The Story We're All In
What is the world? It's people living, breathing, making love, dying, birthing, cutting your hair. It's also a lot of other stuff that isn't so hot.
Roshi Kapleau used to say, “The mind illumines the ancient teachings and the ancient teachings illumine the mind.” That's why I became a storyteller. That's the relationship of Zen and stories. To me, that's the nub of everything we've been trying to talk about. That's it. That's the whole thing, that our minds are transformed by coming into contact with deep narrative, and deep narrative is brought alive by our mind. You can have the scientific data explaining the world but it's apparently not enough. We seem to need stories to come to a deeper understanding. Myth is the highest level of story. It's story in which the nature of one's identity is revealed or may get revealed. It's the story in which we're all embedded, which is the story of identity. Isn't that the highest story? Myth to me is a story that touches on the nature of identity: who we are, where do we come from—that's myth.
- Rafe Martin from his interview with Joseph Sorrentino, ‘Fairy Tales and Zen Riddles' (Winter, 2005)
Read the complete article. http://www.tricycle.com/interview/fairy-tales-and-zen-riddles?offer=dharma
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