Usually I write about fiction that is clearly Buddhist because of intertextuality between Buddhist sacred texts and stories and works of fiction in the West. But there is growing research and writing about reading Western literature, both poetry and fiction, through a Buddhist lense. I first noticed this lense used in John Wolff’s book The Driftwood Shrine:
Sensai John Gendo Wolff. The Driftwood Shrine: Discovering Zen in American Poetry by John Gendo Wolff, Sensei. Foreword by Gerry Shishin Wick, Roshi. Ottawa, Canada: Sumeru Press, Inc. June, 2016.
Representing the West’s evolving understanding of Buddhism, Wolff discovers Zen in works by such poets as Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and H.D., Richard Wright.
Then, as is Wolff’s book was foreshadowing a burst of interest in this area, there were four different works published in 2022 about reading Western literature through a Buddhist lense. They are listed alphabetically below.
Lauren Shufran, Ph.D. The Buddha and the Bard: Where Shakespeare’s Stage Meets Buddhist Scriptures. San Rafael, CA: Mandala Publishing, 2022.
Part of the book blurb reads: "Lauren Shufran explores the fascinating interplay of Western drama and Eastern philosophy by pairing quotes from Shakespeare with the tenets of an Eastern spiritual practice, sparking a compelling dialogue between the two."
Dean Sluyter. The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics. San Francisco: New World Publishing, 2022.
Here is the marketing hook from the Amazon blurb: "Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, and The Bluest Eye."
Pamela Winfield. “To Tame an Ox or to Catch a Fish: A Zen Reading of the Old Man and the Sea” in The Theory and Practice of Zen Buddhism, Eds. Charles Prebish and On-Cho Ng Springer, 2022 pp. 275-298.
Winfield uses the famous ten ox-herding pictures by the twelfth century Chan master Guoan Shiyuan as an analytical frame for understanding Ernest Hemingway’s modern literary classic, The Old Man and the Sea.
Sang-Keun Yoo. PhD Dissertation, Graduate Program in English – University of California-Riverside, 2022. Dissertation title: “Speculative Orientalism: Zen and Tao in American New Wave Science Fiction.”
Yoo's dissertation traces the genealogy of a type of Orientalism found in American New Wave science fiction published between the 1950s and the 1970s, including works by authors such as William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick.
I will keep my eyes wide open for any further research and writing in this area, as I think it is an interesting indicator of how Buddhism is influencing the Western social imaginary.
Buddhist Fiction Blog 