Interview with the Author - Part 1

This last section of the manuscript for The Book of Chen Jen will be broken down into several posts. To see all the posts in chronological order, go to the Book of Chen Jen Index Page (scroll down to Section 3). For the sake of these posts, the questions posed by the interviewer, Sue-tzu, will be in bold and the answers by the author will appear as regular text.

Thank you for giving this interview.

You’re most welcome, though it might disappoint you.

Why is that?

I have little to say.

You did write the Book of Chen Jen, is that correct?

Yes, I admit it.

Yet it says so much. Are the teachings of Chen Jen essentially yours as well?

I am sympathetic to his ‘teachings’. But you must remember he is a fictional character hidden behind a veil of obscurity. Everything is fiction. I, you, Chen Jen — we are all of us fictional characters. There is no Chen Jen. Therefore he can have no teachings. He is the creation of an anonymous author about whose life and true ideas we can know nothing.

Can I assume you are going to publish this interview? And if so, would you mind if I addressed your readers directly?

Yes, I hope to include it in a revised edition of the Book of Chen Jen. And no, I don’t mind.

Then I speak to you the reader: Don’t believe any of this! There was no Chen Jen. There is no Sue-tzu — I made her and this interview up. And there is no ‘me’, because I have made myself up as well!

You did write the Book of Chen Jen?

Yes. But who has authored me?

You’re saying that you, too, are a fictional character?

Of course I am a fictional character! What else could I be? Do you believe yourself to be otherwise?

Something . . . has to be real! Somewhere, someone is writing this down! Is that someone you?

No, it’s not me. I don’t know who it is. But it doesn’t really matter—he is himself a fictional character, the product of his own mind.

I suppose I might say that I made you up.

Yes, that’s it exactly. Like the ‘Tao’ itself, all is hidden behind veils — veils behind veils. But obscurity is not an obstruction to understanding; it is the message itself.

You have insisted that I guarantee your anonymity; why is that?

Because I do not want that I should be someone public — someone with ‘teachings’ to be followed. I think Chen Jen had it right when he said that disciples are a great danger to the sage because their demands are in contradiction to his very being. How can he impart being through words? Why should he want to? He is a man without opinions. He has no purpose. He sees no need to improve the world or to transform people.

This ambivalence about the entire writing project is obvious throughout. How do you reconcile the fact that you have ‘shared’ these ideas with what you have just said?

Yes, Chen Jen and his creator are not entirely comfortable sharing what in the end cannot be spoken. Yet, the words well up. They have no intention. They arise. And Chen Jen, being in harmony with himself and the world, lets them flow unhindered by any intention to speak or not to speak. As for the author, writing Chen Jen was an exercise wherein he experienced flow; it had no other end.

Part 2 will be posted at 4:03 a.m. tomorrow and each subsequent part will appear at the same time until Section 3 is completed..