07.14.2023 Beach Reading I love summer, I really do. With its bright, long days and welcoming weather, my world opens up to endless possibilities. Longer nights and earlier mornings allow for days to fill with activities and get-togethers. Weekends become packed with barbecues, road trips, and outdoor adventures. Around the middle of the season, I start to feel my tank becoming empty. I find myself losing steam trying to pack it all in. To prioritize rest in these wonderfully busy months, I always set a lofty reading goal. When the nice weather hits, I tend to shy away from more dense, academic material and gravitate towards the light, inspiring, and heartfelt. I want to read short, devourable stories — as many as possible. “Beach reads,” if you will. Reading fiction, no matter the genre, can be a lesson in deep compassion. While these stories may be products of imagination, their characters and the narratives they live out can hold invaluable teachings that exemplify the principles we aspire to nurture in Buddhist practice. The three pieces below highlight the value in fiction and the impact it can have on our spiritual journey. May they inspire you to embrace the joy of reading this summer, and do some beachside contemplation of your own. —Martine Panzica, Assistant Digital Editor, Lion’s Roar The Dharma of Fiction   Novels, fables, and plays—they’re stories that are made up, yet they often express deep truths. Five writers and thinkers explore the spiritual teachings they’ve found in fiction.   “Our existence, we learn, is suffused with dukkha; every second is touched by its turmoil. It can be subtle, or it can be extreme. But being aware of this is a momentous beginning. A flower finally noticed. I find the dharma most present in the last line of the novel. Mrs. Dalloway steps into the middle of her party, her thoughts silenced for just a moment: ‘There she was.’ I see a woman at peace. Awakened to her life.” ADVERTISEMENT Truth in Fiction Pico Iyer loves reading spiritual books, but he’s found just as much good dharma in the books of three favorite novelists. Why, my friends sometimes ask me, do I say that the Buddhist texts I turn to, repeatedly, are Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard, the pages of Proust and, more and more, George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo? It’s not just because literature is my drug of choice, and I don’t know my way round any other discipline. It’s not just because all of them are written in a language I understand and with a frame of reference that I know. In Proust’s case, they’re clearly not. And it’s not because they offer resolutions, consolations, or explanations, because all of them are saying at heart that all’s not right with the world, and we can’t expect it to be. Fiction Is a Lie That Illuminates the Path to Compassion Mystery, suspense, science fiction — Andrea Miller profiles three Buddhist-inspired novelists who make up stories to tell the truth about our world. Mysteries are also a succinct reflection of the Buddhist concept of karma. As Dunlap explains it, at the heart of every murder mystery is a dead person. In normal life, people are killed all the time and they don’t necessarily bring their fate upon themselves. But in a mystery—for it to work—they do in some fashion have to draw the murderer to them. Otherwise, readers won’t really care about the story. The victim in a mystery can cause their murder by doing something evil or conniving or by doing something innocent or even well intentioned. “The important thing,” says Dunlap, “is that they have done something to set in motion the wheel of karma in their lives.” LION’S ROAR PROMOTION Subscribe Today!