“Recently, I heard someone say that great literature was their religion. I know what they mean. There can be poetry and prose that capture states of being so transparently and unforgettably that any added theology or philosophy could only detract. Take “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Often, when I contemplate what the Buddhists call “dhukkha,” the Pali word for the suffering or, better, that unsatisfactory, incomplete, pining quality that is built in to existence, I think of that great self-made, driven American character Jay Gatsby, looking across Long Island Sound, at the green light on dock of his beautiful love, Daisy Buchanan. No matter what Gatsby has achieved or will ever achieve–and he has amassed great riches by hook or by crook–Daisy will always be unattainable. Poor Gatsby can’t ever see through the gorgeous veil of illusion. “The Great Gatsby” has been called The Great American Novel. I think of it as the Great American Sutta (in Pali, sutra in Sanskrit) on the suffering that comes from craving…”

— an excerpt from Tracy Cochran