Ruth Ozeki and Shinge Roshi in Conversation

Please join us for a special online event at Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji: A Conversation with Ruth Ozeki and and Shinge Roshi on The Book of Form and Emptiness.

Ruth Ozeki, a novelist and a Zen priest in the Everyday Zen Foundation, will join Shinge Sherry Chayat Roshi, a writer and abbot of the Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji, in an online conversation Tuesday, March 8, 2022, at 7 p.m. Ozeki will read from her latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness. Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion of Zen practice and creativity. Proceeds from the event will help support the Zen Center of Syracuse.

Click here to register for the event.

Purchase a Signed Copy of The Book of Form and Emptiness

Ozeki has signed a limited number of copies of The Book of Form and Emptiness especially for this event through special arrangement with Odyssey Books in South Hadley, MA, where Shinge Roshi’s and Andy Hassinger’s son, Jesse Hassinger, is assistant manager and coordinator of the First Editions Club. Ozeki read from her book there in September, just after its release. To order the book, click https://www.odysseybks.com/hoenji-book-club-ozeki.

About The Book of Form and Emptiness

Rachel Leon, in the journal Fiction Writers Review, wrote: “The Book of Form and Emptiness indeed has everything one wants from a novel — sympathetic and interesting characters, a propulsive story that is heartbreaking but also playful and affirming, artful structure and skillful point of view — all while wrestling with life’s big questions. The novel’s engagement with issues of climate change and consumerism culture gives it an urgency, but its whimsical and epic story makes it the kind of book to settle into, where you both want to keep reading and never want it to end. It’s a novel that reminds you of the power of books, exploring the magical exchange between writer and reader.”

About Ruth Ozeki

Ozeki teaches creative writing at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities there. Her last book, A Tale for the Time Being, was a 2013 Booker Award finalist. Ozeki, a Japanese-American-Canadian, studied classical Japanese literature and Noh drama on a Japanese Ministry of Education fellowship after college. When she returned to New York, she worked in the film and television industry as an art director, set designer, producer, and director, and made several independent films of her own. Her other books include the novels All Over Creation, and My Year of Meats, and a short memoir, The Face: A Time Code.

About Shinge Roshi

Shinge Roshi began formal Zen practice at the Zen Studies Society in 1967, and served as co-director of its mountain monastery, Dai Bosatsu Zendo, from 1974 until 1976, when she moved to Syracuse and began leading the Zen Center there. She practiced with MyoOn Maurine Stuart Roshi until the latter’s death in 1990. Eido Shimano Roshi gave her Dharma Transmission in 1998 and authorized her as a roshi, or Zen Master, giving her the name Shinge, meaning “heart-mind flowering,” in 2008. In January 2011 Shinge Roshi was installed as abbot of the Zen Studies Society. Her books include Eloquent Silence: Nyogen Senzaki's Gateless Gate and Other Previously Unpublished Teachings and Letters; Endless Vow: The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa, with Eido Shimano Roshi and Kazuaki Tanahashi; Subtle Sound: The Zen Teachings of Maurine Stuart; Circle: The Zen Brushwork of Kazuaki Tanahashi, and Life Lessons: The Art of Jerome Witkin.

The first meeting between Shinge Roshi and Ruth Ozeki occurred at Belly of the Beast, the Northampton restaurant owned and operated by Jesse Hassinger and his wife, Aimee Francaes, until it closed at the end of 2021. The two women became fast friends, and Shinge Roshi invited Ozeki to give a reading from A Tale for the Time Being at New York Zendo Shobo-ji on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary celebration in 2018.