Dharma Talk: Guest Speaker Natalie Goldberg

photo by Mitsue Nagase

Thursday, July 18; 5:30 –7 PM

Hybrid, free, no registration required. Meditation begins at 5:30 pm MT, followed by the Dharma Talk (teisho) at 6:00 pm MT. To participate online, please click here: sit.mountaincloud.org (password: mountain22)

You are invited to join us for an evening with Natalie Goldberg at Mountain Cloud Zen Center’s zendo on Thursday, July 18, where she will be discussing and reading from her new book, Writing on Empty, which was launched just last week!

In her book, Natalie Goldberg shares her inspiring personal journey out of a devastating period of writer’s block and back into a life of growth, creativity, and healing. Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore? In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page. When all of her tried and true methods – meditation, sitting still, writing practice – stopped working, she had to take drastic action. She got into her car and left New Mexico in search of a new inventive source. In her journey through the western states, she visited famous literary sites, searching for the spark that would reignite her ability to write.

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About Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, writer, and painter. A student of Zen Buddhism for twenty-four years, she trained intensively with Katagiri Roshi for twelve years, and is ordained in the Order of Interbeing with Thich Nhat Hanh. Natalie Goldberg teaches writing workshops nationally based on the methods presented in Writing Down the Bones. Natalie Goldberg is the author of fifteen books, including Writing Down the Bones, which has sold two million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Her most recent book is Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage To The Heart and Homeland of Haiku. She has also written Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home: a memoir (Shambhala 2018): the beloved Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, a memoir about her Zen teacher. She lives in northern New Mexico.