Five authors contribute to the Lion’s Roar article The Dharma of Fiction where fiction reveals greater truths. The first contribution comes from Emily France on insights gained from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. See an article excerpt below.

For the full article check out http://www.lionsroar.com/the-dharma-of-fiction/

There She Was

Emily France on Mrs. Dalloway.

Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway follows a single day in the life of a British socialite in 1923. The plot is simple. Mrs. Dalloway buys flowers in a London shop, has a visit from a former suitor, and hosts a party. But the novel isn’t about all that. It’s about the vast inner life of one woman, her mind a field of immeasurable size. Woolf painstakingly traces every thought her heroine experiences, and this is part of what makes it remarkable: it was one of the first novels to follow the stream of consciousness.

Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway in the wake of World War I, when writers were turning away from the chaotic details of outward events to the fragmented movements of inner ones. Mrs. Dalloway is pummeled by delicious memories of her youth, feelings of inadequacy in the present, and fears about what may come. And aging! Oh, the horror of all this aging. The powerful undertow of mind is pleasing and terrifying by turns. And it’s nothing if not familiar.

Mrs. Dalloway’s story captures the very essence of dukkha, the Buddhist term for a dissatisfaction that permeates our lives, even at the best of times. She feels something is off-kilter. Things aren’t as they’re supposed to be. Desperate for a solution, her mind tries to solve the puzzle of this discomfort.

‘Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.’—Virginia Woolf

I see a woman at peace. Awakened to her life.