Buddhist Poet Ocean Vuong on Failure, Redemption, and Second Chances

Tricycle Talks

Content provided by Tricycle Talks and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Tricycle Talks and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

14d ago 1:03:41

MP3•Episode home

For poet Ocean Vuong, the act of writing is inextricably linked to his Zen Buddhist practice. In a previous episode of Life As It Is, he told Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg that he believes the task of the writer is “to look long and hard at the most difficult part of the human condition—of samsara—and to make something out of it so that it can be shared and understood.”

Now, in his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, Vuong turns his attention to our cultural avoidance of illness and death, as well as the small moments of care and kindness that are essential to survival. Tracing the unlikely friendship between a young writer and an elderly widow who’s succumbing to dementia, the novel reckons with themes of history and memory, loneliness and heartbreak, and failure and redemption.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Vuong to discuss how he incorporates Buddhist notions of emptiness and nothingness into his writing, the role of ghosts and the dead in his work, how writing can be a form of prayer, and what he’s learned from Buddhist understandings of redemption. Plus, Vuong reads an excerpt from his new novel.

169 episodes

#Tricycle Talks #Tricycle: The Buddhist Review #Buddhist #Society #Religion