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Emptiness and Form: Fiction and the Dharma

Online Program
Dates: Dec 12, 2021

Instructor(s): Ruth Ozeki and Francisca Cho

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Program Description:
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Buddhist traditions have sometimes characterized the dharma—the teachings of the Buddha—as beyond the realm of language and thought. If this is so, then why have so many Buddhists articulated their understanding of the dharma through literature, in poetry, discourses, plays, and fiction? Might the transformed modes of perception described in doctrinal texts be experienced through literature, through deeply engaging literary texts that blur boundaries between the imaginary, the representational, and the real? Join Ruth Ozeki, Zen Buddhist priest and novelist, and Francisca Cho, professor and one of the most prominent contemporary scholars on Buddhism and literature, as together, they explore emptiness and form, and the many ways that reading and writing literature can teach the dharma.

This is a freely offered, pay what you can program.

    About the Instructor(s):
  • Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Ruth was ordained in 2010 and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She is the author of  My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), and A Tale for the Time Being (2013). Her most recent novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, was published by Viking in September 2021. She lives in British Columbia, and New York City. She currently teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of English Language and Literature.