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Since its spread from East Asia to the West, Buddhism’s percolation through cultural landscapes has continued, almost unacknowledged, to influence the creative arts and our reception of them. My thesis employs a Western Buddhist (WB) lens through which to examine deep awareness in contemporary shorter fiction and potential analogies with Buddhist bare attention as a stepping-stone to new ways of seeing.
Mapping convergences of the practices (the Western Buddhist/fiction eco-tone) in the last half century, I establish the reason for a new hermeneutic on short fiction, employing a personal, Western Buddhist perspective, with a nexus on deep awareness. I explore Banana Yoshimoto’s short fiction through a personalised WB lens and use a Tibetan Nyingma lens to explore George Saunders’ stories. I examine tropes in Banana Yoshimoto and George Saunders’ short fiction through critical readings and, supported by Saunders’ articulation of intentionality in the qualitative research, argue that Saunders aims to transmit compassion to readers through the text.
Everyday language, restraint and impermanence, central to Yoshimoto’s fiction, are examined in the light of WB’s things-as-they-are, non-reliance on words and Dogen’s time-in-being. I discuss Saunders’ fiction in terms of the Nyingma aspiration of karuna, a Tibetan concept of deep identity with others, built on the Bodhisattva Vow to liberate all beings, and his exploration of moral dilemmas.
Positioning art as an invitation to life expressed through fictional moments that nudge us out of habitual modes of thinking and drawing on my own experience of WB, I synthesise recurring themes of Impermanence, Suffering and No-Self, “The Three Marks of Existence”, with my own reiterative obsessions with change, dissatisfaction and identity. Framed by the WB lens, I argue Yoshimoto’s, Saunders’ and my own tropes may encourage readers to reframe perception. |
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