Welcome. Wonderful to be with you again. My name is Kodo. I'm the acting Eno today, as Brian is away. At the invitation of our head of practice, speaker for this morning, for today, is Kanshin Ruth Ozeki. Kanshin is a novelist, a filmmaker, a Zen Buddhist priest, and her four novels, including the newest, The Book of Form and Emptiness, have been widely translated and published in over 30 countries. Kanchen was ordained by Zouketsu Roshi, Norman Fisher, in 2010, and is affiliated with Everyday Zen and with the Brooklyn Zen Center. She lives in Massachusetts and teaches creative writing at Smith College. Thank you so much for being here. We will begin with the Sutra opening verse. You can chant along with microphones muted. You can find the text in the chat. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.

[13:33]

Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's work. I think I've just unmuted myself. And thank you so much, Kodo. And 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. So 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.

[14:35]

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 Mohican and the Pequot to the south, the Mohican to the west and the Abenaki to the north. 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 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, both the Buddhist elements, as well as the personal elements that went into the writing of the book.

[15:36]

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, you know, the novel or about Zen and fiction, about Zen as a creative practice, you know, whatever you'd like. But I'd like to start by invoking Dogen Zenji, the founder of our Soto Zen lineage, and to share, you know, my favorite passage of Genjo Koan, 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.

[16:39]

And I love this quote because, you know, while Dogen is describing the practice and study of Zen, he also describes perfectly my experience of writing fiction, at least, you know, 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. 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 US meat industry lobby group. And Oliver Creation is a novel about a potato farming family in Idaho and their run-ins with large agribusiness and the PR around genetically modified potatoes. So I kind of went from meat to potatoes. Both books are concerned with the way food is grown and marketed.

[17:43]

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, right? 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.

[18:47]

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. 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?

[19:53]

The Book of Form and Emptiness. 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. 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 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.

[20:56]

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. 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-ze-ku, ku-soku-ze-shiki. So Avalokiteshvara is expressing their awakening to the reality of emptiness, the sunyata of all phenomena and existence.

[21:58]

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, you know, that 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. So often, you know, a book will come from something I've done.

[23:00]

you know, something that, especially something I've done, I regret and that I want to understand better. And I found that remorse is a great, you know, seed or maybe it's more of a fertilizer, you know, for novels. Sometimes it's some kind of, you know, 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. 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, 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?

[24:13]

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. 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 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.

[25:19]

Okay. In the beginning. a 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. 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. 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.

[26:21]

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. 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.

[27:28]

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, 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.

[28:30]

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. 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?

[29:32]

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. So as you can see, the narrator 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.

[30:35]

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 co-creation. 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. Right. Only a Buddha and a Buddha. And then just to give you a very brief summary of the book, you know, Benny is 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.

[31:37]

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. 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.

[32:45]

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 books, these speaking things are orderly. Right. They're lined up neatly on their shelves and they speak in their quiet library voices. And 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. 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, because all librarians have superpowers, right? And he discovers an abandoned bindery

[33:48]

in the basement of the library. And the bindery is a very powerful place where all phenomena exist in an unbound state, right? And it's here in the bindery where he meets this very special talking object, right? His very own book who starts to narrate his life, right? 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. 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 for the plot of the novel.

[34:51]

It's the event that sets Benny's story in motion. And actually death is also the precipitating incident in the story of Buddhism, right? 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 it 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. He died in 1998. And for about a year after his death, like Benny, I also used to hear his voice calling my name. I'd be doing some kind of random thing like 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.

[35:53]

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? You know, did I really hear the voices of my characters as if with my ears, or was I speaking more metaphorically, you know? 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.

[36:58]

And the father wanted to know if I was a voice hearer too. And if so, how did I cope with this? Were my voices as disturbing to me as his son's were to him? And I told him that I knew what he meant about hearing voices, 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, right? And this, just as an aside, in Buddhism, we often talk about the six sense gates, which are like the five sense organs, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, skin, right? And each organ perceives a different sense phenomenon, right?

[38:01]

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, you know, 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. To hear with the mind is almost a kind of synesthesia. So in any case, this dialogue with the father got me thinking about voices and about voice hearing. What does it mean to hear voices?

[39:02]

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 on one end, there are 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 our culture has decided that this kind of voice hearing is acceptable and even celebrates it. And I feel very lucky about this. I can easily imagine a society in which this was not the case, where artists and writers would be persecuted for their visions, 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?

[40:03]

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. 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 another end of the spectrum, they're the voices that are likely to result in a diagnosis of psychosis or schizophrenia if you happen to mention them to your psychiatrist.

[41:17]

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 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.

[42:25]

Right. So again, you know, the question is, you know, what is normal and who gets to decide? And I think, you know, we forget that normal is a cultural construct. Right. We just made it up. And if that's the case, you know, 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. 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.

[43:28]

And this sort of 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? 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.

[44:37]

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. 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, you know, perplexed him and bothered him. And he searched out various teachers and eventually, you know, one of them told him that he needed to take his question to a venerable old teacher named Yunyang, who lived, you know, of course, on top of a mountain, right?

[45:38]

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, you know, non-sentient beings are able to hear it. And Dongshan asks, well, can you hear it? And Yunyang says, yes, I can. 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?

[46:43]

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. 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?

[47:50]

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? Books emerge out of dialogue, right? They emerge out of the relationship between 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?

[48:53]

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 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

[49:58]

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, right, 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? 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,

[51:06]

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 and the passage from Genjo Koan. 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. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much, Kanchin Ruth Ozeki.

[52:11]

As a transition into dialogue, we will do the sutra closing verse, which you can find in the chat. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Wonderful, wonderful. All of us had our own Dharma talk. Yes, right. It sounds like... Exactly. We know that, right? We certainly know that, that everyone here is a different dharma, though.

[53:14]

And now some time for expression and conversation and questions and dialogue. If you would like, please raise a hand and I can help unmute you. We can begin with Miguel. First of all, I want to say thank you very much for your very wonderful talk. It kind of went around the side on me and then hit me with a nice left hook in terms of just like thinking of that. It's just interesting the thoughts on the meditation on, I guess, living in the world and how things talk to you and how those voices are coming into you. I've had some personal experience with... All right, I'll be blunt. I had a psychotic break when I was younger and I did hear voices. And it has very much impacted the way I approach practice and life in general.

[54:22]

One of the big things is kind of realizing that this notion of self, it's not that I got fixed. in an idea of who I was. It's that I fixated on who I should become. So my question kind of percolates from a place of as a priest and as a writer, I kind of see this fixation. That means from your perspective as a priest and a writer, this is kind of like more like, let's call it a dramatic writer's block where And I've known, I've done this as a Zen student where I've fixated on what I should be as a Zen student and try to take in the Dharma as that. Like you could even hear it in that passage from the Genjo Koan where like, I know I'm doing it wrong. And by thinking that I'm doing it wrong, I know I'm doing it wrong, but I'm still doing it wrong. How would you advise a student to disengage people

[55:28]

from that fixation on what self should be based on your experiences as a writer. That's a wonderful question, Miguel, and thank you for sharing it. I think you probably asked a question that everyone who starts practicing a religion, and particularly a religion or a spiritual practice that has as many forms as Zen does, right? There's no way to do it and do it right. I think, you know, making mistakes is, you know, built into Zen practice. And I would say that it's true for writing, too, you know, that making mistakes, thinking that it should be one way. and making mistakes is built into the practice of writing as well. In Zen practice, what's helpful, of course, is that we're making these mistakes in a context of Sangha, where we're being held, right?

[56:37]

We're being held and supported. And after we practice long enough, you know, we certainly see how nobody... is free from making mistakes, right? Everybody screws up, right? And so that's very reassuring after a while that the mistakes are very much just part of what we are practicing with and that the forms are diabolically created to... you know, make it even easier for us to do this practice, you know, of making mistakes. So, you know, I think in one way to hold mistake making, you know, with that intention that, yes, I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to make mistakes wholeheartedly, right, as best I can. And then, you know, I'll learn something and then I'll go on and make different mistakes, right? And I'll just end by, you know, one of the things that struck me was what you said about the way that things should be done.

[57:46]

You know, this idea like I should be this kind of person or things should be done in this particular way. When I started writing the Book of Form and Emptiness, my intention was to write in the voice of an omniscient narrator. you know, an omniscient third-person narrator, the kind of narrator that, you know, that the great novelists, you know, whoever they are, but all of the great novelists of the past, you know, wrote in the, you know, third-person omniscient, you know, voice. And that was my intention because I've never been able to do it, right? And so I was happily, you know, going along writing in that third-person omniscient voice when suddenly the voice of Benny broke in. Right. And Benny kind of interrupted the narrator and started to complain about, you know, no, you're not doing it right. You're not telling the story right. You're you're skipping things right. You're leaving things out. And then, you know, when the when the narrator started, you know, describing Benny's parents, you know, sex lives, Benny was like, whoa, that's like way too much information.

[58:54]

Right. And so what happened was that this dialogue emerged. Yeah. between Benny and the narrator. And that's what taught me that the narrator was not just some godlike omniscient narrator. No, the narrator was a character. It was the book. And so this ended up being the key to unlock the entire book. And it was a mistake. It was something that I was trying to do something else and I wasn't able to do it. I'd failed to do it. And yet, you know, it was through this mistake that the, you know, that the whole structure for the book opened up. And I really started to think about, you know, the way that, you know, that what we experience, you know, that form arises from dialogue, right? And so in any case, my point there is just that sometimes the most important things, realizations come from these

[59:56]

these mistakes, you know, these moments where we just, you know, we fail to be what we thought we should be. You know, we fail to do whatever it is that we thought we should do. And I feel like I'm learning that lesson over and over again. You know, everything, the world conspires to teach me this, right, every day. So anyway, thank you for your question. And, yeah, have fun making mistakes, you know. Thank you very much. Great. I have next a question that came through the chat because someone's microphone isn't working. So I will ask it on their behalf and then we'll move along the queue with Zach after that. So this question comes from Sandra and it is this. Do the different types of voices that you spoke of coexist with emptiness in the same way, or do they have their own particular expression of emptiness?

[61:04]

Can you repeat that? Do the different forms of voices... I will. Do the different types of voices that you spoke of coexist with emptiness in the same way, or do they have their own particular expression of emptiness? I'm not sure exactly the meaning of the question, but I'll respond to what I think is the meaning of the question. Let me see once again, right? I'm going to probably be making up something completely different that has no relationship to the question. But I guess my response would be that the different voices are different examples or different sort of expressions of emptiness, right? And so they are different forms of emptiness that are manifesting. um in in one way or the other and um and and we all have uh you know all voices are um are different right they're tones of voices we have many different tones of voices um and in this case you know the the voices that i spoke of were the voices of inspiration right which have their own forms and they give rise to their own

[62:29]

forms. We have the, you know, I talked about the kind of neurotic internal voices. And those, again, you know, where did those come from, right? Where do those voices come from? You know, what are those voices expressions of, right? And I think for most of us, those voices are expressions of, you know, societal norms, the kinds of things that we, you know, that we learned from our parents in particular. And Those voices are very interesting to me because although they are very critical and harsh voices, they come from a place of caring, I think. They're the voices of my parents telling me to be careful. Be careful about what you put out into the world. The world is a dangerous place. You could get hurt. You know, so maybe writing and disclosing all of that very intimate stuff about yourself is not a good idea, right?

[63:35]

Maybe you should go do something safe, right? And I think, you know, the intention of those voices, right, is caring maybe and, you know, benevolent, but the effect of them, you know, it can be very limiting, right? And so that's, I think, to what I meant by sort of coming to terms with those voices, really understanding from what did they arise. And then these other kinds of voices, like the voice of my dad speaking to me, I don't know where that voice came from. I don't know what that voice is an expression of. It was probably an expression of my longing, my grief, you know, my, my, you know, missing him. But maybe not, maybe he was there, you know, maybe he was, he was there and I just couldn't see him. I could hear him, you know, I could see him with my ears, but I couldn't see him with my eyes.

[64:39]

So, you know, it's, I guess, you know, all this to say that, that again, you know, that there are so many different manifestations of voice and, you know, and they all come from different places. They all arise from different causes and conditions and they all have different forms of expression. So I hope I got close anyway to the intent of your question there. Thank you. Thank you for responding. Zach. That was a very lovely talk. And my version of it lined up with something that I've been thinking a lot about and actually writing about, that the kind of central claim in it is that an encounter with art is a Dharma gate and opens up into...

[65:55]

Possibly, if it actually, if you take it, opens up into choiceless attention and repose in bliss, right? And my sense of it is that the same is true in a complementary way with the practice of making art, but obviously it's different, right? So you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to, but I wanted to ask you... What's the process and practice whereby you approach and open that gate? And what does it feel like to do that? I love that you, you know, I love the way you phrase that. And I think it's true, you know, the, you know, opening up the gate of repose and bliss. And, you know, once in a while from a maker's point of view, Once in a while that happens, you know, most of the time it's, it's, it's hell.

[66:58]

It's, it's, you know, it's, it's a hell realm, you know, because it's a real struggle. But, you know, and I'm kind of, I'm kind of joking there, but also not really. No, I totally, I totally believe you. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, and I guess when I say it's a hell realm, what I mean is that it's uncomfortable. Yeah. And it should be uncomfortable because, um, you know, the, the process of, um, you know, of making something right. Of, of sort of keeping your sense gates open and, you know, everything attuned and allowing, you know, the, whatever it is, the voice of the muse or whatever it is to kind of come through you, right. Um, you know, the myriad things, um, is, uh, And it's uncomfortable in the sense that there's a kind of tension built into that process. And the way I think of it is, you know, we start out, you know, at the beginning of a project, right?

[68:04]

I don't know anything, right, about what the book is going to be, right? It's a state of not knowing, right? And what I... you know, really am impatient to reach is the end, the state of knowing, right? And, you know, and so the whole, you know, there's this, you know, funny thing about how writers, you know, that we don't want to write, we want to have written, right? And so that's very much what this is, you know, it's this impatience and this wanting to move from not knowing to knowing. And that, you know, that creates a kind of tension right, between those two poles. And I think of it as a kind of generative tension, right, that we sit in that generative tension between knowing and not knowing, you know, with all the sense gates open in a receptive frame of mind, right, willing to entertain whatever it is that happens to show up in the mind, right, or in the body, because the way that I write is a very embodied, you know, I

[69:13]

you know, in that sense, writing is a lot like Zazen in that it's, you know, it's a body-mind practice. It's a very somatic practice for me. And so, you know, but we sit in that sort of state of generative tension, right? And little by little, the, you know, the novel, you know, sort of emerges, the story emerges from that. One of the things that I've, you know, I've discovered over the years is that, and this is very, It's so interesting. The writing goes better when I keep out of the way. When I don't start imposing arbitrary ideas onto my characters and onto the fictional world. And that's one of these sort of almost postural or attitudinal shifts. Very much like... in Zazen or in Buddhist practice, you know, the conversation around right effort, you know, and when you try too hard, right, when you're making too much of an effort, it kind of sinks the ship, right?

[70:25]

So it's that sort of, you know, sort of backward step away from, you know, that complete leaning in and effortfulness. Yeah. Right. It's a kind of relaxation almost. Right. And that makes sense because, you know, the tension there, that generative tension is, you know, is a kind of uncomfortable thing. But if you can relax in that, you know, if you can relax, physically relax, mentally relax in that state, then, you know, then the writing goes better. So if that that that's my way of hearing your question and my response to what I heard, if that makes sense. Yeah. It makes tons of sense, and it feels exactly right. I guess the one, if I can ask one more little tiny thing. So I recognize all that. The question is, what is it that sustains you and supports you in that effort, which is unmistakably difficult, right?

[71:27]

Yeah. You know, for me, it's this practice. It's zazen. You know, I think that, you know, when I you know, when I started practicing, I really thought that that Zen practice and writing were different. Right. I thought they were very, very different things. And of course, they are different, but they're also not different. And the more I do both, the more I realize that the more I realize that they're really not that different. Right. And, you know, when I started, you know, sort of getting really serious about Zen practice. I think that what drew me to it was the sense that if I was going to continue to write in ways that I wanted to write, in ways that I aspired to write, then I was going to need some kind of backbone.

[72:30]

I was going to need some source of strength. to do that. And not just physical strength, but also ethical sense, strength, right? You know, for me, writing is very much, writing fiction is very much tied up in write speech. And so the, you know, the practice, our practice, you know, engages with that in ways that are, I think, very helpful to me, you know, so. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. So to bring everyone along with me, I'm having the thought we have, so far we have about 15, 14 minutes left and we have four folks in the queue. We'll get as far as we get. I'm really enjoying this conversation. The next person is Brian. Well, thank you so much for that wonderful talk. I actually started reading

[73:32]

the Book of Form and Emptiness. And I stopped at about a third of the way through because it was frankly making me kind of crazy. I mean, the whole notion of things in your environment talking to you all the time. I mean, I realize now that you've said it where that whole notion arises from. But when I was reading it, I was just thinking, man, that would be awful. You know, I have enough trouble with all the sentient voices that I hear, and I'm trying to get rid of those. And how would you ever have silence when, if you're hearing the voices of non-sentient beings? I mean, can you turn them off? Question mark? You know, that's a very good question. But I think, you know, I think that non-sentient beings do talk. You know, they might not talk in voices that, you know, that sound like our voices.

[74:33]

You know, they might not talk in voices that you can hear with your ear. But, you know, I certainly think that, you know, clutter, for example, talks to us. It speaks to us. And that's why it makes us so uncomfortable. And I think that's why in Zen practice, you know, and particularly in Soto Zen practice, we spend so much time cleaning. Yeah. We spend so much time cleaning and taking care of our environment. It's to quiet the voices. It's to quiet the voices of our environment. It's to quiet the voices of the things in our world. We're taking care of them. And that's, I think, how we find silence. I think it's particularly hard in this relentlessly materialist consumer society capitalist culture that we live in, right? It's very noisy. Things are very, very noisy and they're very unhappy because of things like planned obsolescence.

[75:35]

Imagine if you're an iPhone and you know going out and starting the beginning of your life that you're going to be tossed in like a couple of years. It's not pleasant, right? So things in this built environment that we live in are, I think, you know, not so happy and they're trying to let us know. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's so for everyone, but I think Brian may have frozen. Oh, yeah, there we go. All right. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. Jennifer, please. Hello. First of all, it was lovely to hear your talk. The Tale for the Time Being is my favorite book ever. So I was thrilled to see you pop up as providing this Dharma talk.

[76:38]

One of the things that you talked about that really got me thinking and wondering was this idea of the... the mind as another sense, another sense gate. And, and just the way that, and that, that all, that feels very, very true for me. And then it made me start to think about the way that like mindfulness kind of, in terms of the way the Western health, the Western kind of health practice has used mindfulness. And, And I started thinking like, well, a lot of the ways that they use that is like grounding yourself in the other senses in order to calm or quiet or turn off the mind, depending on what the mind is doing.

[77:40]

And these are all very, these thoughts aren't well formulated. So the question is going to be a little bit rambly. But just... thinking about the ways in which, like in Western cultures, we privilege certain aspects of mind, you know, like the logical aspects, but the aspects around attuning to the emotional reality and the spiritual reality are often kind of poo-pooed. And just how all of that kind of intersects with mindfulness practices that focus more on the other senses in a way to kind of quiet certain aspects of mind. And it just seemed it was just very interesting to me to start thinking about that. And I just wanted to hear your thoughts. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's I think, you know, it's really true. And certainly in the West, we privilege a certain kind of, you know, mental activity.

[78:41]

And one of the things that has been one of the things that has always been interesting to me that I've really liked is I think it was Uchiyama sensei's, you know, analogy of the hand of the mind or the fist of the mind, right? And thinking of the mind as a hand, right? And so when, you know, thoughts come... you know, what we normally do is we, you know, the hand clenches, right? And then that's what, you know, sort of drags us off our cushion or, and this is particularly true in meditation, right? In zazen, you know, you come up with, you know, a thought comes and you grab onto it and then you're, before you know it, you've been pulled off your cushion. And so Uchiyama Sensei's, you know, advice is relaxing the hand of the mind, right? And so this idea of thinking of the mind as a muscle that can contract or relax has been very interesting, I think, to practice with. And in the East, of course, there's not such a distinction made between body and mind.

[79:46]

So we think of it more as body-mind, sort of one thing. But to think of the mind as a kind of muscle that can clench or relax reminds us, I think, that... you know, that we're capable of doing that in the same way that you can relax your shoulders, you know, you can relax your stomach, you can also relax the, you know, the hand of your mind. And it, again, it kind of, you experience your mind differently that way, right? We experience our mind as a more sort of somatic organ. And I think that can be very helpful. So that would be... uh that would be my response to that thank you thank you yeah thank you let's see so diana and then sue i think those will be our last two comments

[80:50]

Thank you, Ruth, for that talk. It was wonderful to hear you. So I have a writing and practice question. And I think some of what you said about, you know, developing the strength in practice addresses part of it for me. But I'm working on something where I'm encountering that I'm drawn to because there's an element of disgust in it for me. And I'm drawn to it, and I have moments of backing away and questioning, is it really good for me to go there? Is it good for me to enter this? And you spoke of using regret, which also spoke to me, and of mining that. And in some ways, I'm just letting the voices speak, and they're not necessarily speaking to those aspects that...

[82:03]

where the disgust arises from me. It's kind of like I'm circling the subject. But I guess I wondered if that has been something that has ever drawn you. And have you ever questioned whether a subject is going to be good for you to go into? And I guess I also have a concern of if I write about it, will I in some way be succumbing to it? I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, but. When you say succumbing, do you mean like feeding it, exacerbating it, irritating it? Maybe contributing to something that. Although actually, as I begin to explore it, more complexity is arising. So it it's. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what comes to mind, of course, is something that I think about a lot as a writer, writing about traumatic experience, right?

[83:19]

And so when is writing about traumatic experience useful? When is it not useful? When is it harmful? you know, how much detail, you know, I mean, in fiction writing, of course, you know, or any kind of writing, I mean, you can go into kind of tremendous detail and, you know, and, you know, really get into it, or you can kind of back away. I mean, there's so many choices, you know, that can, that can be made. And so I don't think that there's a, you know, I don't think there's any one answer to this. I think that, you know, you're doing exactly the right thing by, you know, sort of approaching it and then investigating it. You know, one of the things that I do is, again, you know, I try to locate feelings of, you know, if it's disgust or if it's, you know, if it's trauma, try to locate it in the body, right?

[84:20]

You know, strong emotions, especially aversive emotions. You know, I try to locate it in the body and then ask, you know, not ask, but... you know, sort of, well, yeah, ask questions of it, right? But that can be, you know, that can be very triggering too. So if that's the case, then, you know, it's time to back off slightly. I think, you know, it's a, you know, it's a kind of, yeah, I mean, you know, you, what you're doing, I think, is investigating your own tolerances here, you know, and those tolerances, of course, will change all the time. Right. So it might not be the right time to do it now, you know, but it might be, you know, next week or tomorrow or next year or, you know, in, you know, in 10 years. Right. There's a one of the things I've the other thing I've discovered is just that, you know, that that, you know, writing, you know, and books are time beings.

[85:21]

Right. They take the time they take and they find their expression at the time that's appropriate. Right. And so, you know, to be doing what you're doing, kind of testing it. Testing it, testing it seems exactly right to me, you know, but testing it in a sensitive and very mindful, you know, and physically, you know, mindful way seems like exactly the right thing. So good to see you. Thank you. Yeah. Good to see you again. And finally, Sue. Hi. Thank you for letting me slip in under the wire, Kodo. And hi, Ruth. That was a wonderful talk. Thank you so much. I just wanted to ask, you know, you're showing us the voices of non-human beings here, and you've been so concerned in the past writing, and as you particularly mentioned early in the talk with your first two novels about environmental concerns, I've wondered how do these voices of non-human beings

[86:29]

contribute to an understanding of the environmental concerns. And I, you know, it's easy to see how plants can be telling us things we need to know and even rocks and walls that are, and mountains and things. But it's more of a challenge for me to fit cell phones, the voices of cell phones into this part, this kind of conversation. But I'm curious if... I mean, there's nothing, there's no reason why cell phones should be part of that conversation. But I'm curious if you're thinking of these voices that Benny hears as also being voices that have something to say to us about the needs of the planet in general. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful question. Thank you, Sue. You know, it's a question of how things express themselves, I think, too, you know, and whether, you know, obviously literally a cell, well, actually that's not true. I was going to say literally a cell phone doesn't talk to you, but actually it does, doesn't it?

[87:31]

I mean, cell phones talk to you all the time. But, you know, whatever else, you know, whatever else, does it, you know, does it literally talk to you? No, but, or maybe it does to some people, but, and to Benny, they certainly did. But, you know, but I think that what's worth listening to and to notice, you know, noticing is the you know, this, the, you know, proliferation of things. And I've forgotten what that, the earlier questioner, I forgot his name, who said that, you know, that reading the book made him feel overwhelmed by the noisiness of things. And I think that's true. And that can teach us something. Yeah, that can really teach us about, you know, about, and especially, you know, and I was kind of making a joke about planned obsolescence. Yeah. You know, and how unhappy that would make you if you were a cell phone. Right. But, you know, that that's something else I think we can think about. You know, all of these are to some extent exercises of the imagination.

[88:33]

And, you know, they're kind of like thought experiments. But then again, everything is a thought experiment. Right. I mean, you know. Yesterday is an exercise of the imagination. Tomorrow is an exercise of the imagination, right? Everything is. So, you know, it's, I think that, you know, to look around and think, you know, what would this scanner, you know, what is this scanner trying to tell me about, you know, the nature of reality now and the condition of the planet, you know, and what's going to happen to this scanner? You know, the amazing thing is that this scanner is going to outlive me, right? Yeah. Parts of it are going to be around longer than I am because objects are durable and they persist. Right. I was downtown the other day and I saw a parking meter. Right. That was a very sturdy parking meter. And I had this moment of like realizing that that parking meter, which has probably been around for 50 years, is going to outlive me, you know, easily outlive me.

[89:33]

And I was like, I had a moment of resentment. You know, I was like, well, what gives you the right? You're a parking meter, right? I'm me. And you're just this parking meter, right? And yet you're going to be around for, you know, forever, right? Or for a very long time. So anyway, I think those are the kinds of things that can teach us a lot of that. Well, that's a great answer. So good to see you. Okay. Wow, wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for being here. I will put a link to Ganshan Ruth Ozeki's bio on sfcc.org there. I think there's a link to the Book of Form and Emptiness on that page if you would like to check that out. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, Ruth Ozeki. What a delightful conversation. Thank you, Kodo-san. It was wonderful. And everyone should be able to unmute right about now if you would like to say goodbye. Oh, yay. Please take care.

[90:35]

Everybody, we want to hear your voices. Thank you. Thank you. I love your books. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was funny. Yeah. I had four minutes on Good Morning America. Too short. Too short, like that. So good to hear everybody. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye, everybody. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to see everybody's names and faces. Thank you so much, Koldo.

[91:36]

Really appreciate it. Oh, you're muted. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. Thank you so much. Wonderful to meet. Wonderful to meet. And thank you for, I'm sorry, I didn't respond to your email. I thought I had, you know, but yeah. No, no worry at all. No worry at all. This went off very smoothly. Good. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Well, have a wonderful rest of the weekend. I hope you do too. Good. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye everybody. Bye.

[92:03]

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