as Annabelle tries to cope with her grief, you know, she does what many people do. She starts to shop. And soon she develops a hoarding problem. So their house is also filled with things, objects that just won't shut up. And Benny gets into trouble at school, right? The voices follow him from the house and follow him to school and he gets in trouble and he winds up on a pediatric psychiatry ward. And then after he's discharged, he takes refuge at a large public library. And of course, you know, libraries are places that are filled with things that speak, right? Books speak to us after all. But, you know, at the library, all of these... these speaking things are orderly, right? They're lined up neatly on their shelves and they speak in their quiet, you know, library voices. And Benny finds this very soothing. And, you know, at the library, he meets the denizens, the people who sort of associate with the library, who live there.

[19:33]

He meets a homeless Slovenian poet philosopher who holds literary salons in a washroom. He meets a beautiful young conceptual artist named the Aleph with a transgender ferret, and he falls in love with her. He meets a librarian with a children's librarian with superpowers, you know, because all librarians have superpowers, right? And he discovers an abandoned bindery in the basement of the library. And the bindery is a very powerful place where all phenomena exist in an unbound state. And it's here in the bindery where he meets this very special talking object, his very own book, who starts to narrate his life. So the Book of Form and Emptiness begins with a death, and that seems like an appropriate way to start a buddhistically inflected novel with a title like this. Death is the movement of form into emptiness.

[20:35]

It's an expression of impermanence, which in Buddhism is one of the three marks of existence, one of the innate characteristics of reality. And death also often causes suffering, another one of the three marks of existence, as well as, of course, the first noble truth. In literary terms, Kenji's death, death is the precipitating incident of for the plot of the novel. It's the event that sets Benny's story in motion. And actually, death is also the precipitating incident in the story of Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama's encounter with the reality of sickness, old age, and death is what inspired him to leave the palace and set forth on the path of becoming the Buddha. So, you know, the... idea of starting with a death seemed like an appropriate place to start the book, and especially since my path to writing this book was marked by a death in my own life, and that was the death of my father.

[21:42]

He died in 1998, and for about a year after his death, like Benny, I also used to hear his voice calling my name. You know, I'd be doing some kind of random thing like, you know, washing the dishes or folding the laundry. And I'd hear him sort of behind me. And it was always kind of behind me, slightly to the right. And I'd hear him clearing his throat. And then he would say my name. And I'd turn around, you know, expecting to see him. And he wasn't there. And then I'd feel that, you know, that sort of punch of grief, like I was losing him all over again. And eventually, you know, I stopped hearing my father's voice and life went on and I, you know, it happened so quickly and I kind of forgot about it. But later on, that memory came back to me and it came back to me at a book event that I was doing. I was talking about how novels come to me as voices and a man in the audience raised his hand and asked me, you know, what did I mean by that?

[22:47]

Did I really hear the voices of my characters as if with my ears, or was I speaking more metaphorically? And I could tell that this wasn't a casual question. And indeed, it turned out that his son heard voices that were very disruptive and disturbing to him, both to him and to his father, who was watching him suffer. And the father wanted to know if I was a voice hearer too. And if so, you know, how did I cope with this? Were my voices as disturbing to me as his sons were to him? And I told him that I knew what he meant about hearing voices, you know, as if with my ear, as if they were outside me. And I told him the story about hearing my dad's voice that way. But then I, you know, went on to explain that, you know, that for me, novelistic voices are more internal, right? They're more like thoughts. But they're different from thoughts, too, because I still hear them. But it's as if they're inside, you know, as if I'm sort of hearing them with my mind.

[23:53]

Right. And, you know, this just as an aside, in Buddhism, we often talk about the six sense gates, you know, which are like the five sense organs, you know, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, skin. Right. And each organ perceives a different sense phenomenon, right? Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. But in Buddhism, there's that sixth sense gate of the mind, which perceives thoughts and emotions. And I always think this is fascinating because it puts the mind, you know, on the same level as an ear or a nose, right? It makes mental or psychic phenomenon equivalent to oral or visual or tactile ones. So A thought, basically, or an emotion is equivalent to a sound or a smell. And this feels relevant to me, relevant to the kind of internal hearing of fictional voices that I hear with my mind.

[24:58]

To hear with the mind is almost a kind of synesthesia, right? So, in any case, this... dialogue with the father got me thinking about voices and about voice hearing. You know, what does it mean to hear voices, right? Is it normal? Is it pathological? You know, what is normal anyway? And who gets to decide, right? It seems as if there are many kinds of voices and they exist on a spectrum of sorts, right? And And on one end, they're the voices that we think of as, you know, the voices of the muse, you know, inspiration, you know, the internal music that composers hear or the visions that painters see, right, or the voices of characters in books. And, you know, our culture has decided that this kind of voice hearing is acceptable and even celebrates it, you know, and I feel very lucky about this. I can easily imagine a society in which this was not the case, you know, where artists and writers would be persecuted for their visions, right?

[26:06]

For making things up and for telling things that weren't true. And, you know, you would be persecuted too for, you know, for listening, right? So that's one end of the spectrum. And then in the middle, I think there are those neurotic right, self-critical voices that we all know and that we all to some degree hear. And, you know, I have a lot of them. Mostly they're the voices that are telling me that, you know, whatever it is that I'm writing now is really, really bad. And, you know, no one is going to be interested in the book that I'm working on, what I have been working on for eight years, right? And, you know, the voices that are telling me, you know, just give it up. Right. Go get a real job. Do something useful with your life. And so these voices are, you know, I'm 66 years old. These voices are very familiar to me by now. And over the years, we've worked out a kind of truce, you know, a kind of rapprochement.

[27:07]

And, you know, we sort of understand each other now. So those are the voices kind of, you know, in this middle range. And then on, you know, another end of the spectrum, there are the voices that are likely to result in a diagnosis of psychosis or schizophrenia if you happen to mention them to your psychiatrist. And these voices can be terribly disturbing, right? But they're not always. And one of the things I learned writing this book is that unshared experiences like voice hearing are far more common than we think. In other cultures, there are, you know, shamanic voice hearers who are, you know, celebrated for their powers as healers, right? And human history, of course, is full of ancient oracles and prophecies, you know, right? There were the biblical voice hearers, you know, Adam and Eve heard voices, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joan of Arc.

[28:08]

heard voices, Mahatma Gandhi heard voices. Ironically, so did Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the fathers of modern psychology. But I'm convinced that if Jung were alive today and told a clinical psychiatrist about his voices and visions and insisted that he could control them, which he said he could, then he'd likely wind up on a psych ward on lithium too. Right. So again, the question is, what is normal and who gets to decide? And I think we forget that normal is a cultural construct. We just made it up. And if that's the case, why can't we remake it? Why can't we expand the borders of normal and make it a bigger and more generous and more all-inclusive and more compassionate category? So these are some of the questions that the book asks, and I think they're important questions and worth thinking about.

[29:13]

So just a couple more things that I just wanted to talk about before we move to more of a dialogue. So the voices that Benny hears are the voices of things. voices of objects. And he hears them as if with his ear, as if they are outside him. And this idea for this thread of the book comes from the famous Zen question, do non-sentient beings speak the Dharma? Can things be our teachers? Can earth, grasses, trees, fences and walls, you know, tiles and pebbles, teach us about the nature of existence, the nature of reality? Can the myriad things of the world that Dogen talks about enlighten us about reality?

[30:16]

And of course, you know, the short answer is yes. The source of this teaching is the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra. And the line in the sutra is... The earth expounds the Dharma. Living beings expound the Dharma. Everything expounds it. And there are many commentaries on this teaching, including a fascicle by Dogen called Mujo Seppo, In Sentient Beings Speak the Dharma. And in this fascicle, in this essay, he references an older story about two of our Zen ancestors, Dongshan and Yunyang. who I'm sure you're friends with, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with. Dongshan was a Zen monk who lived during the first millennium. And he was preoccupied by this teaching in the Flower Ornament Sutra that everything, you know, that earth, living beings, sentient and non-sentient beings, everything expounds the Dharma.

[31:20]

And, you know, he wanted to know then, you know, who is able to hear the Dharma expounded by non-sentient beings, right? And so this was the question that perplexed him and bothered him. And he searched out various teachers and eventually one of them told him that he needed to take his question to a venerable old teacher named Yunyang, who lived, of course, on top of a mountain. And so Dongshan finally locates Yunyang on the top of his mountain and they sit down together and they have a dialogue. And in the dialogue, Dongshan asks, who is able to hear the Dharma expounded by insentient beings? And Yunyang answers, non-sentient beings are able to hear it. And Dongshan asks, well, can you hear it? And Yunyang says, yes, I can.

[32:22]

And Dongshan asks, well, why can't I hear it? And then Yunyang, you know, picks up his whisk, and he waves it. And he asks, you know, can you hear it now? And so, you know, this dialogue varies in different versions of the story, and there are many different versions. But in the end, you know, the climax of the story is that, you know, Dongshan gets it, right? And he has this profound experience of enlightenment, and he composes a verse, right? How marvelous, how marvelous. The Dharma expounded by non-sentient beings is inconceivable. Listening with your ears, no sound. Hearing with your eyes, you directly understand. And I love that. Listening with your ears, no sound. Hearing with your eyes, you directly understand. I love the... you know, that this experience of enlightenment is described by evoking a kind of synesthesia again, you know, going beyond the individual sense gates.

[33:31]

And of course, you know, this refers back to the Prajnaparamita, you know, the Heart Sutra, and Avalokiteshvara, who is the sound observer, right, the perceiver of the cries of the world. So, you know, there's a lot more to say, but I think I'll just end it here with one last thought that goes back to, you know, where the idea of this book came from, right? That it emerged, you know, out of a dialogue between Benny and the book, right? And that through this dialogue, they are, you know, co-creating each other. And so you really, you know, it sort of begs the question, you know, which came first, the book or the boy, right? And this relationship, I think, is, again, this dialogue relationship is very interesting to me because it mirrors, I think, what happens when we write and read books, right?

[34:34]

Books emerge out of dialogue, right? writer and reader, right, between you and me. And it's interesting because, you know, we think of a book as this, you know, sort of singular, right, unchanging object with, you know, with an identity. This is the book of form and emptiness, right? But it's not that. It's much more interesting than that. You know, it's more of a flux, right? It's a collaboration that's co-created by the meeting of writer, and reader. So rather than being a singular object, you know, written by a singular writer, I really think of books as more like an array, right? And so as a result, I mean, this is a wonderful thing, right? There are as many books of form and emptiness as there are readers who read it, right? Every reader who picks up the book of form and emptiness and reads it is going to be co-creating

[35:40]

a different book of form and emptiness, right? So there's as many different readers, sorry, many different books as there are readers who read it. And I think this is just such a beautiful thing. You know, it means that books are really living things, right? And they're constantly changing. And this relationship too, I think is a kind of an example or almost a performance of you know, the movement from form into emptiness and emptiness into form, you know. It's also a performance or an example of, you know, the truth of no fixed self, right, of no self, which is, you know, the third of the three marks of existence. And so that's really the, you know, that's the, you know, the project, I think, that we're embarked on when, you know, when we read literature and when we, you know, when I write literature. And, you know, it's, you know, I do my part of it, right?

[36:47]

But that's all I can control. You know, I do my part of it. And then I send the book out into the world. And then the book finds its friends and finds its readers, right? And from there, you know, different, it proliferates, right? Different books of form and emptiness start to emerge. And so that's really a beautiful thing. And I think I'd just like to end here with, once again, well, first of all, thanking you, I guess, for being my collaborators in this dialogue, this great project that we're involved in of expressing and raising up the Dharma together. And I'd just like to end, once again, with evoking Dogen. in the passage from Genjo Koan. To study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[37:47]

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things of the world. When actualized by the myriad things, the body-mind of self and the body-mind of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues forever. to express itself endlessly. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[38:42]

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