“Han Shan, Chan buddhism and Gary Snyder's ecopoetic way” (Publication, 2009)
Year
2009
Text
Tan, Joan Qionglin. Han Shan, Chan buddhism and Gary Snyder's ecopoetic way. (Brighton : Sussex Academic Press, 2009). (Sny16)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Tan, Joan Qionglin
(um 2010) : Associate Professor English Department, Hunan University
Mentioned People (2)
Han, Shan (Tang)
(um 627-649) : Dichter
Snyder, Gary
(San Francisco, Calif. 1930-) : Schriftsteller, Dichter, Professor of English, University of California Davis
[Reproduction of the texts with the permission by Gary Snyder, January 2013].
[Reproduction of the texts with the permission by Gary Snyder, January 2013].
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
/
Religion : Buddhism
Chronology Entries (17)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1950- |
Gary Snyder and China : general Quellen [Chinese and Buddhist literature]. Chang, Kwang-chih. The archaeology of ancient China [ID D13609]. Confucius. [Texts]. Elvin, Mark. The pattern of the Chinese past [ID D12822]. Fenollosa, Ernest. Epoch of Chinese and Japanese art [ID D5101]. Fenollosa, Ernest. The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry [ID D22141]. Frodsham, John D. The murmuring stream [ID D19382]. Gernet, Jacques. Daily life in China on the eve of the Mongol invasion. (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1962). Grousset, René. The empire of the steppes. (New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 1970). Kahn, Paul. The secret history of the Mongols : the origin of Chinghis Khan : an adaptation of the Yuan ch'ao pi shih. (Berkeley, Calif. : North Point Press, 1984). Karlgren, Bernhard. Glosses on the Book of odes [ID D3516]. Laozi. Dao de jing. Marco Polo. The travels. (New York, N.Y. : Penguin, 1958). Needham, Joseph. Science and civilisation in China. Payne, Robert. The white pony [ID D32201]. Pound, Ezra. [Translations of Chinese poetry]. Fairbank, John K. ; Reischauer, Edwin O. East Asia [ID D8482]. Hawkes, David. Chu ci : the songs of the South [ID D14573]. Sherman, E. Lee ; Wen, Fong. Streams and mountains without end. In : Artibus Asiae (1976). Siréen, Osvald. The Chinese on the art of painting [ID D29304]. Sowerby, Arthur de Carle. Nature in Chinese art. (New York, N.Y. : John Day, 1940). Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Records of the grand historian [ID D10059]. Su, Tung-p'o [Su, Shi]. Su Tung-p'o : selections from a Sung dynasty poet [ID D10954]. Sullivan, Michael. On the origins of landscape representation in Chinese art. In : Archives of the Chinese Art society of America ; vol. 7 (1953). Sze, Mai Mai. The way of Chinese landscape painting. (New York, N.Y. : Vintage, 1959). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. [Texts]. Tang shi san bai shou du ben. [300 Tang poems]. 唐詩三百首讀本 Tuan, Yi-fu. China. (Chicago, Ill. : Aldine, 1970). Waley, Arthur. [Translations of Chinese poetry]. Watson, Burton. Chinese lyricism [ID D10951]. Yoshikawa, Kôjirô. An introduction to Song poetry [ID D10945]. Zhuangzi. [Works]. Sekundärliteratur 1972 Wand, David Happell Hsin-fu [Wang, David Rafael] : Gary Snyder found in classical Chinese poetry in translation a sense of the harmony of man and nature 'better and to me more accurate than anything in English or Western poetry tradition'. Being a mountain-climber, Snyder finds a spiritual affinity with the Chinese landscape poet Xie Lingyun. He also admires Wang Wei and Yuan Zhen. Snyder finds no simple rule or rules for translating Chinese poetry. Being a Buddhist like Wang Wei and Wei Yinwu and being steeped in the tradition of China, whose culture he has studied, he is adequately trained to be their interpreter. Believing fully that 'whatever is or ever was in any other culture can reconstructed from the unconscious through [Zen] meditation. Snyder subscribes to the theory that a poet is a medium through whom other voices or spirits would distill and speak. Being thoroughly immersed in the translation and explication of Chinese poets as Han Shan, Wang Wei and Wei Yingwu, he penetrated into the essence of these classical Chinese poets and emerges as their twentieth-century American medium. Totally identified with them in his Zen outlook and sensibility, he not only lends the Chinese poets his voice but also fuses with them so skillfully as to make us wonder if he were their poetic reincarnation. With his Taoist-Zen orientation, Snyder believes only in the constancy of flux. Just as the Taoists believe that water is the highest good, because it is characterized by eternal fluidity, Snyder subscribes to no fixed principle about prosody, but tacitly agrees that organicity and spontaneity are the bases of satisfactory rhythm in poetry. As the rhythm of the Chinese poems is totally incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the sound pattern and tonal variations of the Chinese language, a knowledge of Chinese prosody might have contributed to Snyder's use of syllabic count and stress patterns in some of his short poems. Snyder has learned a lesson from classical Chinese poets. And this lesson can by summarized as : make the poem as compressed as possible and omit all words that do not absolutely contribute to the image. 1986 Yip Wai-lim : It is no accident that Snyders early Amerindian studies, his love for Taoism and Chinese landscape poetry and his Ch'an Buddhist training all converge into one center of awareness where man becomes truly 'moral' by trusting his natural being and by 'following the grain'. The primitive mode of perception of nature was concrete, viewing things as holistically self-complete ; it was a state of total harmony between man and nature before polarization. The Taoist philosophy and esthetic at work in Chinese landscape poetry seeks the restoration of the original mode of perception, giving back to things their own status and their natural endowment and function, allowing them to emerge from their silent world as self-generating, self-conditioning, self-complete beings. In Snyder's paraphrase, this is 'the non-human, non-verbal world, which is the world of nature as nature is itself, before language, before custom, before culture. Ch'an Buddhism, which also give primacy to this world, attempts to teach man, through intuition and poetic flashes in the form of 'kung-an (koan), to live and function within nature's way ; to do this by a process of dispossessing the partial and reduced forms that intellectualization has imposed upon him and which has thus distorted his original commerce with nature's potentials. For Snyder, the underlying principle is the complete awareness of all the beings in Nature as 'self-so-complete' or 'tzu-jan' as the Taoists and the Chan Buddhists would say. It is upon this ground that a new humanism is to be built or rebuilt. 2007 Robin Chen-hsing Tsai : Snyder claims that Christianity desacralizes nature. His knowledge of nature, along with his life experience and proclivity toward direct action, leads to his dual vision of verse-making : 'A poet faces two directions : one is to the world of people and language and man and society, and the other is to the nonhuman, nonverbal world, which is nature as nature is itself, and the world of human nature – the inner world – as it is itself, before language, before custom, before culture'. From a Zen-Buddhist perspective, the poet is strongly convinced that 'the notion of emptiness engenders compassion. Snyder's idealization of the other stems from his deep involvement with the cultural other in/of Eastern thinking, including (Tibetan) Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism (in China and Japan). He writes poetry so as to arouse our 'ecological consciousness' in response to the call of the other. Generall speaking, Snyder's notions of the other are threefold : 1) the human other ; 2) the nonhuman other ; 3) the 'other in the self' or ecological unconscious, 'the wild'. Snyder is both romantic and anti-romantic in his attitude toward 'freedom' in nature, in part because the art of the wild, being 'abyssal', 'disorderly', and 'chaotic'. He looks to the East for religious and cultural inspiration, hoping that the Zen Buddhist's conception of compassion will help achieve and East-West fusion. 2009 Robin Cheng-hsing Tsai : Gary Snyder was much influenced by the Beat generation and countercultural movement of the fifties and sixties, which closely linked anti-establisment politics with non-Western (especially Asian) religions and modes of thought. He attempts to sensitize us to the constant disruptions of our environment by rationalized, capitalist and essentially Western technology. Poet and translator as well as radical ecologist, anarchist-pacifist and Native American mythographer, Snyder was also a disciple of Confucianism, Daoism and Zen Buddhism. These cross-fertilizing influences form the basis of his eco-poetics. Snyder's translation of Chinese literature, in particular poetry and Buddhist scriptures, has been instrumental in (re)shaping his imagination of the local and the global. His interest in Asian texts and philosophies has been a crucial element in his expression of a transcultural, post-civilizational, post-human 'culture of wildness'. In Snyder's view, Western discourse of the human and social sciences has been uncritical of the centrality it has historically accorded to culture, civilization and man. A very important 'Other-culture' for Snyder is ancient China. In addition to its Daoist-Buddhist spiritual values, which recognize the vital importance and centrality of the earth in a way that the Western or Middle Eastern monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) do not. Chinese civilization has a very old writing system that includes historical, religious-philosophical and literary texts. This means that the rich ancient culture of China is readily 'translatable'. Snyder's literary and cultural translation of traditional Chinese literature, mostly classical poetry and Zen-Buddhist texts, helps Western readers to see that their horizon of expectations is too narrow and that they need a much wider and more encompassing cultural-environmental imagination. Snyder readily admits the enduring creative influence of Chinese landscape paintings on his imagination that began with the visit to the Seattle Art Museum. 2009 Joan Qionglin Tan : Snyder developed his ecopoetic way by absorbing a variety of influences from global subcultures : American Indian culture, Hinduism, Japanese haiku, Japanese Nô plays, Chinese classical poetry, Chinese landscape painting, and different branches of Buddhism. His works cover Indian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Huayan Buddhism, Chan Buddhism and Rinzai Zen, whereas his daily practice is 'zazen' ('sitting in meditation') as a Zen practitioner. What he adopted in his poetry is consistent with his belief that 'poetry also exists as part of a tradition'. In his eyes, 'the collective unconscious' and 'cultural history' are embedded in 'the language' of a tradition. Snyder's 'cultural unconscious' refers to the active interaction in translation he created between his mountain experiences on the coast of western America and Han Shan's seclusion in the costal mountain ranges of eastern China. Chinese landscape paintings, Ezra Pound's ideogrammic method and Zen practice gave Snyder an impetus to study Chinese culture and Buddhism. As a teenager Snyder was greatly influence by his first viewing of Chinese landscape paintings at the Seattle Art Museum. He was surprised to find en echo in his soul when confronted by the Chinese depiction of the world in the painting. The same empathy for nature in his own aesthetic sensibilities prefigures his later choice of the Chinese tradition in his poetry. Snyder's interest in Chinese poetry is inseparable from his belief in Mahayana Buddhism. His enthusiasm for Mahayana Buddhism reflects his respect for primitivism and priorities he expressed in his poetry. He found that Chan and Chan poetry suited him because they express the ineffable 'dao in 'koans' and transparent images. Snyder articulates his own unique manifesto of ecopoetry in the hope of legitimating right understanding, right speech and right action. The idea is publicly expressed from the angle of Buddhist environmentalism with an imperative voice through the poem. As a poet in contemporary times, Snyder believes that one should have a right understanding of the relationship between man and nature. In this place, plants, animals, land and planets are in a harmonious and ecological balance. |
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| 2 | 1951 |
Gary Snyder graduated from Reed College in Portland in Anthropology and Literature. He studied Far Eastern culture at Reed College and read Ezra Pound's and Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry and classics, was amazed at the convergence of Mahayana Buddhism, Daoism and Chinese poetry in the Tang Dynasty. He ceased his graduate study of linguistics at Indiana University. |
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| 3 | 1953 | Gary Snyder studied Oriental culture and languages (Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, French) at the University of California, Berkeley under Peter A. Boodberg and Chen Shixiang. He studied ink and wash painting under Chiura Obata and Tang Dynasty poetry under Chen Shixiang. |
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| 4 | 1955 | Gary Snyder began to translate Han Shan. |
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| 5 | 1955-1956 |
San Francisco Renaissance and Beat Generation. The San Francisco Renaissance poets tended to be characterized by an 'outdoor ethic', an interest in hiking, cycling and working as woodsmen to fund their studies. Natural meditation techniques tend to be preferred to synthesized drug use of the city Beats. Jack Kerouac appears to point towards the greater sobriety of the San Francisco scene when he noted that his contact with it helped to turn him from a 'hot' to a 'cool' hipster, in particular after he was engaged in Buddhist meditation. For the early Beats, the significance of 'the 1955 Gallery Six Poetry Reading' lies in their discovery of Buddhism as a means of spiritual training and new poetic excitement. This discovers is, more or less, connected with Snyder's Zen Buddhist practice, his reading of Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese classics and poetry, and his mountaineering life. Allen Ginsbergs first meeting with Snyder in 1955 helped to expand his poetic vision to Eastern religions – Buddhism and Hinduism. Kerouac's close contact with Snyder pushed him to study Buddhist sutras systematically and he even planned to adopt a celibate, meditative life like a Chinese monk. The Gallery reading encouraged the early Beats to accept Buddhism as a valid alternative spirituality and to take the Chinese hermit-poet lifestyle as a valid mode of countercultural expression. For the early Beats, the significance of 'the 1955 Gallery Six Poetry Reading' lies in their discovery of Buddhism as a means of spiritual training and new poetic excitement. This discovers is, more or less, connected with Snyder's Zen Buddhist practice, his reading of Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese classics and poetry, and his mountaineering life. Allen Ginsbergs first meeting with Snyder in 1955 helped to expand his poetic vision to Eastern religions – Buddhism and Hinduism. Kerouac's close contact with Snyder pushed him to study Buddhist sutras systematically and he even planned to adopt a celibate, meditative life like a Chinese monk. The Gallery reading encouraged the early Beats to accept Buddhism as a valid alternative spirituality and to take the Chinese hermit-poet lifestyle as a valid mode of countercultural expression. Encouraged by Snyder, Kerouac wrote an original Buddhist-cum-Beat sutra The scripture of the golden eternity (1956), which was 'one of the most successful attempts yet to catch emptiness, nonattainment and egolessness in the net of American poetic language. His friendship with Snyder and others was portrayed in his novel The dharma bums, which merged Hand Shan and Snyder into one : an American Han Shan and a Beat hero. Kerouac's interest and belief in Buddhism came to his great spiritual and intellectual passions. Though a casual Buddhist practitioner, he was very serious and enthusiastic. Kerouac's popularizing of Buddhism had a strong impact upon other Beats, among Ginsberg acknowledged his first knowledge about Buddhism. Not until the 1955 poetry reading, when Ginsberg met with Snyder and Philip Whalen he understand that Zen could be seen as part of a global cultural context with a deep resonance in relation to art and the human condition. Ginsberg started to attend D.T. Suzuki and Allan Watts's lectures on Zen Buddhism and was deeply impressed by 'satori' after he read Suzuki's writing. Whalen was much influenced by Snyder in almost every aspect. Whalen, Snyder and Lew Welch began their poetic careers as the Reed campus trio and soon became influential figures within the San Francisco Renaissance. The were influence by William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Watts and Suzuki. After the 1955 poetry reading, Whalen, Snyder, Ginsberg and Kerouac became the main members of the San Francisco Beat scene. |
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| 6 | 1956 | One month before Gary Snyder left for Japan, he was impressed by a talk on 'East Asian landscape painting as a meditative exercise' given by Saburo Hasegawa, a Japanese artist. |
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| 7 | 1956-1969 | Gary Snyder lives in Japan. He went to Japan on scholarship from the First Zen Institute of America. He went to Japan to accept the strictly disciplined Zen practice under the supervision of a Japanese Rinzai Zen roshi, first Isshu Miura-roshi at Shokokuji, and later (1959-1965) under Sesso Oda-roshi at Daitokuji. |
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| 8 | 1958.8 |
Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma bums.[ID D29211]. (8) Sekundärliteratur Real-life person / Character name Jack Kerouac = Ray Smith Gary Snyder = Japhy Ryder Allen Ginsberg = Alvah Goldbook Neal Cassady = Cody Pomeray Philip Whalen = Warren Coughlin Locke McCorkle = Sean Monahan John Montgomery = Henry Morley Philip Lamantia = Francis DaPavia Michael McClure = Ike O'Shay Peter Orlovsky = George Kenneth Rexroth = Rheinhold Cacoethes Alan Watts = Arthur Whane Caroline Kerouac = Nin Carolyn Cassady = Evelyn Claude Dalenberg = Bud Diefendorf Natalie Jackson = Rosie Buchanan Quellen : Aiken, Charles Francis. India and Buddhism. (New York, N.Y. : Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, 1917). Asvaghosa. The Buddhacarita ; or, Acts of the Buddha. (Calcutta : Baptist Mission Press, 1935-1936). Buddhaghosha. Visuddhi magga. Burlingame, E.W. Buddhist parables. (New Haven, Conn. : [s.n.], 1922). Carus, Paul. The gospel of the Buddha. (Chicago, Ill. : Open Court, 1915). Digha nikaya. The dialogues of the Buddha. (London : Hamphrey Milford, 1921). Goddard, Dwight. A Buddhist bible. (Thetford, Vt., 1932). 2nd rev. ed. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Dutton, 1938). [Anthologie buddhistischer Texte ; enthält Diamond sutra, Surangama sutra, Lankavatoara]. Horne, Charles F. The sacred books and early literature of the East ; vol. 18. (New York, N.Y. : Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, 1917). Hui-neng. The platform sutra. Lotus sutra. Pure land sutras. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. The Dhampada. Warren, Henry Clarke. Buddhism in translations. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University, 1909). Kerouac dedicated his novel to Han Shan. In the novel he not only portrayed his friendship with Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Whalen and other writers, but also described in detail Snyder's translation of Han Shan's poems and a Han Shan spirit in Snyder. This novel pushed Han Shan onto the American countercultural stage as a new mysterious Beat hero, while Snyder became a new living guru for the Beat Generation. 2004 Miriam Levering : While Kerouac was in Berkeley in 1955 and 1956 he was a 'real' Buddhist, and his novel The Dharma bums, written about his friendship with Gary Snyder, gives expression to real Buddhist insights and teachings. He wanted to devote his life to expressing dharma in wariting and conveys authentic Buddhist messages. The Dharma bumsm in which Kerouac uses himsels as a model for the narrator (Ray Smith), Gary Snyder as the model for the hero of the novel (Japhy Ryder), and Allen Ginsberg as the model for Ray Smith's poet friend (Alvah Goldbook). But that best-selling novel was largely dismissed by literary critics as superficial, a kind of playing with Buddhism on the part of an author who was irresponsible, immoral, and undisciplined. Beginning in 1953, Kerouac spent several years in concentrated Buddhis reading, study, and practice. Buddhism became central to his life and writing for the next few years. Much of the novel draws a contrast between Ray Smith's attempts to practice Buddhism and those of Japhy Ryder, ways that correspond to what we know of the real ways of practicing Buddhism of Kerouac and Gary Snyder. But as the narrative time of the novel moves forward, tremendously admire Japhy's way of practicing Buddhism, and as the novel progresses Ray clearly becomes influenced by it. One of the central structural devices of the book is the contrast it draws between Ray Smith's idea of bhikkhuhood and Japhy Ryder's model of Buddhist monastic life. Ray has also been practicing the Buddhist bhikkhu's restraint of body, speech, and mind. Japhy, according to Ray, has learned Chinese and Japanese and become an Oriental scholar and discovered the greates Dharma bums of them all, the Zen lunatics of China and Japan. He too is practicing a kind of monastic simplicity. In Berkeley, Ray visits Japhy's small house, where he studies, meditates, and work on translating the poems of Hanshan. The Chinese poet Hanshan, Ray learns, is one of Japhy's great heroes and the chief model for his Buddhist practice. There are two themes in the book that combine to make up the book's central Buddhist message, that America can be a Pure Land, a Buddha Land.The first theme is the association between purity, American mountains, and Buddhist realization. Japhy teaches Ray that mountains are the place where buddhas and 'true emptiness-marvelous being' are most directly experiences. Japhy and Ray agree, that America, this saha-world, is far from being a Pure Land. Both are critical of what America has become in the post-war period, the cold-war period of prosperity, the rush to experience the isolated conformist life of the suburbs, 'the organization man', the threat of the bomb, and the newly available wealth of electric appliances and TV. The Dharma bums introduced the public to a romanticized and simplified version of the ideals, teachings, and practices of Buddhism in general. It also introduced readers to the wisdcom of Zhuangzi, Hanshan, Japanese haiku poets, and Buddhist masters. It also introduced readers to the long tradition in China and Japan of celebrating a life of wandering outside the settled world, and particularly in mountains, as a purifying and revivifying rout to the deepest kinds of human understanding of the world, the void, and the self. It also introduced readers to the notion that life's deepest meaning could be found in purifying the self and benefiting others, empowered by the dharma. 2007 Wang I-chun : Jack Kerouac, one of the leading members of the Beat Generation of the 1950s, impressed his readers with his melancholic sentiment, elegant style, and the themes of migration and exile. In his fictional and non-fictional writings especially, the recurrent motifs such as mutability of life, crossing on the borderlands and the discontent about life manifest the yearnings of the American lost generation. Throughout all the descriptions of the desperation and suffering of his characters, there is always a tough quality of the American spirit bespeaking the possibility of redemption and rejoicing of modern life through religion, especially Zen Buddhism. Kerouac confesses in several interviews that he was influences by Mahayana. Kerouac wins his celebrity by publishing a series of novels with his main characters troubled by their environment, economical problems and disengaged human relationship. The Dharma bums proclaims the incorporation of Buddhism and Christianity in the life of the main character Smith. With the experience of spending a summer in isolation on the top of the Cascade Mountains as a fire look out, Kerouac uses the theme of migration to express another breakthrough : a 'satori', or sudden enlightenment. The Dharma bums represents a migration that evolves into a journey to appreciate a multitude of human lives and spirits. The mutability of life seems to be more keen and poignant because death and suffering fall upon Kerouac's acquaintances. He entitles his novel the wandering pilgrims. The speaker for Buddhism is Japhy who explains for Ray the meanings of Dharma. Basically, Dharma is trugh law, nature and concept. The ultimate Dharma as understood by Buddhists is to learn not to be overpowered by external phenomena, but Dharma to Kerouac does involce compassion and empathy. Awareness of death prompts the Buddha to perceive the ultimate futility of worldly concerns and pleasures. Many of Kerouac's characters are devoted to transitory pleasures and material objects, and they are depicted as foolishly believing that wealth, power, friends, and family will bring lasting happiness. However, the calling from eternity is apprehended only by those who show real compassion and love. Kerouac's most impressive dialogue revealing Buddhist teaching appears in Japhy Ryder. In Ryder he has merged the famous Buddhist disciple, Han Shan. Throughout his years of traveling and writing, Kerouac tries to find Buddhism as an agent of equilibrium in his life and to provide an impetus to become a poet. His characters go to wilderness, to visit the landscapes that were infrequently visited, and they tend to cross the boundaries of physical realms to be enlightened by the simplest truth of nature. In The Dharma bums Kerouac found his heaven, his Promised Land on the cold and windy Desolation Peak and he feels the energy of a blade of grass that is anchored on a rock. Along the road leading to Dalhart of Texas, he found the land was all mesquite and waste. 2013 Bent Sorensen : Kerouac's personal struggle with his childhood catholic belief which trapped him in unpleasant feeling of guilt at not being sufficiently devout and holy also served as an impetus for his quest for alternative enlightenment. It seemed for a while that travelling might offer one way for him to gain freedom from social and subjective repressions ; then it seemed that valorizing the ideal of madness might be another form of freedom from societal norms, and a productive means to deal with the effects of childhood guilt and the public conformity saturating American life in ehe 1950s. The form of salvation Kerouac read into Buddhism was the potential for cessation of suffering, and his subsequent concept of heaven became a mixture of a Christian paradise and a Buddhist non-place of non-existence, nirvana. Kerouac sometimes envisaged nirvana as a condition that he could inhabit while still living here on earth, usually when he was closely in touch with the land and its unpretentious inhabitants, whom Kerouac called the fellaheen. The novel starts out with a positive valorization of both social underdogs and outcasts, the titular characters known as dharma (or truth) bums. After Smith encounters Ryder's brand of Zen Buddhism with its emphasis on the mysteries and riddles of Zen practices, the novel eulogizes the so-called Zen lunatics of ancient Japan and China and contemporary California, where Japhy pursues free love, scholarship, poetry and mountaineering as if they were one and the same thing. This philosophy and life-style soon become so attractive to Smith that he apprentices himself to Ryder in order to refine his own brand of Buddhism with its emphasis on suffering and aloneness in the void as the central human condition. Smith characterizes himself as 'a serious Buddhist'. The clearest example shifting valorization of madness concerns a minor character named Rosie, who suddenly goes mad and commits suicide. Smith's reaction to the death of Rosie quickly becomes inscribed in a guilt narrative that undermines his declared Buddhist credo that all is an illusion and that pain is not real. For Kerouac, it seems as if madness has the potential, in Zen terms, to express a ceasing to grasp after conventional reality, an abandonment of conventional reason, and a pointer to the ultimate reality of a person's egolessness. While the mad ones promise much by way of liberation of mind and body, they ultimately succumb to silence and death, and Kierouac's narrators fall back on a Christian paradism to explain this as punishment for sin. In the next decade of his life, Kerouac never again systematically examined Buddhist spirituality as a remedy for existential anomie and catholic guilt, but rather turned to alcohol do dull his pains. Catholicism circumscribed and tainted Kerouac's declared Buddhist creed from the very beginning, and it is the failure of his culture hoeroes or bodhisattvas to deliver on their promise of detachment from the material world, and from the ego-constraints of conformism, that leads him back into despair on the peak of desolation. He wrote to Philip Whalen : "I'd be ashamed to confront you and Gary [Snyder] now I've become so decadent and drunk and dontgiveashit… I'm not a Buddhist any more, I'm not anyting, I don't care. I do care about hearts… I was all prophesied on Desolation." |
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| 9 | 1958 |
Han, Shan. The cold mountain poems. Transl. by Gary Snyder. [ID D29190]. Preface to the Poems of Han-shan by Lu Ch'iu-yin, Governor of T'ai Prefecture No one knows what sort of man Han-shan was. There are old people who knew him: they say he was a poor man, a crazy character. He lived alone seventy Li (23 miles) west of the T'ang-hsing district of T'ien-t'ai at a place called Cold Mountain. He often went down to the Kuo-ch'ing Temple. At the temple lived Shih'te, who ran the dining hall. He sometimes saved leftovers for Han-shan, hiding them in a bamboo tube. Han-shan would come and carry it away; walking the long veranda, calling and shouting happily, talking and laughing to himself. Once the monks followed him, caught him, and made fun of him. He stopped, clapped his hands, and laughed greatly - Ha Ha! - for a spell, then left. He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat. Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things. On that long veranda calling and singing, in his words of reply Ha Ha! - the three worlds revolve. Sometimes at the villages and farms he laughed and sang with cowherds. Sometimes intractable, sometimes agreeable, his nature was happy of itself. But how could a person without wisdom recognize him? I once received a position as a petty official at Tan-ch'iu. The day I was to depart, I had a bad headache. I called a doctor, but he couldn't cure me and it turned worse. Then I met a Buddhist Master named Feng-kan, who said he came from the Kuo-ch'ing Temple of T'ien-t'ai especially to visit me. I asked him to rescue me from my illness. He smiled and said, "The four realms are within the body; sickness comes from illusion. If you want to do away with it, you need pure water." Someone brought water to the Master, who spat it on me. In a moment the disease was rooted out. He then said, "There are miasmas in T'ai prefecture, when you get there take care of yourself." I asked him, "Are there any wise men in your area I could look on as Master?" He replied, "When you see him you don't recognize him, when you recognize him you don't see him. If you want to see him, you can't rely on appearances. Then you can see him. Han-shan is a Manjusri (one who has attained enlightenment and, in a future incarnation, will become Buddha) hiding at Kuo-sh'ing. Shih-te is a Samantabbhadra (Bodhisattva of love). They look like poor fellows and act like madmen. Sometimes they go and sometimes they come. They work in the kitchen of the Kuo-ch'ing dining hall, tending the fire." When he was done talking he left. I proceeded on my journey to my job at T'ai-chou, not forgetting this affair. I arrived three days later, immediately went to a temple, and questioned an old monk. It seemed the Master had been truthful, so I gave orders to see if T'ang-hsing really contained a Han-shan and Shih-te. The District Magistrate reported to me: "In this district, seventy li west, is a mountain. People used to see a poor man heading from the cliffs to stay awhile at Kuo-ch'ing. At the temple dining hall is a similar man named Shih-te." I made a bow, and went to Kuo-ch'ing. I asked some people around the temple, "There used to be a Master named Feng-kan here, Where is his place? And where can Han-shan and Shih-te be seen?" A monk named T'ao-ch'iao spoke up: "Feng-kan the Master lived in back of the library. Nowadays nobody lives there; a tiger often comes and roars. Han-shan and Shih-te are in the kitchen." The monk led me to Feng-kan's yard. Then he opened the gate: all we saw was tiger tracks. I asked the monks Tao-ch'iao and Pao-te, "When Feng-kan was here, what was his job?" The monks said, :He pounded and hulled rice. At night he sang songs to amuse himself." Then we went to the kitchen, before the stoves. Two men were facing the fire, laughing loudly. I made a bow. The two shouted Ho! at me. They struck their hands together -Ha Ha! - great laughter. They shouted. Then they said, "Feng-kan - loose-tounged, loose-tounged. You don't recognize Amitabha, (the Bodhisattva of mercy) why be courteous to us?" The monks gathered round, surprise going through them. ""Why has a big official bowed to a pair of clowns?" The two men grabbed hands and ran out of the temple. I cried, "Catch them" - but they quickly ran away. Han-shan returned to Cold Mountain. I asked the monks, "Would those two men be willing to settle down at this temple?" I ordered them to find a house, and to ask Han-shan and Shih-te to return and live at the temple. I returned to my district and had two sets of clean clothes made, got some incense and such, and sent it to the temple - but the two men didn't return. So I had it carried up to Cold Mountain. The packer saw Han-shan, who called in a loud voice, "Thief! Thief!" and retreated into a mountain cave. He shouted, "I tell you man, strive hard" - entered the cave and was gone. The cave closed of itself and they weren't able to follow. Shih-te's tracks disappeared completely.. I ordered Tao-ch'iao and the other monks to find out how they had lived, to hunt up the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs - and also to collect those written on the walls of people's houses. There were more than three hundred. On the wall of the Earth-shrine Shih-te had written some gatha (Buddhist verse or song). It was all brought together and made into a book. I hold to the principle of the Buddha-mind. It is fortunate to meet with men of Tao, so I have made this eulogy. The cold mountain poems 1 The path to Han-shan's place is laughable, A path, but no sign of cart or horse. Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged. A thousand grasses bend with dew, A hill of pines hums in the wind. And now I've lost the shortcut home, Body asking shadow, how do you keep up? 2 In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place - Bird paths, but no trails for me. What's beyond the yard? White clouds clinging to vague rocks. Now I've lived here - how many years - Again and again, spring and winter pass. Go tell families with silverware and cars "What's the use of all that noise and money?" 3 In the mountains it's cold. Always been cold, not just this year. Jagged scarps forever snowed in Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist. Grass is still sprouting at the end of June, Leaves begin to fall in early August. And here I am, high on mountains, Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky. 4 I spur my horse through the wrecked town, The wrecked town sinks my spirit. High, low, old parapet walls Big, small, the aging tombs. I waggle my shadow, all alone; Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard. I pity all those ordinary bones, In the books of the Immortals they are nameless. 5 I wanted a good place to settle: Cold Mountain would be safe. Light wind in a hidden pine - Listen close - the sound gets better. Under it a gray haired man Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao. For ten years I havn't gone back home I've even forgotten the way by which I came. 6 Men ask the way to Cold Mountain Cold Mountain: there's no through trail. In summer, ice doesn't melt The rising sun blurs in swirling fog. How did I make it? My heart's not the same as yours. If your heart was like mine You'd get it and be right here. 7 I settled at Cold Mountain long ago, Already it seems like years and years. Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams And linger watching things themselves. Men don't get this far into the mountains, White clouds gather and billow. Thin grass does for a mattress, The blue sky makes a good quilt. Happy with a stone under head Let heaven and earth go about their changes. 8 Clambering up the Cold Mountain path, The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, The wide creek, the mist blurred grass. The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain The pine sings, but there's no wind. Who can leap the word's ties And sit with me among the white clouds? 9 Rough and dark - the Cold Mountain trail, Sharp cobbles - the icy creek bank. Yammering, chirping - always birds Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker. Whip, whip - the wind slaps my face Whirled and tumbled - snow piles on my back. Morning after morning I don't see the sun Year after year, not a sign of spring. 10 I have lived at Cold Mountain These thirty long years. Yesterday I called on friends and family: More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs. Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle; Forever flowing, like a passing river. Now, morning, I face my lone shadow: Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears. 11 Spring water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge - the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness. 12 In my first thirty years of life I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles. Walked by rivers through deep green grass Entered cities of boiling red dust. Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal; Read books and wrote poems on history. Today I'm back at Cold Mountain: I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears. 13 I can't stand these bird songs Now I'll go rest in my straw shack. The cherry flowers are scarlet The willow shoots up feathery. Morning sun drives over blue peaks Bright clouds wash green ponds. Who knows that I'm out of the dusty world Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain? 14 Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders, People who climb here are always getting scared. When the moon shines, water sparkles clear When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles. On the bare plum, flowers of snow On the dead stump, leaves of mist. At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live At the wrong season you can't ford the creeks. 15 There's a naked bug at Cold Mountain With a white body and a black head. His hand holds two book scrolls, One the Way and one its Power. His shack's got no pots or oven, He goes for a long walk with his shirt and pants askew. But he always carries the sword of wisdom: He means to cut down sensless craving. 16 Cold Mountain is a house Without beans or walls. The six doors left and right are open The hall is sky blue. The rooms all vacant and vague The east wall beats on the west wall At the center nothing. Borrowers don't bother me In the cold I build a little fire When I'm hungry I boil up some greens. I've got no use for the kulak With his big barn and pasture - He just sets up a prison for himself. Once in he can't get out. Think it over - You know it might happen to you. 17 If I hide out at Cold Mountain Living off mountain plants and berries - All my lifetime, why worry? One follows his karma through. Days and months slip by like water, Time is like sparks knocked off flint. Go ahead and let the world change - I'm happy to sit among these cliffs. 18 Most T'ien-t'ai men Don't know Han-shan Don't know his real thought And call it silly talk. 19 Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease - No more tangled, hung up mind. I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff, Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat. 20 Some critic tried to put me down - "Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao." And I recall the old timers Who were poor and didn't care. I have to laugh at him, He misses the point entirely, Men like that Ought to stick to making money. 21 I've lived at Cold Mountain - how many autumns. Alone, I hum a song - utterly without regret. Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal medicine Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone. 22 On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon Lights the whole clear cloudless sky. Honor this priceless natural treasure Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh. 23 My home was at Cold Mountain from the start, Rambling among the hills, far from trouble. Gone, and a million things leave no trace Loosed, and it flows through galaxies A fountain of light, into the very mind - Not a thing, and yet it appears before me: Now I know the pearl of the Buddha nature Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere. 24 When men see Han-shan They all say he's crazy And not much to look at - Dressed in rags and hides. They don't get what I say And I don't talk their language. All I can say to those I meet: "Try and make it to Cold Mountain." Sekundärliteratur 2007 Robin Chen-hsing Tsai : Han Shan inspired Snyder primarily through his economy of form and spiritual-ecological theme. Snyder attempts, in translating 'Cold mountain' and more generally Eastern thought, not to superimpose a hierarchical relationship between the original and the simulacrum : his translation project is note purely a textual operation based on cross-referencing. He makes clear that Han Shan is the very embodiment of a cranky and eccentric poet-hermit who traverses the boundary between the sacred and the profane. This hermit's poems not only treat of the poet himself but of his relation to the physical environment of Cold Mountain and his state of mind. The second theme is that of Han Shan the man's relationship to the environment and the third theme contains the tripartite concept of Han Shan the man, his relationship with the environment and his state of mind. Like Han Shan, Snyder is looking for 'one mind' embedded 'in the flesh' in its true nature, as represented by the moon, the central image in the poem. 2009 Joan Qionglin Tang : Han Shan's Cold mountain poems may be heralded as condensed collection of Chinese philosophical ideas drawn from Confucianism, Daoism and Chinese Buddhism (including different branches of Chan Buddhism). Han Shan's spiritual journey to Cold Mountain is often seen as a reflection of the ancient Chinese literati's pilgrimage to Chan enlightenment. Han Shan's poems seem more colloquial, laconic and direct, but they still follow some of the main characteristics of Chinese classical poetry. The nature-Chan images used in his Chan poems not only make the ineffable Chan or 'dao' explicable, but also endow the poems with a high degree of literary virtuosity. Through translation, the legend of Han Shan and his poems were brought to such countries as Japan, Korea and the United States of America. The hermit-poet's name, Han Shan, has become synonymous with the recluse-rebel against the mainstream culture, and also with the 'dao'-Chan mountain spirit, whilst the place name, Cold Mountain, is often used to symbolize a nature-Chan world of peace, transcendence and enlightenment. In China, Han Shan is idolized as an incarnation of Manjusri ('keen awareness', 'the bodhisattva of wisdom') with the sword of wisdom. Arthur Waley translated twenty-seven of Han Shan's poems in 1954, Gary Snyder twenty-four translations in 1958 and Burton Watson one hundred poems in 1962. But neither has proved as influential as Snyders translation. Waley and Watson looked at the poems only as translators, whereas Snyder responded to them also as a poet, as a Mahayana Buddhist and as a mountain hiker. He adopted a principle of selection and a visualization process in his translation to invent his own mentor in the person of Han Shan. His translations are all related to Han Shan, to Cold Mountain, and to a spiritual quest for Chan enlightenment. Through his translation, he discovered that Han Shan had fascinated him from childhood. Han Shan's life on Cold Mountain seemed to have overlapped with Snyder's early life in the American western mountains. As a Mahayana Buddhist, he was attracted by Chan enlightenment in Han Shan's Chan poems, Han Shan secluded life and Han Shan's meditative practice on Cold Mountain. He melded Han Shan harmoniously into his translation and later into some of his works, even into his life. Many years later, he still admitted that 'a bit of a Han Shan spirit' was present in him and others. The eccentric life of the hermit-poet Han Shan, the vernacular style of Hans Shan's poems and the nature-Chan world of enlightenment on Cold Mountain accord with Snyder's interests, personality, and aims as a poet. His successful translation encouraged him to start his own spiritual quest for Cold Mountain, which symbolizes the literary mountain of ecopoetry for him. The comparative study of Snyder and Han Shan has been confined mainly to Snyder's translation techniques, or to the Chinese grammatical influence on Snyder's early works. Both Han Shan and Snyder are not purists in pursuit of Chan enlightenment in their poetics. Han Shan's spiritual quest underwent a rather complicated process, the workings of which were enmeshed with a wide range of Chinese religious or philosophical ideas. He started from Confucianism, but resorted to Daoism after his failure in the Civil Service Examination. He soon accepted Indian Buddhism, and then absorbed the essence of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism, finally turning to Chan Buddhism. Snyder's eclecticism is quite different, for Snyder considers all Buddhist doctrines as 'one teaching'. Although he is a Zen practitioner in his daily life and claims himself as a Mahayana Buddhist, he never refutes other religious teachings in his work, such as Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism. Snyder's principle is to interweave these teachings with archaic values in an eclectic way to rebuild his sense of 'wholeness'. This principle encourages him not to exclude alternative and even opposing Buddhist sects from inclusion within his system of thought. It was the mountain spirit of the poets that linked Han Shan and Snyder so tightly together that Snyder became an exemplary representative of an American Han Shan. Snyder's poetic journey to Cold Mountain can be divided into three stages : pre-turning, turning and returning. This division is mainly based on his acceptance of Han Shan and Chan. It also assumes that Snyder as a poet has achieved a state of enlightenment after his self-cultivation, a 'kensho' in Japanese Zen terminology. 2011 Cong Zihang : One reason that Snyder chose to translate Han-Shan's poems is that these poems evoke memories of his childhood. The other reason is that the harmony and concord in Taoism echo with his ecological view, Snyder established 'depth ecology', which 'contains the concept of energy transformation, of that being a link in the food chain, human beings should be thankful for their food, and of that animals, plants, and minerals are equal to human beings'. Furthermore, concepts of 'impermanence, no-self, the inevitability of suffering, connectedness, emptiness, the vastness of mind, and a way to realization' propagated by Buddhism have too much effect on Snyder. Some of his researches show that it is Buddhism that further strengthens his aspiration for equality among humans and harmony between human and environment. Similar to ancient Chinese officials who served the society, or Taoists who withdraw from society to live leisurely in nature, Snyder combines 'meditation, morality and wisdom' and he himself is the perfect embodiment of the Confucian concept of 'self-cultivating, family-regulating, state-ordering and then nation governing'. |
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| 10 | 1959 |
Snyder, Gary. Riprap [ID D29318]. Lay down these words Before your mind like rocks. placed solid, by hands In choice of place, set Before the body of the mind in space and time: Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall riprap of things: Cobble of milky way, straying planets, These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging saddles— and rocky sure-foot trails. The worlds like an endless four-dimensional Game of Go. ants and pebbles In the thin loam, each rock a word a creek-washed stone Granite: ingrained with torment of fire and weight Crystal and sediment linked hot all change, in thoughts, As well as things. Sekundärliteratur Joan Qinglin Tan : Snyder refers to his work 'Riprap' as a labourer in the mountains and at sea, dedicating his firs lyrical book to those who worked 'in the woods & at sea'. This work also signifies what was occurring within his mind, as he became a practitioner of meditation on Chan, landscape and ecology. The latter is closer to the Chinese tradition. Though there is no unified style in 'Riprap', some poems are obviously successful imitation of Chinese Chan poetry. With nature-Chan images, the reader can detect the basic Chan teachings. Snyder's great innovation lies in his own unique ideogrammic method – riprapping, a result of his turning to Chan, Han Shan and Chinese landscape poetry. 'Riprap' can be seen as Snyder's formal aesthetic statement in poetic form. The poem itself is a good example of presenting the reader with 'the complexity far beneath the surface texture'. To create visual effects, Snyder mimics Chinese landscape paintings o give appropriate blank space. He often deals with this through his use of indented lines, that is, through a visual and spatial dismemberment of the line into small units. The arrangement of lines, when seen from the bottom, like solid rocky steps up a mountain. To express ineffable nonduality, emptiness and 'satori', Snyder likes to employ phrases as compositional units and small nature-Chan images. The image of burning rocks alludes to sudden 'satori' after the Buddhist fire. Through burning, all things are changed. People achieve transcendence in a similar way to the transformation of rocks into granite, crystal and sediment. To illustrate the nature of nature, he often borrows features of Chinese classical poetry. Riprapping, as a method in Snyder's ecopoetry, is a response to the wilderness and to nature. To express his ecological concerns, he chose Chan, not Christianity as one of the riprapping ways. He explained that Chan is 'a way of using your mind and practicing your life and doing it with other people', which inevitably involves 'responsibility and commitment'. |
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| 11 | 1960 |
Snyder, Gary. Myths & texts [ID D29322]. [Auszüge und Sekundärliteratur]. 1972 David Rafael Wang : Myths and texts is a long poem in three sections – a poem which has no precedent or equivalent in classical Chinese poetry. The first section entitled 'Logging' consists of fifteen individual poems ; the second section 'Hunting' of sixteen poems ; and the third section 'Burning' of seventeen poems. 2009 Joan Qionglin Tan : From a Chan point of view, the three fragments 'Logging', 'Hunting' and 'Burning' complete a spiritual quest for enlightenment on a mythopoetic level uniting Chan and ecology. Logging Tan : The fragment 'Logging' contemplates destruction. In basic Chan teachings greed, anger and ignorance are the three poisons, the origin of suffering. These can be turned into 'sila' (morality), 'samadhi' (meditation) and 'prajna (wisdom). 1 "The morning star is not a star Two seedling fir, one died Io, Io." Tan : Begins with the statement 'The morning star is not a star'. There is a subtle relationship between two parallel traditions. Venus is a planet, one of the brightest celestial objects in the sky. It is not a star, but is called the morning star and the evening star as well, because it is nearer the sun than the earth. Wang : It is the Taoist 'self-transformation'. 2 "The ancient forests of China logged and the hills slipped into the Yellow Sea. Squared beams, log dogs, on a tamped-earth sill. San Francisco 2x4's were the woods around Seattle." Wang : The forests of China merge with 'the wood around Seattle. Tan : Logging 2 uses the image of Chinese landscape as a comparison. In ancient China, the large scale of logging resulted in the vanishing of the forests and the erosion of the landscape. This historical disaster plays an apocalyptic role, for Snyder always tries to 'hold both history and wilderness in mind'. When juxtaposed with the present logging site in Seattle, the astonishing similarity between ancient china and present day Seattle deforestation is designed to move the reader to greater awareness. To address the destruction of American forests, the poet refers to the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism and the natural process of rebirth in physical world and hopes that these may give some consolation. 3 Tan : In Logging 3, the nature-Chan image of 'lodgepole pine' is used to exemplify the regenerative power of nature, for lodgepole seed can withstand fire. The possibility of renewal expresses the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism. In Snyder's mind, spiritual fire in Buddhism, as one of the mythical forms of healing, helps to eradicate the three poisons (greed, anger and ignorance) in humans. Hsü Fang's simple life is deftly compared to life in modern American society. Hsü Fang was a mythic figure in ancient China, who, like Han Shan, lived on mountain plants and vegetables. This image is juxtaposed with the apparently unrelated image of the American grown-up kids, which virtually shows some automatic connections. If the kids are well-educated, they will realize the importance of environmental protection. 10 "Man is the heart of the universe The upshot of the five elements, Born to enjoy food and color and noise. Get off my back Confucius There's enough noise now." Shu Yunzong : In this passage Snyder first turns Confucius into an epicurean who advocates that men should enjoy themselves at the expense of the rest of the world. Then Snyder pits himself against Confucius from an exological perspective rather than from the one held by Chuang Tzu. 12 " At the high and lonely center of the earth: Where Crazy Horse Went to watch the Morning Star, & the four-legged people, the creeping people. The standing people and the flying people Know how to talk… In a long south flight, the land of Sea and fir tree with the pine-dry Sage-flat country to the east. Han Shan could have lived here, & no scissorbill stooge of the Emperor would have come trying to steal his last poor shred of sense. On the wooded coast, eating oysters Looking off toward China and Japan…" Tan : Han Shan is treated as a mythical Chan Buddhist sage. The 'scissorbill stooge' was an allusion to Lü Qiuyin, an official of Taizhou appointed by the Emperor in the Tang dynasty. 15 "Pine sleeps, cedar splits straight Flowers crack the pavement. Pa-ta Shan-jen (A painter who watched Ming fall) Lived in a tree : 'The brush May paint the mountains and streams Though the territory is lost." Wang : The 'Ming' referred to the Ming Dynasty whose downfall was brought about the invasion of the Manchus. Pa-ta Shan-jen lived on to paint the mountains and streams of his homeland, even when his homeland was lost. Tan : The last poem is a summation of the first fragment 'Logging'. Unlike Logging 1, this poem manifests two traditions and two worlds, including the Oriental and the Occidental, the Buddhist and the Romantic, the physical and the spiritual, and the human and the non-human. Through juxtaposing different images, Snyder attempts to create a harmonious scene within the poem. In the opening stanza, the void where a lodgepole cone is waiting for fire is the right place where enlightenment will be attained through transcendence and reincarnation in the Chan tradition. The poet invokes the Chinese tradition in the form of the painter Pa-ta Shan-jen's (Bada Shanren) powerful brush, which the artist used both literally and metaphorically to keep the landscape intact. Hunting Tan : The subtitle 'Hunting' hints in a primeval forest, where animals and plants will be seen to possess a supernatural power in shaman songs. This fragment is mainly concerned with native American lore, which dedicates some poems to the animals, birds, bears, and deer. Throughout 'Hunting' humanity's life will be intimately tied to the life cycles of animals and the myths surrounding them. Three main aspects are involved in the process of hunting. First, there must be pure divination before hunting, for hunting in the proper time and place is seen as a spiritual encounter, in which the hunted will sacrifice themselves to the hunter. Second, mindfulness is needs for such a spiritual encounter. 2 "Atok: creeping Maupok: waiting to hunt seals. The sea hunter watching the whirling seabirds on the rocks The mountain hunter horn-tipped shaft on a snowslope edging across cliffs for a short at goat 'Upon the lower slopes of the mountain, on the cover, we find the sculptured forms of animals apparently lying dead in the wilderness' thus Fenollosa On the pottery of Shang It's a shem I didn't kill you, Yang Keui Fei, Cut down in the old apartment Left to bleed between the bookcase and the wall, I'd hunt you still, trail you from town to town. But you change shape, death's a new shape, Maybe flayed you'd be true But it would't be through. 'You who live with your grandmother I'll trail you with dogs And crush you in my mouth. ' - Not that we're cruel – But a man's got to eat." Wang : Legend of Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine of Ming Huang of the Tang Dynasty, who was forced to hang herself from a beam when the Tang soldiers revolted in protest against her nepotism and the usurpation of power by her relatives. What starts out to be Eskimos hunting becomes Fenollosa's commentary on the art of the Shang Dynasty, then becomes Yang Guifei of Tang China bleeding to death in an apartment and finally becomes contemporary America. Going through the three stanzas of the poem, we find that the first one deals with hunting for food (Eskimo hunters), the second one with hunting for revenge (Wang Guifei), and the third one with a rationalization for hunting. Whereas the Eskimos may have a legitimate reason for hunting since they need food for survival, whereas the Tang soldiers may have an adequate excuse for demanding the death of Yang Guifei (who was indirectly responsible for the An Lu-shan rebellion in 755), there is neither a legitimate reason or an adequate excuse for trailing someone who lived with his grandmother with a pack of dogs in order to crush him 'in my mouth'. Reading Snyder's poem in the light of the different justifications for hunting, we find that the Eskimos can be exonerate of their guilt because they need food, that the Tang soldiers can be pardoned because they demanded the restoration of order in the empire, but that the thrill-hunters are accountable for their guilt. The poem seems to suggest a progressive degeneration of values, with 'primitive' Eskimos hunting for food, 'sophisticated' Chinese hunting for revenge, and the 'civilized' modern hunting for thrills. By a cyclical reference to man's eating habit, we mean that the poem starts with showing us the activity of hunting to acquire food and ends with giving us the reason for hunting. In each case, 'eating' is man's justification for his acts of violence. In this light, Snyders's poem can be interpreted as a Buddhist's plea for mercy, or universal compassion, for according to the Buddha, man perpetuates his sin in the killing of any sentient being, human or animal. Snyder's Myths and texts can be viewed as a demonstration of the Buddhist belief that all appearance is illusory or deceptive, because the poem in the beginning, turns out to be carfully designed in the end. The unity of the poem lies in Snyder's use of metamorphosis as the leitmotiv. This metamorphosis illustrates the Buddhist principle that nothing is permanent or real in this world as well as the Taoist principle that the only permanence is change. Snyder's selection of primordial images from the myths of diverse cultures serves to demonstrate that, despite the barriers of languages and cultures, all mankind shares a collective unconscious. The poem illustrates the Taoist concept of endless self-transformation. And, as the Taoist transformation is cyclical, we feel the inevitability of the end when 'The morning star is not a star' is transformed into 'The sun is but a morning star'. Tan : Snyder borrowed tow Inuit verbs, 'atok' and 'maupok', literally 'creeping' and 'waiting', to describe the Inuit's hunting habit with a harpoon, which 'was central to all sea mammal hunting'. For the Inuit, this harpoon hunting is called 'maupok', because it depends upon timing, patience and co-ordination as well as hunters' extensive knowledge of the habits of sea mammals. 5 Tan : Hunting 5 is a good example of embodying the third aspect of hunting. Snyder depicts how Native American people used 'the head of the mountain-goat' for 'the making of the horn spoon'. The sacredness is manifested in the last line. 10 "Flung from demonic wombs Off the some new birth A million shapes – just look in any biology book. Wang : Snyder is referring to the popular Buddhist belief that on can cat reborn in different shapes. 14 "Buddha fed himself to tigers & donated mountains of eyes (through the years) To the blind." Wang : Buddha must be reborn in order to feed himself to tigers and he must have 'mountains of eyes' to donate them continually to the blind. 16 "Meanging: compassion. Agents: man and beast, beasts Got the Buddha-nature." All but Coyote. Tan : 'Hunting' comes to its end with an image from the Chinese tradition. The Chan master Zhao Zhou tried to instruct the novice that all sentient beings possess the Buddha nature. Hunting 16 is about Zhao Zhou's famous 'koan' concerning the Chan concept of 'wu/no'. The last lines not only reveal the theme of the second fragment 'Hunt8ing', but also suggest that the spiritual quest should go ahead. Burning Tan : The whole fragment 'Burning' concentrates on nonduality, emptiness and sudden 'satori' using some nature-Chan images. 2 One glance, miles below Bones & flesh knit in the rock 'have no regret – Chip chip (sparrows) & not a word about the void To which one hand diddling Cling. Tan : At the end of Burning 2, Snyder chooses the bird to depict the moment before enlightenment. 3 Tan : The fragment is about enlightenment. To keep Chan in the foreground, Snyder changed the direction of his exploration into the Oriental tradition. He left his 'western American wilderness' as a logger and a hunter in the tradition of American Indian lore. 6 Tan : Snyder himself wears the mask of Han Shan on Cold Mountain. This is the early image of Han Shan's self-portrait, who was ready to cut down delusion with the sword of wisdom. 7 "Face in the crook of her neck felt throb of vein Smooth skin, her cool breasts All naked in the dawn 'byrdes sing forth from every bough' where are they now And dreamt I saw the Duke of Chou." Wang : Snyder is reminiscing about a former girlfriend who appears as prominently in a dream to him as the Duke of Chou supposedly appeared in a dream of Confucius. 9 "Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed Lenin in a sealed train shrough Germany Hsüan Tseng, crossing the Pamirs Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free starving high-country winter of their tribes." Wang : Transition from China, where the Yangzi river flows, to Germany where the Soviet leader rode 'in a sealed train', to the border of China, India, and Afghanistan, and finally to the North American continent, the tribal home of Crazy Horse. 11 Snyder, with the mask of Han Shan, became 'a pure but' waiting for sudden enlightenment. 17 "The storms of the Milky Way Buddha incense in an empty world Black pit cold and light-year Flame tongue of the dragon Licks the sun The sun is but a morning star." Wang : The transformation of the morning star which is 'not a star' into the sun is brought about by the dragon's tongue. The dragon is 'the symbol of the infinite in Chinese art and literature. |
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| 12 | 1965 |
Snyder, Gary. To the Chinese comrades [ID D29209]. The armies of China and Russia Stand facing across a wide plain. Krushchev on one side and Mao on the other, Krushchev calls out "Pay me the money you owe me!" Mao laughs and laughs, long hair flops. His face round and smooth. The armies start marching—they meet— Without clashing, they march through, each other, Lines between lines. All the time Mao Tse-tung laughing. He takes heaps of money. He laughs and he gives it to Krushchev. Chairman Mao's belongings on the March: "Two cotton and wool mixture blankets, A sheet, two pants and jackets, A sweater A patched umbrella, An enamel mug for a rice bowl A gray brief-case with nine pockets.” Like Han-shan standing there —a rubbing off some cliff Hair sticking out smiling maybe rolling a homegrown Yenen cigarette Took a crack at politics. The world is all one. Crawling out that hillside cave dirt house (whatever happened to Wong— quit Chinese school, slugged his dad left the laundry, went to sea— out of the golden gate—did he make A.B. ?—) black eggshell-thin pots of Lung-shan maybe three thousand years B C You have killed. I saw the Tibetans just down from the passes Limping in high felt boots Sweating in furs Flatland heat, and from Almora gazing at Trisul the new maps from Peking call it all China clear down to here, & the Gangetic plain— From Hongkong N. T, on a pine rise See the other side: stub fields. Geese, ducks, and children far off cries. Down the river, tiny men Walk a plank—maybe loading little river boat. Is that China Flat, brown, and wide? The ancestors what did they leave us. Confucius, a few old buildings remain. —tons of soil gone. Mountains turn desert. Stone croppd flood, strippd hills, The useless wandering river mouths, Salt swamps Silt on the floor of the sea. Wind borne glacial flour Ice age of Europe Dust storms from Ordos to Finland The loess of Yenen. glaciers "shrink and vanish like summer clouds..." CROSS THE SNOWY MOUNTAIN! WE SHALL SEE CHAIRMAN MAO! The year the long march started I was four. How long has this gone on. Rivers to wade, mountains to cross— Chas. Leong showed me how to hold my chopsticks like the brush— Upstairs a vhinese restaurant catty-corner from the police Portland, oregon, nineteen fifty-one, Yakima Indian horseman, hair black as crows, shovel shaped incisors, epicanthic fold. Misty cliffs and peaks of the Columbia: Old loggers vanish in the rocks. They wouldn't tote me rice and soy-sauce cross the dam "Snyder you gettin just like A damned Chinaman." Gambling with the Wasco and the Wishram By the river under Hee Hee Butte & bought a hard round loaf of weird bread From a bakery in a tent In a camp of Tibetans At Bodh-Gaya Where Gautama used to stay. On hearing Joan Baez singing "East Virginia" THOSE were the days, we strolled under blossoming cherries ten acres of orchard holding hands, kissing, in the evening talked Lenin, and Marx. YOU had just started out for Peking. I slipped my hand under her blouse and undid her brassiere. I passed my hand over her breasts her sweet breath, it was too warm for May. I thought how the whole world my love, could love like this; blossoms, the books, revolution more trees, sweet girls, clear springs. You took Peking. Chairman Mao, you should quit smoking, dont bother those philosophers Build dams, plant trees, dont kill flys by hand. Marx was another westerner, it's all in the head. You dont need the Bomb, stick to farming. Write some poems. Swim the river, those blue overalls are great. Dont shoot me, let's go drinking, Just Wait. Sekundärliteratur David Rafael Wang : This poem has no Chinese precedent, it achieves a distinct Zen humor. Snyder chides Mao for trying too hard to emulate Marx and all the Westerners. He suggests that progress is only an illusion and that Mao should be content with writing his poems and swimming in the Yangzi river, two activities for which Mao is renowened in China. Snyder further suggests that Mao should 'go drinking' with Snyder himself and not shoot him, since drinking was an activity which united all the leading Tang poets and shooting was an invention of the West. The poem not only warns Mao against progress, but also suggests simple living as an alternative. Joan Qinglin Tan : In the poem we can certainly take Snyder's view of Mao as heavily romanticized but it would seem to be a mistake to read this poem as naïve. Snyder appears to be quite consciously generating a mythical Mao, a Mao who can stand for the aspects of both ancient and modern Chinese culture that he admires, yet a Mao and a new China that he also has an ambivalent attitude towards. It is the mythical Mao who reveals the continued Han Shanian theme in Snyder's poetry. In the first three stanzas we can see Mao wearing the face and attitudes of the countercultural Chan master. In the final stanza, after a heavily nostalgic passage, Snyder gives direct advice to both the real Mao and the new China pleading with them to return to the simplicity of his Han Shanian, Chan Buddhist and ecological agenda. The criticism and disappointment with the political realities of the Chinese régime in the 1960s is sharply contrasted with a romanticism for the revolutionary Mao that finds its roots in the Beat attitudes of the 1950s. |
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| 13 | 1967 |
Letter from Gary Snyder to Herbert Fackler. "My method of translation is – first, to understand the poem thoroughly on a linguistic level. Second, by an effort of concentration to project the 'picture' of the poem inside my mind, like a movie – to see what's happening. Third, to write down, in my own language, what I see happening. Fourth, to check that back against the original language and be sure they line up." |
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| 14 | 1974 |
Snyder, Gary. Turtle island [ID D29320]. Snyder, Gary. Mother earth. [Auszug]. Pere David's Deer, the Elaphure, Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River Two thousand years ago -- and lost its home to rice - The forests of Lo-yang were logged and all the silt & Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD - Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang, what we call "China" On flyways they have used a million years. Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars, the monkeys, like the snows of yesteryear Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks. IS man most precious of all things? - then let us love him, and his brothers, all those Fading living beings - … Fire is an old story. I would like, with a sense of helpful order, with respect for laws Of nature, to help my land with a burn, a hot clean Burn. Sekundärliteratur Joan Qionglin Tan : The image of China in the poem hints at the impending great ecological crisis on earth, because China represents the old root of civilization, the once-great Buddhist nation, and the land of mountains and rivers and yet this great cultural root is eroding. The heavy sigh 'Ah China' from the mouth of the poet indicates that an ecological revolution will be needed urgently to allow the re-inhabitation of the land as opposed to its destruction. For the benefit of the real land, Snyder pleads for people to descend following transcendence. Descending from the heights of enlightenment, he suggests, might be the best way to heal the land. The first prescription he offers his readers is to descend with healing fire. The effect of such burning is rebirth in China. |
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| 15 | 1991 |
Snyder, Gary. Introduction. In : Beneath a single moon : Buddhism in contemporary American poetry. Ed. by Kent Johnson and Craig Paulenich. (Boston : Shambhala, 1991). "My interest in writing brought me to the twentieth-century modernists and Chinese poetry ; and my thoughts on nature and wilderness brought me to Taoism and then to Zen. This growing awareness of Zen was also interwoven with the discovery of Chinese landscape painting." |
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| 16 | 1996 |
Snyder, Gary. Mountains and rivers without end [ID D29321]. Endless streams and mountains. Ch'i shan Wu Chin Clearing the mind and sliding in to that created space, a web of waters streaming over rocks, air misty but not raining, seeing this land from a boat on a lake or a board slow river, casting by. The path comes down along a lowland stream Slips behind boulders and leafy hardwoods, Reappears in a pine grove, no farms around, just tidy cottages and shelters, gateways , rest stops, roofed but unwalled work space, - a warm damp climate; a trail of climbing stairsteps forks upstream. Big ranges lurk behind these rugged little outcrops – these spits of low ground rocky uplifts layered pinnacles aslant, flurries of brushy cliffs receding, far back and high above, vague peaks. A man hunched over, sitting on a log another stands above him, lifts a staff, a third, with a roll of mats or a lute, looks on; a bit offshore two people in a boat. The trail goes far inland, somewhere back around a bay, lost in distant foothill slopes & back again at a village on the beach, and someone's fishing. Rider and walker cross a bridge above a frothy braided torrent that descends from a flurry of roofs like flowers temples tucked between cliffs, a side trail goes there; a jumble of cliffs above, ridge tops edged with bushes, valley fog below a hazy canyon. A man with a shoulder load leans into the grade. Another horse and a hiker, the trail goes up along cascading streambed no bridge in sight – comes back through chinquapin or liquidambars; another group of travelers. Trail's end at the edge of an inlet below a heavy set of dark rock hills. Two moored boats with basket roofing, a boatman in the bow looks lost in thought. Hills beyond rivers, willows in a swamp, a gentle valley reaching far inland. The watching boas has floated off the page. At the end of the painting the scroll continues on with seals and Poems. It tells a further tale : '- Wang Wen-wei saw this at the mayor's house in Ho-tung Town, year 1205. Wrote at the end of it, 'The Fashioner of Things has no original intentions Mountains and rivers are spirit, condenses.' '…Who has come up with these miraculous forests and springs ? Pale ink on fine white silk.' Later that month someone named Li Hui added, '…Most people can get along with the noise of dogs and chickens; Everybody cheerful in these peaceful times. But I – why are my tastes so odd? I love the company of streams and boulders.' T'ien Hsieh of Wei-lo, no date, next wrote, '…the water holds up the mountains, The mountains go down in the water…' In 1332 Chih-shun adds, '…This is truly a painting worth careful keeping. And it has poem-colophons from the Sung and the Chin dynasties. That it survived dangers of fire and war makes it even rarer.' In the mid-seventeenth century one Wang To had a look at it: 'My brother's relative by marriage, Wên-sun, is learned and has good taste. He writes good prose and poetry. My brother brought over this painting of his to show me...' The great Ch'ing dynasty collector Liang Ch'ing-piao owned it, but didn't write on it or cover it with seals. From him it went into the Imperial collection down to the early twentieth century. Chang Ta-ch'ien sold it in 1949. Now it's at the Cleveland Art Museum, Which sits on a rise that looks out toward the waters of Lake Erie. Step back and gaze again at the land. it rises and subsides – ravines and cliffs like waves of blowing leaves – stamp the foot, walk with it, clap turn, the creeks come in, ah strained through boulders, mountains walking on the water, water ripples every hill. – I walk out of the museum – low gray clouds over the lake – Chill March breeze. Old ghost ranges, sunken rivers, come again stand by the wall and tell their tale, walk the path, sit the rains, grind the ink, wet the brush, unroll the broad white space: lead out and tip the moist black line. Walking on walking, Under foot earth turns. Streams and mountains never stay the same. Note : A hand scroll by this name showed up in Shansi province, central China, in the thirteenth century. Even then the painter was unknown, 'a person of the Sung Dynasty.' Now it's on Turtle Island. Unroll the scroll to the left, a section at a time, as you let the right side roll back in. Place by place unfurls. ……… Hsüan Tsang went to India 629 AD returned to China 645 with 657 sûtras, images, mandalas, and fifty relics – a curved frame pak with a parasol, embroidery, carving, incense censer swinging as he walked the Pamir the Tarim Turfan the Punjab the doab of Ganga and Yamuna, he carried 'emptiness' He carried 'mind only' Vijnaptimâtra The humpbacked flute player Kokop'ele His hump is a pack. ............. The humb-backed flute player Shooting the Hundred-Pace Rapids Su Tung P'o saw, for a moment, It all stand still. "I stare at the water : It moves with unspeakable slowness". ……….. Sekundärliteratur 1999 Anthony Hunt : Gary Snyder told Katherine McNeil that "Mountains and rivers is a title for a number of Chinese landscape paintings. One is by the Yuan dynasty painter Xuben, whose work inspired me. I'm writing about the complementarity of mountains and rivers, but that's really the planet, taking that on." The Cleveland scroll is an unsigned handscroll done in ink and slight coloring on silk with nine colophons that provide information about the work's early history. Forty-eight seals of collectors, including eight belonging to Liang Qingbiao (1620-1691), give further evidence of the transmission of the scroll from the 1340s on ; but it is now thought by several eminent authorities to be more likely to date around 1150. Snyder draws attention to the scroll's anonymity in a note that concludes the first section of his poem 'the painter was unknown, a person of the Sung dynasty'. The misty painted Chinese mountains seen by Snyder in Seattle are 'real' on several levels : in a generic sense they appear to him a true reflection of the kind of mountains with which he grew up, the verifiable Cascade and Olympic ranges. Yet the mountains painted by the Chinese artist were not the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, but in their carefully drawn verisimilitude they are a real image of those Chinese mountains. These are mountains that Snyder feels are 'magical and difficult, the routes are not clear, yet they are passable'. After the Yuan dynasty, Snyder theorizes that 'painting kept love of nature alive' for a civilization that was 'living more in cities and farther from the hills'. At times, Snyder walks the spaces of the landscape painting as if they were actually under his feet ; the trails of the painting are maplike in his mind. At other times, his understanding moves outside the painting as he coolly becomes critical of its style or of the civilization that style reveals. And then there are the times when he clearly imagines going 'beyond' into the spaces farther than the spaces of the painting, into 'visionary timeless lands of mountain rocks and air-mist-breath and far calm vistas'. Snyder has painted numberless little travelers across the scroll of his poetic landscape. Some are historical, while some are mythical or legendary ; some are ghostly ; many are human, and many more are animal. 'Fellow travelers in the scroll' as Snyder said, 'are the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, bears, and elderly farm woman, wild sheep, the female Buddha Tira, woodrats, Coyote, Raven, macaque monkey, the poet Su Shi, the Ghost Dance prophet Wovoka, and many others'. Snyder's concept of space always includes the possibility of Buddhist enlightenment. 2000 Robert Kern : Snyder pays tribute to certain teachers – those, for example, from whom he learned the discipline of the calligrapher's and painter's brush and pen, a discipline that becomes and important motif in the poem. He also acknowledges the importance to him of certain experiences, primarily of wilderness landscapes – mountains and rivers, in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere – but also of representations of such landscapes, particularly in Asian art, encountered in books and museums. It was in Asian paintings that he became aware of 'the energies of mist, white water, rock formations, air swirls – a chaotic universe where everything is in place'. In this way, his direct experience of the natural world seems to have merged with what he saw in artistic representations of it, and a similar merging of nature and culture takes place in the poem. Another key element that animates the poem is Zen Buddhism. Instead, as the title of the book in its several variations suggests, it is Asian landscape paintings, and especially hand scrolls, that provide Snyder with his most immediate structural format. Such paintings, as Snyder points out, are 'not fully realized until several centuries of poems have been added'. The sections of 'Mountains and rivers' are contributions to the realization of the paintings that the book as a whole evokes, and one of Snyder's metaphors for producing them derives from the techniques of Asian painting. 2009 Joan Qionglin Tan : After his return to America, Snyder visited some museums and a Chinese Song dynasty landscape painting entitled 'Streams and mountains without end' in Cleveland inspired him to us it with the similar title 'endless streams and mountains' in the opening poem of his book. Snyder made a series of long walks from different directions : a cultural walk through Chinese landscape scroll painting and through Native American lore, a physical walk through the real mountainous landscapes of China, Japan, India and North America, and a mental walk through Buddhist ideas, rituals and histories. Following natural boundaries, he made a great effort to explore the notions of origins and destinations through an extended meditative practice focusing upon the theme of 'walking on walking'. This project is an extended act of spiritual exploration and orientation through which Snyder hopes to create a set of guiding principles for a modern culture potentially set adrift from a sense of location or direction. Snyder gives the reader the best endnote pertaining to his deep sympathy for mountain practice. It covers a wide range : from his early mountaineering to his part-time work in the mountains ; from his Zen practice to his building a house in the foothills ; from his learning 'East Asian landscape painting as a meditative exercise' to his observation of Chinese landscape paintings in the museums ; and from his translation of Chinese poetry to his watching the Japanese Nô play 'Yamamba' (Old mountain woman). Snyder explains that he obtained this sense from the discernable natural energy of fluidity in Eastern Asian landscape paintings, such as mists, water, rocks, and clouds. In the Chinese tradition, these natural energies refer to the 'yin' and 'yang', a balanced dynamic force in nature. 2009 Robin Cheng-hsing Tsai : In Mountains and rivers without end Snyder's cultural translation of Chinese literature, art and painting, resonates with Chinese motifs that help us to experience non-duality. In these exo-poetic figures, symbols, emblems or motifs, the real and virtual, profane and sacred, eye and gaze are juxtaposed in such a way what the polar ends are brought together. Snyder's translation of nature from the original Chinese texts expresses an insight that is both immanent and transcendent. The first poem 'Endless streams and mountains' is the gateway to the rest of the work. 'Ch'i Shan Wu Chin' is a Chinese landscape painting. Hsüan Tsang : Snyder tells the saga of the seventh-century Chinese monk Hsüan Tsang. In Snyder's hands, Hsüan Tsang and Kokop'ele are bringers of new ideas, appearing multifariously as culture 'carriers' or translators, journeyers and tricksters. Unlike Hsüan Tsang, who is mor of an ascetic, Kokop'ele is a bringer of sun and rain for good crops and a fertility god. |
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| 17 | 2004 |
E-mail from Gary Snyder to Joan Qionglin Tang. "Of course I was already a Buddhist, and particularly interested in Zen, so surely I absorbed some particular influence from him [Han Shan]. In regard to Buddhism and Zen, the First Precept 'Cause no unnecessary harm' is implicitly ecological – since it extends to all Beings – and I took that to heart very early on. This compassionate and generous view of nature is part of Zen, but it is also intrinsically part of art and poetry." |
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Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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