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1293 00791 7614

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Gary Snyder's Poetry: A Study of the
Formation and Transformation of His Enlightened
Vision

presented by

Jyan—Lung Lin

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph . D degree in English

 

 

Majoi' professor

Date July 24, 1992

 

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

 

 

Mlchlgan State
Unlverolty

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TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.

 

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on! sm's POETRY: A STUDY or THE FORMATION
AND Wromnou or HIS ENLIGHTENED VISION

By

Jyan-lung Lin

A DISSERTATION
Submitted tO
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment Of the requirements
for the degree Of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department Of English.

1992

ABSTRACT

GARY SNYDER'S POETRY: A STUDY OF THE FORMATION
AND TRANSFORMATION OF HIS ENLIGHTBNED VISION

By

Jyan-lung Lin

Since the appearance of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums
(1958) and Alan Watts' Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen (1959),
Gary Snyder's poetic reputation has increased dramatically.
His books received sympathetic and serious criticism in the
1960’s from such important poet-critics as Kenneth Rexroth and
Robert Bly. In the last two decades at least three full-
length studies of Snyder's mind and art have been published.
lore recently, a number of critics have attempted to explicate
his esoteric allusions to Zen Buddhist thought. Yet no
critical study of Snyder's poetry presenting his spiritual
development as well as the transforming visions that come with
his Buddhist enlightenment has been written. My study makes
a start. In discussing Snyder's poetry, I rely on Zen
methodology while placing his work within American literary
tradition, dating back tO Emerson, which seeks new sources of
inspiration from the Orient.

The introductory chapter looks briefly at Snyder's life
from a chronological perspective, which includes his direct
contact with Zen Buddhism and Oriental literature. The second
chapter contains an introduction to Zen Buddhism and poetry in
that tradition, and a discussion of Snyder's poetics - his

imagism grounded on the principle of Zen aesthetics and his

elliptical style suitable for expressing the inexpressible.
In the third chapter, I examine his holistic vision of the
phenomenal and the noumenal. The fourth chapter reveals the
process of his spiritual development from.self-examination.to
an exercise of social wisdom. The fifth chapter deals with
his transforming visions, suggested by his sense Of humour,
his daily activities, and the unique Zen moods underlying his
poetry; In the final chapter, I evaluate Snyder's poetry and
make some comments concerning its contribution to American
literature as well as tO the ecology movement.

Snyder's best work stems from his vision of an integrated
and unified world. It not only influences poets but attempts
to create in the reader a change of consciousness. His Zen
Buddhist insights presented through sensuous images are the
source of a poetry of incredible power and beauty. He has
learned from.the Orient a poetry Of spontaneity and startling
originality which expands the range and depth of a literary

tradition deeply rooted in the American past.

For my parents-in-law Tse-ching and Pi-yun Lin Lai

I want to express my deep appreciation to those whose
guidance was instrumental in the completion of this study and
to those who served as encouragers. My special thanks are due
to my parents-in-law for their financial support. I am
especially grateful to my parents Jing-fa and Tung Tseng Lin,
my wife Myau-Jing Lai, my daughter Chant-ho Lai Lin, and my
second baby who is still on the way for their understanding
and loving dedication.

I am also grateful to Mr. Yun-tai Chou whose help
deverves more appreciation than I can express here. My
appreciation extends to Kenneth and Tammy Tanner and their
families for their friendship and encouragement. It is my
pleasure to thank Dr. Victor Paananen and Dr. William Johnson
for their generous Offer Of Assistantships and their
understanding and support at various stages of my study. I
would also like to thank all the staffs, especially Lorraine
Hart, in the Department Of English for their unfailing
kindness and help.

Finally, and most immediately, I want to express my
appreciation to the members of my Guidance Committee. It is

the poet and professor Diane Wakoski who has shaped my

vi

understanding of American poetry. Her comments about her
personal relationship with Gary Snyder were both insightful
and enjoyable. Her poetic sensibility and passion was that
which I continue to learn from and aspire to. Dr. Stephen
Arch, besides bolstering my work, graciously read the drafts
and gave valuable suggestions. His sensitive criticism.and
introduction to a wealth Of views concerning Snyder provided
a sounding board as I attempted to articulate my point of
view. Dr. James McClintock, my director, whose teaching of
American writers' response to nature contributed to the early
formation of this study, is the one to whom I owe the greatest
debt of thanks. His erudite supervision, his patient
assistance, and his deep sympathy enabled.me to complete this
study. Needless to say, completion of this dissertation would
have been impossible without the wide scholarship and useful

suggestion of these teachers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
CHAPTER
I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l
A. Snyder and His American Predecessors . . . . 3
B. Toward a Zen on Turtle Island . . . . . . . . 18
II. The Real Razor's Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
III. Dark and Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
IV; Five Stages of Spiritual Development . . . . . . 87
V. Transforming Visions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
VI. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

viii

3

RW

RCMP

TI

ABBREVIATIWS

Axe Handles (San Francisco: North Point, 1983) .

The Back Country (London: Fulcrum, 1967).

Earth House Hold (New York: New Directions, 1978) .
Left Out in the Rain (San Francisco: North Point, 1986) .
Mountains & Rivers Without End: Six Sections, Plus One
(Bolinas, California: Four Season, 1970).

norths & Texts (New York: New Directions, 1978) .

The Old Ways: Six Essays (San Francisco: City Lights,
1977) .

Passage Through India (San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1983) .
The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point,
1990) .

The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964-1979, ed., Wm
Scott Maclean (New York: New Directions, 1980) .
Regarding Wave (New York: New Directions, 1970) .
Riprap, & Cold Mountain Poems (San Francisco: Grey Fox,
1965).

Turtle Island (New York: New Directions, 1974) .

ix

INTRODUCTIC.

Critics tend to regard Gary Snyder as an “ecological
poet“ because of his recognition of the importance of the
reintegration of man and nature, his deep concern with the
fate of the environment, and his outspoken advocacy for
ecological awareness. Such.a label provides a starting point
for understanding Snyder's poetry. But it can also mislead
because Snyder is a Zen Buddhist, and his works are grounded
on Zen Buddhist ontology. In Barth House Hold, Snyder
mentions the three aspects of the Dharma path - wisdom
(prajna), meditation (dhyana), and morality (sila) - which
direct the course of his poetic development. Wisdom, as
Snyder explains, is “intuitive knowledge of the mind ... that
lies beneath one'e ego-driven anxieties and aggressions.“
Meditation is "going into the mind to see this for yourself -
over and over again, until it becomes the mind you live in."
As to morality, it is viewed by Snyder as leading naturally
from the simultaneously occurred wisdom and meditation, as
"personal example and responsible action, ultimately toward
the true connunity (sangha) of 'all beings” (EHH, 92).

Parallel to this spiritual movement from self-examination to

2

an exercise of social wisdom is the development of his writing
which, as Dan McLeod observes, “has moved from the still,
almost purely meditative lyrics of Riprap to the celebration
of the human family as a vital part of a broad network of
relationships linking all forms of life in Regarding wave, to
the eco-politico poems and essays in Turtle Island which
contains his most didactic poetry."1 In short, Snyder's
poetry of environmental concern is the inevitable outcome of
his mystical perception of the Buddha nature discoverable in
all things, animate or inanimate.

Gary Snyder is considered by Bob Steuding, the first
critic ever to write a full-length study Of Snyder's work, to
be a “strikingly different poet.“ He is "strikingly
different“ from other American poets not because he is
ecologically aware but because he is the only major
contemporary American poet able to absorb the Zen Buddhist
world view. As Steuding points out, "NO poet in American
literature has made Buddhist psychology so completely his
own." To understand Snyder's poetry, one must therefore go
deep into his spiritual world, which, to use Bert Almon's
words, is itself “a trail over the slick rock of [Snyder's]
poetry, providing a path where we might see only a difficult
physical terrainm" The intent of this study is to discuss
Snyder's poetry presenting his enlightened vision - its
formation and transformations. In doing so I rely on Zen

methodology while situating Snyder within a larger, American

3
poetic context by comparing his vision to that Of his American
predecessors, extending as far back as Emerson and Thoreau,
who did not fear to cross cultural barriers to seek new

sources of inspiration from the Orient.

A. Snyder and His American Predecessors

As the first Orientalists of American literature,
Emerson and Thoreau shared a broad interest in the Orient,
covering Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. However, as
many critics have pointed out, the Oriental influence on
Emerson and Thoreau is primarily the wisdom of the Brahman.
In Emerson and Asia, Frederic Ives Carpenter focuses on
Emerson's debts to Indian religion and philosophy. He traces
Emerson's interest in Brahmanism back to his early interest in
Plato and then to Neoplatonism, which, according to him, is
“the fusion of Greek Platonism with a mysticism brought from
the Orient by way of Alexandria.“ Arthur Christy, in The
Orient in American Transcendentalism, relates Emerson's
doctrines of the Over-Soul, Compensation, and illusion to the
corresponding Hindu doctrines of Brahman, Karma, and Maya.“
Christy also notes that while critical of Hindu pessimism and
the caste system, Thoreau focused his interest on Hinduism and
learned largely from it a mystical love of nature, which
helped him find his place in American literature.‘ Moncure

D. Conway, one Of Thoreau's acquaintances, even compared him

4

to a YOgi: “Like the pious Yogi, so long motionless whilst
gazing on the sun that knotty plants encircled his neck and
the cast snake-skin on his loins, and the birds built their
nests on his shoulders, this poet and naturalist, by equal
consecration, became a part of the field and forest.“7 And
Sherman Paul in The Shores of America singles out the
Bhagavad-Gita, the greatest Indian philosophical poem, and the
Laws of Khan as the most important Hindu books that helped to
bolster Thoreau's thought, and suggests that Thoreau was more
indebted to Hinduism than his mentor: “For although Emerson
found the Hindu doctrines of the soul and karma congenial to
his thought, Thoreau captured their spirit, their insistence
on behavior and the way of life."'

Whitman's Orientalism was first recognized by Emerson
and Thoreau. Emerson described Whitman's Leaves of Grass as
“a remarkable mixture of the Bhagavad-Gita and the New Ybrk
Herald, and Thoreau found it “wonderfully like the
Orientals." lore recently, V. R. Chari notes that the
central concept in Whitman's poetry is “the dynamic, cosmic
'I' of the Dpanishads, the atman-brahman.- attained through a
process of universalizing the 'ego, ' by meditating on the
universal nature of the self, its at-one-ness with the
all."" And 0. K. Nambiar in his Walt Whitman and Yoga
(1966) points out that Whitman's views are at times similar to
the spirit of Yoga, and his Leaves Of Grass can be read as a

modern Yoga guidebook.11 In “A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd

5

Roads" (1888) Whitman admitted that he had read "the ancient
Hindoo poems," among other classics, as "some further
embryonic facts of Leaves of Grass.“ In The Great Circle,
Beongcheon Yu has pointed out that Whitman's “Out of the
Cradle Endlessly Rocking“ (1859), describing a boy's
initiation through his witness of a mockingbird grieving over
the loss of its mate, was inspired by the Ramayana, “one of
'the ancient Hindoo poems' he read in preparation for the
first edition of Leaves of Grass."12

Although the Transcendentalists's Oriental interest is
largely in Hinduism, it should be noted that Hinduism, whose
major texts, such as the Upanishads, had already been in
existence long before the appearance of Buddhism, provided a
point of departure for the Buddha's teaching. Hindus believe
in the essential Self (Atman), or the Absolute (Brahman), of
which every human and every thing is a part. They reject the
conscious self (Jivatman), which tends to measure, form, and
divide things with various motives, and thus veil the one
underlying reality of Brahman. This motivated action of
measuring, forming, and dividing things is called Karma, which
always requires further action. It can not solve any problem,
but creates still more problems to be solved. To attain
"freedom" (Moksha) from the enslavement of the relative
comprehension of the world (Maya), from the trap of Karma,
Hinduism teaches us to disentangle our essential Self from our

self consciousness. The method is a yogic discipline: the

6
practice of no conception (Nirvikalpa), of taking action
spontaneously without seeking a result.

Buddhism agrees with Hinduism except that it denies the
Dpanishadic distinction between the essential Self and the
conscious self. “The true Self is no Self," or “the original
Mind is no Mind,“ is the fundamental teaching of every school
of Buddhism. This fundamental teaching of Buddhism is said to
be grounded on the Buddha's experience. After having sat
under the Bo tree for seven years to penetrate the cause of
human enslavement to the relative comprehension of the world,
the Buddha found that all his efforts had been in vain, that
the essential Self was no where to be found. He did not
transcend the distinction. between the absolute and the
relative until he “gave up.“ This simple action of “giving
up” suddenly awakened him to the fact that there was no
essential Self to be grasped, that is to say, there was no
distinction between the relative and the absolute. The
Buddha's teaching is not quite the assertion that there is no
essential Self at the bottom Of our self consciouseness. The
point is rather that the essential Self is not something to be
grasped either by direct experience or by concepts. Any
attempt to conceive it, believe in it, or seek for it
imediately engages the operation of the conscious self, which
is itself a Karma.” The Buddha's intuitional experience,
with no reliance on conventional Hindu teaching, and his focus

on the present, with no distinction between the past and the

7
future, are the original teachings of Buddhism.

Due to its kinship with Hinduism, the forerunner of
Buddhism, American Transcendentalism has been found by many
scholars comparable to Buddhism, particularly to its Zen sect.
For instance, Donald D. Eulert found a haiku quality in
Emerson's vision and style.“ Robert Detweiler declares that
Emerson, with his emphasis on intuitional experience, self—
reliance, and the miracle of the moment, comes quite close to

1’ Van Meter Ames in his Zen and American Thought sees

Zen.
Emerson as an “American Bodhisattva." And with a clear
knowledge of the merging in sixth century China of Buddhism
and Taoism, Ames proceeds to compare Thoreau to the Taoist.“
D. T. Suzuki, after noting the "cosmic feeling“ in Walden,
declares that Thoreau is much like the Japanese Zen poets
Basho and Saigyo.“ Even Emerson himself considered the
Buddhist to be a Transcendentalist.

If there is anything grand and daring in

human thought or virtue, any reliance on

the vast, the unknown; any presentiment,

any extravagance of faith, the

spiritualist adopts it as most in nature.

The oriental mind has always tended to

this largeness. Buddhism is an

expression of it. The Buddhist who

thanks no man, who says, ”Do not flatter

your benefactors,“ but who, in his

8
conviction that every good deed can by no
possibility escape its reward, will not
deceive the benefactor by pretending that
he has done more than he should, is a
Transcendentalist."

Aware of the similarity between Zen and American
Transcendentalism, some critics have attempted to compare
Snyder's Buddhist thought, his personality and life style to
that of the Transcendentalists, Thoreau in particular.
Herbert Fackler notes that Snyder's Cold Mountain Poems is "a
kind of Zen Walden Pond."” Charles Molesworth, while noting
Earth House Hold's dedication to Oda Sesso Roshi and its
indebtedness to Zen philosophy, thinks it possible to read the
book as a very American testament: “here the prototype would
be Thoreau's Walden - that mixes personal experience with a
universalizing vision addressed to the largest questions."°
In his introduction to The Real Work (1980), a collection of
Snyder's interviews and talks, Scott McLean considers Zen and
American Transcendentalism to be two parallel threads Snyder
has followed.

Gary Snyder's poetry has continued a
tradition first pursued in late
eighteenth-century Romantic thought and
carried on in American literature most
notably by Thoreau: a belief that the

“outer and inner life correspond“ and

9

that poetry is “the self-consciousness of

the universe,“ the voice of the universe

reflecting on itself and on the

interdependence of outer and inner nature

But if Snyder's work follows this

thread in European and American

literature, the bases for his poetry lie

elsewhere .... [His] attention to

phenomena in order to discover poetic

form in that reality was sharpened by the

meditative teachings of Japanese and

Chinese poets leading to mind before

language and in what is now more than

twenty-five years of Zen practice, a

discipline which takes one “to anything

direct - rocks or bushes or people.“ (TRW

xi-xii)
Horeover, while making no mention of the parallel insights of
Zen and American Transcendentalism, Snyder, in his first long
prose effort, The Practice of the Wild (1990), quotes most
often Thoreau and the Japanese Soto Zen master Dogen to uphold
his vision of the oneness of mind and nature. Suffice it to
say that Snyder's Zen with its transcendental nature of
mysticism, paradoxism and wise passivism can be better
understood in the light of American Transcendentalism.

Eliot's interest in Hinduism and Buddhism is well-known.

10
In 1911 he returned to Harvard from Paris and took up his two-
year study of Sanskrit and Pali with Professor Charles Lanman.
During the second year he studied Indian philosophy with
Professor James Woods. In After Strange Gods (1934) Eliot
mentioned his study of Hinduism and Buddhism, which left him
“in a state of enlightened mystification.“
Two years spent in the study of Sanskrit
under Charles Lanman. and a year in the
mazes of Patanjali's metaphysics under
the guidance of James Woods, left me in
a state of enlightened mystification. A
good half of the effort of understanding
what the Indian philosophers were after -
and their subtleties make most of the
great European philosophers look like
schoolboys - lay in trying to erase from
my mind all the categories and kinds of
distinction common to European philosophy
from the time of the Greeks. My previous
and concomitant study of European
philosophy was hardly better than an
obstacle. And I came to the conclusion
- seeing also that the “influence“ of
Brahmin and Buddhist thought upon Europe,
as in Schopenhauer, Hartman, and Deussen,

had largely been through romantic

ll

misunderstanding - that my only hope of

really penetrating to the heart of that

mystery would lie in forgetting how to

think and feel as an. American. or a

European: which, for practical as well as

sentimental reasons, I did not wish to

do.21
Although he did not wish to forget “how to think and feel as
an American or a European, " Eliot is clearly indebted to
Hinduism and Buddhism. At the time of his composition of "The
Waste Land, " because he had to face his mentally unstable wife
and his own artistic sterility, Eliot even seriously
considered becoming a Buddhist.“ To transcend this two-fold
impasse and his personal sentimentalism, Eliot adopted the
mythical method to view' his personal situation from. a
universal frame of reference, including Hinduism and Buddhism.
His major Buddhist reference appears in the third section of
'The Waste Land," which puts the Buddha's “fire sermon“ on
lust in parallel with the scene of a love affair between a
clerk and a typist set against the polluted city, symbolic of
the modern society as a waste land. His reference to Hinduism
is seen in the last section, "What the Thunder Said,“ which
uses a fable recorded in the Upanishads, telling how gods,
men, and devils interpreted their father Prajapati's
monosyllabic word Da respectively as "be self -controlled, " “be

charitable," and "be compassionate."

12
More deeply than "The Waste Land" is Eliot's Four

Quartets indebted to Buddhism and Hinduism. The book is found
by critics closest to Hinduism in theme and structure and to
Buddhism in spirit. Russell T. Fowler singles out the Cite as
the most important inspirational source for Eliot's Four
Quartets: “Its influence, however, has a central importance,
both structurally and thematically, to the last of the four
and to the Quartets as a whole.”” Harold E. McCarthy, on
the other hand, declares that “Of all Eliot's works, taken
separately, it is the Feur Quartets which is closest to the
spirit of Buddhism.'“ Throughout the book, Eliot meditates
on time and eternity, action and inaction, movement and
stillness. To reconcile the relative and the absolute, he
follows the suggestion of Krishna, one of the reincarnations
of Vishnu the Hindu Preserver, that one act with no thought of
the fruit of action so that one's conscious self can be wiped
clear and one's discriminating mind be transcended. In “The
Dry Salvages' he sang:

Here between the hither and the farther

shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the
future

And the past with an equal mind ....

And do not thinks of the fruit of action.

Fare Forward ....

So Krishna, as when he admonished

13

Arjuna on the field of battle. Not fare well,

But fare forward, voyagers.”
In suggesting that a “selfless" action be taken to eliminate
the conception of time and space, Eliot also uses at the heart
of the book the now well-known phrase, “the still point of the
turning world,“ which may be read as a key to the book,
suggesting the familiar Buddhist image, “the Wheel of the
Dharma." The Buddhist uses the image of the spinning wheel to
represent the forever changing/ turning phenomenal. At the
axis of the wheel there is the Dharma, the heart of things,
which is still and silent. Like the Buddhist, Eliot uses in
his book a similar image to emphasize that at the center of
“the turning world“ there is the noumenal, the world of non-
distinction.“

Eliot's ”The Waste Land,“ as critics have pointed out,
has had a profound influence on Snyder's work, particularly
his Mfyths & Texts. In Gary Snyder, Bob Steuding, after
comparing Eliot's concept of tradition and his mystical vision
to Snyder's awareness of his place in time and his mysticism,
proceeds to discuss the similarities between “The Waste Land“
and mhs & Texts. He says: "In Myths & Texts, Snyder employs
and adapts to his own needs the themes, technique, and general
purpose of 'The Waste Land': and as a result, he produces a
work similar in content and in style, if radically different
in spirit.“ Although he argues that “The Waste Land“ may be

regarded as the paradigm of myths & Texts, Steuding admits:

14

”in Myths e Texts, Eliot's presence is found most obviously
when comparing his sections III and V to Snyder's 'Burning.’
Eliot's sections I, II, and IV, with their sense of illicit
love, sterility, guilt, and shame contrast to the generally
lusty and psychically uncomplicated drift of Myths e Texts.“
Then Steuding focuses on the numerous points of comparison
between Eliot's “The Fire Sermon“ and “What the Thunder Said“
and Snyder's “Burning.“ He draws connections between both
poets' vision and attitude -- their awareness of “the
existence of the void and the transience of sentient life,“
their sense of purgation and abandonment, and their final
suggestion of acceptance and peace.” Steuding's discussion
indicates that without a knowledge of both poets' influence by
Oriental thought, any comparison of their works will have to
stop at the technical or thematic level.

While "The Waste Land“ had an effect specifically on
Snyder's Myths & Texts, Four Quartets had an influence on
Snyder's poetry in.general. Its viewrof the conscious self as
responsible for the categories of action versus inaction, past
and future, ascent and decline, movement and stillness, and
its suggestion of the sort of I'selfless” action as a way of
reconciling the relative and the absolute are the core of the
Buddhist theory and practice, on which many of Snyder's poems
have grounded themselves. Expressing the Buddhist attitude of
mind, the book is Snyder's favorite Eliot work. In The Real

Work, Snyder says: "And so Eliot, without maybe even

15
consciously being aware of it, points us some profound
directions. Four Quartets is my favorite Eliot work, and I
think that it is a major work" (TRW 56—57).

As for Pound, he agreed with Whitman that the British
literary tradition was not the only source from which American
poets could learn. He did not fear to cross cultural barriers
to seek new sources of inspiration. The Orient, in
particular, was an example and a source of values for Pound.
Because he emphasized the social function of literature and
the role of poet as teacher and preserver of culture, Pound
excitedly turned to Confucianism and translated almost all of
its major texts. In "Canto XIII," as Dan McLeod notes, Pound
alluded to Confucius' view of himself as a preserver of
culture.

The blossoms of the apricot
blow from the East to the West,
And I have tried to keep them from falling."

On the other band, due to his misunderstanding of
Buddhism and Taoism, Pound regarded the two as the arch-rivals
of Confucianism and dismissed them as negative forces that
brought chaos into the Chinese empire. His rejection of
Buddhism and Taoism is seen throughout the China Cantos.
However, Pound as a poet was more interested in seeking from
the Orient something that could confirm the aesthetics of his
Imagism -- a theory grounded on the “Objectivist logic“ of

Schopenhauer, passed through the work of Henri Bergson to the

16

British Imagist T. E. Hulme, attempting to encounter directly
what L. S. Dembo calls “essential reality," with a perception
free, in Dembo's words, “of conventional reason, sentiment,
and even of conception itself .“2’ Thus Pound paradoxically
reverted to the technical aspects of the imagistic Chinese and
Japanese poems, which had their roots in the Buddhist-Taoist
philosophy of egolessness, of the unity of all life forms.
For instance, the nineteen Chineses poems he translated in
Cathay were written largely by Taoist-Zenist poets such as Tao
Yuan Ming, Li Po, and Wang Wei. And his famous "In a Station
of the Metro'. is modelled on an Old haiku written by the
Japanese poet Moritake. From T'ang poetry and Japanese haiku
Pound learned such techniques as line division, syntactical
ellipsis, and super-imposition of one image upon another.
These techniques provided the basic structure for many of his
poems and made possible his creation of a poetry “harder and
saner nearer the bone,“ with “fewer painted adjectives,"
and “free from emotional slither."’°

Pound's Confucianism, with its emphasis on the socio-
political function of poetry, has been a model for Snyder.
Bob Steuding has demonstrated this influence of Pound's
Confucian literary thought on Snyder by comparing “Canto XLV'
and ABC of Reading with Snyder's Earth House Hold (1969).’1
Moreover, Pound's integration of Oriental imagism and
ellipsism in his poetic theory has had a great influence on

contemporary American poets, Snyder among them. Before he

17

came into direct contact with Chinese poetry, Snyder had read
Arthur Waley's and.Ezra Pound's translations. Because it was
not waley’ but Pound. who experimented ‘with the Chinese
structural techniques, it is fair to say that Snyder's first
knowledge of these techniques ’Iwass ; from Pound. Although
Pound's knowledge of the cultures of China and Japan was not
as profound as that of Snyder, his commitment to Confucianism
and the Buddhist—Taoist Imagism paved the way for Snyder to
till the soil of Zen, which blends the three branches of
Chinese philosophy. In the title poem Of his Axe Handles
(1983), Snyder uses “axe and handle,“ a metaphor he borrows
from the Chinese Book of Songs, (700—1200, B.C.), to express
the mentor-disciple relationship between Pound and himself:

“In making the handle

Of an axe

By cutting wood with an axe

The model is indeed near at hand.“

My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

Translated that and taught it years ago

And I see: Pound was an axe,

Chen was an axe, I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture,

How we go on. (AH'G)

18

B. Toward a Zen on Turtle Island

Snyder was born in 1930 in San Francisco. When he was
one and one-half years old, his family moved to the state of
Washington and opened a dairy farm in a rural area and
remained there until 1942. During this period, Snyder became
interested in nature. As he recalls in The Real Wbrk, “As
early as I was allowed, at the age of nine or ten, I went off
and slept in the woods at night alone. I had a secret camp
back in the woods that nobody knew about: I had hidden the
trail to it. As soon as my father figured I knew how to put
out a campfire, he let me go off and cook for myself and stay
a day or two“ (TRW 92). When he was twelve, Snyder moved with
his family to Portland, Oregon” At this time he was strongly
attracted to American Indian culture. He sewed his own
moccasins and made his own arrows, spending much time in the
woods camping and hiking. The sumers of 1943-45 he worked in
a.camp at Spirit Lake, Washington, where he obtained his first
taste of mountaineering. As he recalls, “It was here that I
got my first taste of high country and where I learned the
rudiments of mountain climbing and back packing, and changed
over from lowland wilderness to alpine wilderness. What I
learned there I extended later into Forest Service and logging
and mountaineering experience."” At the age of fifteen he
became the youngest member of the Mazamas MOuntain Climbers,

an adult club that required the climbing of a snow peak for

19
membership.

Snyder's early sympathy with the natural world, his
youthful experiences, and his awareness of manls exploitation
of nature led him to seek in Zen Buddhism an experiential
philosophy whereby he could become an.advocate for wilderness
and ecological awareness. In reply to Peter Barry Chowka who
asked him to recount the context of those years that led him
to Buddhism, Snyder said:

When I was young, I had an immediate,
intuitive, deep sympathy with the natural
world which.was not taught me by anyone.
In that sense, nature is my "guru“ and
life is my sadhana. That sense of the
authenticity, completeness, and reality
of the natural world itself made me aware
even as a child of the contradictions
that I could see going on around me in
the state of Washington, in the way of
exploitation, logging, development,
pollution. I lived on the edge of
logging country, and the trees were
rolling by on the tops of trucks, just as
they are still. (TRW 92)

In 1949 when he studied in Reed College, Portland,
Snyder first heard about the mystical naturalism of Zen, which

believes that the Buddha nature can be discovered not in man

20

alone but in all that exists, sentient or insentient. He
began teaching himself to sit in meditation. By this time he
was also studying Oriental culture. As he recalled in The
Real Work, he read Ezra Pound and Arthur Waley's translations
of Chinese poetry, a translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te wing,
and some texts 'of Confucius, the Hindu Upanishads, Vedas,
Bhagavad-Gitafimost of the classics of Chinese and Indian
Buddhist literature. Moreover, he became particularly
interested in Zen, a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoist
tradition, and decided that he should someday go to Japan and
study it:

The convergence that I found really

exciting was the Mahayana Buddhist

wisdom-oriented line as it developed in

China and assimilated the older Taoist

tradition. It was that very precise

cultural meeting that also coincided with

the highest period of Chinese poetry -

the early and middle T'ang dynasty Zen

masters and the poets who were their

contemporaries and in many cases friends

- that was fascinating. Then I learned

that this tradition is still alive and

well in Japan. That convinced me that I

should go and study in Japan. (TRW 94-95)

One year after graduating from Reed College in 1951 with

21
an interdepartmental degree in Anthropology-Literature, Snyder
went to the graduate school at Indiana University studying
linguistics and anthropology. But soon he quit and hitch-
hiked back to San Francisco. There he roomed with a former
classmate, the poet and Zen Buddhist, Philip Whalen, who
further piqued his interest in Zen. In 1953 he left San
Francisco and worked as summer fire lookout at Sourdough
Mountain in the State of Washington. In the fall of 1953, to
prepare himself to go to Japan, Snyder enrolled in the
Oriental Languages Department at the University of California
at Berkerley. Also in that season he met with Kenneth
Rexroth, then San Francisco's literary patriarch. In 1955
Snyder began translating Han-shan, a Zen lunatic of Chinese
T'ang Dynasty, under the guidance of Chen Shih—hsiang, his
teacher of Chinese poetry. As critics have pointed out, it
was during his translation of Han-sham that Snyder's style was
assured. Before he translated Han Shan, Snyder had tried his
hand on other Chinese T'ang poets in the Zen tradition such
as, Wang Wei, Meng Hao-jan, Liu Tsung-yuan, and Wei Ying-wu.
As Dan McLeod observes, that some of his translations "were
published in multiple versions may even indicate that back
then Snyder was still uncertain of his own style. By the time
he turned to Han-sham, however, his hand was sure."” As his
Cold Mountain Poems (1965) shows. the generalized imagery, the
extreme terseness and colloquial language are actually Han

Shan's style. Only the landscape or “setting“ is largely that

22

of the American West. This style was soon reflected in Riprap
(1959), Durticularly in "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain
Lookout.“ The poem uses the landscape of the Sourdough
Mountain in the State of Washington in presenting scenes not
as settings but as natural forces that integrate humankind.
This Han-sham, as well as Chinese, way Of presenting things
has provided a tradition for Snyder's poetic practice. Also
in the year of 1955 Snyder met Allen Ginsberg. Through his
association with Ginsberg, he met Jack Kerouac and other Beat
writers such as Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia. He soon
joined them in giving the now historic poetry reading at the
Six Gallery in San Francisco, which culminated in Ginsberg's
reading of 'Howl,‘ bemoaning the destruction of “the best
minds“ of his generation. Thus Snyder helped to start the
movement, later known as the San Francisco Renaissance.

Although his involvement in the Beat movement was short
(he met Ginsberg in September, 1955, and left for Japan in
May, 1956), Snyder is lumped together with the Beats not just
because he joined them in justification of hitchhiking, pot-
smoking, and sexual promiscuity, in rejection of post-war
America's intellectual standards and mass culture, but because
he shared with them a strong interest in Zen. The Zen craze
of "the beat generation“ has been properly explained by Alan
Watts from a broad cultural perspective: the war against
Japan, the publications of D. T. Suzuki's essays on Zen and

other anthologies of Zen stories, the attraction of a non-

23
conceptual, experiential philosophy in a climate of scientific
relativism, and the appeal of Zen arts to the modern spirit of
the West and of Zen's mystical naturalism to those seeking the
reintegration of man and nature." It is this Zen fervor
that turns “the heat generation" from an all-out attack on
American business civilization into a search for the
significance of life, from furious, reckless, and crazy into
'beatific. " In taking interest in Far Eastern art and
religion, the Beats found.themselves in.the line of turning to
the East for inspiration, which was started by Emerson and
Thoreau and continued by Pound and Eliot.
Of all the Beat writers, Snyder is the best in absorbing

Zen. Buddhist thought. .According' to ihis colleague Jack
Kerouac, Snyder had already been well-discplined in Zen even
before he went to Japan. In The Dharma Bums Snyder (Japhy
Ryder) was described by Kerouac as leading a monastic life,
typical of a Zen Buddhist.

Japhy lived in his own shack which was

infinitely smaller than ours, about

twelve by twelve, with nothing in it but

typical Japhy appurtenances that showed

his belief in the simple monastic life -

no chairs at all . . ., but just straw mats

.... He had a slew of orange crates all

filled with beautiful scholarly books,

some of them in Oriental languages, all

24

the great sutras, comments on sutras, the

complete works of D. T. Suzuki and a fine

quadruple-volume edition of Japanese

haikus In fact if a thief should

have broken in there the only things of

real value were the books.”5
In his first meeting with Kerouac, Snyder was so well-trained
in Zen that he was able to point out that Kerouac was wrong in
making a distinction between Mahayana Buddhism and Zen, which
differ from each other only in practice and style.

I can't recreate the exact . . . brilliance

of all Japhy's answers and comebacks and

come-one with which he had me on pins and

needles all the time and did eventually

stick something in my crystal head that

made me change my plans in life."
As Kerouac admits in The Dharma Bums, it was Snyder who taught
him to approach Buddhism not through prayer but through
meditation, not to follow the Buddha's truth in an emotional
and ethical way but to enter the world of Zen where ego was
discarded, and come out wholly alive. Everything Snyder did -
his translation of Han Shan, his talks on haiku, his mention
of Zen masters's sayings and doings, and his openness toward
nature - was inspiring to Kerouac. Under Snyder's guidance,
Kerouac finally became initiated and dedicated his book to

Snyder's hero, Han Shan.

25
In 1956 Snyder went to Japan to undertake formal Zen

training on a scholarship from the First Zen Institute of
America. From that year until 1968, except for nine months
(1958) spent in San Francisco, six months (1961-62) traveling
‘with Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky through India, and a brief
stay (1964-65) at Berkeley teaching English, Snyder spent most
of time in Japan. In “As For Poets“ in Turtle Island (1974)
Snyder suggests that he is the first American poet who has
ever spent so many years studying Zen in Japan:

The first

Water Poet

Stayed down six years.

He was covered with seaweed. (TI 87)
“Stayed down six years“ refers to the longest period (1959-64)
that Snyder spent in Japan. As seaweed is one of the Japanese
favorite daily foods, symbolizing the culture of Japan, ”He
was covered with seaweed! represents Snyder's life thoroughly
absorbed in Japanese culture whose core is grounded on Zen.
In “The East West Interview" Snyder more clearly describes his
experiences of studying Zen in Kyoto under Oda Sesso Roshi:

I spent my first year in Japan living in

Shokoku-ji, learning Japanese and serving

as personal attendant to Miura Isshu

Roshi. As my first teacher, he

instructed me to continue my studies with

Oda Sesso Roshi, who was the head abbot

26
of Daitoku-ji at that time. So I went to
Daitoku-ji, was accepted as a disciple by
Oda Sesso, and started going to sesshins
and living periodically in the monastery
. . . . Oda Roshi was an especially gentle
and quiet man - an extremely subtle man,
by far the subtlest mind I've ever been
in contact with, and a marvelous teacher
whose teaching capacity I would never
have recognized if I hadn't stayed with
it, because it was only after five or six
years that I began to realize that he had
been teaching me all along. I guess
that's what all the roshis are doing: ,
teaching even when they ' re not
“teaching.“ One of the reasons that you
have to be very patient and very
committed is that the way the
transmission works is that you don't see
how it works for a long time. (TRW 97-98)

In 1969 Snyder returned permanently to the United
States, continuing his Zen and poetic practices. Since then
he has become increasingly active in advocating the natural
world and ecological awareness. In his effort to restore the
eco-syetem, Snyder has never shuned the media. Instead, he

has published many articles in popular magazines and lectured

27

in many universities across the nation. In 1972 he was
selected along with poet Michael McClure by the Portola
Institute to attend the "United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment" in Stockholm, Sweden. Along with his
concern with the fate of the environment, Snyder has always
cared about the development of art and culture. In 1977 he
worked in Governor Jerry Brown's administration as a member of
the California Arts Council, which was not peopled by wealthy
patrons of the arts as were similar organizations in other
states, but by working artists themselves. Without getting
paid, he regarded the time he gave to the Council as public
service time, hoping to get public support for the arts and
bring artists and communities together.

Moreover, Snyder has always had a strong sense of
mission to spread his Zen Gospel throughout what he calls
“Turtle Island,“ an Indian term for America. Three years
after his return to the United States, Snyder built his own
home near Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada
foothills, where he and a group of friends have established
the Ring of Bone Zendo, hoping to work toward a Zen on Turtle
Island. In an interview conducted in 1988, Snyder lays out
his plan of turning America into a Zen Utopia.

I am working toward a "Ch'an on Turtle
Island,“ which for me means an earlier
and more open and more T'ang Chinese sort

of spirit, old women trading insults and

28
teacakes with wandering monks, really
chopping literal wood and carrying actual
water, a Ch'an for ordinary people and a
few ghosts and spirits thrown in, on a
real continent of mountains and streams
on which we ask how to include the
sagebrush and the rabbits or the
farmworkers and the growers of Manteca
and Turlock in our Zendos as well as the
highly educated slightly troubled
professionals.“”
"Old womem trading insults and teacakes with wandering monks“
refers to an interesting dialogue between the Zen master Te-
shan (780-865) and an old woman selling teacakes. Before he
was converted to Zen, Te-shan had been a learned Dharma-
lecturer. Because he lectured most frequently on The Diamond
Sutra, he was nicknamed “Diamond Chou." One day, due to his
doubts about the teaching of sudden enlightment by the Zen
master Lung-tan, he decided to have a Dharma battle with Lung-
tan. On the way to Lung-tan's place, he met an old woman
selling teacakes, which in Chinese are called “mind-
refreshers."” Being tired and hungry, Te-shan put down his
pole with two baskets of his teacher Ching-lung's comentaries
on The Diamond Sutra, trying to buy some teacakes. The old
woman, out of curiosity, asked, “what is it in those basket?"

“Ching-lung's commentaries on The Diamond Sutra, " answered Te-

29

shan. The old woman said, “I'd like to ask you a question.
If you can answer it, I will give you some good “mind-
refreshers' (teacakes) for free. But if you can't, please go
away. Now, according to The Diamond Sutra, 'The past mind
cannot be obtained, the present mind cannot be obtained, and
the future mind cannot be obtained. ' What mind is Your
Reverence intended to refresh?“ To this the learned Te-shan
could not answer.”

"Really chopping literal wood and carrying actual water"
is a phrase borrowed from Pang-Fun, a famous Zenist of T'ang
China, who said: “supernatural power and wonderful functioning
are found / In the carrying of water and the chopping of
wood."° This famous Zen phrase is often quoted to suggest
that to become enlightened, one needs only to live an ordinary
life because the wonderful function of the Buddha nature is to
be found no where but in his everyday life. By referring to
the dialogue between Te-shan and the Old woman selling
teacakes, which suggests the incredible popularity of Zen
among ordinary people in T'ang China, and by quoting Pang-yun
Snyder reveals his dream of turning Turtle Island into a Zen
Utopia. In this Utopia even an old woman selling teacakes is
able to wage a “Dharma war“ against the learned monk, and
every ordinary person knows that the Buddha nature is to be
found in his "ordinary mind“ as well as in mountains, rivers,
plants, and animals.

In an interview conducted in 1989, Burr Snider mentioned

30

Ginsberg's prediction that Snyder would ”end up living in a
mountain cave" like his spiritual hero, Han Shan, which made
Snyder laugh:

I didn't come up here with the idea of

leaving the world, I always thought of

this place as more like a base camp in

the mountains from which I could make

raids on the world down there. Which is

exactly what I did for years. I'd swoop

down and make raids on the treasures of

student bodies at universities, making my

living reading my poetry.“
Snyder's mind, as Burr Snider puts it, "is adept at operating
at the highest most universal levels while diving into the
thicket of mundane concerns, and he seems always to be
searching for synthesis among the fundamental contradictions
of existence."“ Snyder's Zen activism is, in fact, the
inevitable outcome of his existential awakening, whose process
is one of the main concerns of this study. To understand
Snyder's work presenting the process of his search for a
synthesis of the universal Mind and the mundane world, it is
necessary to introduce Zen Buddhism and poetry in that
tradition, engaging Snyder's poetics shaped in accord with the

principle of Zen aesthetics.

THIRBALRAZOR'SBDGB

As Zen Buddhism was brought from India to China in the
sixth century, the Chinese word 'Ch‘an,“ in Japanese “Zen,“
was transliterated from the Sanskrit word “Dyana.“ However,
since the Chinese T'ang dynasty (613-907), Zen has become
different in meaning from the original "Dyana.“ While Dyana
aims at putting down any thought in the mind by a methodical
practice of yoga, Zen is simply a proper way to sit with no
intention to put down the thought in.mind. Unlike Dyana, Zen
is not an excercise or discipline with an ulterior motive. It
is meditation in the purest sense of the word. For the Zen
Buddhist where there is motive, there is no meditation.
Although Zen.differs from Dyana in insisting on.a purposeless
meditation, it does not deny that there are two selves in men,
the conscious self and the essential Self, and that it has an
aimless aim.at reintegrating both.

In China and Japan numerous Zen stories have been told
to suggest the coexistence of the two selves in men. The most
interesting one is recorded in the Zen text Mhmon-kan:

One day, when Hui-neng [638-713], the

sixth Chinese Patriach of Zen Buddhism,

31

32

went to a certain temple in Canton where

Yin-zong was preaching the Nirvana Sutra

to his audience, he saw two monks arguing

about a flag and the wind. One monk

said: “The flag is moving." The other

one said: "The wind is moving." Each of

them insisted on his own opinion; there

seemed to be no way to end the quarrel.

Then Hui-neng said to them: “The wind is

not moving. The flag is not moving. It

is your mind that is moving."1
The profound coment made by Hui-neng may be interpreted on
two different levels. On one level, he is telling the monks
that it is their conscious self that makes them distinguish
the movement of the wind from the movement of the flag. On
the other level, he is suggesting to them that neither the
flag nor the wind functions. It is the essential Self that
functions through external objects.

The idea of two selves existing in men is also held by
American Transcendentalists. In "The Over-Soul" Emerson
wrote:

What we commonly call man, the eating,
drinking, planting, counting man, does
not, as we know him, represent himself,
but misrepresents himself. Him we do not

respect, but the soul, whose organ he is,

33

would he let it appear through his
action, would make our knees bend. When
it breathes through his intellect, it is
genius: when it breathes through his
will, it is virtue; when it flows through
his affection, it is love.’

Thoreau also noted the two selves within him:
I only know myself as a human entity: the
scene, so to speak, of thoughts and
affections; and am sensible of a certain
doubleness by which I can stand as remote
from myself as from another. However
intense my experience, I am conscious of
the presence and criticism of a part of
me, which, as it were, is not a part of
me, but spectator, sharing no experience,
but taking note of it; and that is no
more than I than it is you. When the
play, it may be the tragedy, of life is
over, the spectator goes his‘way. It‘was
a kind of fiction, a work of the
imagination only, so far as he ‘was
concerned.’

Whitman, too, was fully aware of the coexistence of the real

Me and its early partner when he said: “I cannot understand

the mystery, but I am always conscious of myself as two - as

34
my soul and I: and I reckon it is the same with all men and
women."

The essential Self is generally designated by the Zen
master as the self-nature, Tao, or the noumenal. This true
Self, as Hui-neng explains, is “fundamentally pure and clean, "
'fundamentally beyond birth and death,“ “fundamentally
complete in itself ," "fundamentally immutable." Its content,
as Hui-neng continues to explain, is the absolute voidness of
the inner nature and the outer nature as a whole: “The
wondrous nature of wordly men is fundamentally void and does
not contain a single thing. The absolute voidness of the
fundamental nature is also like that . . . . The voidness of the
universe is capable of containing all things of various forms
and shapes The voidness of wordly men's nature is also
like that." The essential Self with the Void as its content
is the source of all things. In In My Own Way Alan Watts
comments on the Zen Buddhist Void, which he considers started
this universe:

Although Westerners speak of “conquering
space, " they have a radical prejudice and
a blind spot with respect to the
importance of nothingness. They balk at
it as people used to balk at thinking of
the world as round. To them, nothingness
is the awful-awful, the end, the demise

which, we most fervently hope, is not to

35

be the ultimate destiny of man and the
universe. Yet this is due to a freaky
lapse in our logic which affects our
theology, our science, our philosophy,
and our most vivid emotions. No one
seems to have realized that you can't
have something without nothing. How can
you know “is“ without understanding
"isn't“? Try to imagine a solid without
any space through and around it. Try to
imagine space without any solid,
including yourself, within it. For if
something implies nothing, then nothing
in turn implies something. To be or not
to be is not the question, for reality,
like electricity, is a pulsation of
positive and negative energy. The big
bang with which this universe is supposed
to have started was, as they say in Zen,
"the void gnashing its teeth."‘

The essential Self, in. terms of its completeness,
originality, purity, and creativity, is comparable to what
Emerson called "the soul,“ "the aboriginal Self," or "the
eternal One." In “The Over-Soul“ Emerson described "the
eternal One“ as “self-sufficing and perfect,“ and "the soul"

as "original and pure." And in “Self-Reliance“ he

36

interpreted “the aboriginal Self" as the origin of all things
which is beyong human understanding:

What is the aboriginal Self on which a

universal reliance may be grounded? ....

The inquiry leads us to that source, at

once the essence of genius, of virtue,

and of life, which we call Spontaneity or

Instinct. We denote this primary'wisdom

as Intuition, whilst all later teachings

are tuitions. In that deep force, the

last fact behind which analysis cannot

go, all things find their common origin.

For the sense of being which in calm

hours rises, we know not how, in the

soul, is not diverse from things, from

space, from light, from time, from man,

but one with them.and proceeds obviously

from the same source whence their life

and being also proceed. We first share

the life by which things exist and

afterwards see them as appearances in

nature and forget that we have shared

their cause.“'

Where the content of the essential Self is the void,

which is immutable and. permanent, the contents of the

conscious self are the intellect, the will, the emotion, and

37
all the senses, which are changeable and transient. In
contrast with the essential Self which is as pure as a mirror,
the conscious self with all its unsteady contents is apt to be
influenced.by external objects and therefore is impure. Like
dirt on a mirror, it is responsible for the concealment of the
pure, essential Self and for the relative comprehension of
things: good and evil, subject and object, enlightenment and
unenlightenment. As the Zen master Yung-chia sang in his
“Song of Enlightenment,“
Mind is an organ of sense with things for its
object,
Both are like the dust which settles on
a mirror
Which becomes bright when the dust is rubbed away:
Self-nature is realized when mind and dharma
vanish.’
Since the impure, conscious self is to blame for the
concealment of the self nature, the final goal of Zen is to
purify our conscious self so that the mirror-like, original
nature can be revealed. In “This Day, 0 Soul“ in Leaves of
Grass Whitman described his effort to keep his dirt-like
consciousness clean so that the Soul can faithfully reflect
like a mirror the outside phenomena:
This day, 0 Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror;
Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay -

But the cloud has pass'd and the tarnish gone:

38
. . . . Behold, 0 Soul! It is now a clean and bright
mirror,
Faithfully showing you all things of the world.10

However, in purifying the conscious self, Zen does not

try to seek or grasp the essential Self. Following the
original teaching of the Buddha, Zen does not believe that
there is any essential Self to be sought or grasped. For Zen
where there is seeking or grasping, there is no essential
Self. An attachment to the essential Self produces no less
Karma than an attachment to the conscious self. Nor does Zen
make any distinction between the absolute, essential Self and
the relative, conscious self for the Absolute is in the world
of relativity. As D. T. Suzuki says, the essential Self, the
Absolute is “beyond the world of opposites, a world built up
by intellectual distinction a spiritual world of
nondistinction which involves achieving an absolute point of
view. " Lest such a definition postulate a distinction between
the Absolute and the relative, Suzuki immediately adds: "The
Absolute is in no way distinct from the world of
discrimination . . . . The Absolute is in the world of opposites
and not apart from it."11 From this we see that the
essential Self, though beyond all distinct forms, is not
outside the phenomenal world. It remains at the bottom of our
consciousness and functions through every object in the
universe. In commenting on his own poem, “As for Poets,“

which integrates the five basic elements of the physical world

39

in the essential Self or Mind, Snyder says: "Now, we are both
in, and outside, the world at once. The only place this can
be is the Mind“ (TI 114). Therefore, to reach the essential
Self, according to Zen, one must not desire it or distinguish
it from the world in which one lives, but simply purify the
contents of one's conscious self by living a natural,
spontaneous life.

The Zen teaching that we live a simple, unaffected life
without seeking or desiring the Tao corresponds to the
Transcendentalist's doctrine. In "The Over-Soul" Emerson
considered “simplicity“ to be the only way to the universal
Self, which is unapproachable to the complicated mind. He
said: “The simplest person who in his integrity worships God,
becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better

'1’ Thoreau also

and universal self is new and unsearchable.
emphasized the necessity of simplifying our life in order to
return to ”the perennial source of our life“: “In proportion
as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will
appear less comlex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor
poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."n

As this simple, natural life is after all a way of life,
it is by no means apart from work and social responsibility.
On the contrary, it is tied to both. Work in the Zen
monasteries is regarded as one of the most important

activities. As Master Po-chang said, I'One day I no work, /

One day / no food."“ In fact, Po-chang's rule for work is

40

not just a way for self-support. It is itself an important
element in meditation, aiming at bringing body and mind into
one. This Zen principle of self-support, which comes close to
the Transcendentalist principle of self-reliance, has a style
that involves others. It sets an example for people to follow
in reaching the essential Self. As Snyder says in The Real
Work,

It's a way of using your mind and

practicing your life and doing it with

other people. It has a style that

involves others. It brings a particular

kind of focus and attention to work. It

values work. It values daily life. It

values such old-fashioned terms as

responsibility and commitment. At the

same time it has no external law for

doing it. So you must go very deep into

yourself to find the foundation of it.

In other words it turns you inward rather

than giving you a rule book to live by.

Zen is a practice that is concerned with

liberation, not with giving people some

easy certainty. (TRW 153)

Just as Zen is aimed at awakening people to the

spiritual world of nondistinction and turning their experience

of awakening into a way for everyday life, Zen poetry attempts

41

not merely to point at the Absolute but to present the poet's
everyday life, which is itself a practice of Zen. For many
centuries Zen masters have used poetry to express their nearly
inexpressible experience and transmit the Dharma. Since they
live a life that is totally harmonious with nature, which
provides them with the Opportunities to observe natural
objects, the changes of seasons, and the impermanance of life,
and since they remain in a state of mind in which the line
between the Absolute and the relative is erased, many of them
are able to write poems which are so profound as to be able to
compete with the works of the greatest poets.

The Zen masters' habit of presenting their life
experience through poetry is not unexplainable. Chinese and
Japanese Zenists have a saying: “Zen and poetry are one.“
They believe that poetry and Zen function analogously. Like
Zen, poetry is, to use a favorite Zen Buddhist simile, like
the finger pointing to the moon, a common symbol for the self-
nature. After the moon is seen, the finger must immediately
be forgotten. Such an attitude still persists in the Far
East, as is evident in the Zen background of Chinese lyric
poetry and Japanese haiku. This view of poetry as a mediating
art is not exclusively Eastern. In the West, many
romanticists believe that poetry functions as a religion.
Keats had this instinct: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." In
“Nature“ Emerson insisted that language, particularly poetic

language, was grounded in natural facts which participated

42
directly in the spiritual essence of all things:
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular words are symbols of particular
spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.15
Like Emerson and Keats, Whitman saw no difference between
poetry and religion. He viewed himself as a priest rather
than a poet and referred to his poetic vocation as “the
impulse of spirit."“

Strictly speaking, poetry is not producible. It comes
as a result of the mysterious convergence of the senses and
that which is beyond the senses. As Thoreau said, "Poetry is
the mysticism of mankind."17 Indeed, poetry can not be
independent of the inscrutable, essential Self. When the poet
arrives at the awareness of beauty, he arrives at it by
Practice of not an intellectual but an intuitional capacity to
Open the mind to the unaccountable sources. This moment of
awareness is what we call inspiration. Such an inspiration
will either engage the poet in a spontaneous creativity, or
leave him with some impressions which will later be recalled
”id refined when the mature moment of creation comes.
Although new forms of beauty may appear in the poet's creative
process, they are originated in his mystical awareness of
t"hi-119s reflected in the mirror-like, essential Self.

That the essential Self contains art in itself, that it

13 Where beauty comes from, explains why the world's greatest

43

poets always reveal the range and depth of their spiritual
life, and why the most profoundly religious works, such as
Buddhist sutras, the Bible, and Emerson and Thoreau's
writings, are so full of poetic strains. The theory of the
fundamental identity of poetry and religion may disturb some
modern critics, but who can.deny that Buddha's holding up the
flower in silence before his audience and Christ's silence
before Pilate are purely poetic. As R. H. Blyth argues, “When
therefore we say that religion is poetry and poetry is
religion, we mean that it is so whether we realise it or not,
and that from. the beginning, these two being one, our
distinction of Reality into Religion and Beauty is both
baseless in fact and destructive to both. One dries up into
lifeless dogmas, the other' 'vapours into rgroundless
fantasies.'"

As a Zen adept as well as a poet, Snyder is well aware
of the close relationship between Zen and poetry. In his
foreword to A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters, Snyder
*writes:

The Chinese (and almost everyone else)
consider the T'ang poetry of the eighth
century to be the crown of their
literature. The poems of this period . . .
are the ones most Often raided for Zen
quotes .... We are speaking especially

of the poets Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Han

44

Shan, Liu Tsung-yuan .... Contemporary

with these poets were the greatest

creative Ch'an masters Shen-hui, Nan-

yueh, Ma-tsu, Pai-chang, and Shih-tou.

For whatever reason, the Golden Age of

Chinese poetry is also the Golden Age of

Ch'an The major Ch'an literay

productions, Wu-men Kuan, Ts'ung-jung Lu,

Pi-yen Lu, Hsu-t'ang Lu, are from the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was

a second Golden Age of Ch'an and another

era of marvelous poetry, one in which

many poets were truly influenced by

Ch'an."”
Snyder not only sees poetry as, to quote Thomas Parkinson,
“one of a set of instruments in.a spiritual quest“ but uses it
as 'a finger pointing to the moon."” Like Whitman, he uses
poetry as a kind of “ferry boat,“ determined to take his
passengers to what the Buddhist calls “the other shore,“ a
meeting point of the inner nature and the outside world. As
he states in an interview' entitled “The Landscape of
Consciousness,”

We can reach beyond our social nature and

see our relationships in nature, or reach

inward and see the relationships that

hold there. It's here, too, that we can

45

understand the Buddhist concept of

oneness anduuniqueness .... It's at this

level of awareness that I feel all these

relationships: My best poems come from

such a state and plot these relationships

for a listener, who really knew about

them but did not know that they knew.

(TRW’4)
To achieve his purpose of “pointing to the moon,“ Snyder
always makes sure that his poetry is transparent, so
transparent that we should not see the poetry but what it
points at. His is Eliot's effort: “to write poetry which
should be essentially poetry, with nothing poetic about it,
poetry standing naked in its bare bones, or poetry so
transparent that we should not see the poetry, but that which
we are meant to see through the poetry, poetry so transparent
that in reading it we are intent on what the poem points at,
and not on the poetry, this seems to me the thing to try
for.““’ And in ferrying his passengers to “the other shore,"
Snyder always does so by presenting not “his self" but "all
of our selves.“ In The Real WOrk he says:

We all know that the power of a great

poem is not that we felt that person

expressed himself. we don't think that.

What we think is, “How deeply I am

touched.“ That's our level of response.

46

And so a great poet does not express his
or her self, he expresses all of our
selves. .And to express all of our selves
you have to go beyond your own self.
Like Dogen, the Zen master, said, “We
study the self to forget the self. And
when.you forget the self, you become one
with all things.“ (TRW 65)

To express “all of our selves,“ Snyder has to solve a
thorny problem. Insisting that human life partakes of the
all-inclusive essential Self, his philosophical commitment as
a poet is to faithfully represent this essential Self. But
imediately there is a problem. The all-inclusive Unity
cannot, by its very nature, be represented directIy. As a
poet he is thus engaged in the paradoxical task of seeking to
express something that he stresses from the outset remains
inexpressible. His is a problem also faced by Su-shih, the
most highly regarded Chinese Sung dynasty poet, whom Snyder
describes as “a Ch'an adept as well as poet and
administrator.“2

The mountain, the Buddha's body,
The river, his preaching.
Last night, eighty-four thousand poems.
How to make them.understand?”
Whitman also recognized that words could not faithfully convey

the intuitive knowledge of the essential Self:

Like Su-shih and Whitman,

47

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,

It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,

My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,

My breath will not be obedient to its organs,

I become a dumb man."

the inexpressibility of the essential Self:

Inst

Instead, he has taken on, to use Robert Kern's words,

I

of course,

A poet sort of faces two directions: one
is to the world Of people and language
and society, and the tools by which he
comlmnicates his language: and the other
is the non-human, non-verbal world, which
is the world of nature as nature is
itself, and the world of human nature -
the inner world - as it is itself, before
language, before custom, before culture.
There's no words in that realm. There
aren't any rules that we know and that's
the area Buddhism studies, and that's why
you can't talk about it: because it's not
concerned with anything that you can talk

about.”

Snyder more than once talks about

Snyder does not always remain silent.

“ the

48
seemingly paradoxical burden of finding a language for a
reality that is prior to language, for an 'utterly
incommunicable' nature that is non-verbal by definition - a
problem somewhat analogous to Milton's task of relating events
of the pro-fallen world in a fallen language, in a language
that is itself a result of the fall.““

In approaching the nearly inexpressible essential Self,
Snyder avails himself of a strategy similar to that which
Emerson believed had been adopted by Whitman: “Man stands on
the point betwix the inward spirit and the outward matter. He
sees that one explains, translates the other: that the world
is the mirror of the soul."27 Emerson's comment is not
groundless. Read Whitman's “When the Full-Grown Poet Came.“

When the full-grown poet came,

Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe,
with all its shows of day and night,) saying,
He is mine;

But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous
and unreconciled, Nay; he is mine alone;

- Then the full-grown poet stood between the two,
and took each by the hand:

And to-day and ever so stands, as blender and
uniter, tightly holding hands,

Which he will never release until he reconciles the
two,

And wholly and joyously blends them.“

49

In “Road and Apple Interview“ Snyder reveals a poetic strategy

similar to Whitman's.
The true poem is walking that edge
between what can be said and that which
cannot be said. That's the real razor's
edge. The poem that falls all the way
over into what can be said can still be
very exciting, but the farther it is from
the razor's edge the less it has of the
real magic And then some of them
fall too much in the realm of what can't
be said. Then they are no longer poems;
they are meditation themes like the koan.
(TRW 21)

Snyder's strategy of walking the line between what can
be said and what can not be said as applied to his poetry is
the use of the imagistic and elliptic methods. As a Zen poet
who has to use poetry as a mediating art, Snyder rejects not
language itself but its intellectual qualities. Since the
Object world is that through which the non-verbal, absolute
identity reveals itself, Snyder loves and uses widely in his
poetry vivid, concrete images, which are highly suggestive in
their conceptions, and allows them to serve as mysterious
Blr'lnbols pointing to the unseen. His highly suggestive images
are at the same time generic in their conceptions. This

generalization of imagery, as Jody Norton points out,

50

“accomplishes two ends: it denies the reality of individuation
(the proper) without refusing particularity (the common), and
it implies that the embodied experience of the poem is neither
personally nor historically unique.“” As his poetry shows,
Snyder's effort to evoke as a real presence the essential Self
that lies beyond its own powers of explanation, to use Robert
Kern's words, is to “allow things to speak as much as possible
for themselves, in a language stripped of subjective
preconception and historical or cultural encrustation.“ By
allowing things to speak for themselves, according to Kern,
“Snyder finds himself on the common ground with some of the
aims and values of modern poetry in general, particularly with
its 'objectivist' desire to encounter reality directly and
imediately, to see things as they are.“’°

In letting things speak for themselves with little or no
lyrical interference, Snyder seems to agree with the anti-
Romantic modernist-objectivist that reality in poetry should
be consistent with that in science, and that objective
criteria be developed for creating poetry. In presenting
things directly and using no words unneeded, he exhibits a
strong affinity for Pound's Imagistic method and Williams
Carlos Williams' theory of ideas contained in things and
liberated by poets. However, Snyder, like many other
contemporary poets, tends to reject Eliot's and Stevens's
calls for a creation of order out of disorder and favors a

non-created, pro-existing order. In The Practice of the Wild

51

he says: “Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic
in nature is only a more complex kind of order“ (POW 93).
Snyder's poetry in general is a passive nature full of vision.
It values the imagination and rejects the stylistic aspects of
poetry. In this respect, Snyder also seems Romantic. He is
among the poets of the second half of the twentieth century,
who, as Hyatt Waggoner suggests, paradoxically return to
selected Romantic ideas after absorbing the objectivist,
pseudo-scientific notions of Pound and his followers.31 In
short, it appears that Snyder's poetic quest is for a
synthesis of the materialistic Imagism and the visionary
Romanticism. As Robert Kelly in A Controversy of Poets has
indicated, “The use of images constitutes a part of Vision
.... Image is a vehicle for Vision.“”

Yet, even such a view of Snyder's poetry as a synthesis
of Romanticism and Imagism can also mislead because Snyder is
a Zen Buddhist and his imagism is grounded on an important
principle of Zen aesthetics. His is Basho's method: “Learn
about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant
from a bamboo plant.“ “By learning about a pine tree from a
pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant,“ as
Basho's disciple Doho explains, “Basho meant that the poet
should detach the mind from himself, and by 'learn' that he
should enter into the object, the whole of its delicate life,
feeling as it feels. The poem follows of itself.“ This

method has been compared by Lucien Stryk to Keats's “Negative

52
Capability“: “The poet implies that the true artist does not
assert his own personality, even if imagining himself
possessed of one. Rather he identifies as far as possible
with the object of his contemplation, its 'personality,’
without feeling that he must understand it.“33
In The Real WOrk, Snyder reveals his knowledge of this

imagistic method.

I quote to you one of Basho's disciples

who took down something Basho once said

to a group of students. He said, “To

learn.about the pine, go to the pine. To

learn about bamboo, go to the bamboo.

But this learn is not just what you think

learn is. You only learn by becoming

totally absorbed in that which you wish

to learn. There are many people who

think that they have learned something

and willfully construct a poem which is

artifice and does not flow from their

delicate entrance into the life of

another object.“ (TRW 67)
This kind of Imagism is inconceivable apart from the most
important Zen practice of “no mind“ or “no thought.“
According to Hui-neng, “no mind“ or “no thought“ means that
“the mind is not stained by external objects.“ “'NOt' is not

a thing,“ Hui-neng continues to explain, “and 'thought' is

53
thought of nothing: 'not' is not dual, is not the passion-
mind, and 'thought' is thought of the self-nature.“" From
Hui-neng we learn that to remain in a state of “no mind“ or
“no thought“ is not to sit like a piece of dead wood but to
“see“ into the nothingness of the self-nature. However, this
“seeing“ should not postulate a distinction between the seer
and the seen. As Wu-men (1183-1260) said, “The True Self

..35

which is seeing has been seen into. Echoing Wu-men,
Snyder sings in “Puite Creek“ in Riprap: “A clear, attentive
mind I Has no meaning but that I which sees is truly seen“
(RCTa’ 6). When commenting on Snyder's mental state as such,
Charles Molesworth says that Snyder is “borne to the edge of

“" This non-existence of self is the core of

non-existence.
Emerson's teaching: “the act of seeing and the thing seen, the
seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the
animal, the tree, but the whole, of which they are shining
parts, is the soul.“”

Another method Snyder uses to walk “the real razor's
edge“ is an elliptical mode. It involves such structural
techniques as syntactical ellipsis, line division, and super-
imposition of one image upon another, which he learned first
through Pound and later directly from Chinese T'ang poetry and
Japanese haiku. The Chinese and Japanese ellipsism can not be
understood without a knowlege of the Chinese language itself.

The most remarkable characteristic of the Chinese language is

54

that it is uninflected. It uses no gender, number, or case
for the noun, and no tense, or person for the verb. A
transitive verb in Chinese can be used without a subject and
a predicate, and a noun can be used without a definite or
indefinite article. More importantly, most Chinese nouns have
verbal qualities in them. Thus a five-or-seven-character line
often contains five or seven nouns. Such a poetic line,
consisting of a selection of concrete image units with
syntactical ellipses, strives to present directly the actual
situation without going through an analytical process.

Theoretically one can put two or even more such poetic
lines together and make them into a longer line and still make
sense in Chinese. But the Chinese T'ang poets insist on
breaking up the lines into small units with five or seven
characters to each unit and call them “shih line.“ Between
each line and its successor there is little transition. The
ellipsis of enjambment is aimed at isolating each line as an
independent image unit so that its visuality can be increased.
Such a method of line division also produces a montage-like
effect, that is, by juxtaposing two image units it creates a
third which is different in effect from both, capable of
drawing the reader into an intuitional recognition of the
unseen.

One year before be translated Chinese poetry, Pound had
learned from Japanese haiku, which was influenced by T'ang

poetry, such mutually related techniques as line division and

Al

ma]

P01

pat
The
fro
cab
res

gra.

RiDr
0f p<
8tYle
inSta
feldg

gate

55
super-imposition. His “In a Station of the Metro“ is an
example:
The apparitions of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.”

Although in the poem no enjambment is used between the two
image units, articles and prepositions are still employed to
make the English understandable. It is not until Cathay that
Pound began to experiment with the syntactical ellipsis:
“Surprised. Desert turmoil. Sea sun.“” Such elliptical
patterns, after being modified, continue to appear throughout
The Cantos. For example, “Rain; empty river: a voyage; / Fire
from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight / Under the
cabin roof was one lantern.“ And “Sun up: work I sundown: to
rest / dig well and drink of the water / dig field; eat of the
grain / Imperial power is? and to us what is it?“‘°

More excitedly than Pound, Snyder turns to the Chinese
and Japanese ellipsism with which to honeycomb his poetry and
makes the ellipsis itself a form with which to express the
formless. His use of monosyllabic diction and elliptical
phrasing is particularly evident in his first collection,
Riprap (1959) . After Riprap Snyder developed a wider variety
of poetic modes. But he has never abandoned this elliptical
style which increases his detached, impersonal tone. For
instance, we see in Turtle Island (1974): “Snow-trickle,
feldspar, dirt“ (TI 33); in Axe Handles (1983): “sky cloud

gate milk snow,“ “wind-void-word“ (AH 71); and in Left Out

56

in the Rain (1986): “manzanita, valley oak, redwood, / sugar
pine, our folk / sun, air, water, / our toil“ (LOIR 134). In
these lines Snyder uses no verbs or verbals, no articles,
prepositions or connectives. He simply lumps nouns together.
These generic pictures force the reader to forget about the
poet as a speaker and watch things detachedly as they really
happen. These lines, if put vertically, would look like
Chinese shih lines. As Wai-lim Yip points out, Snyder in
“Eight Sandbars on the Takano River“ does put his lines
vertically and make them look like a five-character “shih
line':“

well water

cool in

summer

warm in

winter (BC 44)
Snyder's experiment with.the vertical “shih line“ can alsOrbe
seen in “Hiking in the Totsugawa Gorge“ in Regarding Wave
(1970):

Pissing

Watching

a waterfall (RW 74)

In Snyder's other poems where verbs or verbals may be

used and articles and connectives employed, the personal

57
pronoun, the lyric “I“ is almost always omitted. Take, for
example, “North Beach Alba“ in The Back Country (1968):
walking half-drunk in a strange pad
making it out to the cool gray
san francisco dawn -
white gulls over white houses,
fog down the bay,
tamalpais a fresh green hill in the new sun,
driving across the bridge in a beat old car
to work. (BC 75)
The elision of the subject teaches egolessness. It suggests
the poet's rejection of an anthropocentric view of nature and
man's dominant place in it. It also calls implicitly for a
harmonious interplay between man and all other things. From
this view, the natural objects depicted in the poem should not
be regarded as a mere setting. They co-exist peacefully with
the hero, who is universalized by the omission of the subject.
In addition to syntactical ellipses, Snyder frequently
alllploys in his poems the techniques of line division and
Bliner-imposition to build a sense of distance or space. The
I"Oat extreme example of his use of space to invoke the reader
to regard it as part of the content is “The Songs at Custer's
Bfittlefield“ in Left Out in the Rain:
Crickets and meadowlarks today;
that day - (LOIR 159)

The space in Snyder's poetry not only allows the reader to

58
:hmagine and associate, but, more importantly, forces him to
dive deeply into the unknown. For instance:
Sunday dinner in Ithaca-
the twang of a bowstring (BC 24)

“The two examples given above are both in the form of haiku.
Taxis confirms Thomas Lyon's Opinion that the haiku is “the
sniiding principle of Snyder's poetics.““ Like a traditional
huaiku, Snyder's poem.is divided by a “thought pause“ into two
parts or two image units. The two parts are not structurally
linked by any enjambment but simply super-imposed. They
produce no special effect if viewed separately. But if
BDiliced together, they create a contrast between the mundane
world, as represented by “Sunday dinner in Ithaca,“ and the
Other world, as signified by “the twang of a bowstring.“ As
the tension between the speaker's daily activity and the
seemingly unworldly sound is created out of the ellipsis, the
tNVt: image units are not to bring themselves into focus but to
Gulllahasize what is left unsaid.

As Snyder's imagistic method which allows things to
Bl>eak as much as possible for themselves is inconceivable
aDart from his Zen practice of “no mind,“ his elliptical
“‘Ptzhod is not independent of his Buddhist conception of the
void. As Jody Norton remarks,

Snyder's use of sparely modified,
generalized imagery indirectly reflects

the Zen Buddhist conviction of the

59

pointlessness of intellection. An insight

into the nature of Mind cannot be passed

on by means of elaborate descriptions,

dense figuration, or esoteric allusion,

because all such devices depend on the

understanding - which is inherently

discriminatory and hence powerless to

comprehend the Void. Such in-sight

cannot, in fact, be passed on at all. At

best it can be coaxed out, elicited,- and

to accomplish this, both Snyder and his

models seek to provide the reader with a

maximum of imaginative freedom."
By recognizing space as a positive element and emphasizing
that the unspoken is as essential as the spoken, Snyder deftly
"coaxes out“ his insight. By eliminating all elaboration of
1~<1eas and descriptions, he transforms the personal into the
universal and creates a tension which quickens the reader's
Perception of the inexpressible. This elliptical method links
him to Pound and Williams, who may not have been able to
ac(zept the philosophical basis of Chinese and Japanese poetry
‘ the Zenist-Taoist assumption of the unity of all things. On
the other hand, his Zen Buddhist Imagism, his quietly gazing
‘1an some external object until by recognition and reflection
119 transforms it into poetry, puts him on the common ground

w1th Charles Olson, whose version Of the objectivist desire to

60
experience reality demands “getting rid of the lyrical
interference of the individual as ego.““ It also draws him
near to what Hyatt Waggoner calls “the new poet“ who believes
that he “must lose his self-consciousness and immerse himself
in 'process' in order to render a fragment of chaos 'concrete
in a moment of time.'“" These two methods permit Snyder to
walk what he calls “the real razor's edge“ and provide the
reader with a starting point for understanding his poetry of

Zen.

CHAPTER III

DARKANDLIGHT

Since 1959 Snyder has published fourteen books. The
books contain his translations of Zen texts and Zen poems as
well as his references to his Zen study. More importantly,
they contain poems which express Snyder's vision of the
identity of the phenomenal and the noumenal, poems which
reveal his spiritual range in the various stages of
development. These poems can be best understood in the
context of Ts'ao Tung (Soto in Japanese) Zen. Of the five
sects of Zen Buddhism, the Ts'ao Tung sect had been most
dedicated to the study of the phylosophical aspect of Zen
Buddhism and, before the period of South Sung China, had
established the so-called Ts'ao Tung philosophy, also called
Zen philosophy. Since its appearance the philosophy has been
widely studied by Zen students regardless of sect and for more
than a thousand years has had a profound influence on Zen-
related arts, especially poetry. It is grounded on a basic
idea that the noumenal and the phenomenal, designated by its
founder Tung-shan (807-869) as Dark and Light, are
interpenetrated.

The Dark-Light concept, according to Tung-shan, is

61

62

formed in accord with the teaching of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi
which he inherited from his master Yun-yen. The key sentences
in the Jewel Mdrror go as follows: “The Dharma of Suchness,
directly transmitted.by buddhas and patriarchs, I ... is like
a silver bowl heaped with snow and the bright moon.concealing
herons - I When classified they differ, but lumped together
their whereabouts is known.“1 .As the key sentences in the
Jewel Harror suggest, the way of obtaining the Dharma is to
see the noumenal, signified as “a silver bowl,“ or “the bright
moon,“ and the phenomenal, represented as “snow, “ or “herons, “
as an undifferentiated identity. In his Yu Lu (Record of
Sayings) Tung-shan more clearly explains that the noumenal,
which he describes as dark, dynamic, and ungraspable, is the
foundation of the phenomenal: “There is something the upper
part of which props up the heaven, the lower part of which
props up the earth, is as black as lacqer, and is always in
motion. In the midst of this motion, it can't be grasped.“2
Since the noumenal is the foundation of the phenomenal, it
penetrates to all things and manifests itself through the
phenomenal, which is designated by Tung-shan as the Light.
Tung-shan's Dark-Light concept may be compared to Emerson's
Idealism which regards “the visible“ as given rise to and
supported by “the invisible.“ In “Nature“ Emerson wrote: “The
visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the
invisible world."

As it is well-known that the five sects of Zen Buddhism

63

are all branched from Hui-neng, the Dark-Light idea of the
Ts'ao Tung sect may be regarded as a continuation of Hui-
neng's teaching, which.was shaped in accord with the Book of
Changes (I China). especially its concept of Yin and Yang,
representing two relative forces, from whose interaction comes
the Creation. In his Altar Sutra Hui-neng says: “If someone
suddenly asks you about the Dharma, your answer should be
based on a pair of extremes depending upon each other for
their existence, until both are wiped out, leaving nothing
behind“ Hui-neng's teaching of reaching with extremes beyond
extremes can be better understood if compared to Emerson's
insistence on.dualism as the basis of Unity. Emerson wrote in
an 1851 journal entry: “Dualism I see but one key to the
mysteries of human condition, but one solution to the old
knots of fate, freedom and foreknowledge; the propounding,
namely, of the double consciousness.“s Emerson's theory of
double consciousness is not a justification of the relative
view of the world but an affirmation of man's capability to
perceive both the relative and the absolute. As he sang in
“Brahma,“

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanished gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame.‘
Emerson's strategy of polarity, as Jonathan Bishop observes,

allows him “to stress first one aspect of the Soul and then

64
another, the pair appearing, to the understanding mutually
opposite but, to the reason, complementary parts of a whole.“
Snyder is well acquainted with the Ts'ao Tung Dark-Light
concept. In A Zen Forest, forwarded by Snyder, there are
numerous Zen sayings expressing the Ts'ao Tung idea. For
example: “A black chicken I walks on / the snow“; “Bring /
black water / into a black barrel“: “A white horse enters I
the pampas flower“; “The bright moon reflects / the pampas
flowers: / The pampas flowers / reflect the bright moon“; and
the one taken from the Jewel Mirror, “To heap a silver bowl I
with snow: / To hide a white heron / in the bright moon."
Similar examples can be seen throughout Snyder's poetry:
“white gulls over white houses“ (BC 75); “crows and a white
bird circle“ (PTI 27): “Well water / cool in I summer I warm
in / winter“ (BC 44): and “white radish root / a foot long /
by its dark I dirt hole / green top / her son“ (BC 44) . This
Ts'ao Tung idea is explained more clearly in Snyder's The Real
Work:
The poet holds the dark and the light in
mind, together. Which, by extension,
means birth and death in its totality.
We worship not only the positive forces,
the life-giving forces, not just that . . .
there's also death, there's also the
unknown, there's also the demonic. And

that's the womb and the tomb, that's

65

samsara, that's birth and death, that's

where the Buddhist goes in. And that's

where poetry goes in: That's where poetry

gets its hand on something real. (TRW 81)
As Snyder's suggests in his statement, the Ts'ao Tung Dark-
Light idea is a key to the understanding of his poetry.
Indeed, the idea of holding “the dark and the light in mind,
together“ has become an important source of inspiration for
many of his poems. Take, for instance, the following poem
which appears in Snyder's travel journal, Earth House Hold
(1969).

sun patches in the gorge

whitechuck river

white foam falls,

thru the tops of spruce and hemlock

white sailing clouds.

the brilliance of black. (ass 97)
From a non-Zen perspective, the source of the daylight is the
sun, which whitens the river and its foam “thru the tops of
spruce and hemlock“ and through the “white sailing clouds.“
From this view, the sunlight that whitens all things is simply
a natural phenomenon. But from a Zen standpoint, a natural
phenomenon does not exist independently. It has its root in
noumenon. The sunlight which whitens all things, as Snyder
puts it in the poem, is “the brilliance of black,“ which is

italicized to suggest the noumenal. Snyder's view of the

66
light as the reflection of the dark corresponds to the Ts'ao
Tung idea that the essential Self functions through all things
in the universe.

While the Ts'ao Tung idea of Dark and Light is expressed
directly in the preceding poem, it is merely suggested in the
following haiku in The Back Country.

A great freight truck
lit like a town
through the dark stony desert (BC 31)
On the surface, it is the light of the freight truck that
brightens the dark desert for we can see that the desert is
“stony.“ But from another perspective, it is the darkness of
the desert that makes the freight truck look so bright “like
a town.“ The light of the truck and the darkness of the
desert in their mutuality signify that the Absolute and the
relative are inconceivable apart from each other. The light
and the dark are no doubt two different things. But from the
view that they must depend upon each other for existence, they
should not be regarded as separate entities. Snyder's Zen
vision of Dark and Light penetrating to each other correponds
to Whitman's view of the interdependence of “the unseen“ and
“the seen.“
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is
all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the

seen,

67

Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its
turn.’

In the two poems discussed above, the sensuous images
through which Snyder presents his Buddhist insight are
American. Both poems are set against the landscape of
American West. In the following haiku, his imagery expressing
the Ts'ao Tung idea is more oriental. The first line is a
modified version of a traditional Japanese stone garden, and
the second line sounds much like a Ts'ao Tung Zen saying.

Palm fringing stonefield
crows and a white bird circle (PTI 27)

The first line is simple, consisting only of two generalized
images, “Palm“ and “stonefield.“ Nevertheless, it is as
profound as a Japanese stone garden, where only one or two
unhewn rocks surrounded by an expanse of raked sand can be
seen.“ In a stone garden, which is actually a Zen-related
work of art, stone represents the phenomenal, and sand the
noumenal. As the phenomenal and the noumenal are
interdependent, stone and sand are interpenetrable. To be
more exact, sand is the substance of stone and stone is the
form of sand. In the first line of the poem, “stonefield“ is
comparable to an expanse of sand in a stone garden, and may as
well be regarded as suggesting the noumenal. Pringing the
“stonefield“ is the one single “palm, “ which is as conspicuous
as the usually singular stone in a stone garden. As stone

represents the phenomenal, “palm“ suggests the world of

68

distinction. Like the interpenetrable sand and stone,
“stonefield“ and “palm“ when classified differ, but when
lumped together represent the Absolute and the relative as a
whole. The second line -- “Crows and a white bird circle“ -
- can easily pass for a Ts'ao Tung Zen saying. “Crows“ with
their black color suggest the Dark or the noumenal, and “a
white bird“ no doubt represents the Light or the phenomenal.
They circle around each other, suggesting the mutuality of the
Absolute and the relative.

In expressing the Ts'ao Tung idea, many traditional Zen
poets also employ the images of stillness and motion, silence
and sound. For instance, Basho in his often quoted haiku “A
Spring Day“ approaches stillness from.motion:

Old Pond:

frog jump in

water-sound.n
Like Basho, Snyder sometimes uses the images of stillness and
motion to express his Buddhist assumption of the unity of the
Absolute and the relative:

the boulder in the creek never moves

the water is always falling

together! (8H3 2)
The poem, in terms of its tone, theme and structure, resembles
the first half of Snyder's own 1953 translation of Wang Wei's
“At Deer Hedge“:

Empty, the mountain-

69

not a man,

Yet sounds, echoes,

as of men talking.u
As Wang juxtaposes the enmtiness of the mountain with the
sounds of men talking to hint at the mutuality of the noumenal
and the phenomenal, Snyder in the first two lines of his poem
super-imposes the stillness of the boulder with the falling of
water to suggest the same idea. Like Wang, Snyder views the
two opposing aspects of nature not as distinct from but as
dependent upon each other for existence. Only when the
boulder remains still, does the falling of the water become
possible. On the other hand, only when the water falls, can
the stillness of the boulder be perceived.

Snyder's Zen vision presented in this poem.may also be
compared to Eliot's view of the noumenal as the center of the
ever changing phenomenal. Bis “never moving boulder in the
creek“ is like Eliot's “still point,“ and his “always falling
‘water“ like Eliot's “turning world.“ At the intersection of
stillness and. movement there exists the ‘world of non-
distinction. As Bliot sang,

At the still point of the turning world,

Neither flesh nor fleshless:

Neither from nor towards : at the still point, there
the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it

fixity,

70
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards,
Neither ascent from decline. Except for the point,
the still point.
There would be no dance, and there is only the
dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say
where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it
in time.‘3
In his lysticism and Philosophy W. T. Stace makes a comment on
Eliot's “the still point of the turning world,“ which.helps to
understand Snyder's superimposition of the falling water upon
the still boulder; Stace says: “There is no specific
reference to any regular or mystical conception here. But the
inner meaning of the metaphor of the motionless axis of the
spinning planet is plain. It is that the world of sense - to
‘use Plato's phrase - is a perpetual flux, yet at the heart of
things there is stillness and silence.““ Like Bliot, Snyder
believes that the relative comprehension of the world is as
groundless as the conscious self that makes it. Stillness and
:motion, like any other pair of extremes, are not opposed to
but co-operative with each other. They always come “together“
as a piece.
To express the Ts'ao Tung Zen idea, Snyder also extends

his images of Dark and Light to those of silence and sound.

71

“Rainbow Body“ in Regarding wave offers a good example.

Cicada fill up the bamboo thickets:

a wall of twanging shadow

dark joints and leaves

northwest wind

from the China sea. (RW’26)
The poem is set against the background of Suwa-no-se Island,
in the East China Sea, near the coast of Kyushu, Japan, where
Snyder married his third wife, a Japanese named Hasa Uehara.
“Cicada“ in Chinese has the same pronunciation as Ch'an. It
is often.borrowed by Zen poets to suggest the call of the Tao,
the sound of silence. Read this Basho haiku:

What stillness!

The voices of the cicadas

Penetrate the rocks.15
“Bamboo“ is also a popular Zen image. Its top symbolizes the
starting point for an enlightened Zen student to take a step
further toward the final union with the essential Self. As
Snyder says, in his translation of a famous Zen saying, “When
*we get to the top of the hundred-foot pole, keep going“ (TRW
41)! By splicing together the two popular Zen.images, Snyder
jproduces an effect that neither of them alone can produce.
While the bamboo thickets alone stand for silence and the
cicada by themselves represent noise, a juxtaposition.of them
-“Cicada fill up the bamboo thickets“ - indicates their

interpenetration.

72
In the second and third lines Snyder connects the bamboo

thickets to the Dark or noumenal by describing them as “a wall
of shadow“ with “dark joints and leaves.“ As the bamboo
thickets are connected to the Dark, the cicada with their
terrible noise may be associated with the Light or phenomenal.
Snyder's vision of silence and sound as a piece recalls
Thoreau's view of them as two sides of a coin. In A Week on
the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Thoreau equates silence with
the invisible noumenon and sound with the visible creation,
which is the framework and foil of the noumenal.

Silence is audible to all men, at all

times, and in all places. She is when we

hear inwardly, sound when we hear

outwardly. Creation has not displaced

her, but is her visible framework and

foil. All sounds are her servants, and

purveyors, proclaiming not only that

their mistress is, but is a rare

mistress, and earnestly to be sought

after. They are so far akin to Silence

that they are but bubbles on her surface,

which straightway burst, an evidence of

the strength and prolificness of the

under-current: a faint utterance of

Silence."

Snyder's view of silence and sound as penetrating to each

73

other is further suggested in the final two lines. When the
“northwest wind“ comes “from the China sea, “ the silent bamboo
thickets start “twanging, “ and the noisy cicada in turn become
silent. The reciprocal penetration of the sound of the cicada
and the silence of the bamboo thickets is dictated by the
“wind,“ which symbolizes the Tao, the undifferentiated
identity of the Buddha-nature.

In the poems discussed above, the images of dark and
light, stillness and motion, silence and sound are used
separately. In “The Wide mouth“ in Regarding wave they are
lumped together to express the same Ts'ao Tung idea.

A thick snow
soft falling

the whole house open.

Snowflakes build up on a

single dark green spray of pine

The sparrow
swung and shrieked

in a swish of snowy clustered points,

shew
his wide pink mouth .

house-cleaning.

74
Not a sound,
white world,
great troubles. (RW’8)

In the first stanza Snyder tries to present the Ts'ao Tung
idea by hinting at the interrelatedness of motion and
stillness. The first two lines, “A thick snow / soft
falling,“ represent motion; The third line, “the whole house
open,“ signifies stillness or the Void. In “As for Poets“ in
Thrtle Island the open house image is also used to represent
the void or noumenal: “A Hind Poet / Stays in the house. /
The house is empty / And it has no walls“ (TI 88). Snyder's
consistent use of the empty house image to represent the void
is inspired by the Zen master Nan-chuan (748-835) and Han-
shan." When explaining the Tao or the self-nature to his
disciple Chao-chou (778-897), Nan-chuan said, “it is like the
Void, like a great house, empty and open.“" In Cold
(Nbuntain Poems, Han-shan wrote, and Snyder translates: “Cold
llountain is a house / Without beams or walls / The six doors
left and right are open / The hall is blue sky“ (RCMP 52).
Since the phenomenal is given rise to and supported by the
noumenal, the falling of the thick snow (phenomenon) must
occur within the stillness or voidness of the open “house“
(noumenon).

While in the first stanza the snow with its action of
“soft falling“ represents motion, in the second stanza, after

its flakes build up on a “single dark green spray of pine,“

75

its motion turns into stillness and its color white is in
contrast with the spray's color “dark green.“ The third and
fourth stanzas have their focus on the noisy sparrow, who
“swung and shrieked“ and “shew his wide pink mouth,“ against
the background of the still and empty “house.“ In the final
stanza silence - “Not a sound / white world“ - is juxtaposed
with sound - “great troubles.“ The contrast between the
noisy, black sparrow and the still, white world is not to show
the difference between the phenomenal and the noumenal but to
suggest their interpenetration. The “troubles“ are “great“
only when there is “not a sound.“ The black sparrow with its
“wide pink mouth“ becomes the focus of our attention only when
contrasted with the “white world.“ On the other hand, the
vast stillness of the empty “house“ is perceived only when it
is broken by the shrieking of the sparrow.

As the Ts'ao Tung Dark-Light idea is formed in accord
with the Yin-Yang concept in the Book of Changes, Snyder's
poems presenting the Ts'ao Tung idea echo the concept of Yin
and Yang. Take, for instance, “No Matter, Never Mind“ in
Thrtle Island.

The rather is the Void
The Wife Waves

Their child is Matter.

latter makes it with his mother

And their child is Life,

76
a daughter.
The Daughter is the Great Mother
Who, with her father/brother Matter

as her lover,

Give birth to the Mind. (TI 11)

The Zen view of the self -creation of the universe presented in
this poem is parallel with the Yin-Yang concept in the Book of
Changes. In explaining the process of the self-creation of
the universe, the Book of Changes first hypothesizes the
origin of the universe as the Supreme Pole (Tai Chi). From
the Supreme Pole the two relative powers of Yin and Yang
emanate. From the interaction of the two powers the four
dimensions occur. The four dimensions with their mutuality
give rise to the eight situations - heaven, earth, mountain,
lake, thunder, wind, water, and fire. According to the Book,
the Supreme Pole is the creative while the two relative powers
of Yin and Yang are the receptive. There is a cooperative
relationship between them. That is, the creative gives the
condition for creation, and the creation must be completed.by
the receptive themselves. In turn the two relative powers
with their inner cooperation will become the creative and give
the condition for creation. This is the Book's principle of
changes in the universe.

In the poem Snyder first defines “the Father“ as the

Void, the origin of the universe, which correponds to the

77

Book’s hypothesis of the Supreme Pole as the first creative.
In the Book the Supreme Pole is also called Wu, meaning
Nothingness or the Void, in which nothing has been formed yet.
Although Wu represents a state in which nothing has been
created, it has in itself a sort of life-giving force called
Yu, meaining Somethingness. According to the great Chinese
Buddhist teacher Seng Chao (384-414), whose philosophy has a
profound influence on the later Zen school, it is impossible
to elucidate Wu without explaining its counterpart Yu, for Yu
and Wu, representing the phenomenal and the noumenal
respectively, are interpenetrated:

All things have that in them which makes

them not be yu and also have that in them

which makes them not be wu. Because of

the former, they are yu and yet not yu.

Because of the latter, they are wu and

yet not wu . . . . Why is this so? Suppose

the yu is really Y“, then it should be yu

for all time and should not owe its yu to

the convergence of causes. Suppose the

wu is really wu, then it should be wu for

all time and should not owe its wu to the

dissolution of causes. If the yu owes

its yu to its causation, then the yu is

not really yu . . . . But if all things are

wu, then nothing would come about. If

78
something comes about, it cannot be
altogether nothing.”
Hence, Snyder defines the counterpart of the Father/Void as
the Wife/Waves. The Father-Mother relationship is identical
with that between Yang and Yin, which in Chinese literally
mean male and female. From their interaction, which actually
occurs within the Void or creative itself, comes “Matter.“
The receptive “Matter, “ a Yang, will in turn become the
creative by interacting with his Mother, the life-giving force
contained in the Void. From the mutual penetration of Yin and
Yang comes “Life, “ a daughter, whose marriage with her
“father/brother Matter“ gives birth to the Mind. By
describing the incestuous relationship between mother and son,
father and daughter, brother and sister, Snyder presents the
idea of the interdependence of the two relative powers. The
final result of their interpenetration is the Mind, the void
itself, which is the beginning as well as the end.

These are Snyder poems that explicitly use the Yin-Yang
oriented theory of Ts'ao Tung Zen. Other poems use the theory
implicitly, and are likely to be ignored if not carefully
examined. “Werk To Do Toward Town“ in The Back country is a
good example.

venus glows in the east
mars hangs in the twins,
Frost on the logs and bare ground

free of house or tree.

79

Kites come down from the mountains

And glide quavering over the rooftops;

frost melts in the sun.

A low haze hangs on the houses

firewood smoke and mist

Slanting far to the Kamo river

and the distant Uji hills.

Farmwomen lead down carts

loaded with long white radish:

I pack my bike with books -

all roads descend toward town. (BC 52)
The poem has the quality of Chinese landscape painting, which
is generally’ Taoist-Zenist oriented. The influence of
classical Chinese landscape painting has been pointed out by
a number of critics. Dan Ncleod in his insightful article
remarks on Snyder's particular interest in Chinese Sung
Dynasty “Streams and mountains Without End“ painters.2° Bob
Steuding uses “Work To Do Toward Town“ as an example when
analyzing the scroll-like quality in Snyder's poetry:

The movement of his gaze goes from the

planets to the mountains, down over the

houses, to the river slanting far away to

the distant hills, and then, with the

mention of the farmwomen.going to market

as he packs his bike with books, moves on

and down the hill to town. This adept,

80

vertical movement creates a sense of

distance very much capturing the visual

proportions and lengthened effect of the

classical Chinese scroll.21

However, it is seldom noticed that Snyder, in presenting

the cooperation of cosmic forces, follows ancient Chinese
painters to use the structural pattern of Yin and Yang. In a
Chinese landscape painting, Yang and Yin are usually
represented as mountains and waters, heaven and earth, high
and low. In The Practice of the Wild, Snyder mentions this
traditional Chinese representation of Yin and Yang.

mountains . . . have mythic associations of

verticality, spirit, height,

transcendence, hardness, resistence, and

masculinity. For the Chinese they are

exemplars of the “yang“: dry, hard, male,

and bright. Waters are feminine: wet,

soft, dark “yin“ with associations of

fluid - but - strong, seeking (and

carving) the lowest, soulful, life-

giving, shape-shifting .... In common

usage the compound “mountains and waters“

- shan-shui in Chinese - is the

straightforward term for landscape.

Landscape painting is “mountains and

waters“ pictures . . . . One does not need

81

to be a specialist to observe that

landforms are a play of stream-cutting

and ridge-resistance and that waters and

hills interpenetrate in endlessly

branching rhythms. (POW 101-102)
The structural pattern of Yin and Yang underlying a Chinese
landscape painting can also be seen in “Work To Do Toward
Town.“ In the first two lines Yang is represented as heaven -
- “Venus glows in the east, / mars hangs in the twins“ --
while Yin is signified in the third and fourth lines as earth
-- “the logs and bare ground / free of house or tree.“
Likewise, “the mountains“ in line five and “the sun“ in line
seven, signifying high or Yang, are put in contrast with “the
rooftops“ in line six and “the houses“ in line eight,
signifying low or Yin. Again, “the Kamo river“ in line ten,
representing Yin, is contrasted with “the distant Uji hills“
in line eleven, representing Yang.”

In addition to his use of the structural pattern of Yin
and Yang, Snyder also follows Taoist-Zenist artists to present
in his poem what Lao-tzu called Chi, or the “blending breath“
of Yin and Yang which harmonize the two relative powers. In
Tao Te axing Lao Tzu said: “The ten thousand things carry yin
and embrace yang, / Whose blending breaths make them
harmonize.“” This concept of Chi is also held by the
Confucian. According to Nencius, Chi not only fills up heaven

and earth but also circulates through the human body. By

82
nourshing it correctly one can penetrate to the making of
things. In “Experience“ Emerson mentioned Nencius's Chi.
The Chinese Nencius has not been the
least successful in his generalization.
“I understand language,“ he said, “and
nourish well my vast-flowing vigor
[Chi].“ “I beg to ask what you call
vast-flowing vigor?“ said his companion.
“The explanation,“ replied Wencius, “is
difficult. This vigor is supremely
great, and in the highest degree
unbending. Nourish it correctly and do
it no injury, and it will fill up the
vacancy between heaven and earth. This
vigor accords with and assists justice
and reason, and leaves no hunger.“ In
our more correct writing we give to this
generalization the name of Being, and
thereby confess that we have arrived as
far as we can.go .... Our life seems not
present so much as prospective: not for
the affairs on which it is wasted, but as
a hint of this vast—flowing vigor.“
In: “The Poet“ Emerson gave his own version of Chi and seemed
to liken it to his concept of the Over-Soul:

It is a secret which every intellectual

83

man quickly learns, that beyond the

energy of his possessed and conscious

intellect he is capable of a new energy

by abandonment to the nature of

things: that beside his privacy of power

as an individual man, there is a great

public power on which he can draw, by

unlocking, at all risks, his human doors,

and suffering the ethereal tides to roll

and circulate through him: then he is

caught up into the life of the Universe,

his speech is thunder, his thought is

law, and his words are universally

intelligible as the plants and

animals.“25
As a Zen adept, Snyder is well acquainted with the concept of
Chi. He read Lao-tzu and Nencius during his study in Reed
College. Later he had direct contact with Chinese classical
painting, in which Chi is often delineated as the expanse of
the mist or cloud which melts natural objects into the Void.
When conenting on Sung painting, Snyder refers to “air-mist-
breath“ as one of its major component elements: “with the Sung
they opened out to great space: with the rock formations,
plants and trees, seasons, ways of appearance and
disappearance visionary timeless lands of mountain rocks

and air-mist-breath [italics added] and far calm vistas: in

84

which people are small, but lovingly rendered, doing righteous
tasks, or reclining and enjoying their world.“ Again in his
remark on the post-Yuan painters, Snyder mentions their use of
“the fog“ to represent “the blending breath“ of cosmic forces:
“Still, Wang Hui's 'Landscape in the Style of Chu-jan and Yen
Wen-kuei' (1715) does one more turn, it draws out to sea at
the end, where the sea-fog is twisting into scrolls that take
us back to the very beginning.“" As Chi often appears in
the traditional Zen-oriented scroll in the form of air, fog,
or mist, it is presented in “Work To Do Toward Town“ as
“frost,“ “haze,“ “smoke,“ or “mist.“ The Chi blurs the line
between relative natural forces and gives the first three-
fourths of the poem a sort of floating quality. Bob Steuding,
while making no mention of Snyder's presentation of Chi, notes
this floating quality: “The reader cannot help but note the
insubstantial, other-world quality of the first three-fourths
of the poem: for everything seems to float, to drift, as in
the works of the ancient Oriental painters.“"

The Chi, the “blending breath“ of Yin and Yang, is also
presented in Snyder's poem as female force - “farmwomen.“ As
female or Yin, farmwomen represent not only the “blending
breath“ in the universe but also the “blending breath“ running
through the human body. In “No Matter, Never Mind“ Snyder
describes “the Wife/mother“ as “Waves,“ the life-giving force
contained in the Void. In Regarding Wave he describes women

as a sort of Chi-like substance, “veiled“ and “vague,“

85
“vibrating“ and “pulsing“ within the human body:
wave wife
woman---wyfman---

“veiled: vibrating: vague“

sawtooth ranges pulsing:
veins on the back of the hand. (RW 3)
Snyder's tendency to depict women as the embodiment of the
universal Chi is more Taoistic than Confucian. In The Old
Ways (1977) he mentions the Taoist appreciation of the female
principle: “It's in Taoism, and within the emphasis on the
female . . . the valley, the yin“ (CW 38) . Such an appreciation
of the Yin reminds the reader of something tender or even
feminine about Thoreau who described Nature as female, whose
“globule from her veins steals up into our own.“” As the
Chi breaks the line between heaven and earth, mountains and
rivers, farmwomen with their carts “loaded with long white
radish“ bring the life-giving force of the countryside to town
and take what belongs to civilization back to Nature. The
poet's use of “Chi“ to blend cosmic forces reflects his vision
of the universe as organism, his belief in the world of non-
distinction. l'acing the interaction of cosmic forces, his
manner is completely detached. Instead of opening “books,“
symbolizing man's conscious effort to conceptualize and
classify things, he packs them on the bike. For him the

indivisible phenomenal-noumenal world needs to be retained not

86
explained. He stands there doing nothing but nourishing the
Chi and engaging in its blending process.

In the final analysis, Snyder's poetic presentation of
the Ts'ao Tung Dark-Light concept is a revaluation of things
in. which. the categories of light and. dark, action. and
inaction, sound and silence, Yin and Yang, no longer apply.
It topples the dualistic way of thinking'which.conceptualizes
and divides things, and which interposes its classifications
between subject and object. This vision of non-distinction
presented through concrete images is the source of Snyder's
richest poetry. As John R. Carpenter observes, “It is the
fidelity to a sense of the world which makes this poetry so
valuable. It is profoundly unsolipsistic. The separation
which we often allow to creep into our lives (inner world /
outer world: rational / irrational: subjective / objective:
ego / id) are absent.“” However, it remains unclear how
Snyder achieves his absolute vision and where it would lead
him. To know how Snyder attains his holistic vision, a
further study of his poems using the Ts'ao Tung theory of the
Five Ranks, representing five stages of spiritual growth, is

a must.

MN

rm arms 0! SPIRITUAL 13mm

In “Chan on Turtle Island,“ an interview conducted in
1987, Snyder explains how one may become ecologically aware by
going through different levels of understanding of “nature.“
His explanation corresponds to the Ts'ao Tung theory of the
Five Ranks. The Five Ranks all express the same thing,
namely, the fundamental identity of the phenomenal and the
noumenal, which can be viewed in the various stages of
development. Representing five stages of spiritual growth,
the Five Ranks, as formulated by Tung-shan, are (1) remaining
in the phenomenal, (2) the phenomenal pointing to the
noumenal, (3) entering the noumenal, (4) coming back to the
phenomenal, (5) arriving at the unity of the two.

The first level of understanding of “nature,“ as
explained by Snyder in “Chan on Turtle Island, “ is as follows.
There are many ways to be in nature, and
it's fascinating to me to see how many
levels there are. The most common way
that people approach it is to become to
some degree “nature literate,“ which is

to say, to become amateur naturalist . . . .

87

88

But so far we are all still on the level

of an assumed distinction between the

see-er and the seen. We have some

understanding, but nature is still being

seen as an object.
Snyder's first level resembles Tung-shan's first rank, in
which man still remains in the realm of phenomena. This
initial stage may also be explained in Thoreau's words: “This
world has many rings and we live now on the outmost of
them all.“1 In this stage, man's actions are still dictated
by the conscious self, and he sees nature as distinct from his
“self.“ He may come upon the essential Self at some specific
moments, but does not recognize it. But by becoming “nature
literate“ he has taken an important step toward enlightenment.
As John C. H. Wu remarks on this initial stage, “as in reality
the noumenal and the phenomenal form a continuous whole . . .
even a one-sided attention to the phenomenal and a serious
study of its laws and interrelations may turn out to be a
useful preparation for soaring into the heights and diving
into the depths.“2 This Zen belief in the noumenal and the
phenomenal as a continuous whole is what makes all ancient
masters become nature lovers and live in harmony with it. The
Zen masters' attitude toward nature correponds to that of the
Transcendentalists. In “Nature“ Emerson viewed the phenomenal
as that which was originated in the Spirit, and faithfully

reflected it. “The world proceeds from the same spirit as the

89
body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God,
a projection of God in the unconscious. But it differs from
the body in one important respect. It is not, like that, now
subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable
by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the
divine mind.“ Thoreau also believed that a careful study of
nature would eventually turn the naturalist's observation into
a sort of contemplation. He said: “the fruit of the
naturalist's observation is not in new genera or species, but
in new contemplations still.“3 It is because of his Zen view
of nature as related to the universal, essential Self that
Snyder suggests that we take our study of nature as the first
step toward enlightenment.
In “Chan on Turtle Island“ Snyder continues to explain

the second level of understanding of “nature“:

I think the next layer of feeling for me

at some point was when it just hit me

that I really was an animal and that all

things that we call “human“ are simply

part of that, including our spiritual

capacities and that sense of

connection can spread into broader and

broader appreciations of cellular life,

all the energies that are at work.
This level of sudden realization of “humans“ as part of nature

equates Tung-shan's second stage of spiritual growth, which is

90

marked by the crucial experience of enlightenment or satori.
Generally speaking, one can not reach this second level until
after a long period of Zen practice. When he does reach it,
he reaches it often through some momentous event . For
instance, after many years of study under a number of famous
Zenumasters, Tung-shan still remained unenlightened until one
day when he crossed a river and suddenly saw his own shadow
reflected in the water.

Earnestly avoid seeking without,

Lest it recede far from you.

Today I am walking alone,

Yet everywhere I meet him.

He is now no other than myself,

But I am not now him.

It must be understood this way

In order to merge with Suchness.
Lin-yun after having spent thirty years trying to obtain
satori was suddenly awakened by the sight of the blooming of
the peach blossoms.

Some thirty years I sought an expert swordsman.

How many times leaves fell, how many times branches

burst into bud!
But from the instant I saw the peach flowers
blooming,
From that moment to this I have had no doubts.‘

Tung-shan and Lin-yun's experiences of sudden awakening are

91
not much different from Emerson's mystical experience which
authenticates his doctrine of universal identity. Emerson
wrote in “Nature“: “Standing on the bare ground - my head
bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space -
all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball: I
am nothing: I see all: the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me: I am part or parcel of God.“‘ Such an
extraordinary moment which occurs unexpectedly is exactly what
Snyder refers to when he says, “it just hit me that I really
was an animal and that all things that we call humans are
simply part of that. “ This experience of sudden awakening has
become an.important subject for many of Snyder's poems, which
will be discussed in due course.

The third level of ecological awareness, as explained.by
Snyder in the same interview, is the internalization of one's
perception of the Unity: “And all of what I said is
theoretically comprehendible by a biology class, but
internalizing it, feeling it as your reality, is another
step.“ This “another' step“ taken. to internalize one's
perception of the oneness of all life forms is identical with
Tung-shan's third rank. .At this level the student must avoid
analyzing his experience of enlightenment lest his analysis
result in a superficial conception of his experience and hence
distort it. Rather he must internalize it, which, in the
words of Zen students, is to “nurse the holy embryo.“

The first three levels of ecological awareness, which

92

echo the first three stages of spiritual development in Zen
philosophy, may be compared to Emerson's “degrees in idealism“
and to Thoreau's “unaccountable transition.“ In “Circles“
Emerson said:

There are degrees in idealism, We learn

first to play with it academically, as

the magnet was once a toy. Then we see

in the heyday of youth and poetry that it

may be true, that it is true in gleams

and fragments. Then its countenance

waxes stern and grand, and we see that it

must be true. It now' shows itself

ethical and practical. We learn that God

is: that he is in me: that all things are

shadows of him.
Reinforcing Emerson's “degrees in idealism, “ Thoreau stated in
A week on the concord and Kerrimack Rivers:

There are perturbations in our orbits

produced by the influences of outlying

spheres, and no astronomer has ever yet

calculated the elements of that

undiscovered world which produces them.

I perceive in the common train of my

thoughts a natural and. uninterrupted

sequence, each implying the next, or, if

interruption occurs, it is occasioned by

it

C<

 

93

a new object being presented to my

senses. But a steep, and sudden, and by

these means unaccountable transition is

that from a comparatively narrow and

partial, what is called common-sense view

of things, to an infinitely expanded and

liberating one, from seeing things as men

describe them, to seeing them as men

cannot describe them. This implies a

sense which is not common, but rare in

the wisest man's experience.‘
If Emerson's “degrees in idealism“ and Thoreau's
“unaccountable transition“ resemble Snyder's first three steps
of understanding of nature, their commitment and action, their
deep involvement with society over issues such as slavery come
close to Snyder's fourth level of ecological awareness.

The fourth level of Snyder's ecological awareness goes
beyond a mere internalization of one's vision of the inner and
outer nature as a whole. It involves others and supports the
idea of responsibilty and comitment. As Snyder says in “Chan
on Turtle Island,“ “The large scale view of things that often
comes with Buddhist practice doesn't take us off the hook from
the responsibility to respond to events. To use that larger
perspective as an excuse for not being concerned in the moment
is cheating. That would be the exercise of wisdom without

compassion." This level of awareness is identical with Tung-

94

shan's fourth rank, in which the student comes back with his
secured vision to the phenomenal world and act in it.
According to Ts'ao Tung Zen, a complete identification with
nature means an understanding of only one aspect of noumenon -

its emptiness or voidness. Since the noumenal always
functions through the phenomenal, to identify one's self with
it is not to sit like a piece of dead wood but to actively
participate in the world.

Although in “Chan on Turtle Island“ he makes no mention
of the fifth level of ecological awareness, Snyder in his
poems repeatedly echoes Tung-shan's fifth rank, in which the
student is exempt from fear of death, and sees it as the final
step toward the unity of Buddhahood. Life and death, from a
Ts'ao Tung standpoint, are always tied to each other: a moment
of life is a moment of death. Death is not an end but a
beginning which leads to the Nirvana, the ever-lasting state
of emancipation from the chain of cause and effect. As a Zen
student, Snyder knows well the dialectic synthesis of life and
death. In “For Jack Spicer“ in Regarding Wave, he describes
death as a spiritual breakthrough:

You leave us free to follow:

banks and windings

forward:

and we needn't want to die. but on, and
through.

through. (RW 63)

95

And in “Night Herons“ in TUrtle Island, he sees death as the
‘way'to the eternal joy in being one with the essential Self:

The joy of all the beings

is in being

older and tougher and eaten up.

in the tubes and lanes of things

in the sewers of bliss and judgment,

in the glorious cleansing

treatment

plants. (TI 36)

Snyder's echo of the Ts'ao Tung theory of the Five Ranks
can be seen throughout his poetry, which reveals the full
range of his spiritual life. His poems best presenting the
Ts'ao Tung idea of the first rank are “For Will Petersen the
Time we Climbed Ht. Hiei Cross Country in the Sonow,“ “Pine
Tree Tops,“ and “The Uses of Light.“ “For Will Petersen“ is
collected in Regarding Wave.

No trail
can't be followed:
‘wild boar tracks slash
sidehill through bamboo
thicket.
Where are we the hill
Goes up. (RW’72)
The “trail“ or “track“ is a symbol for the Tao or the way; In

Snyder's translations of Han-shan poems, the “trail“ leading

96
to the Cold Mountain is consistently used to represent the Way
to Han-shan's enlightened Hind. “In a tangle of cliffs I
chose a place - / Bird-paths, but no trails for men“: “Men ask
the way to Cold Hountain / Cold Mountain: there's no through
trail“ (Ram 38: 42). In these examples, the physical
“trails“ to the “mountains“ are totally denied. Since there
is no “trail“ to the “mountains,“ the only way to get there,
according to Han-shan, is to follow the “bird-path,“ a
spiritual route actually, by purifying one's conscious self.
Han-shan wrote, and Snyder translates: “How did I make it? /
Hy heart's not the same as yours. I If your heart was like
mine I You'd get it and be right here“ (Rm 42). Thus it
becomes clear that the narrator and his fellow hunters's
failure to follow the wild boar tracks is a failure to find
the “way“ to the noumenal. The fact that they follow the
physical trail suggests that they are still attached to the
phenomenal, or in Snyder's words, they are “still on the level
of an assumed distinction between the see-er and the seen.“
Because they see the wild boar or nature as an object, they
cannot see their original Hind reflected in it. “Where are
we“ can mean that they are ignorant of their place in nature,
of their relations to it. Since nature is still regarded as
distinct from the mind, “the hill goes up“ does not involve a
spiritual elevation. Yet from another perspective, the two
concluding lines can also mean that the hunters have already

had some insight. Like Han-shan who said, “Clambering up the

97
Cold Mountain path, / The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on“
(RPCT! 44), the hunters have found it futile to follow the
physical trail in reaching the traceless, essential Self.
They quit tracking the wild baor and watch quietly “the hill“
go up.

The other two poems that clearly express the first stage
of Snyder's spiritual development are “Pine Tree Tops“ and
“The Uses of Light.“ Both poems appear in the Pulitzer-Prize-
winning Turtle Island (1974). The former is generally
considered to be one of Snyder's best poems.

in the blue night

frost haze, the sky glows

with the moon

pine tree tops

bend snow-blue, fade

into sky, frost, starlight

the creak of boots.

rabbit track, deer tracks,

what do we know. (TI 33)
In the first six lines, Snyder uses the Ts'ao Tung Dark-Light
images and allows them to speak as much as possible for
themselves. In these lines the Dark is signified as “the
night“ while the Light is represented as “the moon“ and
“starlight.“ On the surface, the pine tree tops that look
“snow-blue“ have their source of light in the moon and stars.

But as Snyder explains in “now“ in Left Out in the Rain,“ all

98
lives, including the trees, have their final source in the
Dark .
The trees know

stars to be sources

Like the sun,

of their life:

But many and tiny

sprinkled through the dark (LOIR 174)
From this vision.of Dark and Light as an inseparable identity
comes Snyder's description of “the night“ as “blue,“ “the sky“
as “glowlingl'with.the moon,“ and.the “pine tree tops“ which,
though. “snowbblue,“ “fade into sky.“ The view' of the
phenomenal and the noumenal as a piece is further suggested by
such images as “frost haze“ in line two and “frost“ in line
six, which blend heaven and earth, Dark and Light, whose
meeting point is the “pine tree tops.“

Although he uses the Dark-Light images to suggest the
Buddhist reality, yet, to express the first stage of his
spiritual development, Snyder lets his persona remain ignorant
of that ultimate reality; The last three lines of “Pine Tree
Tops“ present an ironic situation in which the narrator and
his friends, though existing in the phenomenal-noumenal world,
see only the phenomenal. They hear the sound - “the creak of

boots“ — but do not hear the silence of “the blue night“ that

99

makes the sound audible. They follow “rabbit tracks, deer
tracks“ that would lead to the rabbit and deer only, but do
not follow the spiritual “tracks“ that would take them.to the
awareness that all things, including the rabbit and deer, are
the manifestations of the noumenal. The last line “what do we
know“ suggests that not only the narrator and his friends but
all of us are fundamentally ignorant: as Thoreau said in A
week on the concord and Herrimack Rivers,

We are comparatively deaf, and dumb and

blind, and without smell or taste or

feeling. Every generation makes the

discovery that its divine vigor has been

dissipated, and each sense and faculty

misapplied and debauched.‘
But the question itself also suggests that the narrator has
begun pondering on what we do not know.

The other Snyder poem presenting the first stage of his

spiritual growth is “The Uses of Light“:

It warms my bones

Say the stones

I take it into me and grow

Say the trees

Leaves above

Roots below

100
A vast vague white
Draws me out of the night

Says the moth in his flight-

Some things I smell
Some things I hear
And I see things move

Says the deer

A high tower

On a wide plain.

If you climb up

One floor

You'll see a thousand miles more. (TI 39)
The poem recalls an interesting Zen poem composed by Tung-
shan, which concerns the sermon of inanimate things: “How
amazing, how amazing! / Hard to comprehend that nonsentient
beings expound the Dharma. / It simply cannot be heard with
the ear, / But when sound is heard with the eye, then it is
understood.“’ Like Tungeshan, Snyder lets the stones, the
trees, the moth, and the deer expound the uses of the Light
(the phenomenal), which is one of the two sides of the Dharma.
Yet by letting them reveal their knowledge of the uses of the
Light only, Snyder suggests that these stones and plants and
animals are still remaining in the realm of phenomena. They

know that the light can warm their bones, make them grow, draw

101

them.out of the night, and make them see things move, but do
not know that the uses of the Light are actually the uses of
the Dark. They are like unenlightened persons incapable of
perceiving the noumenal through the phenomenal. Hence the
poet's advice: Climb up one floor to see a thousand miles
more. The final stanza is translated from.the second couplet
of a four-line Chinese poem titled “Ascend the Heron Tower“ by
the famous T'ang poet Wang Chih-huan.

White sun ends with the mountains.

Yellow river flows on into the sea.

To widen the ken of a thousand miles,

Up, up another flight of stairs.10
The couplet has long been raided for Zen quotations, aimed at
pushing those who have some vague understanding of the truth
of universal identity deeper. By putting the lines at the end
of his poem, Snyder encourages those who understand only the
uses of the Light to have an insight into the uses of the
Dark.

After a certain period of practice, a Zen student is
able to keep his mind pure and clean and ready to perceive the
essential Self. Since man can hear sounds and see objects
very easily, the most convenient way of perceiving the
essential Self, which functions through every object in
nature, is through the sense of hearing or seeing. This way
of discovering one's original nature is both easy' and

difficult: as Thoreau said, “It is easier to discover another

102

such a new world as Columbus did, than to go within one fold
of this which we appear to know so well .... But there is
only necessary a moment's sanity and sound senses, to teach us
that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have
only some vague preemption right and western reserve as
yet.“:11 This “method“ has long been “used“ by Zen students,
who at their most serene moments hear or see the essential
Self through external sounds or objects with no previously
prepared intention of seeing or hearing it. For instance, Po-
chang was suddenly awakened to the Buddhist reality when he
saw the wild ducks fly away. Hsiang-yen became enlightened
when he heard a piece of tile strike against a bamboo pole.
Such a “method“ of seeing or hearing the noumenal with one's
innermost self was also “adopted“ by Thoreau. In.his journal
for February, 1842, Thoreau wrote: “I was always conscious of
sounds in nature which my ears could never hear, - that I
caught but the prelude to a strain, She always retreats as I
advance. Away behind is she and her meaning. Will not this
faith and expectation.make to itself ears at length? I never
saw to the end, nor heard to the end, but the best part was
unseen and unheard.“"

As a Zen practitioner, Snyder is always sensitive to the
outside phenomena through which the noumenal ceaselessly
functions. Nany of his poems express his experience of sudden
awakening to»the essential Self through the sense of seeing or

hearing. For instance:

103
THE PLICKBRS
sharp clear call
THIS!
THIS!
THIS!
in the cool pine breeze (AH 57)
In this short poem what draws our attention most is the call
of the flickers - “THIS! THIS! THIS!“ The pronoun “this“ is
an important word for the Zen student. Since Zen appeared in
China, the masters have found it hard to use a certain word or
phrase to represent the noumenal without letting its wholeness
be dissected into separate entities by the literal aspect of
that word or phrase. Hence the pronoun “this,“ which can
suggest anything, was adopted and has been widely used in the
Zen community. Snyder's intentional use of “this,“ an
onomatopoeic imitation of the call of the flickers, to pun on
the noumenal can be confirmed by his statement comparing
Hinduism and Buddhism in the “Road Apple Interview“:
There is a tendency in Hinduism to go out
there to a mind-breaking absolute point
of seeing only that side of all things
being impermanent, all things being
illusory, and all things ultimately
returning into Shiva, or the all
devouring mouth of Krishna, which can be

an excuse for having no responsibility to

104

anything on your own planet. The

Mahayana Buddhists think one step beyond

that, that is to say, beyond the ultimate

void is this. (TRW’20-21)
What Snyder means by “this“ in his statement is exactly what
he means by “THIS“ in the poem, which refers to the
phenomenal-noumenal world. By emphasizing “THIS, “ the call of
the flickers, the poet deftly suggests that he has reached
Tung-shan's second rank and has been able to hear the call of
the noumenal through the sound of the phenomenal.

Another poem that more clearly expresses Snyder's
enlightened experience through. the sense of hearing is
“Regarding Wave.“

The voice of the Dharma
the voice

DOW

A shimmering bell

through all. (RW’35)
The implicit joy and ecstacy of Snyder's poem is illuminated
when one considers this satori poem written by Master Te-ching
of King China: “Sitting in meditation alone after midnight I
Stirring cold ashes, nothing burning. / Suddenly a shimmering
bell from the tower I A clear voice in the freezing sky.“13
Compared with Te-ching, Snyder is more direct in identifying

the sound of the bell as the voice of the Dharma. .Although.he

105

does not describe his situation, Snyder must have been like
Te-ching trying hard to seek the Dharma but unable to find it.
Opportunely the bell struck and awakened him to the absolute
silence which was suddenly broken. Again like Te-ching,
Snyder must have heard the sound of the bell many times before
and failed to perceive the essential Self functioning behind
it. But this time, when the sound was reflected upon the
mirror of his essential Self through his purified
consciousness, he was instantaneously guided to the
intersection of the phenomenal and the noumenal.

Snyder's mystical experience of sudden awakening by the
sound of the bell should not sound foreign to those who have
read Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, in
which he wrote about a similar experience. It is when Thoreau
and his friends were half awake and half asleep on the bank of
the Nerrimack that he “heard some tyro beating a drum
incessantly, in preparation for a country muster. “ On hearing
that, Thoreau underwent an experience similar to Snyder's,
which, as Thoreau expressed it, “is beyond time, beyond the
range of sound, and the verge of sight.“ It comes from
Thoreau's own perception of being allied to the “everlasting
Something.“ He said: “I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that
everlasting Something to which we are allied, at once our
maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves.“ The result
is his realization of how the foundations of the world are

laid: “I have found how the foundations of the world are laid,

106
and I have the least doubt that it will stand a good
while.““

While the two preceding poems express the poet's
experiences of sudden awakening through the sense of hearing,
“Once Only“ in The Back Country presents his recognition of
the real Self through the sense of seeing.

almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship

the full

moon

in the center of the sky. (BC 27)
On the surface, Snyder simply describes his experience of
seeing the full moon from a ship. Yet it should be noted that
“the moon“ is a common Zen symbol for the noumenal while the
sky or the water that reflects it is a symbol for the
phenomenal. In the “Song of Enlightenment“ Yung Chia wrote:
“One moon appears in all waters / Wherein all moons from the
One Moon derive.“15 At the end of Cold Mountain Poems,
Snyder makes a short remark: “the full moon Symbol of
the Buddha nature inherent in all beings“ (Ram 61) . Thus,
what Snyder sees from the ship is not the moon but the Tao

reflected in the phenomenal. His description of the moon as

107
“full,“ as appearing “in the center of the sky,“ “almost at
the equator I almost at the equinox / exactly at midnight“
reflects his Zen belief that one can recognize his own Buddha-
nature only at the right moment, that is, onlwahen.one is in
a self-oblivious state of consciousness. As the Zen saying
goes: “In the ripeness of time I Dharma / shows.““

Another example of Snyder's expression of his
enlightened experience through the sense of seeing is “Archaic
Round and Keyhole Tombs“:

One child rides a bike
Her blue dress flutters
about her gliding
white-clad hips

The second runs behind
Black hair pulsing

to the ease of her lope

bares her pale nape

They pass by a pond of water—lily

and lotuses, a pond with a legend,

Coast out of sight. (RW 20)
In the first two stanzas Snyder depicts two children playing
in a self-oblivious manner. The first one rides a bike
without noticing that her blue dress is fluttering “about her

gliding I white-clad hips.“ The second runs behind without

Se
312
a8

ape

108
knowing that her black hair is pulsing and her pale nape is
bare. Both of them act spontaneously with no thought of the
fruit of their action. The children's playful immediacy and
spontaneity, which we have long lost, is what the Chinese
Taoists urge us to recover. Lao-tzu said: “In developing the
vital senses, / Can you be like an infant child?“ And Chuang-
tzu: “You want the first elements? I The infant has them. /
Free from care, unaware of self, / He acts 'without
reflection“: and “This enables you to unlearn I So that you
can be led by Tao, I Be a child of Tao.““ Echoing the
Taoists, the American Transcendentalists insist that wisdom is
only obtained by becoming once again like a child. Emerson
‘wrote in “Nature“: “To speak truly, few'adult persons can see
nature. Host persons do not see the sun. .At least they have
a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye
of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the
child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other: who has
retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.“
Thoreau also said: “Is the baby young? When I behold it, it
seems more venerable than the oldest man: it is more ancient
than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of father
Saturn himself.“" Like the Taoists and Transcendentalists,
Snyder views the two children.p1aying for the sake of playing
as children of Tao. They are not in bondage to ego, not torn

apart by alienation and anxiety. They live in a world which

109
is prior to the distinction between self and other, good and
evil.

However, Snyder's persona is unable to see the Tao in
the two children until he sees them “pass by a pond of water-
lily / and lotuses, a pond with a legend.“ “A pond with a
legend“ probably refers to the legend about the Buddha's use
of the pond to represent the phenomenal and of lotus flowers
to signify the eternal truth. According to the legend, the
Buddha believed that all beings could be divided into three
classes. The first class who possessed the truth from the
edge of a pond saw'lotus flowers that had.not emerged from the
water. The second who lived in uncertainty was on a level
with the surface. The third who was in error and would so
remain stood up out of the water.” The three classes of
beings, as divided.by the Buddha, may'be compared.to the three
periods of human life - childhood, manhood, and old age. By
describing the two children passing by a pond of water-lily
and lotuses, the poet suggests that it is the pond with a
legend that helps to awaken him to the Tao which appears in
the form.of children. The word “coast“ may be a reference to
the Buddhist term “the other shore, “ representing the realm of
noumenon. “Coast out of sight“ thus signifies the sparkling
moment when the narrator watches the two children of Tao
disappear.

Aside from the convenient way of perceiving the Tao

through his purified senses, Snyder also adopts the Lin-chi

110

(Rinzai) method of koan (Hung-an in Chinese), which helps to
understand his spiritual development in the second stage. The
word koan means a public case from Zen tradition which is open
to be understood or determined. It is also called Hua-tou,
meaning the end or purpose of a Zen saying. Some of Snyder's
finest poems result fromfihis struggles with.such.problems for
meditation, For instance, in the sixth poem of the “Burning“
section in.Myths & Texts, he writes:

larch wind

blows the bright dawn

apricot blossoms down.

salty bacon smoking on the stove

(sitting on Chao-chou's wu

my feet sleep) (MT 42)
In the passage, Snyder describes himself meditating on Chao-
chou's wu, which is the first koan.compiled in.mumon-kan: “A
monk once asked Haster Joshu [Chao-chou in Chinese] 'Has a dog
the Buddha nature or not?’ Joshu said, 'Mu [wu in
Chinesell'“’° The Chinese word Wu can mean No: that is, a
dog has no Buddha nature. It can also mean Nothingness or the
Void: in this sense, Chao-chou's answer is positive -- a dog
has the Buddha nature called Wu or Nothingness. A koan as
such is often used by a master to make the student realize
that he must intuitively perceive the Buddha nature or Wu in
things, instead of pondering intellectually on the yes/no

question.

111
In the passage cited above, Snyder describes himself
pondering on Chao-chou's Wu without commenting on it. In
“Walking Through Hyoshin-ji“ collected in Axe Handles, he
directly responds to the koan.
Straight stone walks
up lanes between mud walls
... the sailors who handled the ships
from Korea and China,

the carpenters, chisels like razors,

young monks working on mu,

and the pine trees

that surrounded this city.

the Ancient Ones, each one

anonymous.

green needles,

lumber,

ash. (AH 34)
In the poem the poet's vision.embraces the panorama with all
its particular details. Outside the Hyoshin temple, on the
“straight stone walks,“ there are “sailors who handled the
ships I from Korea and China, “ “carpenters“ with their chisels
sharpened like razors, and the poet among them. In the
temple, the Japanese young monks meditate on Chao-chou's
Wu/Wu. Surrounding the city, there are the pine trees, “The

Ancient Ones, each one / anonymous.“ All these unrelated

112

particulars are lumped together without logical linking; But
these discursive details find their proper places and gain
significance when connected at last to the closely
subordinated images, “green needles / lumber / ash,“ which
suggest the process of all phenomena returning to Wu or
Nothingness. While the young monks are still working on Wu,
the poet has already perceived it through its counterpart Yu,
the vanishing world.

Another Snyder poem expressing his experience of satori
through koan study is the sixteenth poem of the “Hunting“
section in Myths & Texts:

How rare to be born a human being!

Wash him off with cider-bark and milkweed
send the damned doctors home.

Baby, baby, noble baby

Noble-hearted baby

One hand up, one hand down

“I alone am the honored one“

Birth of the buddha.

And the whole world system trembled.

“If that baby really said that,

I'd cut him up and throw him to the dogs!“
said Chao-Chou the Zen master. But
Chipmunks, gray squirrels, and

Golden-mantled ground squirrels, all

113

brought him each a nut

Truth being the sweetest of flavors.

Girls would have in their arms

A wild gazelle or wild wolf-cubs

Any give them their white milk,

those who had new-born infants home

Breasts still full.

Wearing a spotted fawnskin

sleeping under trees

bacchantes, drunk

On wine or truth, what you will,

leaning: compassion.

Agents: man and beast, beasts

Got the buddha-nature

All but

Coyote. (MT 33-34)
In the poem Snyder responds directly to a koan compiled in
.Meeting'the Source of the Five Lamps. “When Buddha was newly
born, with one hand up, one hand down, he walked seven steps
and looked around and said, 'In the whole universe I alone am
the honored one.’ 'If I heard that baby say that, I'd strike
him to death with my stick and throw him to the dogs so that
the world may have peace,’ said Haster Yun-men Wen-yen.“1
Yunemenls seemingly'profane comment is a re-definition of the
Buddha's words. To him.the “I“ does not refer exclusively to

the Buddha as a baby but to every babwaith inborn Buddhahood

114

still intact and every adult with the innocence and simplicity
of a baby. Yun-men's re-definition of the Buddha's “I“ is
parallel with Emerson's re-interpretation of Jesus Christ's
“I.“ In “Address“ Emerson wrote:

He saw that God incarnates himself in

man, and evermore goes forth anew to take

possession of his World. He said, in his

jubilee of sublime emotion, “I am divine.

Through me God acts: through me, speaks.

Would you see God, see me: or see thee,

when thou also thinkest as I now think.“

But what a distortion did his doctrine

and memory suffer in the same, in the

next, and the following ages! The

idioms of his language and the figures of

his rhetoric have usurped the place of

his truth; and churches are not built on

his principles, but on his tropes.“
Just as Emerson viewed Jesus' “I“ as divinity equally
discoverable in every man and woman, Yu-men regarded the
Buddha's “I“ as the essential Self inherent in all things.
The essential Self, the “I alone am the world honored one, “ is
the state of egolessness, of non-discrimination. One day, a
monk asked Chao-Chou: “You said that the way to the ultiminate
Tao is not so difficult: only avoid discriminating against

things. But what does no discriminating against things mean?“

115

Chao-chou answered: “In the whole universe I alone am the
honored one.“”

Snyder understands that state of illumination suggested
by the master's seemingly profane comment. Like the master,
he discovers the Buddha nature, “the world honored one“ in
every new-born baby, human or non-human. In his eyes, a baby,
with its heart full of inborn Buddhahood, is absolutely pure,
and lives in a world of non-discrimination. It needs no
treatment from doctors. It is itself healing. As Thoreau
once said, “Heal yourselves, doctors: by God I live.““

Illuminated by the koan, Snyder is able to see the
baby's purity and non-discrimination as that which generates
compassion. “Chipmunks, gray squirrels, and I Golden-mantled
ground squirrels“ bring the human baby each a nut. On the
other hand, “Girls would have in their arms I A wild gazelle
or wild wolf-cubs / And give them their white milk, / those
who had new-born infants home I Breasts still full.“ To him
the compassion found in all humans and non-humans flows from
the purest “I“ with no discriminating consciousness. In his
vision, the adult's compassion is no other than the baby's
purity and non-discrimination. This compassion alone is the
world honored one, which is as sweet as the wine on which
bacchantes are drunk. The last sentence -- “Agents: man and
beasts, beasts I Got the buddha-nature I All but I Coyote“ --
is a variation of Chao-chou's “Wu.“ It has nothing to do with

positive or negative. It demands a real experience of

116
recognizing the three aspects of Buddhahood - purity, non-
discrimination, and compassion - in all things, including the
coyote.

Among Snyder poems, composed in response to koans, which
indicate his arrival at the second stage of spiritual
development, “One Should Not Talk To A Skilled hunter About
What Is Forbidden By the Buddha“ is closest in form to a
traditional Zen poem of this kind, in which the major part of
a koan is cited before the poem or used as its title.

A gary fox, female, nine pounds three ounces.
39 5/8“ long with tail.

peeling skin back (Kai

reminded us to chant Shingyo first)

cold pelt, wrinkle: and musky smell

mixed with dead-body odor starting.

Stomach content: a whole ground squirrel well chewed
plus one lizard foot
and somewhere from inside the ground squirrel

a bit of aluminum foil.

The deep secret,

and the secret hidden deep in that. (TI 66)
The koan used as the poem's title is recorded in The
Transmission of the Lamp: “A monk requested, 'Please say

something beyond the four alternatives and the hundredfold

ne

ta

di

in

9i

ml

117

negation.’ The master [Hsiang-yen] answered, 'One should not
talk to the skilled hunter about what is forbidden by the
Buddha.'“” “The four alternatives“ refer to the four
different views of life - life is permanent: life is
impermanent: life is either permanent or impermanent: life is
neither permanent nor impermanent. “The hundredfold negation“
refers to all theories of nature of the universe, which negate
each other - the universe is monistic: the universe is non-
monistic: the universe is either monistic or non-monistic: the
universe is neither monistic nor non-monistic, ect. There are
various views of life and various theories of the nature of
the universe. But none of them is Zen. Zen is beyond all
things, and can not be conceptualized. One must go “beyond
the four alternatives and the hundredfold negation“ to
encounter with the Buddhist reality. Therefore, “One should
not talk to the skilled hunter about what is forbidden by
Buddha“ means that one need not give a lecture on Buddhahood
to those who do not conceptualize the universe but identify
themselves with it.

Corresponding to the koan, Snyder's poem moves from an
affirmation of the life to a negation of it, and finally
transcends both. In the first stanza, the poet describes with
details the color of the fox, its gender, weight, length,
pelt, and smell. This is the poet's affirmation of the life
form. This affirmation is not a fixed idea of form but a

starting point to penetrate to its empty nature. In the

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second stanza, the poet describes what he finds in the stomach
of the fox, which gives the reader a glimpse into the secret
network of nature where all things are interrelated. He
discovers in the the fox's stomach “a whole ground squirrel
well chewed I plus one lizard foot.“ And “somewhere from
inside the ground squirrel“ he finds a bit of aluminum.foil,“
a human invention, indicating man's place in the network of
nature. This discovery denies the general assumption of the
life form. Before peeling the fox's skin, the poet is
reminded by his son Kai to chant the Shingyo (Heart Sutra),
which is about the interconnectedness of form and emptiness.
According to the Shingyo, in the absolute state of emptiness,
all things, including the six senses, the objects of the six
senses, the chain of cause and effect - the source of all
sufferings - are annihilated. This ultimate state of
emptiness is beyond all affirmation and negation, in which
“form is no other than emtinesss, and emptiness is no other
than form." This is the secret hidden deep in the poem.
The poet's vision that one is all and all is one is pre-
conditioned by his transcendence of the “four alternatives and
the hundredfold negation.“ He has already arrived at the
stage of illumination, and need not be admonished about what
is forbidden by the Buddha.

After recognizing the secret nature of all life forms
through koan study and through the purified senses, Snyder,

like all other enlightened Zen students, must consolidate his

119

vision by internalizing it. This internalization of his
experience of satori, according to the Ts'ao Tung Zen, puts
him in the third rank of spiritual development. The third
rank, the middle one, is the transition.point at which Snyder
begins to turn.his awakening into a constant attitude of mind
and prepare himself for partaking the world affairs. His
“Source“ in Turtle Island, which deals with his identification
‘with the land, is a direct presentation of his entry into the
third rank. It concludes:

Clears up, and all the stars

the tree leaves catch
some extra tiny source

all the wide night

up here
outback

drink deep

that black light. (TI 26)
In the first of the two stanzas, Snyder uses the Light images
- “all the stars“ and “the tree leaves“ which catch the
starlight - to signify the phenomenal, and the Dark image “all
the wide night“ to represent the noumenal. Omitting the line
“all the wide night,“ the reader may simply interpret the
first three lines as suggesting that the light which the tree
leaves catch has its source from the stars. But since “all

the wide night“ is super-imposed with “some extra tiny

120

source,“ the reader is forced to view the Dark as the source
of the Light. In the final stanza, Snyder directly expresses
his view of Dark and Light as a whole and his effort to
internalize this absolute vision. The lines “up here I
outback“ suggest that the poet is standing or sitting on top
of the mountain, which symbolizes his achievement of a
holistic vision. Snyder's use of the mountain top image to
represent the highest Zen achievement is habitual. It can.be
traced back to his 1958 translations of twenty four Han-shan
poems, in*which.the mountain top image is always used for the
same purpose. The concluding lines “drink deep I that black
light“ hint at the poet's attempt to internalize his vision of
the phenomenal and the noumenal as a whole.

While in “Source“ Snyder directly describes his attempt
to internalize his absolute vision, in “Thin Ice“ in Riprap he
metaphorically suggests the importance of securing one's
enlightened mind.

Walking in February
A warm.day after a long freeze
On an old logging road

Below Sumas Mountain

Cut a walking stick of alder,
Looked down through clouds
On wet fields of the Nooksack -

And stepped on the ice

121

Of a frozen pool across the road.

It creaked

The white air under

Sprang away, long cracks

Shot out in the black,

Hy cleated mountain boots

Slipped on the hard slick -

like thin ice - the sudden

Feel of an old phrase made real -

Instant frozen leaf,

Ice water, and staff in hand.

“Like walking on thin ice-“

I yelled back to a friend,

It broke and I dropped

Eight inches in (RCMP 14)
“Like walking on thin ice“ is a Chinese phrase first appearing
in The Book of Songs. It becomes a popular phrase to the
Chinese partly because it is quoted in The Analects of
Confucius and partly because it is widely used in the Zen
circle. In The Analects of cenfucius Tseng-seng, a disciple
of Confucius, quotes it to express the idea that one must
carefully retain the mind he has developed in order to come to
know his natured" In.Zen literature the masters use it to
suggest that one maintain with great caution his purified
consciousness through which he perceives the self-nature. In

the poem Snyder echoes the masters by giving a detailed

122

description of his experience of “walking on thin ice.“ The
message he sends may be decoded by the dialogue between a monk
and Ts'ao-shan (840-901), co-founder of the Ts'ao Tung Zen.
“A monk asked, 'How can.I maintain.what I have achieved in.my
meditation during the twelve periods of a day?’ The Master:
'It is just as when one passes through an infected country.
One should not even touch one drop of water.'“”

The first stanza can mean that after a long period of
Zen training the poet finally comes to himself - “In February
I A warm day after a long freeze.“ After his spiritual
awakening, the poet does not dive into world affairs
immediately but tries to secure his vision of the unity of
Buddhahood. His cautiousness in maintaining his Zen
achievement is suggested by the way he walks on an old logging
road below Sumas MOuntain — “Cut a walking stick of alder, I
Looked down through clouds I On wet fields of the Nooksack.“
However, to consolidate the universal Hind.he has achieved is
no easy job. It is like “passsing through an infected
country, “ like “walking on thin ice.“ But he does not realize
it until he “stepped on the ice I Of a frozen pool across the
road.“ “It creaked I The white air under I Sprang away, long
cracks / Shot out in the black.“ At this moment of crisis,
the poet suddenly thinks of the old Zen.phrase: “Like walking
on thin ice.“ But it is a little bit too late. The fact that
he drops eight inches in suggests that he is not careful

enough in maintaining his enlightened mind, and almost loses

123
what he has achieved. His yelling back to a friend is
actually a warning to all Zen practitioners that after seeing
into their own Hind, they must maintain their vision with
great caution as if they were “walking on thin ice.“

Another example of Snyder's echo of the Ts'ao Tung third
rank is “Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout, “ which
dramatizes his silence, his concentration on “nursing his holy
embryo.“ In Zen tradition there is the exemplary wall-facing
meditation of its first patriarch Bodhidharma. Snyder's
attempt to internalize his experience of enlightenment,
suggested in the poem by his act of “drinking cold—snow water
from a tin cup,“ is the American version of Bodhidharma's
wall-facing meditation.

Down valley a smoke haze

Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones

Across rocks and meadows

Swarms of new flies

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air. (RCMP 1)
“Valley, “ as Sherman Paul points out, “belongs to a culture of

values, the unassertive and 'female' yin, associated with

124

Tao.“” Paul's interpretation may be confirmed by Snyder own
words: “it's in Taoism, and within the emphasis on the female,
the feminine, the spirit of the valley, the yin“ (OW 38).
While “valley“ represents Yin or the invisible noumenon, the
more visible images, such as the glowing pitch, fir-cones,
rocks, meadows, and swarms of new flies, stand for Yang or the
phenomenal. In between Yin and Yang, there are “smoke haze, “
“heat,“ and “rain,“ signifying Chi, that harmonize the two
relative powers.

In the second stanza Snyder re—shapes traditional Zen
phrases and uses them to hint at his inexplicable experience
of satori and his attempt to internalize it. “I cannot
remember things I once read,“ as Paul notes, recalls Han-
shan's “I've even forgotten the way by which I came.”0 In
this self-oblivious state, which is prior to knowledge, all
the abstractions of the educated mind that prevent the poet
from intuitively perceiving the existence of the noumenal have
been completely forgotten. The next line, “A few friends, but
they are in cities, “ reminds the reader of Han-shan's reply to
those who ask the “way“ to the Cold Mountain: “My heart's not
the same as yours. I If your heart was like mine I You'd get
it and be right here“ (scam 42). Like Han-sham, Snyder does
not explain his experience, which is, in fact, beyond his
power of explanation. All he does is “drink cold snow-water
from a tin cup, “ which is his refurbishing of this popular Zen

phrase: “like a drinker of water who alone knows whether it is

125

cold or warm.“ The phrase was first used by Chen Hui-ming to
suggest the inexpressibility of his Zen experience after being
awakened to the essential Self by his colleague Hui-neng.31
The act of drinking and the feeling of cold suggest the
drinker's attempt to feel the unity of Buddhahood as a real
presence in his mind. The “high still air,“ as Paul remarks,
is “an equivalent perhaps of an empty mind.“ “Looking down
for miles I Through high still air“ indicates that after
reaching the third stage of spiritual growth, after “nursing
the holy embryo,“ the poet is ready to move toward a higher
level of spiritual growth by returning to the phenomenal world
and acting in it.

In “The East West Interview“ Snyder makes a statement
echoing the Ts'ao Tung theory that entering the noumenal and
keeping a complete identification with the universe is a mere
stepping-stone to the fourth stage of spiritual growth, to the
Bodhisattva ideal of saving the world from the misery of sin:

I was trying to say that, to be true to
Mahayana, you have to act in the world.
To act responsibly in the world doesn't
mean that you always stand back and let
things happen: you play an active part,
which means making choices, running
risks, and karmically dirtying your hands
to some extent. That's what the

Bodhisattva ideal is all about.“ (TRW

126
106-7)

According to Buddhism, due to our self consciousness, we crave
for things and ignore their empty nature. Our act of craving,
which is called Karma, will produce in the future a chain of
cause and effect, which is the source of all sufferings. From
the general Buddhist perspective, all practices are attempts
to avoid Karma and enter the Nirvana. In this view, “making
choices, running risks, karmically dirtying your hands“ would
only tie us to the chain of cause and effect. But from a Zen
standpoint, to attain Nirvana is to assume that Nirvana is to
be craved for and grasped, which is at odds with the Mahayana
principle of “not grasping“ and “not craving for.“ Therefore,
a Zen student does not try to attain Nirvana. Rather he is
willing to save the world at the cost of karmically dirtying
his hands and being born again and again into this suffering
world until all other beings have attained Nirvana. By not
trying to enter the absolute state of freedom he thus has a
hope to enter it. That is what the Ts'ao Tung dialectic of
enlightenment is all about, which reminds us of what Thoreau
said: “Here or nowhere is our heaven . . . . We have need to be
earth-born as well as heaven-born.”2

Snyder's presentation of his spiritual development in
the fourth stage can be seen widely in his poetry. In “Night
Herons“ he writes: “How could the I night herons ever come
back? I to this noisy place on the bay I like me“ (TI 35-36) .

By comparing the herons's return to the noisy, polluted bay to

127

his own return to it, the poet suggests that after becoming
enlightened he is not leaving the world but diving into the
thicket of its mundane concerns. Snyder's finest poem
presenting his spiritual state in this stage appears in
.Mbuntains and.Rivers Without End, which, like “Night Herons,“
echoes this famous Zen saying: “The accomplished hermit /
hides in the town: / the immature hermit I hides in the
mountain.“”

High up in a yellow-gold

dry range of mountains -

brushy, rocky, cactussy hills

slowly hiking down-finally can see below,

a sea of clouds.

Lower down, always moving slowly over the
dry ground descending, can see through breaks
in the clouds: flat lands.

damp green level ricefields, farm houses,

at last to feel the heat and damp.

Descending to this humid, clouded, level world:
now I have come to the LOWLANDS. (MRWB 35-36)
In the first three lines Snyder describes himself sitting or
standing alone on top of the mountains, an image consistently
used by the poet to suggest an enlightened state of mind.

High up in the mountains, he is accompanied by the brush, the

128
rock, the cactus, representing an unapproachable situation
that he is in, or his unconscious, non-egocentric state of
mind. From the fourth line on to the end of the poem, the
poet describes himself moving slowly but unhesitatingly down
to the “LOWLANDS.“ “The lowlands,“ as Snyder explains in The
Practice of the Wild, “with their villages, markets, cities,
palaces, and wineshops, are thought of as the place of greed,
lust, competition, commerce, and intoxication - the 'dusty
world'“ (POW 100). However, as an acomplished Zen student,
Snyder knows that he must function as part of the self-nature
while keeping his mind still and attached to nothing. In the
same prose work he says: “One should not dwell in the
specialness of the extraordinary experience nor hope to leave
the political quagg behind to enter a perpetual state of
heightened insight. The best purpose of such studies and
bikes is to be able to come back to lowlands and see all the
lands about us, agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of the
same territory - never totally ruined, never completely
unnatural“ (POW 94). The line, “Damp green ricefields, farm
houses,“ suggests the world of humans, which is “humid, “
“clouded,“ and “level,“ symbolizing the sick, confusing, and
shallow. Despite “the heat and damp,“ representing the
spiritually uninhabitable condition of the lowlands, the poet
shows no regret. On the contrary, he seems to feel satisfied.
The last sentence gives us the feeling that the poet is more

than happy to return to the “LOWLANDS“ at the risk of

129
karmically dirtying his hands and thus being unable to go back
to the mountain top again.

In fact, what concerns the poet is not whether he can go
back to the mountain top again.but whether he can.belp people
in the lowlands attain a larger wisdom. If he cannot help
people out of the chain.of cause and effect, then.his personal
attainment of Buddhahood will become meaningless. Such an
idea is explicitly expressed in “Amitabha's vow.“

“If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I

not attain highest perfect enlightenment.“

wild geese in the orchard

frost on the new grass

“If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
loses a finger coupling boxcars, may I

not attain highest perfect enlightenment.“

mare's eye flutters
jerked by the lead-rope
stone-bright shoes flick back

ankles trembling: down steep rock

“If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land

can't get a ride hitch-hiking all directions, may

130

I not attain highest perfect enlightenment.“

wet rocks buzzing

rain and thunder southwest

hair, beard, tingle

wind whips bare legs

we should go back

we don't (MT 45-45)
The very title of the poem refers to the vow of the Buddha of
Boundless Life (A-mi-tou Buddha in Chinese) of the Pure Land
Buddhism, situated in a world to the west of this one. In one
of the three major sutras of the Chinese Pure Land Buddhism,
the Wu Liang Shou Ching, there is a famous story about A-mi-
tou Buddha vowing in forty-eight vows that he would rather not
obtain Buddhahood unless he had created a pure land in which
he could transfer the merit he had acquired through his
practices to other beings so that they could all obtain
Buddhahood." The spirit of the Pure Land Amitabha Buddha is
not at odds with that of the Zen Buddhist. In most of the Zen
temples, Amitabha Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Kuan-yin
Bodhisattva are worshipped together because their principle of
“not grasping“ and “not craving for“ and their willingness to
conduct all beings to the Buddha land correspond to the spirit
of Zen Buddhism.

The three vows in Snyder's poem are spiritually

equivalent to Amitabha's vows. Like Amitabha, the poet vows

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that he would rather not obtain Buddhahood unless he has
created a pure land, which in his other poem concerning his
thinking on Amitabha is described as the “western paradise“
where “impurities flow out away, to west“ (MRWE 43) . And like
Amitabha's Pure Land where all things enjoy absolute freedom,
Snyder's pure land - “my land“ - permits people to wander
freely like “wild geese in the orchard, “ or like “frost on the
new grass,“ without “getttingl tossed in jail on a vagrancy
rap.“ In his “land“ people will not lose “a finger coupling
boxcars,“ and can “get a ride hitch-hiking all directions.“

The fourth and sixth stanzas inserted between his vows
present a situation in which the poet leads a pack horse
apparently trying to find his way to the pure land, a land not
for himself but for all other beings to dwell in. He walks
down wet, steep rocks with the mare's ankles trembling, the
rain and thunder tingling his hair and beard, and the wind
whipping his bare legs. This difficult situation suggests the
poet's determination to follow Amitabha in making a spiritual
trail to the Buddha land. He “should go back,“ but he will
never retreat.

Except for the preceding two poems, Snyder's social and
eco-politico poems can also be read in the context of the
Ts'ao Tung fourth rank. As his attitude of mind changes from
concern with the self to concern with the world, his subject
matter develops from private meditation to social reform. The

theme of social reform his poems take up in the fourth stage

132

is often treated in the manner of Confucianism, which is one
of the three major component elements of Zen. Like Pound,
Snyder is in favor of Confucianism for social living. In an
interview conducted in 1967 Snyder said: “Confucius said, as
well as Plato, that as soon as you change the mode of music
you change the government, that politics and. music are
related.“ When the interviewer pointed out that “Plato was
for kicking all musicians out,“ Snyder responded, “Confucius
was all for bringing poets into government and letting them
run it. He said that poetry teaches you the names of flowers
and trees and animals, then it gives you a proper sense of
decorum, and thirdly it trains your character, so that people
who know poetry can be good governors.“35 In Axe Handles
Snyder has a poem titled “Talking Late with the Governor About
the Budget“ presenting his exercise of his Confucian
responsibilities as a poet in society.

Entering the midnight

Halls of the capitol,

Iron carts full of printed bills

Filling life with ruels.

At the end of many chambers

Alone in a large tan room

The Governor sits, without dinner,
Scanning the hills of laws - budget -

codes -

133
In this land of twenty million

From desert to ocean.

Till the oil runs out

There's no end in sight.

Outside, his car waits with driver
Alone, idling.

The great pines on the Capitol grounds

are less than a century old.

We walk to the street

Tired of the effort

Of thinking about “the people.“
The half moon travels west

In the elegant company

Of Jupiter and Aldebaran.

And east, over the Sierra,
Far flashes of lightning -
Is it raining tonight at home? (AH 81-82)

As Dan McLeod remarks, the poem “very consciously echoes
the treament of such Confucian themes in Chinese poetry as
home-thoughts while away on.official business and the poet as
the 'reminder' to the government.““ Snyder's work toward a
Confucian type of society while missing his Taoist life at

home indicates his ability to integrate Confucianism and

134

Taoism in his Buddha Dharma. In a symposium on “Chinese
Poetry and the American Imagination“ in Ironwood 17 (1981) , he
describes Confucianism and Taoism as the twin poles of Chinese
poetry.

We have no real models in Occidental

poetry of poets who either were staunch,

quiet, solid civil-servants involved in

responsible positions in society for a

whole lifetime as a regular type of poet,

nor do we have on the other hand a real

tradition of hermit's poetry in the

Occident. So it's all the more

interesting to see that these two types

of roles of poetry were both in China

coming from the same individuals, often

at different stages within one lifetime,

or in some cases, it was just a matter of

literally changing hats - Confucian hat

to Taoist hat while on a trip to the

country.”
“These two types of roles of poetry“ are both found not only
in the same Chinese poet but in Gary Snyder at different
stages of his spiritual development. In the first three
stages, Snyder is more like Han-shan speaking from the
hermit's habitat. In the fourth stage, he is more like the

T'ang poet Han-yu, a lifetime civil servant and social

135
reformer. Like the Chinese poet, Snyder changes hats from
Taoist to Confucian while on a trip to the city.

In Nature in American Literature, Norman Foerster
divides humanitarianism.into three kinds. One is Emerson.and
Thoreau's doctrine, which is the love for man from the
viewpoint of his spiritual need, Another is the economic and
practical one, such as the Quaker Whittier's Christian
humanitarianism. The other is the instinctive one, such as
Whitman and the European romanticists' emotional
humanitarianism." Snyder's Zen humanitarianism, if it can
be so called, is the love not only for humans from the
viewpoint of their spiritual as well as material need but also
for animals, plants, rocks, and air. This Zen humanitarianism
is grounded on the conception of the Buddha Dharma which
starts from the recognition of all things sharing the same
spiritual essence and finally arrives at the true community of
all beings. In “Revolution in the Revolution in the
Revolution,“ Snyder declares the religious ground of his
political vision:

The country surrounds the city

The back country surrounds the country

“From the masses to the masses“ the most
Revolutionary consciousness is to be found
Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes:

Animals, trees, water, air, grasses

136

We must pass through the stage of the

“Dictatorship of the Unconscious“ before we can

Hope for the withering-away of the states

And finally arrive at true Communionism, (RW’39)
In his essay, “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution,“ Snyder
refers to ignorance “which projects into fear and needless
craving“ as that which causes the ruthless exploitation of the
earth (EBB 90). In “Breasts“ in.Axe Handles'he uses “poison“
to represent ignorance and suggests that it be replaced with
“milk,“ a symbol for wisdom, so that all things may live
peacefully together on this planet.

That which makes milk can't

help but concentrate

Out of the food of the world,

Right up to the point

where we suck it,

Poison, too

But the breast is a filter-
The poison stays there, in the flesh.
Heavy metals in traces
deadly molecules hooked up in strings
that men dreamed of:
Never found in the world til today.

(in your bosom

137
petrochemical complex

astray)

So we celebrate breasts
We all love to kiss them

- they're like philosophers!
Who hold back the bitter in mind
To let the more tasty
Wisdom slip through

for the little ones.

who can't take the poison so young.

The work that comes later

After child-raising

For the real self to be,

Is to then burn the poison away.

Flat breasts, tired bodies,

That will snap like old leather,
tough enough

for a few more good days,

And the glittering eyes,
Old mother,
Old father,

are gay. (AH 103)

“Poison“ and “milk“ are traditional Zen images. In his Altar

138

sutra, Hui Neng uses “three poisons“ to stand for “desire,
hate, and stupidity,“ which are responsible for all human
tragedies. In “Song of Enlightenment,“ Yung-chia uses “milk
and butter“ to represent the Buddha wisdom: “Milk in the snow
mountains is pure and nourishing, I It makes the refined
butter that I enjoyed.“” In Mountains and Rivers Without
End, Snyder uses “buttermilk“ to signify wisdom: “An old man
came up the lane alongside a mud wall - he shouted a little
scolding at some Zen monks . . . . He came over and chatted with
us, a grizzled face - neither eastern nor western: or both.
He had a glass of buttermilk in his hand. I asked him
'Where'd.you get that buttermilk?’ I'd been looking all over
for buttermilk.’ He said“ umwx 41). While “poison“ and
“milk“ represent ignorance and wisdom respectively, “the
breasts“ that sift out “poison“ and make “milk“ signify the
mind. According to Buddhism, because of our attachment to
things in the past life, we were born with fundamental
ignorance in the present life. However, like all other
things, we have the Buddha nature existing in.our mind, which
produces wisdom, which in turn enables us to see into our
original nature. Although we have the fundamental ignorance
and Buddha wisdom co-existing in us, our mind functions as a
filter that sifts out ignorance and prevents it from poisoning
us.

In analyzing the “poison,“ or ignorance, Snyder uses

“Heavy metals,“ “deadly molecules,“ and “petrochemical

139

complex“ to represent its elements. His use of the polluting
images to represent the elements of the “poison“ indicates
that he looks at the environmental crisis from a Zen
perspective and attributes it to our fundamental ignorance.
In his view, we have no chance to solve the environmental
problem unless we understand that all things, sharing the same
Buddha-nature, are equally divine. The lines -- “So we
celebrate breasts / We all love to kiss them I - they're like
philosophers“ -- suggest that in solving the environmental
problem, which is actually a “mental“ problem, we have nothing
but our own mind to resort to. We must “hold back the bitter
in mind I To let the more tasty I Wisdom slip through.“ We
need to burn the “poison“ away and replace it with “milk“ so
that the world can last “for a few more good days,“ and “the
glittering eyes“ of the Old Mother and Old Father will look
happy and gay.

While in the fourth stage of spiritual growth an
accomplished Zen student must return to the mundane world, in
the final stage he must go back and sit in preparation for
death, which is his final attempt to arrive at the unity of
Buddhahood. From the Tso'ao Tung point of view, a student may
be empirically awakened to his original nature. However, as
long as he still lives, he can not completely get rid of his
self-consciousness. The remnant of his discriminating mind
will continue to cause a relative comprehension of the world,

which prevents him from entering the absolute state of

140

Nirvana. To eliminate the remnant of the conscious self,
death becomes the final means. This view of death as that
which releases us from the yoke of the conscious self has been
held by the ancient Zen masters, particularly of the Ts'ao
Tung sect. For example, Dogen, founder of the Japanese
Soto/Ts'ao Tung Zen, saw death as a dynamic force that pushed
him forward to the final communion. In his death poem he
sang: “Four and fifty years I I've hung the sky with stars.
I Now I leap through - I What shattering.“‘° Viewing death
in such an excited manner, Dogen is not far from Emerson who
wrote: “There prevailed anciently the opinion that the human
mind was a portion of the Divinity, separated for a time from
the infinite mind, and when life was closed, reabsorbed into
the Soul of the world: or, as it was represented by a lively
image, Death was but the breaking of a vial of water in the
ocean.““ In fact, one does not need to be as transcendental
as Dogen and Emerson to hold a view as such. Here is Emily
Dickinson's vision of death.

A death blow is a Life blow to some

Who till they died, did not alive become -

Who had they lived, had died but when

They died, Vitality begun.“
Although Snyder may agree with Emerson and Dickinson on the
question of death, his attitude is more Dogenisque. Instead
of waiting to be broken like a vial of water, or to be striken

by a death/life blow, he wishes to “dive in“ or “leap through“

141
in a more active manner. This wish is presented vividly in
poems such as “Old Pond.“
Blue mountain white snow gleam
through pine bulk and slender needle sprays:
little hemlock half in shade,

ragged rocky skyline,

single clear flat nuthatch call:
down from treetrunks

up through time.

At Five Lakes Basin's

biggest little lake
after all day scrambling on the peaks,
a naked bug

with a white body and brown hair

dives in the water,

Splash! (AH 70)
From the first line on.to the seventh, Snyder uses the call of
the bird to suggest the summon of the Tao, which has existed
ever since the beginning of time. As the Tao is hidden.under
the phenomenal, the nuthatch hides itself in the depths of the
blue mountain, calling through the pine tree - “down from
treetrunks I up through time.“ Generally the Zen poetic

presentation of the summon of the Tao is aimed at calling on

142
those who are ignorant of its existence to see or hear the Tao
through natural phenomena. But here Snyder's presentation -
the “single clear flat nuthatch call“ - is aimed at summoning
those who have become enlightened and acted in the world,
represented as the bug “all day scrambling on the peaks,“ to
the final union with the essential Self.

Although from line eight on the poem reminds us of
Basho's “A Spring Day“ describing a frog breaking the silence
of an old pond, it is more comparable to the Dogen death.poem
I just cited. While Basho simply presents his perception of
the sound of silence, Snyder, like Dogen, attempts to fulfill
his wish to reach the final stage of spiritual growth by
symbolically describing a bug diving in the water. The bug
with “a white body and brown hair,“ signifying the poet
himself, is depicted as “naked,“ representing the poet's
simple and unaffected mind. Before diving in the water, the
bug/poet has been “all day scrambling on the peaks,“
suggesting that he is like Dogen who had acted for years in
the mundane world after obtaining Buddhahood: “Four and fifty
years I I've hung the sky with stars.“ Snyder's final
depiction of the bug's dive in the water presents the same
view as Dogen's: “Now I leap through - I what shattering!“
Like Dogen, Snyder sees death. not as stillness but as
“shattering, “ as “Splash.“ This view of death recalls that of
Eliot presented in Four Quartets:

We must be still and still moving

143
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my

Beginning . "

In the previous poem Snyder tries to fulfill his wish to

arrive at the unity of Buddhahood through the symbol of a bug

diving in the water. In “Journey IX“ in Mountains & Rivers

Without End, he tries to fulfill the same wish by presenting

a dream-like situation in which he and his companion Ko

journey through death to the Nirvana, represented as “the back

country . "

We were following a long river into the mountains.

finally we rounded a ridge and could see deeper in -

the farther peaks stony and barren, a few alpine
trees.

Ko-san and I stood on a point by a cliff, over a

rock-walled canyon. Ko said, “Now we have come to

where we die.“ I asked him, what's that up there,

then - meaning the further mountains.

“That's the world after death.“ I thought it looked

just like the land we'd been travelling, and

couldn't see why we should have to die.

Ko grabbed me and pulled me over the cliff -

both of us falling. I hit and I was dead. I saw

144

my body for a while, then it was gone. K0 was

there too. We were at the bottom of the gorge.

We started drifting up the canyon, “This is the

way to the back country.“ (MRWE 37)
Although he does not interpret the poem from a Ts’ao Tung
standpoint, Steuding is able to say: “to reach the ’back
country,’ the place of total freedom, man must die. Of
course, this concept seems preposterous: for to die is to be
nonexistent. Logically, no one goes anywhere after death.
But in Zen terms, man must, in a sense, surrender life - must
lose his ego and become selfless to find freedom.““ Indeed,
the narrator and his companion K0 are on a journey through
death to the Nirvana, “the back country.“ They follow “a long
river into the mountains“ and round a ridge and stand “on a
point by a cliff, “ which suggests that they have gone through
the third and fourth stages of spiritual growth, and are now
coming to a new point of departure. They both wish to see
deeper and farther, to be united with the self-nature. But
their wish cannot be fulfilled by a mere knowledge of “what’s
up there“ in “the world after death.“ They must die.

The narrator wonders why they have to die to enter the
Nirvana after having known that it looks just like the land
they had been travelling through. His doubt reflects the
essential dilemma of a “sravaka,“ meaning the hearer of the
Dharma, whom Snyder describes in Earth House Hold as

“disciplined in Tao, enlightened, but on the wrong path“ (31m

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8). As the sravaka is satisfied with a theoretical
understanding of the Dharma, the narrator after having known
what “the world after death“ looks like assumes that he has
attained Nirvana. Since he equates his knowledge of the
Nirvana to the attainment of it, he cannot see why he needs to
die to enter it. But unlike the narrator, Ko knows that the
Nirvana is nothing but a state of mind in which any attempt to
understand or grasp it has completely ceased. Therefore,
instead of explaining to the narrator that to attain the
Nirvana one must not try to understand it but personally
testify to it, he grabs him and pulls him over the cliff. By
so doing, he forces the narrator to realize that their falling
to the bottom of the gorge is not falling but “drifting up,“
that death is not death but the way to “the back country, “ the
final stage of spiritual growth.

In summary, Snyder’s poems, as discussed above in the
context of the Ts’ao Tung theory of the Five Ranks, display
the range and depth of his spiritual life. These poems,
showing the poet’s movement from the private insights achieved
by meditation to the constant search for the reintegration of
man and nature, should not be treated with logical trickery.
Rather they should be viewed as re-presentations of the poet’s
spiritual quest. The process of the poet’s spiritual quest
does not order these poems, for Snyder does not necessarily
express himself in a linear order of his experiences. In

fact, any astute reader can recognize in any of Snyder’s books

146

of poetry this spiritual-quest process represented without
orderly classification. In the fourth chapter of Gary Snyder,
Steuding analyzes Snyder’s Myths & Texts from a mythological
standpoint and compares the poet to Joseph Campbell’s
“mythological hero.“ In The Hero With a Thousand Faces,
Joseph Campbell develops the thesis that the quest motif, or
“monomyth,“ which involves three stages of inward journey -
separation, initiation, and return, is the key to all
effective mythology. Campbell writes, and Steuding quotes:

The passage of the mythological hero may

be overground incidentally: fundamentally

it is inward - into depths “where obscure

resistences are overcome, and long lost,

forgotten powers are revivified, to be

available for the transfiguration of the

world“ A hero ventures forth from

the world of comon day into a region of

supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are

there encountered and a decisive victory

is won: the hero comes back from this

mysterious adventure with the power to

bestow boons on his fellow man.
Yet, as Steuding remarks, “Snyder’s adaptation of Campbell’s
’monomythic’ structure is sketchy, and it does not order the
poem. There is little linear movement in Myths 8: Texts.

However, what most evidently is the unifying force of the poem

147

is the poet as ’creative hero’ - his personality, wit and
wisdom.“" Steuding’s treatment of Snyder’s spiritual quest
in Myths & Texts can be expanded into a broader one with a Zen
method as adopted in this chapter. His observation of
Snyder’s sketchy adaptation of Campbell’s monomythic structure
explains the necessity to re-order the poems presenting the
five ranks of Snyder’s spiritual growth.

Like Campbell’s “creative hero,“ Snyder journeys into
the innermost of his own mind and finds in there the purest
emptiness that relates man and physical environment. Like a
mythological hero's quest, Snyder’s journey is not just a
matter of learning from a great Zen master, not just a matter
of perceiving the oneness of the universe. It leads to an
existential awakening which seeks to transfigure the world by
changing our consciousness and value system. It opens our
mind to the nonhuman beings which inhabit this planet. As
William Blake wrote,

The wild deer, wand’ring here a there

Keeps the Human Soul from Care.“
And as Snyder, echoing Blake, sings in the eighth poem of the
“Hunting“ section in Myths & Texts,

Picasso’s fawn, Issa’s fawn,

Deer on the autumn mountain . . .

Stiff springy jumps down the snowfields . . . .

Keeping the human soul from care. (MT 27)

But Snyder would not stop even at what Campbell calls the

148
stage of “return,“ the stage of fruition with the world. He
continues to soar like an eagle till he can soar no more. As
he writes in “The Blue Sky“ in Mbuntains and Rivers Without
End:
The Blue Sky

The Blue Sky

The Blue Sky

is the land of

OLD MAN MEDICINE BUDDHA
where the Eagle

that Flies out of Sight

flies (MRWE 43-44)

WV

mum VISIMS

Snyder’s poetry not only reveals the range and depth of
his spiritual life but also deals with his transforming
visions of the fundamental identity of the phenomenal and the
noumenal, which come with his Buddhist enlightenment. From a
Zen standpoint, when a person has experienced the unity of
Buddhahood, his attitude of mind becomes constant. Every word
he says and every gesture he makes, however senseless they may
be, can signify the Buddhist reality. Snyder’s poems dealing
with his transforming visions are usually formed by such words
and gestures. They are often too plain to be noticed. As he
tells Burr Snider in an interview conducted in 1989, “It is
true that in some of my poetry I’ve worked in the aesthetic of
plainness, which I really learned from the Chinese, and have
taken that right up to the line, where it’s so plain that
people might not even notice it.“1 Although such poems are
simple and rarely beyond understanding, they always contain
unique Zen qualities, suggesting Snyder’s visions which
require explanation. The most significant Zen quality
contained in Snyder’s poems is Zen Ki, which, as Lucien Stryk

explains, is “a spontaneous activity outside established

149

150
forms, as if flowing from.formless self.“2 The Zen Ki which
comes out of the poet’s identification with the formless,
essential Self is often presented through his daily
activities, or his simple, leisurely life.

As Zen is true meditation applied to ordinary, everyday
life, Snyder’s poetry is inconceivable apart from his daily
activities. As his poetry shows, Snyder is always interested
in describing the details of his everyday life: grinding
tools, fixing the motorcycle, sweeping the floor, paving a
trail, chopping wood, sitting, hiking, drinking, and even
passing water. These daily activities are not to be taken as
mere fragments of his life, but rather as part of his Zen
practice. As Snyder says in The Real work, “All over the
world there are people who are doing their sitting while they
fix the machinery, while they plant the grain, or while they
tend the horses. And they know it: it’s not unconscious.
Everybody is equally smart and equally alive“ (TRW 137) . Such
an equation of labor and meditation is grounded on the
traditional Zen Buddhist view'of labor as an inseparable part
of meditation and a useful way of suggesting the laborer’s
spiritual achievement. The classic instance is the dialogue
between Lin-chi and Huang-po:

One day during the group work, Lin-chi
was going along behind the others.
Huang-p0 looked around, and, seeing that

Lin-chi was empty-handed, asked: “Where

151

is your mattock?“ “Somebody took it away

from me,“ said Lin-chi. “Come here,“

said Huang-po. “I want to talk the

matter over with you.“ Lin-chi stepped

forward. Huang-po lifted up his mattock

and said: “Just this people on the earth

can not hold up.“ Lin-chi snatched the

mattock from Huang-po’s grasp and held it

high. “Then why is this in my hand now?“

he asked. “Today there’s a man who

really is working,“ said Huang-p0, and

returned to the temple.’
Like Lin-chi, Snyder always knows that he is doing his
:meditation while he “beat[s] asphalt into highway potholes,“
while he “cutlsl branches for a day,“ or while he “walklsl the
tight-rope I high over the streets / with a hoe and two
buckets / of manure“ (BC 10: 14: 45). Such a Zen practice
through work is to bring about the oneness of body and mind,
subject and object, to see through the illusive nature of
“time“ and reach the eternity of the essential Self. The
method is to concentrate in a relaxed manner on the present
activities, excluding any thought of the past or of the
future.

Time, according to Buddhism, cannot be perceived without

thought. When a thought rises in the mind, another thought

will immediately follow. Between the two thoughts, time is

152
perceived. Therefore, a thought may represent a unit of time.
Since thought, no matter if it is the memory of the past or
the expectation of the future, is the activity of the
conscious self, time is the product of human conception. When
a person eliminates his thought by focusing on the present
activities, he immediately sees that a period of time is not
a period of time but a period of silence, which is infinitely
extended. He immediateky arrives at what Eliot calls “the
intersection of timeless moment.“‘ Such a Zen view of time
is comparable to that of Emerson.who noted in.bis journal for
October 1836: “A moment is a concentrated eternity: All that
ever was is now.“5
Among Snyder poems presenting the spontaneous Zen Ki

through his concentration on the present activities, “Sixth-
Month Song in the Foothills“ in The Back Country is the best.

In the cold shed sharpening saw.

a swallow’s nest hangs by the door
setting rakers in sunlight
falling from.meadow through doorframe

swallows flit under the eaves.

Grinding the falling axe
sharp for the summer

a swallow shooting out over
over the river, snow on low hills

sharpening wedges for splitting.

153
Beyond the low hills, white mountains
and now snow is melting, sharpening tools:
pack horses grazing new grass

bright axes-and swallows

fly in to my shed. (BC 9)
The poem is about sharpening tools in the cold shed while
thinking about sharpening tools in the shed. “Sharpening
tools“ is actually a practice of sharpening the mind. In the
“Craft Interview“ conducted in 1973, Snyder said: “I like to
sharpen my chain saw. I like to keep all my knives sharp . . . .
Creativity and maintenance go hand in hand“ (TRW 41).
Throughout the poem, the poet concentrates on “sharpening
saws, “ “setting rakers in sunlight, “ “grinding the falling axe
/ sharp for the summer,“ and “sharpening wedges for
splitting.“ What he does is what he thinks. There is no
other thought rising in the mind.

The poet’s attention paid to the immediate tasks at hand
is not de-focused but rather intensified by the daily works of
the swallows and the horses. The swallows’ act of flitting
under the eaves, of flying in and out probably for feeding the
young in the nest hung by the door, and the horses’ act of
“grazing new grass“ indicate their attentiveness in the
imediacy of the present moment. Their attentiveness, which
is made possible by their lack of the conscious self, enables
them to act as naturally as the change of the season - the

melting of the snow. Theirs is a world not conditioned by the

154
thought of the past or of the future. It is a world of
timelessness. Like the natural objects, the poet insists on
the present moment being lived for its own sake, on sharpening
tools for the sake of sharpening tools. His focus on the
preparation for the wood-cutting tools is the spontaneous Zen
Ki, flowing from his original mind, which is totally empty.
In The Back Country'there is another example of Snyder’s

presentation of the spontaneous Zen Ki in the form of his
attentiveness in menial work. It is titled “Six Years:
February.“

water taps running, the sun part out

cleaning house sweeping floor

knocking cobwebs off the shoji pap pap

‘wiping the wood and the mats with a wet rag

hands and knees on the veranda

cat-prints-make them a footwiper

of newspaper

wash the motorcycle. fold clothes

start a new fire under the kama.

fill Mrs. Hosaka’s kerosene stove tank,

get the cat hairs

out of the kotatsu.

take the sheets in from the bamboo poles

where they are drying

put away the poles

stand them up below the eaves

155
and tie them with strings.
scrub out the floor of the bath and move the
mirror
and towel rack
sweep out the genkan footprints
oil the clutch cable of the motorcycle
through the oil nipple under the handle grip
- take off sweater now because it’s
too hot
put back on the denim.jacket work
Nansen mews angrily because he feels so sick
all the different animals are persons
what will I do about Liberation.
6:30 bath
charcoal. black. the fire part red
the ash pure white (BC 55)
The stylistic device of the poem is apparently a catalogue of
the little chores the poet does around the house. This
catalogue technique is similar to that of Whitman.who in.many
of his poems tried to present his transcendental view of the
Soul, the cosmic “I,“ as immanent in all things by cataloguing
all the particular details of the universe. George R.
Carpenter has remarked on Whitman’s use of the catalogue
technique in expressing his transcendental vision and mystic
experience.

In this state of rapt contemplation the

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mind, rather out of itself than

concentrated within itself, dwelt in

rapid succession upon a multitude of

outward objects, until under this swift

and dionysiac sequence of parallel,

unrelated percepts, there followed the

mystic experience, the illusion or the

verity, of knowledge of the Whole. The

most marked characteristic of Whitman’s

poetic method, that by which he

catalogues or inventories objects,

without close subordination or orderly

classification, is perhaps but the same

process on a small scale. The reader’s

attention reels under the weight of

unrelated particulars until, just as the

mind refuses to go further in the

hopeless task of coordination, it is

suddenly suffused, as it were, with a

glow of comprehension, and there is born

an impression of totality.‘
While Whitman’s purpose in employing the catalogue technique
is to express his vision embracing panoramic dimensions,
Snyder’s goal is to present his view of body and mind as one.
In an interview in The Real Work, Snyder talks about his

belief in the oneness of body and mind and his poetic

 

157

presentation of it:

One of my poems is about doing a lot of

little chores around the house. It is

very close to what I am thinking of, in

a very obvious way, of the act and the

thought being together. And, in that

sense, there is a body-mind dualism if I

am sweeping the floor and thinking about

Hegel. But if I am sweeping the floor

and thinking about sweeping the floor, I

am all one. And that is not trivial, nor

is the sensation of it trivial. Sweeping

the floor becomes, then, the most

important thing in the world. Which it

is.“ (TRW'7)
In listing a multitude of menial works he does around the
house, the poet does so not without hinting at the importance
of doing those little chores. The acts of “cleaning,“
“sweeping,“ “wiping,“ and “washing“ all suggest the theme of
the purification of the contents of the conscious self. The
“house,“ a common Zen symbol for the void, the “mirror,“ a
symbol for the pure, essential Self, and the cat named after
the Zen master Nan-chuan (Nansen in Japanese) are all strong
hints at the poet’s absolute vision. However, these symbols
and hints do not prevent the seemingly unrelated particulars

from boring the reader until a striking sentence appears in

158

the beginning of the concluding lines: “what will I do about
Liberation.“ After the 'word “Liberation“ appears, the
reader’s attention, to use Carpenter’s words, “is suddenly
suffused, with a glow of comprehension.“ This “Liberation“ is
gained by the poet through his focus on the menial works at
hand, which leads to his transcendence of the dualism.of body
and mind. The attentiveness suggested by the swift sequence
of the poet’s acts, which.are the‘only'objects of his thought,
is the spontaneous Zen.Ki, the Bodhisattva’s act revealed, In
The Real work Snyder equates attentiveness with the
Bodhisattva’s act: “At any time when the attention is there
fully, then.all of the Bodhisattva’s acts are being done“ (TRW'
134).

Snyder’s use of the catalogue technique to present the
spontaneous Zen Ki, or what he calls “the unconditioned.mind-
in-the-moment“ (POW 70) is also seen in “A Walk“ from The Back
country. As its title suggests, the poem is not about the
poet’s working Zen but about his walking-in-mediation.

Sunday the only day we don’t work:

Mules farting around the meadow,
Murphy fishing,

The tent flaps in the warm

Early sun: I’ve eaten breakfast and I’ll
take a walk

To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,

Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders

159

Up the rock throat three miles

Piute Creek-
In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country
Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,
The clear sky. Deer tracks.
Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,
Lunch tied to belt,
I stemmed up a crack and almost fell
But rolled out safe on a ledge

and ambled on.
Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone
Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.
Craggy west end of Benson Lake-after edging
Past dark creek pools on a long white slope-
Lookt down in the ice-black lake

lined with cliff
From far above: deep shimmering trout.
A long duck in a guneightpase

steep side hill
Through slide aspen and talus, to the east end,
Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream
Into camp. At last.

By the rusty three-year-
Ago left-behind cookstove

Of the old trail crew,

Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch. (BC 11)

 

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“A walk“ to the Zen student is not just a hike for pleasure.
It is one of “the four austere acts,“ the other three being
“abiding,“ “sitting,“ and “lying,“ through which his
achievement of the Tao, the way of bringing his body and.mind
in one, is shown, In The Practice of the Wild’Snyder explains
how “walking“ can be a useful practice of the mind:

There’s all sorts of walking ....

Descending rocky ridges and talus slopes

is a specialty in itself. It is an

irregular dancing - always shifting -

step of walk on slabs and scree. The

breath and eye are always following this

uneven rhythm. It is never paced or

clocklike, but flexing - little jumps -

eidesteps - going for the well seen place

to put a foot on a rock, hit flat, move

on - zigzagging along and all deliberate.

The alert eye looking ahead, picking the

footholds to come, while never missing

the step of the moment. The body-mind is

so at one with this rough world that it

makes these moves effortlessly once it

has had a bit of practice. (POW 113)
The practice of walking Zen, as explained by Snyder, is well
presented in “A Walk.“ Throughout the poem, the poet

catalogues his acts of walking: “Hopping on creekbed

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boulders“: “Up the rock throat three miles“: “Jump, land by a
pool“: “I steamed up a crack and almost fell“: “But rolled out
safe on a ledge“: “and ambled on“: “edging I Past dark creek
pools on a long white slope“: “Through slide-aspen.and talus,
to the east end“: “Down to grass, wading a wide smooth
stream,“ The poet’s acts of walking are more related to each
other than his acts of doing house chores as inventoried in
“Six Years: February.“ This suggests that “walking“ is even
more useful in bringing about the oneness of body and mind
than “working.“ It also explains why “walking“ is
traditionally regarded by the Zen student as one of “the four
austere acts.“

Parallel with the poet’s catalogue of his acts of
walking is his inventory of the acts of natural objects:
“Mules farting around the meadow“: “trout skitter“: “The clear
sky“: “Deer tracks“: “Quail chicks freeze underfoot“: “Then
run cheep! away, hen.quail fussing“: “deep shimmering trout“:
“a lone duck in.a gunsightpass.“ The various acts of natural
objects, as they are unconscious, should.not be taken as that
which distracts the poet’s mind but rather as that which
reflects his spontaneous activity, his “unconditioned mind-in-
the-moment.“ From this “unconditioned mind-in-the-moment,“
which is in harmony with outside nature, comes the poet’s
unawareness of self and.his carefree behavior of swimming and
eating.

While in the three poems discussed above the Zen Ki is

162

shown through.the poet’s attentiveness in working or*walking,
in the following poem, under the title “Hitch Haiku“ from.The
Back Country, it is suggested by his concentration on drinking
sake and toasting fish.

Drinking hot sake

toasting fish on coals

the motocycle

out parked in the rain. (BC 26)
In Gary Snyder, Bob Steuding remarks that the poem, “full of
concrete, commonplace details, reminds the reader in this
respect of William Carlos Williams’ poem about the red
wheelbarrow;“’ In fact, the poem.reminds the reader of “The
Red Wheelbarrow“ not simply because it is “full of concrete,
commonplace details“ but because it presents the poet's total
absorption in “things.“ “Drinking hot sake“ and “toasting
fish on coals“ are the activities in which the poet is now
engaged. From the viewpoint of time, they both refer to the
present moment. Whereas the motocycle, which was ridden
probably just hours ago and will be ridden again.perhape in a
few hours, refers to the past and the future. The fact that
it is “out parked in the rain“ suggests that the past and
the future are excluded from the present moment. Focusing on
the present activities, the poet is now arriving at the state
of “no thought.“ Giving no continuity to thought, he is
emptying the conscious self, the storehouse in which memories

and expectations are kept. Without being conditioned by any

163

thought of the past or of the future, the present moment he
enjoys becomes a “concentrated eternity, “ which is not of time
but of the infinite, essential Self itself. By expressing the
state of total absorption in “things, “ the poet not only links
himself to Williams but echoes Thoreau who expressed the same
state by referring to the artist of the city of Kouroo in
Walden: “His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his
elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with
perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time
kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he
could not overcome him.“

In the previous poems, the spontaneous Zen activity is
shown through the poet’s concentration on the immediate tasks
at hand. In other poems of this kind, it is presented through
his simple, leisurely life, which suggests his wu-shih or
nothing special state of mind. Such a wu-shih mind-set, as
Lin-chi suggested, has the nature of eatori: “He who has
nothing to do is the noble man. Simply don’t strive - just be
ordinary.“ It also has the sense of simplicity and
unaffectedness. As Alan Watts explains in The Way of Zen,
“The expression wu-shih also has the sense of the perfectly
natural and unaffected, in which there is no ’fues’ or
’business.’“ Echoing the Zenists, Thoreau stated in Walden
that nothing special meant that all things were congenial to
the simple and unaffected mind.

This is a delicious evening, when the

164
whole body is one sense, and imbibes
delight through every pore. I go and
come with a strange liberty in Nature, a
part of herself. As I walk along the
shore of the pond in my shirtsleeves,
though it is cool as well as cloudy and
windy, and I see nothing special [italics
added] to attract me, all elements are
unusually congenial to me.’
Snyder’s presentation of the spontaneous Zen Ki flowing from
the wu-shih state of mind is seen clearly in the following
poem collected in Axe Handles:
One boy barefoot
swinging madly
in the driving rain
I stand by the pond
the hiss
Of rain into itself (AH 55)

As the poem shows, the poet has nothing special to do
but stands by the pond listening to the rain. The image of
the rain is the key to the poem. In the final section of “The
Waste Land,“ “What the Thunder Said,“ Eliot uses the rain
image to represent what is opposite to sterility’ and
wasteness. “Here is no water but only rock I ... dry sterile
thunder without rain.“ Likewise, Snyder uses “rain“ to

suggest hope and regeneration in the seventeenth poem of the

165

“Burning“ section in Myths & Texts:

Toward morning it rained

We slept in mud and ashes,

Woke at dawn, the fire was out,

The sky was clear (MT 47)
In fact, the rain is a traditional Zen image. In the Zen
text, Meeting the Source of the Five Lamps, there is a poem
written by one of Gui-sheng’s disciples after being suddenly
awakened by the sound of the rain. “Eavesdrops I I clearly
heard now, I When I broke through the universe I And became
peaceful-minded.“ In the chapter titled “The Sound of Rain“
in In My Own Way Alan Watts writes about the significance of
“listening to the rain“:

If you just listen, relating yourself to

the world entirely through the sense of

hearing, you will find yourself in a

universe where reality - pure sound -

comes immediately out of silence and

emptiness, echoing away as memory in the

labyrinths of the brain. In this

universe everything flows backward from

the present and vanishes, like the wake

of a ship: the present comes out of

nothing, and you cannot hear any self

that is listening. This can be done with

all the senses, but most easily with the

166
ears. Simply listen, then, to the
rain.“”
“Simply listen, then, to the rain“ is exactly what Snyder does
in the poem. “The hiss I Of rain into itself“ is, perhaps,
inspired by the eighteenth-century Japanese haiku poet Gyoda’s
“the rain I beats on the rain.“11 It suggests the poet’s
concentration on and identification with the rain. In this
state of absorption, the field of his consciousness is not
occupied by any extraneous concepts. The poet’s focus on the
rain is reinforced by that of the barefooted boy, who relates
himself entirely to the rain by “swinging madly I in the
driving rain.“
Another example that presents the poet’s spontaneous Zen

Ki coming out of his wu-shih nature of satori is this haiku
taken from Earth House Hold:

sitting in the sun in the doorway

picking my teeth with a broomstraw

listening to the buzz of the flies. (EHH 8)
The Zen Ki presented in this poem is the poet’s practice of
doing nothing special. In The Real Work Snyder explains how
he first had his insight into the satori nature of wu-shih:

During the first year or two that I was

at Daitoku-ji Sodo, out back working in

the garden, helping put in a little

firewood, or firing up the bath, I

noticed a number of times little

167

improvements that could be made.

Ultimately I ventured to suggest to the

head monks some labor-and-time-saving

techniques. They were tolerant of me for

a while. Finally, one day one of them

took me aside and said, “We don’t want to

do things any better or any faster,

because that’s not point - the point is

that you live the whole life. If we

speed up the work in the garden, you’ll

have to spend that much more time sitting

in the Zendo, and your legs will hurt

more.“ It’s all one meditation. The

importance is in the right balance, and

not how to save time in one place or

another. I’ve turned that insight over

and over ever since. (TRW 109)
That insight Snyder turned over and over ever since has been
applied to his everyday life and presented in poems such as
the one cited above. The depth of his wu-shih state of mind
is suggested by his leisurely acts: “sitting in the sun in the
doorway / picking my teeth with broomstraw.“ Such leisurely
acts are the acts mindful not of the acts themselves but of
their ultimate content, which is “wu“ or “emptiness.“
“Listening to the buzz of the flies“ is an act more attentive

than leisurely. It stops the mind from generating the thought

168

of the past or of the future and takes it to what Eliot calls
“the intersection of timeless moment.“ Snyder’s mindfulness
pervading his leisurely acts reminds the reader of Thoreau’s
wise passivenees: “What, after all, does the practicalness of
life amount to? The things immediate to be done are very
trivial. I could postpone them all to hear this locust sing.
The most glorious fact in my experience is not anything that
I have done or may hope to do, but a transient thought, or
vision, or dream, which I have had.““

In Barth House Hold another Zen Ki poem shows the poet’s
insistence on the miracle of the moment in the form of his
leisurely and spontaneous activities.

Leaning in the doorway whistling

a chipmunk popped out

listening (mm 7)
“Leaning in the doorway whistling“ is, in fact, a variation of
sitting-in-meditation. As mentioned before, sitting-in-
meditation is simply a proper way to sit. The practitioner,
knowing that Buddhahood is not graspable, has no intention to
grasp it. He sits simply because there is nothing special to
do. As Lin-chi taught us, satori mandated a wu-shih state of
mind, a simple, unaffected life style, which excluded any
thought of the Dharma: “Followers of the Way, as to Buddha-
dharma no effort is necessary. You have only to be ordinary
with nothing to do - defecating, urinating, putting on

clothes, eating food, and lying down when tired.“13 As a

169

follower of the Tao, Snyder knows how to practice wu-shih by
remaining ordinary with nothing to do. He leans in the
doorway whistling, unconscious of his leaning in the doorway
whistling. Such unconscious acts, magically drawing the
chipmunk out listening, suggest the oneness of his empty mind
and the physical world. Snyder’s ability to practice wu-shih
until the chipmunk pops out listening resembles Thoreau’s
capability to sit immovable until the animals came and watched
him. Emerson in his memorial essay on Thoreau noted his
friend’s Yogi-like habit: “He knew how to sit immovable, a
part of the rock he rested on, until the bird, the reptile,
the fish, which had retired from him, should come back and
resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come back
to him and watch him.“ In Walden Thoreau admitted:

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having

taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my

sunny doorway from sunrise till noon,

rapt in reverie amidst the pines and

hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed

solitude and stillness I grew in

those seasons like corn in the night, and

they were far better than any work of the

hands would have been. They were not

time subtracted from my life, but so much

over and above my usual allowance. I

realized what the Orientals mean by

170
contemplation and the forsaking of
works.“

In the 1973 “Craft Interview,“ Snyder was asked by the
New York Quarterly if he agreed with Eugene Herrigel, author
of Zen in the Art of Archery, who said that through a kind of
“disciplined inattention“ the archer and the target became
one: the artist and the creation became one. He answered: “I
never try to use meditation deliberately - for the reason
that, as anyone who has done much meditation knows, what you
aim at is never what you hit. What you consciously aim at is
never what you get. Your conscious mind can’t do it for you.
So you do have to practice a kind of detached and careful but
really relaxed inattention, which lets the unconscious do its
own thing of rising and manifesting itself“ (TRW 33-34).
Herrigel’e “disciplined inattention, “ or Snyder’s “careful but
really relaxed inattention,“ is attentiveness in its highest
sense. It is the ordinary mind, which, according to Nan-
chuan, is Tao itself.15 By letting his ordinary mind operate
freely Snyder makes himself as much an artist of life as
Thoreau, who, as Sherman Paul observes, went to Walden to
“affirm the open prospects of the eternal present.“ By
insisting on living every moment for its own sake Snyder
proves himself to be the true follower of Wu-men who said:
“Day after day I a very good day,“ just as Thoreau is the
genuine realizer of Emerson who said: “One well spent hour is

the proper seed of heaven and eternity.“1‘ And by writing

171
poetry of this kind, which stops the imediate moment and
lifts it out of time into timelessness, Snyder turns his own
life into a work of art and makes us look at it with wonder
and admiration.

While Snyder’s poems of Zen Ki, detailing his daily
activities, are apt to be unnoticed, his poems with the
quality of Zen humor are easy to identify. Zen is unique
partly because of its unusual sense of the comic. As Conrad
Hyers points out, “Humor in the movement of Zen Buddhism from
India to China and Japan comes to be most fully developed and
self-consciously employed as an integral part of both a
pedagogical method and an enlightened outlook.“" Seeing
that humor through upside down statements can effect a
reversal of dualities and oppositions, many Zen masters and
artists have played the role of buffoons. For instance, Han-
shan often carried a blank sutra scroll. Tan-hsia (738-824)
was caught burning a Buddha image for firewood. When the
horrified chief monk blamed him for profaning the Buddha, he
explained that he was burning it to obtain the pearl-like
substance believed to reside in the ashes. When the monk
declared that a wooden Buddha had no substance like that, Tan-
hsia immediately took two more Buddhas images and burned them.
And Sengai (1750-1837), a Japanese Zen painter, was
responsible for the sketch of a Zen monk leaning over to
relieve himself of intestinal gas, with the title, “One

Hundred Days Teaching of the Dharma.“" Like those ancient

172
Zen buffoons, Snyder is full of spontaneous sense of fun. In
1962 Robert Bly, in an extremely sympathetic essay, identified
Snyder’s “humorous awareness“ and his ability to mock at
himself. One year earlier Alan Watts met Snyder in Kyoto,
Japan, and noted his comic outlook and character:
Unburdened by a Christian upbringing,
Gary Snyder has the humorous attitude to
religion so characteristic of Zen. We
found him in a Japanese-style cottage,
close to the Daitokuji monastery in
Kyoto, where he was making a twelve-year
study of the Zen way of life. He is like
a wiry Chinese sage with high cheekbones,
twinkling eyes, and a thin beard, and the
recipe for his character requires a
mixture of Oregon woodsman, seaman,
Ameriindian shaman, Oriental scholar, San
Francisco hippie, and swinging monk, who
takes tough discipline with a light
heart. He seems to be gently keen about
almost everything, and needs no
affectation to make himself
interesting.”
Watts’s depiction of Snyder as an American Zen lunatic
living in a Japanese Zen monastery is similar to Snyder’s

portrait of Han-shan: “He is a mountain madman in an old

173

Chinese line of ragged her-mite . . . . He and his sidekick Shih-
te (Jittoku in Japanese) became great favorites with Zen
painters of later days - the scroll, the broom, the wild hair
and laughter. They became immortals and you sometimes run
onto them today in the skidrows, orchards, hobo jungles, and
logging camps of America“ (RCMP 33). Snyder resembles Han-
shan so much not only because he Americanizes and personalizes
his hero, but also because he has a comic spirit similar to
that of Han-shan. His apparent madness, like that of his
hero, symbolizes not libertinism but freedom in its highest
sense. It is a disguised form of the sage who transcends
ordinary canons of reason and behaviour. Behind his madness
there is the serious truth which is unutterable. Snyder’s
disguise as a Zen fool, his use of nonsense to point to the
beyond of common sense, can be seen in “The Old Man“ in
Regarding Wave.

His face is the color of the wall

His robe is the same as his cushion

He speaks of frog and ox

He laughs up a hill (RW 77)
The old man depicted here is a Han-shan figure, or Snyder
himself in his comic disguise. In Cold Mountain Poems, which
is translated as if written by Snyder himself, Han-shan is
portrayed as a crazy vagabond “going for a walk with his shirt
and pants askew,“ “not much to look at I Dressed in rage and

hides“ (Ram 51: 60). Likewise, the old man is described here

174

as a tramp who has the demeanour of madman: “His face is the
color of the wall I His robe is the same as his cushion.“ And
as Han-shan always expresses his insight through nonsense,
insults, and laughter, and yet always comlpains -- “They don’t
get what I say I a I don’t talk their language“ --, the old
man makes his point in a most eccentric manner: “He speaks of
frog and ox I He laughs up a hill.“

Because of its constant sitting posture, the frog has
long been used by Zen artists as a symbol for the Buddha.
Toba-sojo (1053-1140), a Japanese monk painter, in one of his
animal scroll scenes portrayed the frog as a Buddha figure
seated on a lotus throne made of cabbage leaves, and
worshipped in an open-air service by other animals all dressed
like monks and laymen. Ryokan (1758-1831), the most famous
Japanese Soto Zen fool, was always interested in listening to
the frog: “What a happy thing it is I To listen to the frogs
I In the mountain fields. I Stretched at full length I In my
thatched but!“ In The Dharma Bums Kerouac shows the same
interest in the croaking of the frog: “I had frogs in the
little brook that kept croaking at the oddest times,
interrupting my meditations as if by design, once at high noon
a frog croaked three times and was silent the rest of the day,
as though expounding me the Triple Vehicle.“0 While the
frog is a symbol for the Buddha, the ox signifies the Mind.
The tending of the ox is the tending of the mind. Nan-chuan

was famous for his ox-tending koan: “When I was a child I had

175

to tend an ox. When I put it out to the pasture on the east
bank of the stream, I was afraid that it would eat the grass
owned by the state. And when I led it to the pasture on the
west bank, I was also afraid that it would eat the grass owned
by the state. Finally I decided not to tend it but to let it
feed on grass spontaneously.““ Since Nan-chuan’s koan
appeared, tending or seeing the ox has become a favorite
subject for Zen poets and painters. Of all Zen paintings, the
most famous is, perhaps, “The Ten Ox-tending Scroll Scenes.“
The ten stages of ox-tending represent ten steps of the
practice of one’s mind essence. Snyder used to own a copy of
the Scroll Scenes and once showed it to Kerouac. In The
Dharma Bums Kerouac restates Snyder’s comment on it.

Look at this picture, by the way. This

is the famous Bulls. It was an ancient

Chinese cartoon showing first a young boy

going out into the wilderness with a

small staff and pack and in later

panels he discovers an ox, tries to tame,

tries to ride it, finally does tame it

and ride it but then abandons the ox and

just sits in the moonlight meditating.

Finally you see him coming down from the

mountain of enlightenment and then

suddenly the next panel shows absolutely

nothing at all, followed by a panel

176
showing blossoms in a tree, then the last
picture you see the young boy is a big
fat old laughing wizard with a huge bag
on his back and he’s going into the city
to get drunk with the butchers,
enlightened, and another new young boy is
going up to the mountain with a little
pack and staff.“
In addition to his comment on the “Ten Ox-tending Scroll
Scenes,“ Snyder also writes a poem titled “Seeing the Ox,“
which is about his observation of the simple, unaffected mind
of the ox:
Brown ox
Nose snubbed up
Locking his big head high
against telephone pole
right by Daitoku temple-
Slobbering, watching kids play

with rolling eye ,

Fresh dung pile under his
own hind hooves. (LOIR 89)
As the old man’s talk of the frog and ox is his talk of the
beyond of rational sense, his seemingly foolish laughter is
his exhilarated reception of the moment of insight into the

truth. His laughter as a way of making his point is not

177

ideosyncratic at all. It is in the line of the smiling
Kasyapa.

Long ago when the World-Honored One was

at Mount Grdhrakuta [vulture Peak] to

give a talk, he held a flower before the

assemblage. At this all remained silent.

The venerable Kasho [Kasyapa] alone broke

into a smile. The World-Honored One

said, “I have the all-pervading True

Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite

teaching of formless form. It does not

rely on letters and is transmitted

outside scriptures. I now hand it to

Maha Kasho’“
Kasyapa’s smile, as Conrad Hyers puts it, is a “smile of
understanding, a smile that is carried through in the subtlest
to the most raucous forms throughout the later developments of
Zen,“” In. short, Snyder’s “old. man“ is one of those
enlightened Zen monks or hermits who would climb straight to
the top of a hill, laughing crazily at the moon or clouds.
His crazy outlook and foolish talk is no vulgar hilarity. It
symbolizes his liberation from senseless cravings and his
achievement of a larger wisdom. Through him we see Snyder’s
comic spirit and perspective, his emancipation from the
bondage to ego, desire and attachment.

Snyder’s use of humor as a sign of sanity and a method

178

of Zen teaching is not confined to “The Old Man.“ It is seen
widely in his haiku poems. Snyder’s haiku presenting his
sense of humor is often abrupt, precipitating laughter as well
as awakening. Following the line of Basho, Snyder’s is a
haiku insisting on the use of the common to point at the
sublime, of the paradoxical to collapse the conceptual, which
brings about a relief from tensions. The following haiku poem
taken from Snyder’s travel journal offers a good example:

You be Bosatsu

I’ll be the taxi-driver

Driving you home. (am 10)
Here Snyder’s comic-iconoclastic tendency is shown clearly in
his use of paradox to reduce Bosatsu (the Bodhisattva) to the
ridiculous and give credit to the profaning taxi-driver. By
describing Bosatsu as one who needs to be “driven home“ by the
taxi-driver, Snyder annuls the dualities such as, lofty and
lowly, sacred and profane. In The Practice of the Wild he
reiterates the importance of toppling the classification
between high and low, great and small, powerful and weak.

For those who would see directly into

essential nature, the idea of the sacred

is a delusion and an obstruction: it

diverts us from seeing what is before our

eyes: plain thusness. Roots, stems, and

branches are all equally scratchy. No

hierarchy, no equality. No occult and

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exoteric, no gifted kids and slow

achievers“ (POW 103) .
In subjecting Bosatsu to profanation, Snyder resembles Lin-chi
who taught that anything categorized as the sacred could
become a new source of attachment, instead of a vehicle for
emancipation from bondage to ego: “Whatever you encounter,
either within or without, slay it at once: on meeting the
buddha slay the buddha, on meeting a patriarch slay the
patriarch.““

In the previous poem Snyder’s humorous attitude toward
religion is suggested by his humbling of the exalted and
exalting of the humble. In the following haiku collected in
Axe Handles his sense of Zen humor is presented through his
mockery at himself with glee.

Setting sugar water

feeder jars for bees out

hum of mosquitoes at dusk (AH 72)
The poet’s comic spirit presented in the poem is in tune with
seriousness. By putting out the feeder jars with sugar water
in them, he aims at attracting bees, which symbolizes his
deliberate effort to achieve a larger wisdom. Yet as he says
in the 1973 “Craft Interview“ that “what you consciously aim
at is never what you get,“ the result of his conscious effort
is of course the compelling mockery of the hum of mosquitoes.
In terms of its tone and style, the poem resembles the Zen

saying: “Scything the grass: I a snake’s head drops.“” But

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thematically the poem is a reverse of the saying. While the
Zen saying emphasizes the purposelessness of “scything the
grass,“ the poem emphasizes the aim at attracting “the bees.“
Although the poem exposes the inadequacy of the poet’s
conscious mind while the Zen saying suggests the power of the
unconscious, it produces humor and hints at truth just the
same as the Zen saying.

In addition to his comic iconoclasm and self-mockery,
Snyder also dramatizes and exposes through comic exaggeration
the folly of those who seek the Dharma while remaining
attached to material things.

Skirt blown against her hips, thighs, knees

hair over her ears

climbing the steep hill in high-heeled shoes (m 21)
In this haiku, the Zen humor is presented through the poet’s
mockery at the absurdity of a Dharma seeker going against the
principle of non-attachment. To ridicule those who seek
spiritual awakening while clinging to material things, Snyder
sarcastically describes a female mountain climber who fails to
see her skirt and high-heeled shoes as potential
stumblingblocks to the mountain climbing. As a life-long
“mountaineer, “ Snyder has always pursued the ideal of a
voluntary, joyous poverty, typical of the Zen Buddhist. His
manner of life was properly described by Alan Watts as “a
quietly individualist deviation from everything expected of a

’good consumer. ’“3‘ In sharp contrast with Snyder, who would

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dress himself in such a way so that the mountain climbing may
become easier, the woman climbs “the steep hill in high-heeled
shoes“ with “hair over her ears“ and “skirt blown against her
hips, thighs, knees.“ As a “mountaineer,“ the woman
contradicts not only Snyder’s principle but Thoreau’s tenet:
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of
life are not only not indispensible, but positive hindrances
to the elevation of mankind.“”

In the preceding three poems the Zen humor is presented
in the form of sardonic laughter and bitter irony: in “Hiking
in the Totsugawa Gorge“ in Regarding Wave it is presented
through a child-like playfulness.

pissing

watching

a waterfall (RW 74)
The poem can be interpreted on two different levels, each
rewarding. It can be read as the poet urinating while
watching a waterfall. It can also be read as the poet viewing
the urine as a cataract pouring down from the mountains. Both
interpretations touch on the poet’s child-like playfulness.
However, one must bear in mind that Snyder is a Zen adept and
his sense of humor is that of the child of Tao. To read the
poem simply as “pissing while watching a waterfall“ is to

ignore the poet’s deliberate connection of the urine to the

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waterfall, of the trifling particular to the sublime.

Snyder’s view of the urine as a waterfall reflects his
child-like freedom from cars, his unawareness of self. His is
a vision that we had as a child but lost as we grew up. His
playfulness and spontaneity is typical of an enlightened
person whom Hui-neng defined as someone to whom “Everything
and anything is good ... sitting, or lying, or standing. He
enjoys perfect freedom of spirit, he moves along as he feels,
and yet he does nothing wrong. He is always acting in accord
with his Self-Nature. His work is play.“” Snyder’s playful
immediacy and freedom of spirit is based on his vision that
all things are equally pervaded by the invisible Buddha-
nature. Such a vision is a democratization of things in which
the distance between beauty and ugliness, magnificence and
plainness, truth and error is reduced to nothing. It enables
him to create an amusing as well as amazing connection between
urine and the waterfall.

In another haiku poem in Axe Handles, Snyder creates out
of the same child-like mindset an.equally stunning connection
between blossoms and a radiator.

Ceanothus blossoms
and the radiator boiling
smells of spring (AH 72)
In putting “ceanothus blossoms“ and “the radiator boiling“
together as a piece, the poem resembles the following haiku by

Ryokan, the most famous Japanese Soto Zen lunatic.

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The sound of the scouring

Of the saucepan blends

With the tree-frogs’ voice.”
In his haiku Ryokan suggests that what decides the sound of
the spring is not human emotions but that which really happens
in the spring. Similarly, Snyder accepts the smell of
ceanothus blossoma and.that of the radiator boiling as “smells
of spring,“ By treating things in this manner, Snyder effects
a reversal of our discriminations, enabling us to see even.the
dullest of things as having its own significance and value.
His perspective though at the heart of the comic spirit is a
religious and sobering one. He says in The Practice of the
Wild: “Not only plum blossoms and clouds, or Lecturers and
Roshis, but chisels, bent nails, wheelbarrows, and squeaky
doors are all teaching the truth the way things are“ (POW
105) .

In the haiku poems discussed above, Snyder uses a wide
variety of comic devices to present things and trace in them
the cardinal principles of Zen. In “Cats Thinking About What
Birds Eat“ in Regarding Wave, he uses no techniques but simply
allows the cat to present its own amusing quality which
suggests the truth. As a Zen artist, Snyder believes that all
things in the universe, including even the insentient, speak
of the Dharma. To express his belief, Snyder follows Zen
tradition to sing not of the lofty but of the lowly, not of a

dragon but of a dragonfly, not of a tiger but of a house cat:

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the kitten

sniffs deep

old droppings (RW’79)
In depicting his cat, Snyder insists on its being completely
“artlese. “ Snyder’s “artleesness“ correponds to the important
principle of Zen aesthetics, expressed particularly in haiga
and zenga, the most extreme forms of sumi painting by Zen
monks. According to .Alan. Watts, haiga and zenga are
“spontaneous, artless, and rough, replete with all those
’controlled accidente’ of the brush in which they exemplify
the marvelous meaningleesness of nature itself.“30 This
principle of “artlessness“ was highly respected by Thoreau,
who said: “What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like
the forma of lichens and leaves. There is a certain
perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.“”

Snyder’s depiction of the kitten’s amusing act of

sniffing old droppings is a depiction of the cat’s natural,
unaffected mind. Such a unique presentation of things comes
directly from the poet’s insight into the unconscious, which
is unfathomable in its profundity. It is a stratagem for
showing us Nature’s way, which will reveal to us all its
secrets and even help us understand our “self.“ It is also a
method of expounding the Dharma, which is similar to that
adopted by Master Hsuan-sha (835-908):

One day, he was scheduled to discourse to

his assembly. But as he arrived at the

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platform, he heard the twittering of a.
swallow outside the hall. Thereupon he
remarked, “what a profound discourse on
Reality and a clear exposition of the
Dharma!“ And he retired from the
platform as though signifying that his
sermon was done.”

Snyder’s poems in their highest Zen form of lightness
and playfulness reflect not only his witticism and comic
spirit but also his religious attitude and philosophical
perspective, which involve a very special way of perceiving
reality and presenting its ultra-seriousness. In expressing
his awe and wonder at the sublimity of the Buddhist reality,
Snyder uses no overpowering and sublime images. Rather, he
puts on his poems the garment of nonsense and foolishness. By
so doing, he successfully points toward the very absurdity and
meaninglessness of categories and discriminations. His old
man and taxi-driver, his mountaineer and kitten, all defy
attempts at fitting them into the framework of the conscious
mind, at forcing them into conformity with the categories of
rationality.

Except for Zen Ki and Zen humor, there are several
traditionally recognized moods, which, though not directly
related to Zen, are responsible for producing the unique Zen
flavors in Snyder’s poetry. They are Sabi, Wabi, Aware, and

Yugen in particular. Generally the four dominant Zen moods,

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which have become part of the atmosphere of Snyder’s poetry,
are not consciously created. They are felt as the poet
expresses his feeling of aloneness, of longing, of the
fleetingness of things. Sabi literally means loneliness or
silence. The mood is associated with the Zen monastic
training, aiming at cultivating a strong detachment with which
one sees all things as coming from the same source of
Emptiness. In the early stage of the training, a feeling of
loneliness and sadness is inevitable. But when the sense of
detachment is achieved, sadness is mixed with peace and
satisfaction, and isolation becomes the emreseion of absolute
freedom, In The Way'of Zen,.A1an Watts defines Sabi properly
as “loneliness in the sense of Buddhist detachment, of seeing
all things as happening ’by themselves’ in miraculous
spontaneity.“” In the mood of Sabi, one does not have much
to offer except his detached manner, his insight into the
emptiness of all things. Snyder says in Earth Heuse Held:
“Sabi: One does not have a great deal to give. That which one
does give has been polished and perfected into a spontaneous
emptiness: sterility made creative, it has no pretentions, and
encompasses everything“ (EHH 11). The following haiku taken
from Earth House Hold offers a good example of Snyder’s poetic
presentation of Sabi:
a butterfly
scared up from its flower

caught by the wind and swept over the cliffs

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SCREB (BHH 8)

In “The Poetry of Gary Snyder“ Thomas Parkinson says
that Snyder “has a gift for quiet, untroubled, accurate
observation with occational leaps to genuine eloquence.“"
In the poem Snyder observes the passive and silent nature of
the butterfly, which reflects his own propensity to follow
Nature’s way. From his “quiet, untroubled, accurate
observation“ of the butterfly’s receptive character comes a
tremendous sense of detachment, which alternates with an
intense sense of wonder and astonishment. The geological term
scree does not literally mean a rock sliding off mountains.
As Steuding points out, Snyder “has utilized a geological term
in an interestingly new sense. ’Scree’ is rock which slides
off mountains. In the poem Snyder has employed its meaning
metaphorically suggesting that the butterfly is like a falling
rock. He has also utilized the sense of the sound of the
term, for to say ’scree’ is to sound like one is
screaming.“” The fact that the butterfly is as light and
soft as a feather does not prevent it from entering the Void,
the source of all things. It pierces into the vast space and
becomes one with it, leaving the poet in the state of awakened
loneliness.

In the above poem, by super-imposing a small butterfly
upon the vast space, Snyder presents a situation which
objectifies his sense of eternal loneliness to evoke that

sense in the reader, a technique similar to Eliot’s “objective

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correlative.“ In the following haiku, by describing “a few
elderly mosquitoes“ humming in the great mountains, the poet
produces a poetic pressure in which the permanent and the
impermanent become one, Nature and its lonely observer become
one.

September mountains,

ripe huckleberries

a few elderly mosquitoes with

chilly wings. (ass 98)
In the poem, the “k1“ or season, a basic component element in
a haiku, is the early autumn, which is suggested by
“September“ in the first line and “chilly“ in the final line.
The “ki“ of the early autumn not only defines the images of
the poem but gives the reader a sense of loneliness. In
explaining why a Zen poet, particularly a haiku poet, is
always interested in setting his poem against the background
of the early autumn in order to present the mood of Sabi or
what he calls the “Eternal Loneliness,“ D. T. Suzuki says:

In the beginning of autumn, when it

begins to rain occasionally, nature is

the embodiment of Eternal Loneliness.

The trees become bare, the mountain

begins to assume an austere appearance,

the streams are more transparent, and in

the evening, when the birds, weary of the

day’s work, wend their homeward way, a

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lone traveller grows pensive over the

destiny of human life. His mood moves

with that of nature."
In the early autumn, the mountain, as Suzuki puts it, “begins
to assume an astere appearance,“ and a sense of Eternal
Loneliness is present in nature. With his mood moving with
that of nature, the poet begins to feel the fleetingness of
things and awe at the eternity of nature. He quietly watches
the transient, represented as “ripe huckleberries“ and “a few
elderly mosquitoes,“ intercept the eternal, represented as
“September mountains. “ This feeling of permanence interacting
with impermanence is not a projection of the poet’s melancholy
on nature but rather a strong detachment with which he
perceives nature’s emptiness and silence.

While Snyder’s poems of Sabi give the reader a sense of
loneliness and quietude, his poems of Wabi produce the
atmosphere of a great delight in reality recognized in the
most ordinary things. The word “Wabi,“ according to D. T.
Suzuki, “means ’poverty,’ or negatively, ’not to be in the
fashionable society of the time.” To be poor, that is, ’not
to be dependent on things worldly . . . and yet to feel inwardly
the presence of something of the highest value, above time and
social position.“ The process of feeling inwardly the
presence of reality, according to Alan Watts, is depression
followed by joy in a sudden perception of the truth in the

most trifling particulars. “When the artist is feeling

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depressed and sad, and in this peculiar emptiness of feeling
catches a glimpse of something rather ordinary and
unpretentious in its incredible ’suchness, ’ the mood is called
wabi.“” Watts’ and Suzuki’s definitions of Wabi remind the
reader of the Transcendentalists’ emphasis on the need to find
Reality in the commonest event. In “Nature“ Emerson said:
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the
common.“ Thoreau also stated in.bis journal for March, 1856:
“I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and
inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so
that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the
conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream
of no heaven but that which lives about me.“”

Wabi, with its wonderment and delight coming from the
perception of the truth in the most unnoticed event, is best
presented in the following poem from Regarding Wave:

ranges of hazy hills

make the heart ache -

tiny flowers in the underbrush,

winds from Siberia

in the spring. (RW’72)
In the poem. Snyder gives the reader a sense of the
inexpressible, which is present at the juncture in nature
where the wintry desolation meets with the life power of the
spring. By superimposing the “tiny flowers“ upon the “ranges

of hazy hills“ the poet creates in us an unconscious tension

191

that quickens our perception of the unexpressed. His final
discovery of the indication of the spring is his achievement
of an insight into the very nature of things, which now
appears as “tiny flowers.“ The process of his search for an
indication of life can be viewed as the process of his Zen
practice, which is a painful but useful preparation for the
state of illumination. Yet, of course, this process, this
preparation does not guarantee an achievement of that state of
illumination. As the poem shows, in the early stage of his
search, the poet is depressed by the “ranges of hazy hills,“
which “make the heart ache.“ However, it is in this peculiar
mood of depression and sadness that he finally sees “the
spring“ shoot out from “the underbrush.“ His sudden
recognition of the incredible “suchness” of “tiny flowers“
changes his mood from frustration to delight.

In Regarding wave, there is another example of Snyder’s
poetic presentation of Wabi, which gives the reader glimpses
of his insight without describing the insight itself.

scattered leaves

sheets of running

water.

unbound hair. loose

planks on shed roofs.

stumbling down wood stairs
shirts undone.

children pissing in the roadside grass (RW 51)

192

The very title of the poem “The Way Is Not a Way“ recalls
Basho’s haiku titled “The Way of Zen“: “Well then, let’s go -
I to the place where we tumble down I looking at the snow.”
As Basho stumbled down the place where he looked at the snow,
Snyder stumbles down wood stairs with his shirts undone. By
dramatizing their acts of stumbling down, both poets create a
sense of frustration. This sense of frustration which helps
to conquer ego and pride is later turned into an unexpressed
ecstasy as both poets suddenly “see“ the Way in the commonest
event. Basho was awakened by the snow which he had looked at
before but failed to have an insight into its “suchness.“
Likewise, Snyder discovers the very nature of things in
children who have their hair unbound pissing in the roadside
grass.

Thematically Basho and Snyder both express the Zen idea
supported particularly by the Ts’ao Tung sect that the way to
illumination is not a way but a sudden recognition of every
event in nature as a correspondence within ourselves. As
Conrad Hyers points out,

Soto Zen ... argues that if one’s
original nature is “Buddha,“ then one is
already within enlightenment, and there
can therefore be no path to enlightenment
at all. This would be like Po-chang’s
“riding the ox in search of the ox.“ The

way of Zen is therefore no way, if by

193
this one means a journey to some foreign
destination. It is a way only in the
sense of working out, or manifesting, or
expressing, the fundamental character of
one’s being.“

In the two poems discussed above, Snyder presents wabi
through the images of “tiny flowers“ and “children.pissing in
the roadside grass, “ which lift his mood out of depression and
sadness into delight and inspiration. In the following haiku
he presents the same mood through the images of watching and
fixing the roof leak, which turn the deep sense of frustration
into great delight.

After weeks of watching the roof leak

I fixed it tonight

by moving a single board (BC 30)
The poem exhibits a mixed feeling of aloneness and wonderment.
The first line defines both an image and an emotion. “The
roof leak“ not only symbolizes a rainy season but also
suggests the inconvenience and frustration of the weeks-long
dripping. “After weeks of watching the roof leak“ suggests
the peculiar quality of the poet’s mind - a receptive nature
full of wise passiveness -, which resembles Thoreau’s
personality: “All good abides with him who waiteth wisely: we
shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by
hurrying over the hills of the west.“1 The moving of a

single board, which is done in the quickest possible time and

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unhampered by any extraneous distractions, is Snyder’s
application of Zen practice to his daily life. In Zen
practice, a student can not obtain enlightenment step by step.
He either obtains it or does not obtain it at all for
Buddhahood cannot be divided into pieces and achieved little
by little. The student’s practice, however hard it may be, is
a mere preparation for sudden awakening which is like jumping
over a deep chasm with no immediate step between its two
sides. Likewise, in fixing the roof leak, Snyder insists on
finishing the job instantaneously with no immediate step
between moving a single board and fixing the leak. As Zen
practice does not guarantee an obtainment of Buddhahood,
Snyder’s weeks-long watching, his preparatory work does not
guarantee a success in fixing the leak. During his watching,
it can be imagined that Snyder would sink at times into
depression, just as a Zen practitioner would sometimes feel
his ambitiousness being checked. But when the single board is
moved, his depression is imediately turned into a great
delight in something that is real and immutable.

Another underlying mood in Snyder’s poetry is Aware,
which is sadness coming with the perception of the
fleetingness of things. It is, as Watts explaines, “not quite
grief, and not quite nostalgia in the usual sense of longing
for the return of a beloved past.“ Rather, it is “the moment
of crisis between seeing the transience of the world with

sorrow and regret, and seeing it as the very form of the Great

195

Void.““ In other words, it is a religious/philosophical
elevation of the pathos, a transcendence of the nostalgia for
the lost youth, love, or time. Such a spiritual elevation
enables poets to present their holistic vision while lamenting
over the brevity of life. In one of his haiku poems, Issa
wrote on the death of his child:

This dewdrop world -

It may be a dewdrop,

And yet - and yet.
Like Issa, Emerson was passionate when facing the death of his
dear son Waldo. Yet like Issa again, Emerson was aloof enough
to regard sorrow as superficial, dwelling in a low region, and
describe his son as “a beautiful estate-no more.“" This
sadness coming with the realization that the beauty of things
is in their impermanence is the source of poetry. In a poem
titled “These,“ William Carlos Williams thus sang:

The source of poetry that

seeing the clock stopped, says

the clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing - that is now stone.“
Snyder’s poetic presentation of Aware can be seen in
poems such as, “August on Sourdough“ in The Back Country and

the sixth and tenth poems of “Atthis“ in Left Out in the Rain.

196

Yet nowhere is this mood more painfully shown than in “Four
Poems for Robin“ in The Back Country. In the first of the
four poems, the feeling of impermanence is embodied in the
juxtaposition of the fallen rhododendren blossoms with the
poet’s memory of his first wife, Alison, whose nickname is
Robin.

I slept under rhododendren

All night blossoms fell

Shivering on a sheet of cardboard

Feet stuck in my pack

Hands deep in my pockets

Barely able to sleep.

I remembered when we were in school

Sleeping together in a big warm bed

We were the youngest lovers

When we broke up we were just nineteen.

Now our friends are married

You teach school back east

I don’t mind living this way

Green bills the long blue beach .... (BC 47)
The poet’s reminiscence, which both gives a haunting sense of
the past and casts an afterglow over the present, comes not
quite from a nostalgia for what has vanished but from an
insight into the emptiness of worldly love. Love or passion,
from a Zen standpont, is transient and empty. Because it is

transient, the sense of its fleetingness automatically

197
transmutes itself into an intense, sentimental feeling. Yet
because it is essentially empty, it is paradoxically viewed by
Zen students as inseparable from Buddhahood. In The
Transmission of the Lamp Chao Chou said: “Buddhahood is
passion, and passion is Buddhahood,“ After hearing Chao Chou
say that, a monk asked him. “In whom does Buddha cause
passion?“ “Buddha causes passion in all of us.“ “How do we
get rid of it“ “Why should we get rid of it.“" As a Zen
student, Snyder realizes the empty nature of worldly love.
Owing to this realization, he makes no effort to shun the
inextinguishable pain and passion. On the contrary, he
constantly recalls his lost love and faces it, hoping to
integrate its emptiness in the very essence of all things.
Although.he is able to come to terms‘with.his passion.by

seeing through its empty nature, the post can not help feeling
sad and regretful when he thinks back on.his lost young love.
His view’of worldly love as an intergral part of the void is
always tinted with a melancholy quality. As Charles
Molesworth remarks on the “Four Poems,“ “Clearly he wants to
achieve a Zen-like sense of calm and acceptance in regard to
ineradicable but unalterable experience, but the demons of
self-doubt and ego are not easily denied.““

Last night watching the Pleiades,

Breath smoking in the moonlight,

Bitter memory like vomit

Choked my throat .

198

I unrolled a sleeping bag

On mats on the porch

Under thick autumn stars.

In dream you appeared

(Three times in nine years)

Wild, cold, and accusing. (BC 48)
The phrases “watching the Pleiades,“ “under thick autumn
stars,“ and “in dream“ not only intimate Emptiness but
underscore the complex feeling of the poet - a mixture of
dependence and independence, ambivalence and resolution, ego
and egolessness. The poet’s feeling, though full of sorrow
and regret, involves a negation of the will, an acceptance of
what has vanished, and a personal decision to subordinate
worldly love to the pursuit of the Dharma. .As he sings in the
last of the “Four Poems,“

After college I saw you

One time. You were strange.

And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have

Gone by: I’ve always known
where you were -

I might have gone to you

Hoping to win your love back.

You still are single.

199
I didn’t
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that. (BC 49)

While Snyder’s poems, giving the moods of Sabi, wabi,
and Aware, are rarely beyond understanding, his poems, with
the quality of Yugen, which literally means depth and mystery,
are baffling. In The way of Zen, Alan Watts defines the mood
as a mysterious vision: “When the vision is the sudden
perception of something mysterious and strange, hinting at an
unknown never to be discovered, the mood is called yugen.“
Lucien Stryk in Encounter with Zen more clearly defines Yugen
as the sense of a mysterious depth in nature: “Yugen, most
difficult of the dominant moods to describe, is the sense of
a mysterious depth in all that makes up nature.W" Like the
other three Zen.moods, Yugen is identified by Zen students as
an essential precondition.of awakening, of penetrating to the
void by which all things are engendered. When a student stays
in this mood, nothing seems impossible to him, For instance,
he may see a swallow dart into the lightning or an earthen ox
roar in the stream.

Snyder is not the first American post to write Yugen
poems. In Gaudier Brzeska: A Memoirs, Pound admitted that his
“In a Station of the Metro“ was inspired by a “Yugen-in-
reverse“ haiku written by the Japanese poet Meritake (1472-
1549), which used a more “realistic“ vision to deny the

preceding deep, mysterious vision:

200
The fallen blossom flies back to its branch:
A butterfly.“

However, in composing his “Metro“ poem, Pound did not imitate
the mood in Moritake’s poem literally. Rather, he made his
poem a standard Yugen by balancing the mood of mystery and
depth in both lines so that the mood in each line reinforces
the mood in the other.“ Like Pound, Snyder is able to write
poems full of the mood of Yugen, which appear only as vague
impressions open to many interpretations. “At Kitano Shrine
for the Fair“ in Regarding Wave offers a good example of
Snyder’s descending into the mysterious depth in nature.

In the washroom I looked in a mirror

And saw the roots of a huge tree. (RW’76)

In the poem there is an awareness of the never-to-be-
known, a longing for the unattainable, which reminds the
reader of these Whitman lines in “Song of Myself.“

I hear and behold God in every object, yet
understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understanduwho there can.be more wonderful
than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see, and in my own
face in the glass.so

Whitman’s mystical experience -- “I see something of God ...

201

in my own face in the glass“ -- comes out of his vision that
the phenomenal world is the mirror of the Soul. Similarly,
Snyder’s sudden perception of a mysterious depth in nature
comes from his vision that the invisible void, “the root“ of
all things, is reflected in the visible creation. Snyder’s
ability to see “the roots of a huge tree“ in a mirror in the
washroom, from a Zen standpoint, is his ability to see things
with his “Dharma eye,“ referring to an intuitive power of
perceiving the existence of the essential Self. For those who
are capable of “seeing“ things with the “Dharma eye,“ nature
is inseparable from the mysterious Void, and, therefore, has
its aura of mystery. The Zen master Chia-shan (805-881) once
said mysteriously: “Pick me out in the hundred grasses. “ Yun-
men (862-949), DOinting to a pillar, shouted: “Chia-shan has
turned into a pillar, look! look!“51 Like Chia-shan and Yun-
men, Snyder recognizes that nature, being connected to the
Void, is itself mysterious and remote. As his poem.shows, he
sees the world through rays of the Void and makes its familiar
scenes suddenly become unfamiliar.

The atmosphere of Yugen in Snyder’s poetry is produced
not only by his sudden perception of the existence of the
“root“ of all things but also by his complete identification
with nature. Steuding has noted Snyder’s mystical expressions
in “Without,“ “Source,“ “For Nothing,“ and “By Frazier Creek
Falls“ in Tartle Island,‘which.come as the consequence of his

oneness with this earth.” In the conclusion of “By Frazier

202
Creek Falls“ Snyder writes:
This living flowing land

is all there is, forever

We are it

It sings through us -

We could live on this Earth

'without clothes or tools! (TI 41)
In Walden Thoreau has a poem that might show how the mood of
Yugen is produced by a strong communion with nature.

It is no dream of mine,

To ornament a line:

I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven

Than I live to Walden even.

I am its stony shore,

And the breeze that pass o’er:

In the hollow of my hand

Are its water and its sand,

And its deepest resort

Lies high in my thought.53
Thoreau’s identification with Walden is an identification with
nature’s beauty and reality. So is Snyder’s communion with
the mountain:

Don’t be a mountaineer, be a mountain.

And shrug off a few’with avalanches. (EHH 21)

203
As the sense of a mysterious depth perceived in Thoreau’s poem
comes out of his complete identification with nature, the mood
of Yugen felt in Snyder’s haiku comes from.his sense of unity
of subject and object. In The Practice of the Wild, Snyder
makes it clear that he looks on life as a whole and as a
mystery, which can not be grasped with logical explanations of
the ways things are. He quotes Dogen: “If you doubt mountains
walking you do not know your own walking“: “Now when dragons
and fish see water as a palace, it is just like human beings
seeing a palace. They do not think it flows. If an outsider
tells them, ’What you see as a palace is running water,’ the
dragons and fish will be astonished, just as we are when we
hear the words, ’Mountains flow’“ (POW 102: 108-109). In
Snyder’s vision, a mountain is not just a mountain. It is all
of existence - beings and non-beings, humans and non-humans.
As he comments on Dogen/s view of mountains and waters, “His
mountains and streams are the processes of this earth, all of
existence, process, essence, action, absence: they roll being
and.nonbeing togetheru They are what we are, we are what they
are“ (POW 103). Just as dragons and fish see water as a
palace, Snyder views himself as a mountain. If some one
suddenly tells him that he is not the mountain, he will be
astonished. With its Zen spirit of oneness with nature,
Snyder’s poem is essentially mystical. In the first line,
Snyder produces an atmosphere of mystery by giving an

unfathomable suggestion which reflects his ability to

204

internalize his feelings about the mountain: “Don’t be a
mountaneer, be a mountain.“ In the second line, he deepens
the sense of mystery by suggesting that one “shrug off a few
with avalanches.“ The season word “avalanches“ not only
personifies winter but also suggests the vanishing of the
world. To “shrug off a fewflwith avalanches“ is to let go, or
to accept “the going.“ The white color of the avalanches
takes on the quality of Yugen with its sensation of purity,
when used in direct contrast with the sense of a mysterious
depth/darkness in nature.

Like the poems of Zen Ki and Zen humor, Snyder’s poems
expressing the four dominant Zen moods have their religious
significance and manifest his transforming visions that come
with his Buddhist enlightenment. Yet, again like the poems
pervaded by Zen Ki and Zen humor, his poems giving the unique
Zen moods are free of dogmatism. Full of beauty, elegance,
and tranquility, they are purely aesthetic. These moods not
only mark Snyder’s supreme accomplishment in Zen but also make
his poetry unique and distinguished. As Thoreau said, “A true
poem.is distinguished not so much.by a felicitous expression,
or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which
surrounds it.““ Because Snyder’s poetry conveys such
unconsciously created Zen moods, which imply emotions as well
as thoughts, it. may’ be called. an. intuitive art, 'which

offhandedly attempts to express the inexpressible.

commerce

Snyder’s poetry, which presents his Buddhist view of the
identity of the phenomenal and the noumenal, the various
stages of his spiritual development, and the transformations
of his enlightened vision, not only makes himself unique and
distinguished as a poet but also expands the range and depth
of American literature. In its fundamental assumptions,
Snyder’s poetry radically dissents from the dominant literary
traditions of America. No poet in American literature has
ever tried, as he has, to achieve from the old Zen tradition
a vision that is fully informed about its relation to both
human society and the non-human world, and use it as a major
source of his poetry. Although it has been linked by Snyder
to other cultural wisdoms such as Amerindian lore, it remains
the central vision of his poetry. By demonstrating the
ultimate truth that relies on witnessing nature at close range
by our senses, Snyder’s vision echoes a few, relatively
isolated geniuses in American literature such as, Emerson and
Thoreau, who called for an integration of humankind into
nature. By democratizing all things, by elevating

contemplation over action, it reinforces the ecology movement

205

206
which rejects the traditional man-over-nature mind set, the
resource-management mentality that manages nature not for the
fruition of the eco-system as a whole but for the short-term
benefit of the managers themselves.

Since 1955, the year he participated the poetry reading
at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, Snyder has insisted on
writing the kind of poetry that moves from tranquility and
contemplation to the exercise of social wisdom and back again
to tranquility and contemplation. This kind of poetry is
valuable in that it has both “in-time“ and “out-of-time“
functions: that is, it deals with the worldly and the
unworldly at the same time. In The Real Work Snyder
formulates the function of poetry, which fits his own poetry
so well.

The value and function of poetry can be
said in very few words. One side of it
is in-time, the other side is out-of-
time. The in-time side of it is to tune
us in to mother nature and human nature
so that we live in time, in our societies
in a way and on a path in which all
things can come to fruition equally, and
together in harmony. A path of beauty.
And the out-of-time function of poetry is
to return us to our own true original

nature at this instant forever. And

207

those two things happen, sometimes

together, sometimes not, here and there

and all over the world, and always have.

(TRW 73)
The in-time or worldly function is curative, focusing on the
social and historical dimension of our existence. The out-of-
time or unworldly function is more contemplative or aesthetic,
attempting to return us to “our own true original nature at
this instant forever.“ In Enlarging the Temple, Charles
Altieri suggests that Snyder has stepped outside Western
literary traditions to make these claims, and his use of
Buddhist material can be seen as either a critique or a
radical reimagining of those traditions.1 In fact, Snyder
uses Buddhist material not just to criticize or reimagine
Western literary traditions but to present a vision that
affirms what we really are, opens our eyes to the mysterious
oneness of all things, and attempts to create in the reader a
change of consciousness.

Jack Kerouac once referred to the vision of the word

Beat as “being to mean beatific.“a Snyder’s poetic vision is
indeed “beatific“ enough to rule in the possibility of poetry
playing an important role in warning against all ties and
possessions and saving human beings from misery and self-
destruction. As Bob Steuding observes, “one of the factors
that creates Snyder’s influence is the fact that the

conception of poetry and the role of the poet has changed

208

since the 1950’s, especially in the minds of the young. The
new concern is to relate to poetry more personally and to get
something specifically from it. This refreshing pragmatism,
if one wishes to see it as such, stresses in poetry its
opportunities for learning and for self-awareness. In this
respect, Snyder’s life and poetry offer the reader a glowing
example.“3 Snyder’s poetry, from a pragmatic standpoint, does
show the reader how the ineffable Tao can be turned into a way
of life, into a “power vision“ that offers an important
preserve of value and truth.

As a Zen practitioner, though, Snyder must, like all
poets, be judged as an artist. In the 1960’s Snyder received
the first flush of criticism from such important poet-critics
as Kenneth Rexroth and Robert Bly. In the last two decades at
least three full-length studies of Snyder’s mind and art have
been published. More recently, a great number of articles
have been written explicating his esoteric allusions to
Oriental thought. Almost all these critical books and essays
are sympatheic and serious, affirming his role as an important
poet. Of the many things which might be said about the
criticism of Snyder’s poetry, one is worth mentioning here.
That is, all of these critics discuss Snyder’s poetry in
conjunction with his personality and life style. The critics’
interest in Snyder’s career reminds the reader of the emphasis
of his role as a culture-hero by the 1960’s and 1970’s reviews

in the popular culture newspapers and magazines, which were

209

written more or less in response to such biographical works as
Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958) and Alan Watte’ Beat Zen
Square Zen and Zen (1959). This tendency to emphasize
Snyder’s life experiences suggests that his life plays an
important role in the formation of his art. Indeed, Snyder’s
work is inconceivable apart from his life. His art, to use
Thoreau’s words, is “what he has become through his work.“
While Thoreau admitted -- “My life has been the poem I would
have writ,/ But I could not both live and utter it“ --, Snyder
succeeds in doing so.‘

At its best, Snyder’s work is a reflection of himself
living in and outside the world at once, finding eternity in
every moment, and aware of the deep significance of his
affinity with the most ordinary things in nature. From the
pure meditation of Riprap a Cold Mountain Poems, on to The
Back Country, a concern with the unconscious, and through to
the political and poetic syntheses of Earth House Hold and
Turtle Island, and then back to Left Out in the Rain and The
Practice of the Wild, recurrences of his contemplation, the
cycle of Snyder’s life and art has been from meditation to
wisdom and morality and back again to meditation. Such a
course of development has been deepened by his attempt to make
new out of the old, to integrate his tone, and to make his
rhetoric relevant to human experience,

In some literary circles, Snyder has been dismissed as

a relic of the Beats. But compared with the poetry of his

210

generation, his is free of howling, itchiness, and the lack of
self-discipline. As Robert Bly remarks in an insightful
article, Snyder can no longer be lumped with the Beats because
his poetry “reveals the grave mind of a man who is highly
civilized.“s In his 1960-61 review of.Myths & Texts, Thomas
Parkinson finds that there is a “terrible sanity“ about
Snyder’s work,‘ In his review of Snyder’s Earth Heuse Held,
Timothy Baland notes the depth.and lasting effect of Snyder’s
poetry, which is “like a stone skipping water, touching
lightly then sinking deep." In the final analysis,
Snyder’s poetry, with its directness and simplicity, its
clarity and brilliance, and its spontaneity and startling
originality, is a poetry of power and beauty. His insights
presented through sensuous images represent the true spirit of
his generation, and will probably stand the test of time.

With the availability of the numerous anthologies of Zen
‘writings and of the critical materials explicating his
Buddhist allusions, Snyder’s Zen, which is integral to his
works, is no longer esoteric. The figure of Gary Snyder as a
poet is no longer overshadowed by that of Snyder'as a.culture-
hero. His poetic reputation no longer rests merely on Myths
& Texts, on a few excellent poems from Riprap, Turtle Island,
and.Mountains and.Rivers Without End. .Although it is hard to
predict how he will be received by a future, different era,
his place as a pioneer who has taken a new direction in

American literature seems to have been secure. More than as

211

follower of Pound, Snyder has created a new kind of poetry,
‘which turns his Zen vision of an integrated and unified world

into a consciousness that is social, political, cultural, as

well as poetic.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

Chapter I

1. Dan MCLeod, “Some Images of China in the Works of Gary
Snyder,“ Tamkang Review, 10: 3 a 4 (Spring 5 Summer 1980),
372.

2. Bob Steuding, Gary Snyder (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1976), the preface.

3. Bert Almon, “Buddhism and Energy in the Recent Poetry of
Gary Snyder,“ Mosaic, 2.1 (1977), 117.

4. Frederic Ives Carpenter, Emerson and Asia (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1930), 15.

5. Arthur Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 61-183.

6. Ibid., 185-233.
7. Quoted in Christy, 202.

8. Sherman Paul, The Shores offiAmerica (Urbana: University'of
Illinois Press, 1958), 69-75.

9. Quoted in Beongcheon Yu, The Great Circle: American
Writers and the Orient (Detroit, Wayne State University Press,
1983), 55. For Thoreau’s comment on Whitman’s Orientalism,
see The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Familiar Letters, ed.
F. B. Sanborn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 296.

10. v. K. Chari, Whitman in the Light of vedentic Mysticism
(Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1964), 106.

11. Summarized in Gay Wilson Allen, The New Walt Whitman
.Handbook'(New'York: New'York‘University Press, 1975), 263-64.

212

213
12. Yu, 62-63.

13. For a further understanding of the similarity and
difference between.Hinduism.and Buddhism, see Alan Watts, The
way of Zen (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), 29-56.

14. Donald D. Eulert, “Matter and Mathod: Emerson and the Way
of Zen,“ East-West Review, vol. 3 (Winter 1966-67): 48-65.

15. Robert Detweiler, “Emerson and Zen,“ American Quarterly,
vol. 14 (Fall 1962): 422-38.

16. Van Meter Ames, Zen and American Thought (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1962), 65-94.

17. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1959), 342-44.

18. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Transcendentalist, “ The
Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson
(New York: Modern Library, 1950), 91-92.

19. Herbert Fackler, “Three English Versions of Han-Shan’s
Cold Mountain Poems,“ Literature East and West, 15.2 (1971),
274.

20. Charles Molesworth, Gary Snyder’s Vision (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1983), 65.

21. T. S. Eliot, After Strange God (London: Faber & Faber,
1934), 44.

22. Stephen Spender, “Remembering Eliot,“ in T. S. Eliot: The
Man and His Work, ed. Allen Tate (New York: Delacorte Press,
1966), 40.

23. Russell T. Fowler, “Krishna and the ’Still Point’: A
Study of The Bhagavad-Gita’s influence in Eliot’s Four
Quartets,“ Sewanee Review, 79.3 (July-September, 1971), 408.

24. Harold E. McCarthy, “T. S. Eliot and Buddhism,“
Philosophy East and West, vol. 2 (April 1952), 39.

25. T. 8. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: A Harvest, 1943),
41-42.

26. My discussion of the Orientalism of Eliot and the
Transcendentalists is indebted to Yu’s The Great Circle,
especially to its first three and its nineth chapters.

27. Steuding, 70-74.

214
28. Quoted and commented in McLeod, 377.
29. L. S. Dembo, Conception of Reality in Modern American
Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 4: 3.
Schopenhauer’s “objectivist logic“ is summarized in Dembo’s
introduction.

30. Quoted in Hyatt H. Waggoner, American Poets (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 392.

31. Steuding, 43-45.

32. Quoted in David Kherdian, Six San Francisco Poets
(Fresno, California: Giligia Press, 1969), 22.

33. “CLGOd: 37‘s

34. Summarized in Yu, The Great Circle, 209. See Alan Watts,
Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen (San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1959), 3-9.

35. Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (New York: Penguin Books,
1986), 18.

36. Kerouac, 13.

37. See “Chan on Turtle Island," Inquiring Mind 4.2 (Winter
1988), 6.

38. Snyder has a poem about the “mind refreshers, “ which he
calls “dot the heart.“ See Left Out: in the Rain (San
Francisco: North Point Press, 1986), 94.

39. Zu-chi Chu ed., Chi Yveh Lu (Record of Pointing to the
Moon), 2 vols (Taipei: Lao Ku, 1985), I, 717-18.

40. Chung-yuan Chang, trans., Original Teachings of Ch’an
Buddhism: Selected from the Transmission of the Lamp (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 175.

41. See “The Sage of the Sierra,“ Image (September 17, 1989),
11.

42. Ibid., 15.

215

Chapter II

1. Zenkei Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (New York:
Harper a Row, 1974), 29.

2. Emerson, “The Over-Soul,“ Selected Writings, 263.

3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Harper 5, Row,
1963), 178.

4. See Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, 2 vols.,
ed. Emory Holloway (London: William Heinemann, 1922), II, 66.

5. Charles Luk, ed., Ch’an and Zen Teaching, 3 vols.,
(London: Rider, 1962), III, 25: 30-31.

6. Alan Watts, In My Own Way (New York: Vintage Books, 1973),
440-41.

7. Emerson, “The Over-Soul,“ Selected Writings, 262: 277.
8. Emerson, “Self-Reliance,“ Selected Writings, 155.

9. Luk, III, 136.

10. Walt Whitman, “This Day, 0 Soul,“ Leaves of Grass, ed.
mg'Hiééoway (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books,

11. D. T. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism (London: Buddhist
Society, 1947), 9.

12. Emerson, “The Over-Soul,“ Selected writings, 275.
13. Thoreau, Walden, 427.

14. Soiku Shigematsu, trans., A Zen Forest: Sayings of the
Masters (New York: Weatherhill, 1981), 39.

15. Emerson, “Nature,“ Selected Writings, 14.

16. Clifton Joseph Furness, wa1t Whitman’s workshop
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), 185-86.

17 . Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrick Rivers
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 350.

18. R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental
Classics (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1960), 31. My discussion of
the two selves in man in the context of Zen and American

/

216

Transcendentalism, and of the relationship between Zen and
poetry relies partly on the first and third chapters of Shoei
Ando’s Zen and American Transcendentalism: An Investigation of
One’s Self (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1970), 1-52: 136-67.

19. Shigematsu, ix.

20. Thomas Parkinson, “The Poetry of Gary Snyder, “ The
Southern Review, vol. 4 (1968), 620.

21. Eliot’s statement was included in an.unpublished lecture
on “English Letter Writers“ - primarily on Keats and Lawrence
- which was delivered in New Haven, Conn., in 1933. It is
quoted in F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot:
.An Essay on the Nature of Poetry (Boston: Heughton.Mifflin,
1935), 89-90.

22. Shigematsu, ix

23. Quoted in Lucien Stryk, Encounter with Zen (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1981), 14.

24. ‘Whitman, “A Song of the Rolling Earth,“ Leaves of Grass,
189.

25. Quoted in David Kherdian, A Biographical Sketch and
Descriptive Checklist of Gary Shyder (Berkeley, California:
Oyez, 1965), 13.

26. Robert Kern, “Clearing the Ground: Gary Snyder and the

‘\\Modernist Imperative,“ Criticism, 19.2 (Spring 1977), 156-

27. Entry of Oct. 28, 1835, The Journals of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, 18 vols., ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson
Forbes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909-14), V, 103.

28. Whitman, “When The Full-Grown Poet Came," Leaves of
Grass, 452-53.

29. Jody Norton, “The Importance of Nothing: Absence and Its
Origins in the Poetry of Gary Snyder,“ contemporary
Literature, 28.1 (1987), 43.

30. Kern, 166.

31. waggoner, American Poets, 615-17.

32. Paris Leary and Robert Kelly eds., A Controversy of Poets
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1965) , 566-67 .

33. Stryk, 44.

217
34. Luk, III, 46-47.
35. Shigematsu, 316.
36. Molesworth, Gary Snyder’s Vision, 14.
37. Emerson, “The Over-Soul, Selected writings, 262.

38. Ezra Pound, Lustra of Ezra Pound with Ealier Poems (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917), 50.

39. Ibid., 90.

40. Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: New
Directions, 1973), 244: 245. My discussion of Chinese
ellipsism and its influence on Pound relies largely on Wai-lim
Yip’s first chapter of Ezra Pound’s cathay' (Princeton:
Priceton University Press, 1969), 8-33.

41. Yip, Ezra Pound’s Cathay, 33.

42. Thomas Lyon, “Gary Snyder: a Western Poet,“ Western
American Literature, vol. 3 (Fall 1968), 210.

43. Norton, 46.
//44. Charles Olson, “Projective Verse,“ The Selected writings
.' of Charles Olson, ed. Robert Creeley (New' York: New
‘-a.Directions, 1966), 24.

45. Waggoner, 616.

Chapter III

1. William F. Powell, trans., The Record of Tung-shan
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 63-64.

2. Ibid., 46.
3. Emerson, “Nature,“ Selected writings, 19.
4. Luk, Ch’an and Zen Teaching, III, 90.

5. Entry of 1851, The Journals of Ralph waldo Emerson,‘VIII,
211.

218
6. Emerson, “Brahma,“ Selected Writings, 809.

7. Jonathan Bishop, Emerson on the Soul (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964), passim.

8. Shigematsu, A Zen Forest, 61: 102: 114: 53.
9. Whitman, “Song of Myself,“ Leaves of Grass, 27.

10. Snyder is well acquainted with the Japanese stone garden.
In “A Stone Garden“ in Riprap, he describes Japan as a great
stone garden in the sea. In “Sand“ in Regarding Wave, he
mentions the “white river“ sand raked out at Ryoan-ji, a Zen
temple in Japan famous for its stone garden.

11. Harold G, Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), 19.

12. Quoted in McLeod, 382, n. 3.
13. Eliot, Four Quartets, 15.

14. W. T. Stace, Waticism and Philosophy (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1960), 173.

15. Quoted in Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental
Classics, 339.

16. Thoreau, A Week, 418.

17. Snyder is especially interested in the teaching of Nan-
chuan (Nansen in Japanese). He uses the master’s name “Nansen“
as the title of a poem collected in The Back Country. In
Regarding Wave, he uses the master’s famous koan “Killing a
Cat“ to conclude the poem titled “In the House of the Rising
Sun.“

18. I-kung Tsang-tsu ed., Ru az’an Shih Y‘u Lu (Recorded
Sayings of Ancient Zen Masters), 2 vols., (Taipei: Kwung-wen,
1981), I, chuan 13.

19. Quoted in Yu-lan Fung, A Short History of Chinese
Philosophy, ed. Derk Bodde (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 246-
47.

20. McLeod, 379.

21. Steuding, Gary Snyder, 63.

22. In using the structural pattern of Yin and Yang to

analyze Snyder’s poem, I am inspired by Lin Wen-yueh who in a
Chinese article points out the same structural pattern

219
commonly found in the landscape poems of Hsieh Ling-yun and
his contemporaries. See Wai-lim. Yip’s “Aesthetic
Consciousness of Landscape in Chinese and Anglo-American
Poetry,“ Comparative Literature Studies, 15.2 (June 1978),
226-27.

23. Herrymon.Maurer, trans., The way of ways: Lao Tzu/Tao Te
Ching (New York: Schochen Books, 1985), 63.

24. Emerson, “Experience,“ Selected writings, 357-58.
25. Ibid., 332.

26. Quoted in McLeod, 379.

27. Steuding, 64.

28. Thoreau, A week, 404.

29. John R. Carpenter, “Comment,“ Poetry, vol. 120 (June
1972), 169.

Chapter IV

1. Thoreau, A week, 411.

2. John C. H. Wu, The Golden Age of Zen (Taipei: National War
College, 1967), 178.

3. Emerson, “Nature, ’ Selected Writings, 36: Thoreau, A Week,
23.

4. Powell, The Record of Tang-shan, 27-28: Isshu Miura and
Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Zen Dust:The History of the Khan and Khan
Study in Rinzai (Lin-chi) Zen (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1966), 292.

5. Emerson, “Nature,“ selected writings, 6.

6. Emerson, “Circles,“ Selected writings, 283-84: Thoreau, A
”98*, 412-130

7. For Snyder’s statements cited above, see “Chan on Turtle
Island]. 4.5.

8. Thoreau, A week, 408.

220
9. Powell, 26.

10. Wai-lim Yip, trans., Chinese Poetry: Major Modes and
Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 318.

11. Thoreau, A week, 409.

12. Entry of February 21, 1842, The writings of Henry David
Thoreau: Journal, 20 vols., ed. Bradford Torrey (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1968), I, 321.

13. Quoted in Sung Tse-lai, Ch’an Yu wen Hsieh Ti Yen (Zen
and Literary Experiences) (Taipei: Chien-wei, 1982), 290-91.

14. Thoreau, A week, 180-82.

15. Luk, III, 132.

16. Ibid., 70.

17. Herrymon.Maurer trans., The ways of Ways, Lao Tau/Tao Te
Ching, 48: Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang-tzu (New York: New
Directions, 1965), xxiii: 7.

18. Emerson, “Nature,“ Selected Writings, 6: Thoreau, A Week,
160.

19. J. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Life and Legend of Buddha,
translated from the French by Laura Ensor (Calcutta: Susil
Gupta, 1957), 20.

20. Shibayama, Zen cemments on.Mumon-kan, 19.

21. Pu-chi Shi, wu Teng Hui YUan (Meeting the Source of the
Five Lamps), 3 vols (Taipei: Wen-Ching, 1986), III, 924.

22. Emerson, “An Address,“ Selected writings, 72.
23. PU'Chi Shi, I, 203.
24. Thoreau, A week, 181.

25. Chung-yuan Chang, Original Teaching of Ch’an Buddhism,
223.

26. D. T, Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove
Press, 1960), 26-27.

27 . Hung-ming Ku trans. , The Discourses and Sayings of
Cbnfucius (Taipei: Prophet Press, 1976), 59-60.

221

28. Chung-yuan Chang, p. 75. In ancient China a day was
divided into twelve two-hour periods.

29. Sherman Paul, In Search of the Primitive: Rereading David
Antin, Jerome Rotherberg, and Gary Snyder (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana University Press, 1986), 197.

30. Ibid., 196.

31. Luk, III, 27.

32. Thoreau, A week, 405-6.

33. Shigematsu, 87.

34. Miura and Sasaki, Zen Dust, 172-73.

35. Quoted in McLeod, 372-73.

36. .MeLeod, 373.

37. Quoted in Molesworth, Gary Snyder’s Vision, 3.

38. Norman Foerster, Nature in American Literature: Studies
in the Modern View of Nature (New York: Russell 5 Russell,
1958), 137-38.

39. Luk, III, 32: 132.

40. Quoted in Stryk, Encounter with Zen, 55.

41. Entry of 1827, Journals of Ralph waldo Emerson, 11, 217.

42. Emily Dickinson, Final Harvest: Emily'Dickinson’s Poems,
3:3.Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown a Company, 1961),
43. Eliot, Feur Quartets, 32.

44. Steuding, 54.

45. See Steuding, 68-69:

46. ‘William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,“ Poetry and Prose

of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: Nonesuch
Library, 1956), 118.

222
Chapter v

1. Snider, “The Sage of Sierra,“ 15.
2. Stryk, Encounter with Zen, 62.

3. Ruth Fuller Sasaki trans., The Recorded Sayings of Ch’an
Master Lin-chi (Kyoto: Institute for Zen Study, 1975), 54.

4. Eliot, Feur Quartets, 51.

5. Entry of Octorber 13, 1836, The Journals of Ralph waldo
Emerson, IV, 115-17.

6. George R. Carpenter, walt Whitman (New York: Macmillan,
1909), 55.

7. Steuding, 62.
8. Thoreau, walden, 431.

9. Sasaki, 10: Watts, The way of Zen, 126: Thoreau, walden,
170.

10. Quoted in Ando, Zen and American Transcendentalism, 16:
Watts, In.My Own way, 450.

11. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, 118.
12. Thoreau, A week, 145.
13. Sasaki, 11-12.

14. Emerson, “Thoreau,“ Selected Writings, 905: Thoreau,
walden, 146-47.

19. Shibayama, Zen Comments on.Mhmonkan, 140.

16. Paul, The Shores of America, 352: Shigematsu, 98: entry
of January, 1825, The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 41-
42.

17. Conrad Hyers, zen and the comic Spirit (Philadelphia:
Westminister Press, 1973), 33.

18. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, 3 series (London: Rider,
1949-53), III, 145: I, 330: Conrad Hyers, Zen and the comic
Spirit, 106.

223

19. Robert Bly, “The Work of Gary Snyder,“ The Sixties, No.
6 (Spring 1962), 27-28: Watts, In.My Own way, 439-40.

20. See Hyers, 59, plate 5: Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics (New
York: Vintage Book, 1978), 147: Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 143.

21. Pu-chi Shi, wu Teng Hui YUan (Meeting the Sburce of the
Five Lamps), 3 vols., (Taipei: Wen-Ching, 1986), I, 137.

22. Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 174-75.

23. Shibayama, 58: Hyers, 25.

24. Sasaki, 25.

25. Shigematsu, 66.

26. Watts, Beat Zen square Zen and Zen, 17.

27. Thoreau, walden, 16.

28. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, I, 217.

29. Quoted in Watts, The way of Zen, 189.

30. Watts, The way of Zen, 182.

31. Thoreau, A week, 351.

32. Wu, The Golden Age of Zen, 230.

33. Watts, The way of Zen, 186.

34. Parkinson, “The Poetry of Gary Snyder,“ 630.

35. Steuding, 59.

36. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, III, 330.

37. Suzuki, “Zen and the Art of Painting,“ The world of Zen,
ed. Noncy Wilson Ross (New York: Random House, 1960), 92:
Watts, The way of Zen, 181.

38. Emerson, “Nature,“ Selected writings, 41: entry of March
:3; 1856, The writings of'Henry'David Thoreau: Journal, VIII,
39. Quoted in Henderson, 36.

40. Hyers, 130.

41. Thoreau, A week, 133.

224
42. Watts, The way of Zen, 186-87.

43. Quoted in Watts, The way of Zen, 187: entry of February
13, 1831, The Jaurnals of Raph waldo Emerson, II, 356.

44. William Carlos Williams, “These,“ The collected Earlier
Poems of William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions,
1951), 433-34.

45. Chung-yuan Chang, Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism,
166.

46. Molesworth, 56.

47. Watts, The way'of Zen, 181-82: Stryk, Encounter with Zen,
60.

48. I borrow the term “Yugen-in-reverse-haiku“ from watts:
see The Way of Zen, 188. For Moritake’e poem and its
influence on Pound’s Metro poem, see Pound’s Gaudier-Brzeska:
A Memoirs (New York: New Directions, 1960), 86-89.

49. For further understanding of Pound’s adaptation of the
Zen.mood.in.Moritake’s haiku, see my “Pound’s ’In.a Station.of
the Metro’ as a Yugen Haiku,“ Paideuma, 21.1 a 2 (Spring a
Fall 1992), 175-84.

50. Whitman, “Song of Myself,“ Leaves of Grass, 74.

51. Thomas and J. C. Cleary trans., The Blue Cliff Record
(Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1977), 236.

52. Steuding, 166.
53. Thoreau, walden, 257.

54. Thoreau, A week, 400.

Chapter VI

1. Charles Altieri, Ehlarging the Temple: New Direction in
American Poetry During the 1960’s (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania:
Bucknell University Press, 1979), 131-50.

225

2. Kerouac, “The Origins of the Beat Generation,“ A Case.Book
on the Beat, ed. Thomas Parkinson (New York: Crowell, 1961),
75.

3. Steuding, Gary Snyder, 160.
4. Thoreau, A week, 365.
5. Robert Bly, “The Work of Gary Snyder,“ 36.

6. Parkinson, “Two Poets,“ Prairie Schooner, vol. 34 (Winter
1960-61), 384.

7. Timothy Baland, “A Skipping Stone,“ New'Republic (April 4
a 11, 1970), 32.

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