No Matter Never Mind

“No Matter, Never Mind

The Father is the Void, The Wife Waves
Their child is Matter.
Matter makes it with his mother
And their child is Life, a daughter.
The Daughter is the Great Mother
Who, with her father/brother Matter
as her lover,
Gives birth to the Mind."

"While in India our group visited Freda Bedi's "Young Lamas Home School" in Dharamshala and met some of the young lamas there. I took a picture of Allen Ginsberg in front of the altar together with a young lama who later we realized had been the person who became Trungpa. That photograph has, finally, been published.

That was in 1962. To jump ahead fifteen years or so to Boulder, Colorado, Naropa seemed like a fine name to give the study center that Chogyam Trungpa launched there. Allen, who had learned to sit and also to do some chanting, was very much drawn to the Rimpoche and soon became a regular supporter, visitor, and practicioner in Boulder.

We did a little fundraising; one time Robert Bly, Allen, Trungpa, and I all sat together—on the floor on cushions—on the stage of a big hall and did a sizeable scale of poetry reading. A few years later Allen and Anne (I guess it was) launched the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics." I've always felt dubious about the use of the word "disembodied" and so—as it turned out—was Allen; but I guess nobody had the nerve to change it.

I was invited to come and teach on one occasion for two or three weeks, putting up at an apartment that belonged to David Padwa. That was a rich two weeks, I concentrated on poetics; my wife Masa Uehara did some Baharat-natyam teaching (the dance discipline in which she became quite proficient) and my two sons Kai and Gen enjoyed the freedom to walk around on sidewalks. We lived, and I still do, in a very remote place in the middle Sierra mountains in which there's no opportunity to hang out on the street (though you can hang out on the trails).

One or two other times I also was in Boulder for Naropa events, the last I guess was the one for Allen when he was still alive at which I met Geshe Rinpoche briefly.

Through the years I've had some friends and connections at Naropa, though I was never a regular visitor there and I stayed away by choice from several large events that Allen invited me to.

I have great respect for all the schools of Tibetan Vajrayana, and was able to be an active participant in some Yamabushi hikes and climbs in Japan which is a distant relative. Japanese Shingon (with its headquarters at Mt. Koya) is a remarkable school that continues similar and sometimes identical Dharma teachings to a small number in Japan since the 12th century.

My own focus over the years has been traditional Linji Chan (Rinzai Zen) in the Daitoku-ji line. I just recently came to a better understanding of the role that Hakuin Ekaku Zenji played in the Rinzai school. He lived in the 18th Century. I was looking at a huge presentation of his unique sketches and calligraphies which touch on many of the figures in Japanese spiritual life and mythology — always with unremitting and enlightened humor. This show happened to be in Manhattan. I thought how the Siddha Naropa and the Zen Master Hakuin would have enjoyed each other. “

Gary Snyder 23. X. 2011