Relax Into Your Creativity with Ruth Ozeki
In this episode, Marc speaks with acclaimed novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki about her journey into Zen practice and her life as a writer. Ruth shares how her grandfather sparked her interest in meditation, her transition from Tibetan Buddhism to Zen, and how Zen helped her overcome writer’s block. They explore themes of timeless being, selflessness, and creativity, and how her spiritual path continues to shape her writing process.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Marc: Ruth, it’s such a treat to get to be here with you.
[00:00:02] Ruth : Yeah. Thank you, mark. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:00:06] Marc: Yeah. So I I, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard from you your, what I think of as the origin story. How did you come to be practicing Zen?
[00:00:18] Ruth : Yeah, well. I mean, the origin story story really is kind of an origin story, , because, , my, my mother’s Japanese and my Japanese grandparents were both Zen practitioners.
[00:00:31] Ruth : They were both meditators. And I only met my grandfather once when I was three years old. And my first encounter with him I, I, it’s my first memory as a, as a little human being, , they had arrived at night and they had they were sleeping in my parents’ bedroom. And so I woke up in the morning and went to the kitchen and my mother told me to go wake them up and, and tell them to come to breakfast.
[00:00:59] Ruth : [00:01:00] And so I went to the bedroom and, I remember, ’cause , one of the memories is of reaching up for the doorknob right? To open the door. And I, so I opened the door and I. Took a step into the room and confronted this man who was sitting on the floor cross-legged on the floor, and, this was in East Haven, Connecticut, and grownups didn’t sit on the floor.
[00:01:24] Ruth : That it just, that’s not what grownups did. And so I was really, , startled and and he had his eyes closed and his legs crossed and he was rocking, sort of slowly back and forth. And when he heard me, he opened his eyes, right? And he looked right at me. Right? So there was this like moment of like direct eye contact, right?
[00:01:46] Ruth : And , and of course I was terrified, right? So I went running back out to the kitchen and I think I must have, I told my mother and. What I remember, and I think this was just the
[00:01:56] Ruth : story that she used to tell me, was [00:02:00] that she didn’t use the word meditating ever. She, she said that he was doing breathing exercises, and, . And, she had, she didn’t really know that much about it. She wasn’t raised Buddhist herself. She was, , raised in Hawaii and, uh, the community there was a more Christian community, so she didn’t really know that much about Zen. But in any case, that was my first encounter and it was kind of, , face to face.
[00:02:22] Ruth : Sort of one of those face-to-face transmission moments. And, , but then, I think I was, , it was the 1960s, so I was really interested in, , everybody was meditating and, so when the Beatles started meditating, so did I, and , I didn’t know how to do it or what I was doing.
[00:02:38] Ruth : But I, I, I was like nine, 10 years old maybe, and would sit on the floor in front of a candle and stare at the flame and think that I was meditating. And, . And then I think when I was 14 I was initiated, , I got my transcendental meditation, , mantra. So I did that for a while. Much later.
[00:02:58] Ruth : I mean, I kind of had this off [00:03:00] and on meditation practice, but in my. Late thirties, I started practicing Tibetan Buddhism and did that for several years and then, , moved to the West Coast and then finally. I, , I sort of lost touch with the Tibetan Sangha and I was here on Cortez and, , Norman Fisher came, uh, for a workshop called Compassion in Action, and he he had a, he had a back injury.
[00:03:31] Ruth : There were several other teachers who had come to, and he had, he had, , a, , herniated disc or something in his back, and he didn’t wanna come. He tried to cancel, but, , the organizers kind of were pressuring him to come and they said, , if you come, we’ll give you, , somebody will take care of you.
[00:03:46] Ruth : Right. And so they gave me that job. , My job was to take care of this man, Norman, Norman Fisher, who I’d never heard of before. , I was still more aligned with the Tibetan teachers and, . So I took care of him for like five days or something like [00:04:00] that. And, just drove him around and, and we got to know each other and it was, , it was just this lovely kind of friendship that, , started that this way.
[00:04:09] Ruth : And when, , when he left, I knew that he was going to do a shin, which I didn’t, I didn’t know what a sine was, but he was going to do a retreat. And so when, when we parted, I gave him a copy of my first novel, which. , I knew he was a, a writer. And it had just been published, , maybe earlier that year, and he gave me a maah, right?
[00:04:30] Ruth : And so we exchange, we exchanged gifts and then parted. And then three weeks later, four weeks later, I got a little package in the mail and it was a cassette tape and it was a Dharma talk. Unlabeled. It was a dharma talk that he, I realized that he had given at this shin, which was in Bellingham and. In the talk he, he talked about how he had met, he had just been to this conference and he had met a real live Bodhi Sattva.
[00:04:59] Ruth : And he talked [00:05:00] about how this Bodhi Sattva had driven him around the island and taken care of him, right? And then he said, and then he said something like, , and this Bodhi Sattva is a novel. And she gave me a copy of her novel. And so since my job is to entertain you all this week, I’m gonna read a chapter of her novel to you.
[00:05:18] Ruth : And he did, he read, he read this chapter from the novel and he read it so beautifully and it was, he read it in a way that made it so funny, right? And everybody was laughing and I just thought. This obviously is my teacher. Anybody who can read my work, and get this much of a reaction from a crowd, this, , this is it, right? Yeah. And so that’s, I started showing up for Shin and that was my introduction to Zen. So it was, I started out with my grandfather from Japan and then ended up with, , a teacher who’s, , a Jew from, , Pennsylvania, right?
[00:05:50] Marc: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s great.
[00:05:52] Marc: I love the story. And just to fill in, so. People listening might not realize that. Uh, you are talking about, uh, [00:06:00] Cortez Island, British Columbia.
[00:06:01] Ruth : That’s right.
[00:06:02] Marc: Holly. Holly Hawk.
[00:06:03] Ruth : That’s right.
[00:06:03] Marc: And, and, uh, and Norman Fisher. I I, I actually first met Norman. We were students. We were students together.
[00:06:11] Marc: Tasajara back in the, way back in this, yeah. Late seventies.
[00:06:15] Ruth : Yeah. Yeah. ,
[00:06:16] Marc: Yeah. And Norman, I was ordained. I was ordained as a priest by, by Norman.
[00:06:21] Ruth : Right. That’s right.
[00:06:22] Marc: So I’m, I’m now, so many things I want to ask you. I, I wanna, I do wanna ask you your origin story as a, as a writer as you were, uh, that’s simple as, as you were describing.
[00:06:34] Marc: You, you, I’m sure you don’t know this, I’m often reading a piece that you wrote. It starts with the zen nun, Chico Ya. Satani once told me in a dream that you can’t understand. What it means to be alive on this earth until you understand the time being.
[00:06:52] Ruth : Yeah.
[00:06:52] Marc: I love, I love that. I love that. That’s
[00:06:55] Ruth : from, isn’t that the, it’s one of the appendices from, uh, A Tale for the time being.
[00:06:59] Ruth : Right?
[00:06:59] Marc: [00:07:00] Exactly. It’s one of the appendices. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that, and yeah. So the, I’m also, I’m assuming is, was, . Is all over creation your first novel?
[00:07:10] Ruth : No, my year of meats. Oh, my year of meat meats
[00:07:13] Marc: that
[00:07:13] Ruth : came,
[00:07:13] Marc: that
[00:07:13] Ruth : came first. That’s right. That was the first one that right.
[00:07:17] Marc: Uhhuh. Which I know.
[00:07:19] Marc: I was, , I was tickled to learn that my, my daughter had. No known of you before I knew of you through, through having, having read that book.
[00:07:27] Ruth : Yeah. That was the first one. That was in 1998, I think. Uhhuh. Yeah.
[00:07:32] Marc: So origin story with you as a writer. Yeah,
[00:07:34] Ruth : I mean, it, it’s, that’s easy. , I, I started writing when I learned how to hold a pencil and, , , and I never stopped.
[00:07:43] Ruth : It just was always what I love to do. And, , I always felt that I could. I could think better with a pencil in my hand or a pen in my hand. So in a way I think writing and thinking became different [00:08:00] aspects of the same thing. , When I was a little kid, I I was an avid reader and what I loved were, , I loved, thick, juicy novels.
[00:08:08] Ruth : Mm-hmm. And, , and I really wanted to write novels, but , again, it was a. , I, I guess I was growing up in, in, on the East coast, there weren’t a lot of Asian Americans around. I, I didn’t really have a cultural context that. It led me to think that I could write novels. , And so, I remember thinking, like, people who look like me don’t write novels, so, what do they write?
[00:08:33] Ruth : And, , and, and of course, , it was more things like haiku, right? And so I remember at, I went through this period where I thought, okay, well I’m, I’m, I’m gonna write Haiku, but I’m not, as you can tell, I’m a very verbose person, right? So, . 17 syllables doesn’t quite cut it right.
[00:08:49] Ruth : And so, , but I, I tried, at first I wrote a lot of poetry. Right? And then little by little, I mean, ’cause when I was a kid, , there weren’t any Japanese American novelists [00:09:00] or, at all. I think Amy Tan didn’t publish Joy Luck Club until, , I was in my thirties, right? So I just didn’t, there was no precedent for, for, this person that I wanted to be.
[00:09:12] Ruth : But in any case, I, , it was always drawn to the longer form fiction and, , and I tried writing short stories in college and, and, , and then tried writing novels several times after that. And, but never really, never really knew how, or, , it hadn’t really come together. I, I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to do it right.
[00:09:33] Ruth : And so then I got into the film business and, , and so I was hired to make, and to direct and edit at films. And it was really editing images was where I learned to write. It was, , editing television. Where you have to, you have to be very succinct and you have to get to the point very quickly.
[00:09:51] Ruth : And, , and really, and, and , you’re just relying on visuals to tell a story. And that was really what did it for me. And after that [00:10:00] I suddenly realized I, I know how to do this now I know how to write a novel. And so I wrote my year of meats and , and that was the first one, and I’ve never looked back.
[00:10:10] Marc: That’s great. That’s great. I often describe, uh, a tale for the time being as, , maybe my favorite novel. I, I don’t, I don’t read, I, I mostly read nonfiction.
[00:10:22] Ruth : Yeah.
[00:10:23] Marc: Although at the, I, I find myself now reading more and more novels, but I when I, I think I read the first, I don’t know, three pages or five pages of a tale for the time being, and I was just so.
[00:10:36] Marc: Hooked by, by the, the voice of this teenage, the, the, the creativity that went into creating the voice of this teenage girl.
[00:10:46] Ruth : I didn’t really feel like there was anything creative about it. I, it because. , She now, and, and sometimes this happens with characters, it’s almost like they’re coming from some other [00:11:00] place, ?
[00:11:00] Ruth : And, and that I really have very little to do with it. , I just kind of have to show up and be ready and, , and if I do that, then, suddenly this character starts to speak to me. And, , when I say that, I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds like really kind of, like woo woo or something, ?
[00:11:17] Ruth : . Uh, and I, and I understand that it’s not, , it’s not like a PI play where there’s all these, , characters out there in search of authors and they see one and they, , it’s like, oh look, , she’s paying attention. I think I’ll go inhabit her. Right? I know it’s not like that.
[00:11:31] Ruth : I think it’s more that. We all, all of us, have different facets of self, right? This thing that we call self, right? And we have all of these different facets of self and different facets of self emerge in relationship to others, right? And so, if you pay attention to that, , if you’re kind of tuned into the different facets of self that you have been over the course of a very long lifetime.
[00:11:58] Ruth : That’s what I [00:12:00] think, that’s where the material comes from. And so at, there was a point where I was a an unhappy, right. 16-year-old girl who had lots of suicidal ideations and who also was very dramatic about her life. And, and I think that is where, , the impetus for the voice of now comes from.
[00:12:20] Ruth : It’s, and, and I think too, , in that book there’s a character named Ruth. Right. So that’s clear where that Ruth comes from, ? Yes, yes. And then there’s old gco who is 104 year old, great grandmother. And , I think that’s a kind of aspirational, , aspect facet of self.
[00:12:37] Marc: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:38] Ruth : So, I mean, I guess, , in Buddhism we talk about no self, and maybe this is exactly the same thing. There is no fixed self, it’s all relational, right?
[00:12:45] Marc: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I love in your writing though, the obvious and not so obvious kind of weaving, , zen zen practices, zen selflessness in, into, [00:13:00] into your, into your writing, right?
[00:13:01] Marc: That, like, you, you just, you just threw out that this character’s name is now.
[00:13:06] Ruth : Right. NAO. But of course there’s a pun. That’s right. Right. There’s a pun on NOW. Yeah. Yes,
[00:13:14] Marc: yes. And, and then the, uh, the grandmother, old Gco and the kind of relationship of, , kind of time and life and death, and of course in the bringing, bringing the teachings of Dogan into Right.
[00:13:29] Marc: Time, time being.
[00:13:31] Ruth : Yeah. Well that was a, , , that I wrote that book at a point where, at a period in my life where and it was a fairly long, I mean, it took me about 10 years maybe to write, maybe even longer. This was right after my, so that was my third novel. And it was. After my mother died in 2004, , that’s when I was getting more serious about Zen and I went through a [00:14:00] period there.
[00:14:00] Ruth : Where I just, I, I just had a kind of writer’s block, right? I’d published two novels. I just couldn’t get any traction. On a third, I think I started and stopped many different, , many different books during that time. And I really was feeling like, I don’t know whether I’m gonna be able to continue to do this.
[00:14:18] Ruth : I just, , I, and I, I know that this was, , I, I had lost both parents by then. Life was. Life was hard. And , and so the one thing that was, that felt helpful to me was, was the Zen practice. And so I got quite serious about it and I was living up here on Cortez Island in the middle of a rainforest.
[00:14:37] Ruth : And there’s not much to do here during the winter. And so I set about, I di I was, I, I was really getting interested in Dogan then. And, , I think I had read, I had read Genjo Koan and I started to think very, much about time. And, and of course, because I had just had this, sort of very intimate confrontation with [00:15:00] mortality taking care of my mom.
[00:15:01] Ruth : She had Alzheimer’s and so she really was like a time being who was, very gradually. Dropping out of time. And . And so I was thinking a lot about that and I started reading uji, the Time Being Dogen’s Fale, the time being or being time, depending on how you wanna translate it. And I started.
[00:15:22] Ruth : Kind of doing an experiment with time. And one of the things I did was block off. I, I got rid of all the clocks in the house and even on my computer I put a little piece of tape over the, the time. , And just because I wanted to see what it was like, , the days are very short in the winter up here because we’re so far north, and I just wanted to see what it would be like to live in a kind of timeless.
[00:15:46] Ruth : Way and to take cues from my body rather than the clock. Right? And so, and I was doing a lot of meditating then, and I think, and, and I was reading the, the Fal Ji [00:16:00] time being. And I think it was really from that experience that the book started to grow the phrase. Time being the way that Katana Hashi translates that phrase he translates it as the time being.
[00:16:16] Ruth : And there’s something kind of weirdly unstable about that phrase in English, because depending on how you pronounce it, it can mean two different things, right? It can mean temporarily, , for the time being right? For, , for now, for the time being, , or for the time being. And if you emphasize the first, and certainly in the context that he puts it in it sounds like a being like a, like an entity, like a, like a time Lord, or, , an alien being made of time.
[00:16:46] Ruth : And, and that really intrigued me, that I loved that, the kind of instability of the phrase, and I think, , it was kind of like a loose tooth every time I ran across it. It would kind of, , I would have to kind of play with it a little bit and. [00:17:00] That I think lodged itself in my brain.
[00:17:02] Ruth : And then one day I just, , this voice came to me and it was a voice of this 16-year-old, , teenager living in Tokyo. And , and she introduced herself to me and she said, hi, my name is now and I’m a time being, do what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you a time being is someone who lives in time and that may, , and she just.
[00:17:24] Ruth : Boom, she was off and running, right? Yeah. Yeah. , So it all came from that, it all came from that little bit of that little phrase and then the, , the kind of experiment that I was doing around it with time.
[00:17:35] Marc: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love, , I feel like I don’t even need to ask you about your creative process.
[00:17:41] Marc: It’s just kind of seeping out, seeping out of you. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s interesting, especially in today’s, today’s world where. Time and we’re so right that you, that you needed to, I love that you, uh, even put a put, blocked it out even on your, because every, everywhere we live, everywhere
[00:17:59] Ruth : there’s [00:18:00] clocks.
[00:18:00] Ruth : Yeah. There’s s there’s, there’s, yeah,
[00:18:02] Marc: there’s, there’s clocks. Yeah.
[00:18:03] Ruth : Yeah. Well, I mean, we live in a relentlessly capitalist society and capitalism and t , and time. It’s all about monetizing time, right. And, and, , turning time into a commodity and. That seems like a really limited way to live a life, right?
[00:18:17] Ruth : I mean, it’s, it’s not that time is a construct, right? Blocks are constructs. Money is a construct. So, why not just let go of it all and see, I mean here too, the wonderful thing about living as remotely. A as we do up here is that there’s really nothing to buy, right? And so, , I, when I lived here, I would go for weeks and weeks without ever handling money, right?
[00:18:45] Ruth : I mean, I would lose my wallet and then suddenly have to go to town and realize like, oh, right, I need money. And, , and I’d have to run around, , trying to find my wallet. Of course. Now the problem is that you can actually get [00:19:00] Amazon here, even here on Cortez. So all of that’s, all of that’s ruined, , but
[00:19:07] Marc: So do you, , do you have a ritual these days around around writing that’s either time bound or not time bound, and how do you, how do you practice?
[00:19:20] Ruth : Well, usually, , . Usually when I’m writing, I’m in North Hampton, Massachusetts, which is where I’m living these days. And I have an office there and this is a new, this is new for me. I’ve never had an office before and I love my office and I have no internet there. If I need to, I can get on, get on on my phone, but generally I don’t, I don’t have internet there.
[00:19:47] Ruth : And , and I just go there in the morning. Spend the day there and, yeah, and it’s a place that is, , where I only do writing. I don’t do I, I try my hardest [00:20:00] not to do email, not to do all of the business stuff that one has to do. , It’s just a kind of creative space. And that’s been.
[00:20:08] Ruth : That’s been really, really wonderful. I tend to write best in the mornings. And so my, , my ideal situation is, get up and go to the office and and write, and then by around , by around, , one or two o’clock, I’m, I’m kind of winding down a little bit. So I’ll do other things.
[00:20:27] Ruth : , I like to kind of work out in the afternoons or, , do something kind of more energetic in the afternoons. Yeah, and that’s, that’s basically it. It depends on where I am though in a project, right? Sure. First drafts are, are rough and I, I, don’t usually work more than a couple of hours, but once I’m on to kind of editing and, which is the really fun part right for me I can, I can work for.
[00:20:50] Ruth : 10, 12 hours at a time.
[00:20:53] Marc: Right. Interesting. How different, right, the Yeah, yeah, yeah. The blank, the blank pages compared to,
[00:20:59] Ruth : it’s [00:21:00] very intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. Even, , even after all these years. Yeah.
[00:21:05] Marc: Well, I’m, I, I, I’m guessing, although I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that you don’t think of yourself through the lens as a leader so much.
[00:21:16] Ruth : Oh, no, I don’t at all. No. See,
[00:21:17] Marc: but see, so I wanna, I wanna give you some different context here.
[00:21:21] Ruth : Yeah.
[00:21:21] Marc: I think of you, I think that as a, as a writer and as, so like the, , some of the key, key components of leadership are one, is, uh, there’s having a vision of what you want to accomplish.
[00:21:37] Marc: There’s actually accomplishing something. Mm-hmm. And, and probably. You end up working with, in leading teams. Mm-hmm. , That you, you, you have your, your, your agent and your editor and your publisher and various, and that you might not. And you’re probably leading in a, in a, , in [00:22:00] more of a kind of a zen way of leading.
[00:22:03] Ruth : I just do what they tell me to do.
[00:22:04] Marc: Well, exactly. That’s what you think.
[00:22:06] Ruth : Yeah. And
[00:22:06] Marc: they all think, they all think they just do what you tell them to do. Probably.
[00:22:10] Ruth : Well, I think actually they might know that they have to tell me to do things, but, no, I think you’re right. You’re right. But it’s a, I guess, I.
[00:22:21] Ruth : Personally have a, a slightly like aversive reaction to the idea of leadership. Because, , my relationship with the, with the work itself. Which is what I feel like my real work is. My real work is is solitary. It’s, it’s what I do, on the page. It’s, uh, relationship between me and the language and me and the characters and me and the book.
[00:22:50] Ruth : , The book eventually starts to have its own persona and so, , it’s, it’s this very intimate relationship between me and the work. Itself, , this book. [00:23:00] And it’s all about following. Mm-hmm. If I try to lead, that’s when I, that’s when I screw up. Mm-hmm. , And so it’s really about, really trying to kind of drop any sense of my own.
[00:23:13] Ruth : Conscious preferences, right. And follow a, a much, different kind of intuitive relationship with the material itself, with the art itself, right? And so there’s that. And then in terms of, sort of that, and that’s being a writer. Right. And I differentiate that from being an author, right?
[00:23:30] Ruth : Being the, being an author is outward facing work. And that’s a job. That’s not work. To me, that’s a job. It’s something that I have to do. , I’m, , responsible for the material that I, the books that I put out into the world, , they’re like, children, I have to take care of them. But that’s a job. That’s not, that’s not the work itself. And so, and, and there are, I think, leadership components, , in the more traditional idea of the word leadership. But even there, I, I feel I [00:24:00] feel like it’s more, and, and I’m sure you would agree with this, that it’s relational that my relationship with my readers is.
[00:24:11] Ruth : Collaboration. It’s not me leading them anywhere. It’s, , they happen to pick up my book and then we have this conversation that takes place over time and, but that’s it.
[00:24:22] Marc: Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, this is, this is, I would say the, well you might say it’s the great, the great aha of, of modern leadership, but it’s the same.
[00:24:32] Marc: It’s the great aha of lasu. Who that. This idea, that leader, that leadership is primarily relational.
[00:24:43] Ruth : Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And that it should be anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And
[00:24:47] Marc: that, that, , what’s, what’s quite beautiful is the way you describe your relation to your characters. I’m also thinking about the way you were [00:25:00] describing.
[00:25:00] Marc: Your relationship to self and kind of mi listening or mining, the various selves, which in a sense is a kind of practice of selflessness. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There’s not any one particular self. And, and I’m also what I read last night I thought is somehow seeming appropriate for right now is this, , this zen poem.
[00:25:22] Marc: When the wind stops flowers fall. When the bird sings, the mountain becomes more calm. That’s nice. Well, it’s ju and I feel like I’m just mirroring what I’m hearing from you. Yeah. About, le it’s, it’s a little bit like you could say, when when I stop leading, beautiful temples are built.
[00:25:45] Marc: Mm mm mm-hmm. Or, , or something, something about this playing, playing with. Leading and following, or doing, doing, doing, and, and not so much doing. And
[00:25:56] Ruth : that, that, evokes for me the, , [00:26:00] Dogen’s teaching about the backward step. Mm-hmm. , And how important it is to, , to take the backward step and shine the light inward.
[00:26:08] Ruth : Right. I think is what he, , he, and that’s his instruction, part of his instruction for meditation. And, . And I think that’s a, , I, I found that to be a beautiful instruction for everything, for life, for certainly for relationships, rather than, , a. Leaning in, stepping forward, dominating kind of relationship with people and with time and with your to-do lists and , everything else.
[00:26:32] Ruth : Right. This idea of productivity, I mean, you used the word mining earlier and I would object to that because I don’t think of it as mining that that’s too object oriented. That’s too, acquisitive. No, it, it’s, it’s more just, , it’s kind of widening and observing and receiving. Mm-hmm.
[00:26:49] Ruth : ? But yeah. Yes. I guess, I mean, I just have a very passive, approach, which is actually not passive, but it
[00:26:57] Marc: right. Passive. Passive does not feel [00:27:00] like
[00:27:00] Ruth : Yeah.
[00:27:01] Marc: How I would des Right. So, yeah. But
[00:27:02] Ruth : it’s a kind of active passivity.
[00:27:05] Marc: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s sounds like, , it’s, it’s a, it’s allowing, it’s deep listening.
[00:27:13] Marc: Yeah. Yeah. It’s being, maybe being, . Being awake. Being awake for what is, what is, especially for you as a writer. What, what is, what is coming through you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it’s interesting how you are quite quite clear in, in a way, in creating the environment for that.
[00:27:34] Ruth : Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s true.
[00:27:36] Ruth : I think that’s true and it’s a, , it’s a less a physical environment than a, , almost a, a mental environment. Yeah, yeah. And that’s where I think Zazen is, is a wonderful way of creating that environment. It’s, it’s, , creating a kind of receptive mind, , that, that can be aware and can.
[00:27:57] Ruth : Pay attention. Right. , And isn’t always distracted and [00:28:00] clouded by, all of the noise. Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:02] Marc: Well, great. We’ve, we’ve somehow managed to come full circle. We started with your Zen Orange origin story, and now we’re talking about zen.
[00:28:10] Ruth : That’s right, that’s right. That’s right. All roads, all roads to zazen, , sorry,
[00:28:14] Marc: Zen, Zen meditation.
[00:28:15] Marc: And
[00:28:16] Ruth : That’s right.
[00:28:16] Marc: And I love, I love the story of your walking in and kind of receiving this kind of silent. Transmission from your grandfather.
[00:28:26] Ruth : Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:28] Marc: It’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful image.
[00:28:30] Ruth : Yeah. Yeah. No, that was, I, the first memory I have as a human being, right. So that it meant something, I think.
[00:28:39] Ruth : Mm-hmm. It gave me sort of my marching orders. Yeah.
[00:28:42] Marc: Yeah. It’s really a delight to just to get to hang out, get to hang out with you. And I am I notice I’m feeling inspired to create the mind, mind, space and physical space for my [00:29:00] own writing and c creative, creative process. Yeah. So it’s a thank you for the inspiration.
[00:29:06] Ruth : Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I guess that’s the last thing to say is that we all have this, right? I mean, this is not unique to me. , We all have this. It’s just, , are you going to give yourself, permission to really relax into that, that, that creativity and, and, and do it allow that to happen.
[00:29:27] Ruth : Allow that to emerge, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, uh.
[00:29:32] Marc: Relax into your creativity. Yes. I think you’ve just, , named, named what we’ll call this conversation. And I, and I, and I always often I perhaps this will be part one and we’ll we’ll see where we, where we wanna go at some other time. But, but Ruth, thank you so much.
[00:29:48] Marc: I appreciate talking to you.
[00:29:49] Ruth : Thank you so much, Marc. It’s great to talk to you.
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