Dharma Vision interview: Louise Southerden of the Buddhist Library in Sydney talks with Dharmachari Ananda
1. What led you to the writing life? What form did your earliest writing take?
a) Boredom.
b) A 50 page story about a community of mice who wanted to create their own rules for living.
2. What keeps your pen moving after all these years? What moves you to write?
a) Desperation
b) The belief that if I dont write I'll have nothing to show for my life. Plus I suppose the belief that something I write might open a door for someone somewhere that might change their life.
3. What kind of writing do you most love to do? Which writers have most inspired you? What kind of writing do you most love to read?
a) Poetry
b) Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, W B Yeats, William Blake, William Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Saul Below, Philip Roth, Graham Greene, Russell Hoban, John Le Carre, Malcolm Lowry, Iris Murdoch, W S Merwin, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Robert Gray, Les Murray, William Stafford, Theodore Roethke, Robert Bly, Ken Smith. (that's just the shortlist).
c) See (b)
4. Do you ever have times when you just canāt write? What do you do when the creative juices dry up?
a) Yes, most of the time.
b) Get very neurotic and unsociable. Wonder why the hell I'm alive. Take very long walks away from people.
5. The Wolf at the Door workshops in November are about our relationship, as writers, with the environment - both our immediate everyday environment and the natural world. What inspired you to apply this theme to this year's workshops?
I've been extremely conscious of the crucial importance of what we loosely call the 'environment' for several years. Recently this awareness has been focused on how I as an individual actually live from day to day, how every single decision I make affects others and my immediate environment in many subtle and not so subtle ways. I can't exist without having an effect on this environment. And now everything is becoming really critical in terms of whether we survive as a species for a few decades or a few millennia. For example the decision of President Bush not to ratify the Kyoto protocol because it would restrict the lifestyle choices of the American people would have led to a global temperature rise of something like 5 degrees by 2050 (I'm doing this from memory so these figures may not be exact). Similarly if I go around in a bad mood and project this mood onto situations I encounter this will affect how others behave in the situations they encounter, because they will have unconsciously picked up my 'narrative' of what is going on. So bringing all this material into the light of consciousness and realizing it is possible to work creatively with it is crucial for anyone who wants to shape the present and future of their world. Writers especially can benefit from a detailed knowledge of these dynamics, and pass them on to others through their work (as well as their states of mind of course).
6. How do you see the relationship between writing and the environment?
Writing is simply an exteriorisation into various narratives of our interractions with the world. We are others' environment, just as 'our' environment is the 'other'. Really there are no barriers: everything participates in everything else all the time, regardless of our habitual perceptions. I see writing both as a witness to this state of affairs, and as a means of bringing it all into awareness so the whole process can evolve into some form of harmony.
7. Writing and meditation are often seen as passive, introspective activities; how can we as writers and meditators, relate to the wider world in an effective way? How can we be active in the world?
I think the above deals with this question.
8. In terms of writing as practice, what is it about writing that might promote wisdom and compassion i.e. develop within us qualities that we usually associate with a spiritual practice?
I'm not sure that writing directly promotes wisdom and compassion. Rather it brings all the millions of facets of existence (such as our mental states) into relationship so we can get some sort of handle (if the writing is really good!) on how it all fits together and how we affect the world through our mentality.
9. What do writing and Buddhist practice have to offer each other? How can meditation nourish and open our writing? Can writing nurture our spiritual life?
It does it by nurturing awareness, insight and empathy. Very briefly I think it works by offering a greater perspective on human life than the mechanical participation in life itself affords. A good example might be Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" which is partly about a romantic relationship falling apart in London in the War. He describes with great detail the states of mind and preoccupations of the two characters so that you know the complexity of their characters and understand exactly why they behave as they do, and one is less inclined to condemn them as a result. I think this process of empathising rather than judging has a very great bearing on our spiritual lives, it's a very difficult thing to achieve and our present world stands in enormous need of it.
10. What place does imagination have in Buddhist-inspired creative writing?
Imagination is what enables empathy and thus makes possible compassion.
11. Your workshops encourage us to come together to write; how important is it to write in a group setting, to share our writing with others like this? What are the advantages of writing alone compared with writing in a group? What are the benefits of writing in a group?
a) Sharing writing is, I strongly believe, a spiritual practice in itself. We get very valuable feedback by simply reading our writing out without receiving explicit comment of any kind. It also enables us to feel that we can say something conventionally unacceptable or embarrassing or 'shadowy' and not be judged for it. The long-term effects of this have to be experienced to be believed.
b) Writing alone is also a practice, perhaps harder for many people than in a group. There are times when inspiration simply fails and we are left with our naked mental states and a blank page before us. At times like these all our failures and excuses stand revealed for what they are: part of our background conditioning which we as Buddhists must find a way to overcome.
c) Writing in a group can be beneficial because when we're alone we may be tempted to just give up when things get tough; or we may believe there are standards in the world that we'll never attain. A group situation can remind us at the critical moment that being true to ourselves, witnessing our experience if you like, is the only standard that matters, and that giving up is giving in to our past conditioning, repeating the endless circle of samsara.
With many thanks to Louise Southerden at the Sydney Buddhist Library for permission to reproduce this interview.
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I think the above deals with this question.
8. In terms of writing as practice, what is it about writing that might promote wisdom and compassion i.e. develop within us qualities that we usually associate with a spiritual practice?
I'm not sure that writing directly promotes wisdom and compassion. Rather it brings all the millions of facets of existence (such as our mental states) into relationship so we can get some sort of handle (if the writing is really good!) on how it all fits together and how we affect the world through our mentality.
9. What do writing and Buddhist practice have to offer each other? How can meditation nourish and open our writing? Can writing nurture our spiritual life?
It does it by nurturing awareness, insight and empathy. Very briefly I think it works by offering a greater perspective on human life than the mechanical participation in life itself affords. A good example might be Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" which is partly about a romantic relationship falling apart in London in the War. He describes with great detail the states of mind and preoccupations of the two characters so that you know the complexity of their characters and understand exactly why they behave as they do, and one is less inclined to condemn them as a result. I think this process of empathising rather than judging has a very great bearing on our spiritual lives, it's a very difficult thing to achieve and our present world stands in enormous need of it.
10. What place does imagination have in Buddhist-inspired creative writing?
Imagination is what enables empathy and thus makes possible compassion.
11. Your workshops encourage us to come together to write; how important is it to write in a group setting, to share our writing with others like this? What are the advantages of writing alone compared with writing in a group? What are the benefits of writing in a group?
a) Sharing writing is, I strongly believe, a spiritual practice in itself. We get very valuable feedback by simply reading our writing out without receiving explicit comment of any kind. It also enables us to feel that we can say something conventionally unacceptable or embarrassing or 'shadowy' and not be judged for it. The long-term effects of this have to be experienced to be believed.
b) Writing alone is also a practice, perhaps harder for many people than in a group. There are times when inspiration simply fails and we are left with our naked mental states and a blank page before us. At times like these all our failures and excuses stand revealed for what they are: part of our background conditioning which we as Buddhists must find a way to overcome.
c) Writing in a group can be beneficial because when we're alone we may be tempted to just give up when things get tough; or we may believe there are standards in the world that we'll never attain. A group situation can remind us at the critical moment that being true to ourselves, witnessing our experience if you like, is the only standard that matters, and that giving up is giving in to our past conditioning, repeating the endless circle of samsara.
With many thanks to Louise Southerden at the Sydney Buddhist Library for permission to reproduce this interview.
Back to Home page