"I know nothing about Buddhism, if it's present in the play, it is unbeknownst to me."
For years I'd been studying Zen and its particular form of sitting meditation, and I'd always been struck by the parallels between its practice and Beckett's work.
"What do you do in such places?"
He asked.
I told him that mostly we looked at the wall.
"Oh," he said. "You don't have to know anything about Zen to do that. I've been doing it for fifty years."
Becket found it extraordinary that people would seek it out of their own free will.
"Why" He asked. "Did people do it? Were they seeking tranquility? Solutions?" And finally, as with neurosurgery:
"Does it hurt?"
I'm a fit of despair I had written him once about what seemed to me an absolute, insoluble conflict between meditation and writing.
" What is it about looking at the wall that makes the writing seem obsolete?"
Two weeks later, when I'd almost forgotten my question, I received this reply, which I quote in its entirety:
Dear Larry,
When I start looking at walls, I begin to see the writing. From which even my own is relief.
As ever.
Sam
|Lawrence Shainberg|
July 15, 2026 896 3
