Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 203

530 TARTHANG TULKU: N’yingma-pa lineage Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Berkeley friend of Gary Snyder, taught the millennial Padmasambhava mantra quoted: “Body, Speech, Mind, Lotus-Flower-Power Diamond-Teacher, Hum.”

530 SAGUARO … OCOTILLO … CHOLLA … PALO VERDE: Varieties of cacti.

Memory Gardens

539 MEMORY GARDENS: Cemetery near Albany Airport glimpsed on way to Jack Kerouac’s funeral in Lowell, Mass. Poem was written on that trip.

540 HAL: Hal Chase, Denver-bred contemporary and friend of Cassady and Kerouac, later boat and lute builder in Bolinas, California, 1960s.

541 JOHN HOLMES: John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988) Author of first published (1952) Beat romance, Go (New York: New American Library, 1980).

Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport

543 LSD: Formula for lysergide written on the john wall differs from that given in Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (1981): C20H25 N3O.

Friday the Thirteenth

546 FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: Allusion to date of explosion in town house West 11th Street, New York. While parents were on vacation, it was used as safe-house bomb factory by “Weathermen.”

546 HAMPTON, KING, GOLD: Fred Hampton, Chicago Black Panther murdered in bed by police with FBI collaboration, 1968. Martin Luther King, assassinated in Memphis, April 5, 1968. Theodore Gold, killed in Weathermen blast (see note above).

546 SONG-MY: Vietnamese village blasted and burned by U.S. forces “to save it from the Viet Cong.”

546 TU-DO: Main Saigon hotel-cafe street during U.S. occupation.

Ecologue

550 MAHANIRVANA & HEVAJRA TANTRAS: Buddhist Vajrayana texts used by advanced meditation practitioners.

552 JOHN SINCLAIR: Poet, pioneer Detroit publisher, jazz critic, leader of Ann Arbor “White Panthers.” Arrested 1969 for giving two marijuana joints to police spies in his Artists Workshop interracial poet-musicians’ enterprise, he was sentenced to 9?–10 years jail, and liberated by state legislation the weekend after John Lennon-Yoko Ono’s “Free John Sinclair” concert, Ann Arbor, 1972. This libertarian protest provoked unsuccessful Nixon administration deportation proceedings against Lennon.

553 QUECHUA: The Quechua Indian city Macchu Picchu is located in Huilca Bamba valley.

553 DMT: Dimethyltryptamine, a short-lived “high,” psychedelic drug related to traditional Peruvian intoxicant Huilca. The chemical was later described by an early experimenter, Dr. Oscar Janiger, as “most powerful of all hallucinogenic agents.” DMT use has not yet been experimentally discerned in a cultural climate (1970s–1980s) discouraging to this area of scientific investigation.

555 GOODMAN, CHANEY, SCHWERNER: N.Y. Jewish boys and a Southern black were murdered together while traveling in Mississippi, 1964, to aid black civil rights campaign.

558 WEATHERMEN: Underground radical extreme confrontation-protest antiwar SDS splinter group engineered pot-convict scientist Dr. Timothy Leary’s over-the-wall departure from half-ounce grass-bust twenty-year sentence to California prison.

558 EAST HILL: Highest point Otsego County, N.Y., 2,400 feet near Cherry Valley town (pop. 300).

Guru Om

561 PRANAYAM: Yogic conscious breath attention practice.

561 NITYANANDA: Swami, guru to Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, from whom author received meditation instruction at time of writing.

562 SAMSARA: World of illusory suffering, or existence seen as condition of suffering.

562 ASANAS: Yogic postures.

562 KUNDALINI: Energy wakened by yogic practice. See The Serpent Power, by Arthur Avalon (New York: Dover, 1974), celebrated early exposition-translation by Westerner.

Milarepa Taste

565 MILAREPA: “Cotton-clad” Himalayan yogi poet, early father of Kagyu lineage, Tibetan Buddhist hero, author The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, trans. Garma C. C. Chang, 2 vols. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1962).

Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road

(1971)

Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze

569 MUDRAS: Sacramental or yogic hand gestures, bodily or psychologic attitudes.

570 BEEDLE: Beetle, or beadle: church official who bears the mace. See Blake, Songs of Innocence, “Holy Thursday”: “Grey headed beadles walked before / with wands as white as snow / …”

September on Jessore Road

579 JESSORE ROAD: At time of author’s visit, millions of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan communal strife crowded starving in floods on this main road between Bangladesh and Calcutta.

582 SUNIL POET: Calcutta poet Sunil Ganguly (Ganghopadhyay), with whom author traveled Jessore Road, in company with American Buddhist student and poet John Giorno.

IX

MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE

(1972–1977)

Sad Dust Glories

(1972–1974)

Thoughts Sitting Breathing

597 OM MANI PADMI HUM: (Sanskrit) “Hail jewel in the lotus,” Tibetan mantra for compassion practice, each syllable penetrating its equivalent among the six worlds pictured in Time Wheel Mandala: Heaven Realm, Human Realm, Hungry Ghost Realm, Hell Realm, Animal Realm, Angry Warrior Realm, transitory delusive states of consciousness, all revolving on the axle of vanity, greed and ignorance. The poem explores the cycle thrice. See illustration to poem.

597 CORD MEYER: CIA officer responsible for covert subsidization of international intellectuals’ opinion-making organizations and periodicals, 1950s–60s Committee for Cultural Freedom, Encounter magazine, etc.

599 DHARMAKAYA: Buddhist term—kaya: realm, world or body; dharma: truth, law or nature. World of absolute, in the sense of totally accommodating open space, nondiscriminating ultimate reality, equivalent to the nonconceptualizing awareness of ordinary mind.

“What would you do if you lost it?”

600 RINPOCHE CHoGYAM TRUNGPA TULKU: (1939–1987) Rinpoche, honorific title for lamas: “precious jewel”; Tulku, one of succession of teachers “reincarnated” or trained in specific lineage teachings. Chogyam Trungpa, the author’s Vajracharya, or Mantrayana-style meditation practice master, born in Tibet, abbot of Surmang Monastery, is presently director of Vajradhatu Buddhist Centers and Naropa Institute. See his Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, 1973, and First Thought, Best Thought (108 poems), with introduction by Allen Ginsberg, 1984, both Shambhala Press, Boulder.

600 TANTRAS: Buddhist texts for Mantrayana practice mode.

600 HAGGADAHS: Hebrew liturgy, Passover Seder service.

600 ZOHAR: Kabbalist-gnostic theosophical work expounding Pentateuch mysteries.

600 KOANS: Extrarationalistic riddles for nonconceptual mindfulness and “nonlinear” awareness used in Zen meditation practice with a committed teacher’s guidance.

600 DHARMAKAYA … NIRMANAKAYA … SAMBHOGAKAYA: “body of truth” (absolute Buddha nature), “body of creation” (earthly or grounded Buddha form) and “body of bliss” (visionary communicative aspect of Buddha as speech).

600 PADMASAMBHAVA: Founder Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma or “old sect,” A.D. 747 author of Tibetan Book of the Dead.