Postmodern Angst and Zen Buddhism in Ruth Ozeki‘s A Tale for the Time Being

Abstract

The article addresses issues concerning objective, or systemic, violence which legitimizes and conditions other forms of violence – psychological, economic, sexual, physical, etc. These issues are approached from the perspective of frustrations and traumas experienced by individuals as a consequence of the shift of the sociohistorical paradigm, which has so far been principally governed by the mechanisms and interests of global postindustrial capitalism. Through the analysis of the status of reality and subject in A Tale for the Time Being, a 2013 novel by Japanese-American author Ruth Ozeki, I first identify the violent and traumatic aspects of contemporary conditions as experienced by the protagonists in the novel. Then, Ozeki’s literary scenario for improving quotidian existence of individuals via internalization of Dogen’s Zen Buddhist principles is assessed from the perspective of the philosophical definitions of the categories of subject and reality in postmodernity, as well as in relation to the actual conditions in the global consumerist societies of the digital age. The article maintains that Ozeki’s solution of the protagonists’ existential crises is rather significant since the fundamental premises of Zen Buddhism correspond to the metaphysical structuring of postmodernity. The novel hence illuminates the productive facets of the fractal nature of postmodern individuals, as well as the role literature can play in their concretisation.