Dogen: Life and Creative Process (Part 4 of 4)
The central koan of Ruth Ozeki's life has been the relationship between Zen practice and creativity, specifically writing. How can a serious Zen practitioner spend their days producing pages and pages of words when Zen consistently emphasizes going beyond language?
The renowned novelist (A Tale for the Time Being; The Book of Form and Emptiness) and Zen priest approaches the koan of Zen and creativity through Dogen's central teaching of Practice-Realization, that is, that Zen practice is not a means to realization but an expression of it.
Ruth talks about how Dogen's Practice-Realization has helped her to reconcile her career as a novelist and her Zen practice. If meditation is not a means to an end, but simply an expression of one's already realized self, it becomes, from a meritocratic perspective, useless. It's like art: its purpose is not utility but expression.
Taking a lead from Taigen Dan Leighton, Ruth compares Dogen's Zazen to performance art. Through maintaining a certain posture and holding a certain gesture with one's hands, the meditator expresses her larger self. In the same way, when we sit down to write or paint or create music, we can let go of our small selves and be actualized by the whole world.
Zazen as art
Practice realization
Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture into unique, hybrid, narrative forms. Her new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, published by Viking in…