Reading Buddhism in English Literature

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.

The Devoted, by Blair Hurley

First-time novelist Hurley, a Pushcart Prize winner, has written about a subject that is not new in the Zen community: sexual abuse by a Zen Master. But the way she approaches the subject and her description of the psychological hold the Master has on his student is original.

Here is what the publisher, W. W. Norton, says about THE DEVOTED:

“A spellbinding confession of what it means to abandon one life for another, The Devoted asks what it takes, and what you’ll sacrifice, to find enlightenment.

“Nicole Hennessy’s life revolves around her Zen practice at the Boston Zendo, seeking solace in the tenets of Buddhism to the chagrin of her Irish Catholic family. After a decade of grueling spiritual practice under her Master’s tutelage, living on a shoestring budget as a shop clerk, Nicole has become dangerously entangled with her mentor. As Nicole confronts her past—a drug-fueled year spent fleeing her family’s loaded silences and guilt-laden “Our Fathers”—and reinvents herself in New York City, her Master’s intoxicating voice pursues her, an electrifying whisper on the other end of the phone. Somehow, he knows everything.

“In deft, soaring prose that bristles with psychological and erotic tension, Blair Hurley crafts a thrilling exploration of Nicole’s ecstatic quest for spirituality.”

THE DEVOTED will be reviewed here following release, expected in August. It can be pre-ordered from many sources.

CLASSIC BUDDHIST FICTION He’s Leaving Home: My Young Son Becomes a Zen Monk by Kiyohiro Miura (Charles E. Tuttle, 1988; English translation, 1996) Reviewed by Chris Beal

How do the parents feel when a child decides to become a Zen monk? This is the territory explored in this exquisite little volume, translated from the Japanese by Jeff Shore. Told in first person from the father’s point of view, the story explores the emotional journey a family takes as the son disengages from his birth family and is adopted by the priest at a temple.

One of the many strengths of this novel is the realistic way the father’s ambivalence is explored. He is the one who first takes his son to the temple to do Zen, when he is still in primary school. The boy expresses a childish desire to become a monk, but it is the father who clings to this notion, as well as the woman priest. She is quite a character in her own right, and the father likes her but also becomes suspicious of her motives in wanting to take his son away from him. All of this is complicated by the attitude of the mother. We only know the mother, of course, through the father’s eyes, but as time goes on, she blames her husband more and more for the fact that they are losing their son.

The awkward title reads more simply in Japanese. The original title was Chonan no Shukke, but expressing in English the culturally dependent, complex ideas embodied in this phrase isn’t easy. “Shukke” means “to become a Buddhist monk,” but the characters, translated literally, would mean “home-leaving.” Thus, both the title and subtitle express aspects of the meaning of this word. “Chonan,” too, carries cultural meaning. Literally it means, not “young son,” but “eldest son.” In Japan, of course, the eldest son is the one who carries the family line. In Miura’s story, while there is a younger daughter, there are no other sons, and therefore, no other heirs to the family name. This issue isn’t explicitly explored in the text, but a Japanese reader would, of course, understand the gravity of the situation.

In the West, Zen is not even considered a religion by some of its practitioners, and certainly it isn’t part of our cultural tradition. So probably the most analogous situation for readers in English-speaking countries would be when a Catholic child decides to become a monk or nun. Parents’ attachment to their children is, after all, universal. But the Buddhist emphasis on detachment makes the story all the more poignant. The priest, in fact, tells the father that the loss of his son is his koan (a riddle Zen practitioners are given to advance their spiritual understanding).

It would be an unforgivable omission not to mention one of the facets of the book that makes it so charming: the fanciful illustrations by J.C. Brown. The drawings in themselves tell the story of the boy’s maturation and coming to terms with a monk’s life.

Miura spent time in the United States when he was young, receiving a degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Perhaps the insight he gained from living in the West explains, at least in part, why this book has such appeal to English language readers.

In Japan, Chonan no Shukke received the Akutagawa Prize, an esteemed award for fiction. This book deserves to be a classic of Buddhist fiction in its English translation as well.

Chris Beal is reading JAKE FADES: A NOVEL OF IMPERMANENCE

JAKE FADES: A NOVEL OF IMPERMANENCE, by David Guy, was published in 2007 by Trumpeter, an imprint of Shambhala.  Here is the publisher’s description:

“Jake is a Zen master and expert bicycle repairman who fixes flats and teaches meditation out of a shop in Bar Harbor, Maine. Hank is his long-time student. The aging Jake hopes that Hank will take over teaching for him. But the commitment-phobic Hank doesn’t feel up to the job, and Jake is beginning to exhibit behavior that looks suspiciously like Alzheimer’s disease. Is a guy with as many “issues” as Hank even capable of being a Zen teacher? And are those paradoxical things Jake keeps doing some kind of koan-like wisdom . . . or just dementia?

“These and other hard questions confront Hank, Jake, and the colorful cast of characters they meet during a week-long trip to the funky neighborhood of Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As they trek back and forth from bar to restaurant to YMCA to Zen Center to doughnut shop, answers arise—in the usual unexpected ways.”

In the near future, we will post a review of the Buddhist aspects of this novel, as well as some questions to ponder.  Stay tuned.