Talk on Art Making

First talk in series on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Second talk in series on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Chris Fortin gives this third talk in a series on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Fourth talk in a series on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Talk on Language Poetry and War

"These are incendiary poems...like fire-bombs..." Norman describes Leaves of Grass as "one of the great manifestos of American literature," discussing the work's relevance to mystical and Buddhist thought.

"These are incendiary poems...like fire-bombs..." Norman describes Leaves of Grass as "one of the great manifestos of American literature," discussing the work's relevance to mystical and Buddhist thought.

Norman reads his unedited poems from his trip to Japan in July 2010 with a number of Everyday Zen priests.

Zoketsu discusses his own life story, poetry, being a priest, and the unknowable nature of our life.

A talk about the essentially unrepresentable nature of Buddhism, given by Norman at the "Speaking For the Buddha?: Buddhism and the Media" conference at U.C. Berkeley on February 8-9, 2005

Norman explores the basic human need for expression. Through poetics, Dogen, Ginsberg, and Valery, he investigates what art is and the beauty of its instability.

...language is on one hand a prison: we are literally locked inside language, created by, defined by, language, and can only see as far as we can say. On the other hand, language can free us: it can open our imagination and allow us to reach out to the world, and also to fly beyond it...

An ancient set of Buddhist slogans offers us six powerful techniques to transform life's difficulties into awakening and benefit.

A meditation, in poetry and prose, on light, language, and silence in Kabbalistic and Zen literature, focusing on the Zohar and Kabbalistic texts and on Buddhist views of language and Dogen's linguistic praxis.

I want to tell you about coming apart, wanting to die, and returning at last to myself, and about how my Buddhist practice both helped and hindered me in this zigzag journey.

"Trying to write about Buddhism is more difficult. It is something I mostly do not do. Mostly I wrote about immediate experience, and about writing, which is a kind of experience. People tell me that most of my writing sounds like it is about Buddhism, but I don’t really intend it to be that way."

En este ensayo Norman Fischer discute la relación complementaria entre la práctica espiritual y el arte

Norman's eagerly awaited book about Homer's Odyssey and the metaphor of homecoming, from a Zen perspective. "Norman Fischer deftly incorporates Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and popular thought, as well as his own unique and sympathetic understanding of life, in his reinterpretation of Odysseus's familiar wanderings as lessons that everyone can use. We see how to resist the seduction of the Sirens' song to stop sailing and give up; how to bide our time in a situation and wait for the right opportunity -- as Odysseus does when faced with the murderous, one-eyed Cyclops; and how to reassess our story and rediscover our purpose and identity if, like the Lotus-Eaters, we have forgotten the past."