Literary Event:

For this portfolio assignment, I attended an online literary event hosted by Elliot

Bay Books for the author Norman Fischer and his book “When You Greet Me I Bow.”

Fischer is a Zen Buddhist priest, translator, and poet. His book was a collection of all his

writings on Buddhist philosophy and practice throughout his career.

At the beginning of the literary event, the moderator asked the author and his

editor, Cynthia Schrager, questions about Fischer’s career and how he became a Zen

teacher. Fischer talked about how, before, he didn’t desire to be a Zen Buddhist priest. He

explains how he was given opportunity after opportunity to become one and he didn’t

decline any of them. One particularly intriguing thing that he said was that even though

he’s considered a “Zen teacher,” he doesn’t believe that one can actually “teach” Zen

because Zen isn’t something that can be taught. Fischer doesn’t believe that he has

students, per say, but that he practices Zen with others. The author then read from his

book, which went into detail about some of the topics he touched on during the

introduction.

Fischer also talked about how he applies his beliefs and values to his views of

current day politics and social justice issues. His main argument was that there is a lack of

respect on both political sides so the best solution would be for people to either have calm,

open-minded discussions where both sides listened to one another or to set aside political

beliefs and first love and care for each other. I, personally, don’t think the second option

works well since biases still exist and impact who people interact with each other, such as

relating to race, gender, sexuality, etc. However, I still appreciated hearing his pacifist

perspective of the world and am glad I attended his literary event.

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