Some enterprising young scholar should write a book about
Rousseauistic philosophy and Buddhist thought and he'd have an
instant best-seller. As it is we must make do with the gentle
essays and notes of Gary Snyder, erstwhile member of the Beat
Generation, poet, and devotee of Zen. "The mercy of the West," says
Snyder, "has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been
individual insight into the basic self/void." Envisioning a coming
revolution, the meeting of cultural polarities, he looks forward to
a "totally integrated world with matrilineal descent, free-form
marriage, natural-credit communist economy, less industry, far less
population and lots more national parks." One smiles, for this
water color utopia is easy to make fun of, especially with the
irresistible pull of technology breathing down our collective
necks. Yet the ideas of neo-tribalism, agape, spiritual renewal (re
meditation and/or drugs), and anarchist doctrines (both the
political and sexual variety) appear to be flourishing around the
globe, from Levi-Strauss and McLuhan to Mao's Red Guard. If the
upheaval is complex and contradictory (Snyder, for instance,
rejects the Marxist tradition which he considers as bankrupt as the
Judaeo-Christian one), it is still the most potent intellectual
climate of our day. Indeed, for many of the young it has all the
sacred allure of a new religion, long dormant but now surfacing -
what Snyder calls "this subculture of illuminati." Jotting down his
experiences at a Kyoto monastery, travels abroad a Pacific tanker,
or studies of ecological patterns amongst the American Indians,
Snyder is very much the involved participant, seeker of wisdom,
harmony, rebirth. An honest testament. (Kirkus Reviews)
"As a poet," Snyder tells us, "I hold the most archaic values on
earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of the
soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the
terrifying intuition and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the
dance, the common work of the tribe." He develops, as replacement
for shattered social structures. a concept of tribal tradition
which could lead to "growth and enlightenment in self-disciplined
freedom. Whatever it is or ever was in any other culture can be
reconstructed from the unconscious through meditation...the coming
revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the
most creative aspects of our archaic past."
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