37 quotes found
Poet · American · 1930
American poet (born 1930)
“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”
“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the upper Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation an...”
“I never did know exactly what was meant by the term The Beats, but let's say that the original meeting, association, comradeship of Allen Ginsberg, myself, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, P...”
“Better, the perfect, easy discipline of the swallows dip and swoop, without east or west.”
“How could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions—gravity and livable temperature range between freezing and boiling—have given us fluids and flesh. The trees...”
“If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I not attain highest perfect enlightenment.”
“I recalled when I worked in the woodsand the bars of Madras, Oregon.That short-haired joy and roughness—America—your stupidity.I could almost love you again.”
“The Sioux idea of living creatures is that trees, buffalo and men are temporary energy swirls, turbulence patterns ... that’s an early intuitive recognition of energy as a quality of matter. But th...”
“Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it ...”
“The national polities of the modern world maintain their existence by deliberately fostered craving and fear. ... The free world has become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulati...”
“The Bodhisattva lives by the sufferer’s standard, and he must be effective in aiding those who suffer.”
“The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.”
“Historically, Buddhist philosophers have failed to analyze out the degree to which ignorance and suffering are caused or encouraged by social factors. ... Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuou...”
“Toni Morrison and I and Leslie Marmon Silko traveled through China together five years ago, with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Francine du Plessix Gray...Ginsberg and Snyder are Buddhists. Gary ...”
“I am struck by how much we talk about rebirthing but never about rebearing. The word itself is unfamiliar to most people. Yet both women and men are capable of rebearing, women literally and men me...”
“People like Rothenberg and, of course, Gary Snyder perfected the white shamanism movement. The attitude of the white shaman is that he knows more about Indians than the Indians know.”
“I admire Gary Snyder and his ecological commitment very much.”
