Jack Kerouac and Silver Ravenwolf
"Altho really frankly I think an American zendo with no rules and all the cats talking all day when they feel like it and orgies at night with shaktis would be the best thing . . . ." -- Jack Kerouac, letter to Gary Snyder, 1956, quoted in One Bird, One Stone, by Sean Murphy
Subtitled "108 American Zen Stories," One Bird, One Stone is a loose history of Zen in America, a series of dialogs between teachers and students, and a wide-ranging series of anecdotes about various American Zen practitioners drawn from interviews and archives. It's enjoyable on a number of levels; at the most basic, it's extremely entertaining, showcasing a broad array of personalities and experiences. I find it historically interesting, as well, because I know only somewhat about the history of Buddhism in America. While I knew about the Beats and Alan Watts, I didn't know that a Zen master first visited the States in 1893 for the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. I'd mentally connected the American Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau) with Buddhism, but I hadn't known that Emerson printed Buddhist texts in his magazine, while Thoreau drew inspiration from the Lotus Sutra for his retreat to Walden.
And, of course, the stories are often enlightening in and of themselves:
An electric news screen has a lot of lightbulbs and shows letters by lighting some of them up . . . . When you look at it from afar, it certainly seems as though the letters are flowing, but when you go up close and look at it, it is just some lightbulbs going on and off, and there is not a single flowing letter. In the same way as that, everything in the universe seeming to exist and seeming to be active is completely untrue. . . .What has struck me the most, however, is how similar, in some ways, the rise of Zen in the 50s and 60s parallels the rise of Paganism since then -- and the differences are just as intriguing.
Everything in the universe is like that.
Yasutani Roshi, One Bird, One Stone, p37
The way that Kerouac talked about Buddhism, as encapsulated by the quote at the top of the post, sounds very much to me like a Pagan festival. For that matter, the initial view of Zen in the West has a lot in common with Paganism. The first great popularizer of Zen in the West, D.T. Suzuki, although formally trained, consciously transformed traditional Japanese Zen practice. As author Sean Murphy puts it:
Suzuki's eloquent writings about the freedom inherent to Zen, its iconoclasm, distrust of authority, and absence of ritual or dogma, sent a compelling message to an American society whose spiritual traditions appeared to be running out of steam.
Thus have I heard many American Pagans praising their own paths. And, since Paganism is a recent creation (albeit partly based on older forms) there's nothing to gainsay this view. Not so Zen.
Some of these statements, however, have turned out to be, strictly speaking, not entirely accurate -- as many of the Zen boomers discovered when they went on to train with traditional masters and discovered that form and hierarchy were very much in place. . . . Suzuki frequently neglected to mention the essential practice of zazen. Why?As I lay in bed last night, somewhat delirious, all of this went swirling about, keeping me from the sleep I needed. Somehow, Suzuki became Scott Cunningham, and Kerouac became Silver Ravenwolf. Look, Ananda -- fluffy Buddhists!
I once asked an American Zen priest, a vocal admirer of Suzuki, what he thought the reason was for these omissions.
"He was trying to invent a new tradition," replied the priest. "He felt that Asian forms had grown stale and the spirit had gone out of the practice. He was trying to save it by creating a new Zen of the West -- a Zen Westerners could handle. That he could handle. And he probably thought trying to get us to actually sit still and be silent was a hopeless mission!"
One Bird, One Stone, p45
But, then, the mind whirled on -- if that were some kind of parallel, how come Zen got Kerouac and Ginsberg and Gary Snyder and Philip Whelan and John Cage? What'd Paganism get ... Stevie Nicks & Godsmack?
Of course, I heard the Greek chorus in my head, "Oh, but Pagans are persecuted against. How can we get anything out there, since everyone thinks we're Satanists?" I am sure that no Zen Buddhist, Japanese or American, ever experienced difficulties on account of the fact that the US had just gone to war with Japan. The 50s being a time of great acceptance and all.
Furthermore, Zen does have an actual series of traditions, of discipline, of an aim beyond "what feels right." Some Pagan trads do, some are trying to, but most are stuck in solipsistic ego preening. I used to think that form, discipline, and devotion were traps for the weak, that authority only existed to be resisted. I was so wrong. "Emptiness is not other then form and form is not other then emptiness." I think a stick upside the head, or maybe just a hearty, "Kwatz!" would do them some good.
But that just may be the cold medicine talking.
13 Comments:
"Somehow, Suzuki became Scott Cunningham, and Kerouac became Silver Ravenwolf. Look, Ananda -- fluffy Buddhists!"
Well said indeed! However, you have to fit Alan Watts and Christmas Humphreys in there somehow. Maybe Alan Watts is Ravenwolf, Humphreys is Cunningham, and Suzuki is Ray Buckland? Or something. Perhaps it is becoming too much of an ANALogy, after all.
I'd almost leave Kerouac out, except that he could be OZ :-)
You know, when I was writing today, I almost replaced $RW with OZ for Kerouac ... it does seem a more apt analogy, in terms of ethos (or lack thereof...) But I kept it, 'cause I found it amusing, and, in terms of effect, it seems a better parallel.
I've never come across Humphreys, although the name is familiar. I'm going to have to differ with you on Watts, though. Yeah, he was a popularizer -- which isn't, imo, a bad thing inherently -- but he didn't always see eye to eye with the Beats (see "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen.")
Or, I guess, this could be my own fluffydom showing its faith. ;)
Interesting and thought-provoking!
I was thinking this over while meditating/showering (I get a lot of insights while showering, but I have decided to, when relaying them to the concerned parties, refer to the practice as 'meditating'; "I was thinking about you in the shower" has unfortunate allusive qualities, while "While I was meditating I thought of you" carries its own impact.
There was some economist who stated "bad money drives out good" which my b-i-l interpretated as "if you allow gaudy plastic MacDonalds cups in your house the actual glass glasses will sink out of reach in the back of your cubords". In this case, I think the publishing houses compound the problem.
Llewl fosters unhealthy growth; many of their stable of authors have a fairly good first or first few books. Then they are encouraged(?) to churn out dreck. Reading this dreck, other wanna-be writers say to themselves, "I could do just as well and earn big bucks" $illy Raving Writers result and are agressivly promoted, forcing serious writers/practicioners underground.
Whereas a publisher like City Lights (if that is the one who published the beats, I am only using memory) does not branch out into Hallmark-like writings to make a buck; the beats were always underground and cultish. Readers could honestly admire and emulate. Result: no dreck.
Are you kidding!!!? The shower is where I come up with some of my best ideas!
I agree that the commercialization of Paganism is certainly a problem, and a large one. But I'm not sure that a serious Zen practitioner in the 50s or 60s would have said anything different about the ways that popularization were affecting American Zen. I just don't know, but my gut feeling would be that they would feel much the same way that serious Pagans feel about popularization of Paganism today.
City Lights (and, yes, you're remembering that correctly) is a primarily literary publishing house. Llewellyn is a metaphysical hack shop, primarily focussing on (magical) self-help books. Very different animals.
I also don't think it's accurate to characterize the Beats as underground & cultish. They were a counterculture, yes, and arguably the direct progenitors of the 60s counterculture, but they were hardly obscure. And there was lots of Beat drek, endless painful rip-offs of "Howl" and more. The Beats ultimately drowned in it, and the musical language of the counterculture changed from bop to the Beatles and beyond.
My deeper question is, why? To be more clear, why is it that Zen inspired a group of artists who, whether you like their work or not (and I generally do not, with the exception of Snyder, whom I love) worked a profound sea change on American culture, poetics, and music, while Paganism languishes on the margins, cheering every time there's a media depiction (almost always created by a non-Pagan) that is more than a caricature?
"Those are pearls that were his eyes"
or
"Why drink from a MacDonalds mug?"
I see what you mean, but the difference is inside the difference between City Lights and Llew.
Content informs---the beats had something to say, and by saying it changed mainstream opinion. Even if you didn't like the individual artist---for example I never liked Ginsburg--there's still something there to emulate. So, even if you don't like 'Howl' and can't stand 'Pseudo-Howl' there's actual content that (hopefully) provokes thought.
For Pagans, there are a lot of acolytes of $ilver in much the same way that there were a lot of pseudo-Howlers, but in the case of the beats there was something deeper to get into. Likewise, if you were provoked by Americianized Zen, you could move into 'better' Zen and find more.
I think the distinction lies in that Jack Kerouack is replaced by Silver RavenWolf, not Alexie Kondratiev. If you were stimulated by her and wanted to look into the religion more by reading more Llew books, you would only find yourself on an endless loop of dreck....
Do you want fries with that?
I would argue that there are many great Pagan artists, musicians and writers. But they aren't getting the attention they deserve from the "mainstream" press.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Beats didn't get big until many of them were "middle-aged" and no longer up for the hi-jinx they wrote about when young.
Also, Jack may have liked his Zen but he always went back to his Catholic roots whenever times got tough.
Finally, literary/artistic/musical movements don't get "big" like they did in the early days of big media. You won't see another "Beat Generation" because coverage doesn't work like that anymore, and heaven help any nacent movement that gets caught in the wheels of fame.
"What'd Paganism get ..."
Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Starhawk, Ronald Hutton, Unto Ashes, Coil, Nebelhexe, Incus, Doreen Valiente, Chas Clifton, Thorn Coyle, Crowley, Tori Amos, and possibly Neil Gaiman depending on who you ask. Also a handful of Romantic-era poets.
Thanks, Jason. Those are all good points. Especially the point about the differences in the way media are promulgated now vs. 50 years ago.
I didn't know Alan Moore was Pagan. Isn't Hutton kind of cagey on his Paganosity? The Romantics I'll disagree with; they might have been pagan in outlook, but I don't know that one could say that they were Pagan in the modern sense. But it's certainly a point upon which reasonable folks can disagree.
Unfortunately, I'll have to plead ignorance of the music; Coil is the only one I've heard of.
I actually really liked Starhawk's most recent book & Thorn's Evolutionary Witchcraft. Yeah, Starhawk should still be banned from writing history, but she made up for it by admitting, and arguing for, an omnivorous diet. But Thorn's book was excellent, and her interview in newWitch was one of the better features they've had.
I just wonder if any of the people you listed, Jason, are going to be remembered after they die the way the Beats are?
In other words, will people still be reading their work or listening to their music?
I would argue that if modern Neo-Paganism survives, then Hutton's work will be read in the future, as will Starhawk's. Doreen Valiente will still be seen as a foremother of Neo-Paganism, and Niel Gaiman's work may or may not be remembered as "Pagan" at all.
I am leery of classifying writers and historians such as Gaiman and Hutton as Pagan in the first place--lacking a definitive statement from the authors themselves, it is rather foolish to say, "Ooh, so and so is a Pagan."
Who cares if Hutton is Pagan or not--his work is still relevant and ground-breaking, so what does it matter what his religious affiliation is?
Note that I am saying all of this as a woman who until very recently, self-identified as a Witch and wrote for an exclusively Neo-Pagan audience.
I think that Neo-Pagan ideas and themes are quite well represented in modern media, they just happen to be coming from people other than avowed Neo-Pagans. A look at any number of Disney films of the past several decades show a lot of Pagan values represented, for example.
I don't think that Neo-Pagans core ideals are as "fringe" as we make them out to be, but I think that is true is that Pagans themselves -are- on the fringes.
I wonder why that is?
My theory has to do with some folks feel more comfortable out on the edges, and some folks are too dysfunctional in a social sense to get along anywhere but on the fringes. And, some might say, that the fringes, the liminal spaces, are where Pagans belong in the first place, and the march towards the mainstream is going to be the death of what Neo-Paganism is meant to be.
Crazyquilt:
"I didn't know Alan Moore was Pagan"
If believing in the reality of magick and the gods makes one a Pagan then yes. Everyone MUST go out and read his series "Promethea" it is basically his treatise on magick and the universe disguised as a comic-book series.
"Isn't Hutton kind of cagey on his Paganosity?"
In his book "Witches, Druids and King Arthur" he pretty much comes clean about his connection to modern Paganism. His parents apparantly were very much involved and that he was for a time though he seems to be pretty non-practicing now.
Barbara:
"In other words, will people still be reading their work or listening to their music?"
Well, it is hard to say. Though I agree with you that Starhawk, Hutton, Gardner and Valiente will be remembered and read by future generations.
With music is is a bit tricky, and to be fair I am a bit biased since I track modern Pagan-made music on a somewhat professional basis.
"the fringes, the liminal spaces, are where Pagans belong in the first place, and the march towards the mainstream is going to be the death of what Neo-Paganism is meant to be"
It could be argued that Paganism handled being mainstream for quite some time before Christianity came along. But I also think that religion will always inhabit the "liminal" spaces no matter how mainstream or counter-culture they happen to.
There is actually a very interesting book on this that I reading that was written by an Episcopal priest called "Ministry and Imagination" that deals with ministers living in these "liminal" spaces.
Also I very much agree with you that many Pagan values and ideas have been mainstreamed, especially since much of modern culture was built by those who worshipped "strange" gods.
Ancient Pagans who were mainstream are not the same thing as modern Neo-Pagans, and the core values are not necessarily as similar as we like to think of them.
What I meant is this:
When a liminal religous movement becomes mainstream, it changes, its values change and its place in society changes.
To use your example of Pagans dominance pre-Constatine's conversion, let's flip the coin and look at Christianity.
The early Church was very different than what we think of when we look at Christianity now. One of its greatest attractions was that its theology was one of liberation--all humans were equal in the eyes of God, and it was possible for all humans to achieve salvation.
At that time, the Pagan religions of the Roman Empire were more involved in keeping control of the populace and keeping the slave economy going. As state religions, the Roman Pagans were all about the status quo.
However, once the two religions changed places--once Christianity became the religion of the state, it then became concerned with the status quo and it was used as a behavioral control. The liberation theology was pretty much tossed by the wayside--the truly revoluationary teachings of Christ and the ideas that women were not chattal and could be religious leaders also got excised.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Modern Neo-Paganism is as much a reaction against the stifling post-Industrial Revolution society as it is a harkening back to a pre-Christian past. I firmly agree with Hutton that it is an outgrowth of the Romantic literary and artistic movement and as such, started as a fringe movement counter to the prevailing mainstream societal mores and values.
It is a reaction to and against the great changes wrought by industrialization, much in the same way that Protestantism was a reaction to and against the social control exerted by the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.
Again--look what happened to Protestantism post Reformation and Counter-Reformation--it started out with a liberating set of ideas, but has become mainstream and concerned with social control and the status quo.
This is what may happen to Neo-Paganism. This is a peril and a pitfall that I think bears thinking of and understanding. Any time you have a religious movement which begins as a reaction to a societal stimulus (and I wonder how many religions started out as something other than a reaction to some societal stimulus), there is a profound change that begins once that religion becomes mainstream.
Which is why I said that perhaps Neo-Pagan religions belong in the liminal spaces, as a small fringe element. I fear that when we do see Pagan temples on every other street corner, and congregationalist style worship, we are going to see the end of what made Neo-Paganism interesting, somewhat unique and a religion for mystics and serious spiritual seekers.
Hi Crazyquilt et al - I was very pleased to find your thoughtful and insightful discussion on the Beats, Zen, and my book, One Bird, One Stone, on your site, and I thought I'd jump into the fray (I, too, get some of my best thoughts in the shower - ). I'm an MFA graduate of the Naropa Institute writing program (official name: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics), which was founded by Allen Ginsberg and the controversial Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Through this affiliation I have been privileged to meet some of the original Beats, including Allen Ginsberg, as well as a number of the seminal figures of American Zen (I interviewed 100 different Zen teachers and senior practitioners in putting together the book). I also was lucky enough to be present at one of the last public readings Ginsberg ever gave of 'Howl' -- a truly moving experience, as this performance was being filmed for posterity, shortly before his death, and he put his full passion into it...
On the question of popularization re Zen and Paganism, my own Zen teacher, John Daido Loori, with whom I've studied for some 15 years, has always pointed out that popularization is an inherent part of the spread (and thus, the general availability) of any spiritual path. So even in the Golden Age of Zen in China, where even heads of state were often practitioners, or at least interested in and supportive of the Zen teachings, only a handful of genuine masters emerged. So an aspiring Zen hopeful of the time, despite the fact that everyone seemed to be talking about the Zen phenomenon (as in the Beat years here), would have had to scour the countryside, and visit countless temples and masters, before finding one who truly had everything the Zen tradition had to offer.
It's exactly like this, I think, in America today, where there are hundreds of practice centers and teachers.
Who are the 'masters' whose teachings will survive through the years to be regarded as the deepest, and who will be forgotten? Only time will tell. And yet Kerouac and Snyder and the other Beats, in their raw enthusiasm and spontaneity, their willingness to abandon conventional ideals of behavior and embrace a new way of being, grasped something of the vital essence of Zen -- something that is all too rare today. And they managed to communicate it in such a way that the ideas and practices took hold in the minds of a large enough sub-sector of the American population that these teachings continue to flourish today. Kerouac was my own introduction to Zen, and for that I will always be grateful to him. He was a tremendous influence too upon me as a writer, not only in the creation of One Bird, One Stone, but in my first novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, which covers the same spiritual/philosophical terrain as OBOS from a fictional perspective -- not to mention his impact on my subsequent novels.
I wanted to share a small story with you around all this... In the course of my research for One Bird, One Stone, I delved deeply into the Beats, knowing that if not for their influence (you could say their popularizing influence) Zen might never have taken hold here. One of the most exciting moments in my research came when I was digging throught the materials at the library at my Alma Mater, the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, Colorado. They have an enormous archive of materials by all the Beats who visited there beginning in the 70's, including Ginsberg, Snyder, Corso, Whalen, Burroughs, and many others. My most exciting moment of discovery came in the main library, where I found volumes of the collected letters of Kerouac to Snyder, Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and others, as well as a little known out-of-print edition of the collected letters of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady.
These materials yielded such gems as Kerouac's own original jacket copy for Dharma Bums, which was never used (presumably being thought too outrageous), as well as Ginsberg's account of his first discovery of Buddhism (which according to his account, provided him with an understanding of various 'spiritual waves of hipness' and 'a lot of new mind and eyeball kicks'!!). Both of these ended up in One Bird, One Stone. The letter you quote from Kerouac to Snyder re the orgies with shaktis came from these materials as well, and also ended up in the book, as well as another of my personal favorite segments, Philip Whalen's account of his first satori experience (Whalen later became a Zen teacher. My account of my meeting with him {and his eventual refusal to be interviewed!} also ended up in One Bird, One Stone).
Well, I guess that's it for now -- I was very pleased with your thoughtful response to my book, and felt moved to respond. All best wishes in your own hermetic quest after the truth. And thanks!
I didn't take the nom de blog of "the hermit" for naught -- I did catch your post, albeit some time after you wrote it, but I've barely been online for almost a month. Hiding from the computer in that illusory place called real life. While I don't regret going more or less cold turkey off the 'net (I was, previously, online for far too many hours a day for any semblance of health) I do regret not replying to your own thoughtful and interesting post.
The comparison between Kerouac and SRW is an interesting one, the parallels are intriguing -- but it's the differences that ultimately have stuck with me.
Kerouac was, as you say, following in a rather long tradition of popularizing Zen, one about which any number of more, ahem, intense practitioners, monks, and abbots railed against. The forms may have been different -- Kerouac's populist hedonism vs. earlier runs at gilded imperial hedonism -- but the idea of making Zen more comfortable, more in love with samsara (or, in Kerouac's case, more in love with maya, with its less pejorative and creative connotations) is a common one.
But the Beats are also closely allied to masters like Ikkyu and Ryokan, who, as you said, flouted tradition. Ikkyu happens to be my favorite 'Zen master,' so I'm hardly a stick-in-the-mud! (Although, unlike Ikkyu, I rather like the smell of incense.)
Yet, Zen still has an implacable core. It is, in many ways, profoundly empirical and depends upon Sturgeon's maxim: Ask the next question.
Kerouac et al may have come up with some startling answers, but they were certainly asking. Every writer must keep asking -- certainly every successful one. As I am sure you're more than well aware.
On the other hand, the dime-store spirituality hawked by Ravenwolf and her ilk is antithetical to that maxim. The maxim there seems to be, "Cast the next spell." Grappling with the troubling and confusing minutiae (and not-so-minutiae...) of life are devalued in favor of magical curatives. The answer to life's problems is in the newest book, or the latest tarot deck, or the right candle. Enjoying the weeds, playing in the mud.
That isn't to say that there isn't spiritual transformation (or enlightenment, in a Buddhist sense) present and accounted for within the various magical traditions. But the folks who are living those lives are not, by and large, the ones writing the books or giving classes. In part, they, like so many adepts, prophets, and arhats before them, are much more concerned with living a fully realized, engaged life than with seeking followers (or readers.) Others are, simply, burned out by those who want their mystic might right now for as little effort as possible, with no strings attached.
Zen communities, while they are (as you note in your book) becoming more lay-oriented, and less monastic, still have an accumulation of knowledge and experience with group dynamics and management that most of the Neopagan traditions lack, or have only started working out comparatively recently. The conflict between personal, individual sovereignty and group cohesion and interdependance is the same. Those that have the best handle seem to be the ones that are the most private. [On the other hand, my admittedly cynical mind can't help but observe that the most private communities/traditions are also the most capable, by their very nature, of controlling what information gets out about them. So, it's hard to know if secreter really is better ... or just more occult, in a literal sense.]
At any rate, thank you for One Bird, One Stone. It was both entertaining & informative, and, best of all (by my measure, anyway) thought-provoking.
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