The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Gary Snyder

True affluence is not needing anything.

The Buddha taught that all life is suffering. We might also say that life, being both attractive and constantly dangerous, is intoxicating and ultimately toxic. ‘Toxic’ comes from toxicon, Pendell tells us, with a root meaning of ‘a poisoned arrow.’ All organic life is struck by the arrows of real and psychic poisons. This is understood by any true, that is to say, not self-deluding, spiritual path.

poison, spirituality, suffering

True affluence is not needing anything.

contentment, stoicism

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Neolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.

Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the presence of Pelican and Osprey and Gray Whale in our lives; salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams.

dreams, language, the-environment

The Government finally decidedTo wage the war all-out. Defeat is Un-American. And they took to the air,Their women beside themin bouffant hairdosputting nail-polish on thegunship cannon-buttons.And they never came downfor they found,the groundis Pro-Communist. And dirty.And the insects side with the Viet Cong.

america, communism, vietnam, war

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.

living, path, revolution

Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.

beatnik, naturalism, poetry, spirituality

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

buddhism, dharma, gary, mind, snyder, zen

The other side of the “sacred” is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.

Here is perhaps the most delicious turn that comes out of thinking about politics from the standpoint of place: anyone of any race, language, religion, or origin is welcome, as long as they live well on the land. The great Central Valley region does not prefer English over Spanish or Japanese or Hmong. If it had any preferences at all, it might best like the languages it has heard for thousands of years, such as Maidu or Miwok, simply because it is used to them. Mythically speaking, it will welcome whomever chooses to observe the etiquette, express the gratitude, grasp the tools, and learn the songs that it takes to live there.

bioregionalism, california, nature

In Western Civilization, our elders are books.

books, elders, truth