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Bearing In His Right Paw The Shovel That Digs To The Truth Beneath Appearances, Cut The Roots Of Useless Attachments, And Flings Damp Sand On The Fires Of Greed And War; His Left Paw In The Mudra Of Comradely Display - Indicating That All Creatures Have The Full Right To Live To Their Limits And That Deer, Rabbits, Chipmunks, Snakes, Dandelions, And Lizards All Grow In The Realm Of The Dharma.

-Gary Snyder

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Bearing In His Right

Gary Snyder

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Bearing In His Right Paw The Shovel That Digs To The Truth Beneath Appearances, Cut The Roots Of Useless Attachments, And Flings Damp Sand On The Fires Of Greed And War; His Left Paw In The Mudra Of Comradely Display - Indicating That All Creatures Have The Full Right To Live To Their Limits And That Deer, Rabbits, Chipmunks, Snakes, Dandelions, And Lizards All Grow In The Realm Of The Dharma.

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Ko Un's Poems Evoke The Open Creativity And Fluidity Of Nature, And Funny Turns And Twists Of Mind. Mind Is Sometimes Registered In Buddhist Terms - Buddhist Practice Being Part Of Ko Un's Background. Ko Un Writes Spare, Short-line Lyrics Direct To The Point, But Often Intricate In Both Wit And Meaning. Ko Un Has Now Traveled Worldwide And Is Not Only A Major Spokesman For All Korean Culture, But A Voice For Planet Earth Watershed As Well.

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You Run Into People Who Want To Write Poetry Who Don't Want To Read Anything In The Tradition. That's Like Wanting To Be A Builder But Not Finding Out What Different Kinds Of Wood You Use.

Poetry A Riprap On The Slick Rock Of Metaphysics

Clouds Sink Down The Hills Coffee Is Hot Again. The Dog Turns And Turns About, Stops And Sleeps.

Will Be But Corpses Dressed In Frocks, Who Cannot Speak To Birds Or Rocks.

All Those Years And Their Moments— Crackling Bacon, Slamming Car Doors, Poems Tried Out On Friends, Will Be One More Archive, One More Shaky Text.

A Reading Is A Kind Of Communion. The Poet Articulates The Semi-known For The Tribe.

Range After Range Of Mountains. Year After Year After Year. I Am Still In Love.

I Don't Know Of Any Other City Where You Can Walk Through So Many Culturally Diverse Neighborhoods, And You're Never Out Of Sight Of The Wild Hills. Nature Is Very Close Here.

I Try To Hold Both History And Wilderness In Mind, That My Poems May The True Measure Of Things And Stand Against The Unbalance And Ignorance Of Our Times.

Stay Together Learn The Flowers Go Light

Practically Speaking, A Life That Is Vowed To Simplicity, Appropriate Boldness, Good Humor, Gratitude, Unstinting Work And Play, And Lots Of Walking, Brings Us Close To The Actually Existing World And Its Wholeness.

What Is Any Religion? A Little Ritual, A Little Superstition, And Some Magic. It's Not A Strictly Spiritual Affair; It Has Psychological Roles To Fulfill. You Might Not Want It To Be A Religion Based On Your Own Experience But That's Like Wanting To Clean Up Your Dreams

For Several Centuries Western Civilization Has Had A Drive For Material Accumulation, Continual Extensions Of Economic Power, Termed 'progress'...the Longing For Growth Is Not Wrong. The Nub Of The Problem Is How To Flip Over, As In Jujitsu, The Magnificent Growth Energy Of Modern Civilization Into A Nonacquisitive Search For Deeper Knowledge Of Self And Nature.

The Lessons We Learn From The Wild Become The Etiquette Of Freedom.

Wildness Is Not Just The "preservation Of The World," It Is The World

The Size Of The Place That One Becomes A Member Of Is Limited Only By The Size Of One’s Heart.

My Grandmother Standing Wordless Fifteen Minutes Between Rows Of Loganberries, Clippers Poised In Her Hand.

Like, When We Did Parliament And Funkadelic And Bootsy, It Was Actually One Thing. But There Were So Many People That You Could Split Them Up Into Different Groups. And Then, When We Went Out On Tour And They [the Record Companies] Would See Us All Up There Together - We Had Five, Six Guitars Playing At One Time, Not Including The Bass! -, They Said: "wait A Minute, That's Just One Whole Group, Selling Different Names!" But It Wasn't - We Had Enough People In The Group That Each Member Would Have A Section To Be Another Group. So Now We're Finally Starting To Get Them To Understand That.

Nature Is Not A Place To Visit. It Is Home.

With No Surroundings There Can Be No Path, And With No Path One Cannot Become Free.

A Great Poet Does Not Express His Or Her Self; He Expresses All Of Our Selves.

But If You Do Know What Is Taught By Plants And Weather, You Are In On The Gossip And Can Feel Truly At Home. The Sum Of A Field's Forces [become] What We Call Very Loosely The 'spirit Of The Place.' To Know The Spirit Of A Place Is To Realize That You Are A Part Of A Part And That The Whole Is Made Or Parts, Each Of Which In A Whole. You Start With The Part You Are Whole In.

Wilderness Is A Place Where The Wild Potential Is Fully Expressed, A Diversity Of Living And Nonliving Beings Flourishing According To Their Own Sorts Of Order. In Ecology We Speak Of "wild Systems." When An Ecosystem Is Fully Functioning, All The Members Are Present At The Assembly. To Speak Of Wilderness Is To Speak Of Wholeness. Human Beings Came Out Of That Wholeness, And To Consider The Possibility Of Reactivating Membership In The Assembly Of All Beings Is In No Way Regressive.

I Thought, That Day I Started, I Sure Would Hate To Do This All My Life, And Dammit, That’s Just What I’ve Gone And Done.

The Best Thing You Can Do For The Planet Is To Stay Home.

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Bearing In His Right Paw The Shovel That Digs To The Truth Beneath Appearances, Cut The Roots Of Useless Attachments, And Flings Damp Sand On The Fires Of Greed And War; His Left Paw In The Mudra Of Comradely Display - Indicating That All Creatures Have The Full Right To Live To Their Limits And That Deer, Rabbits, Chipmunks, Snakes, Dandelions, And Lizards All Grow In The Realm Of The Dharma.

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Knowing Where And Who Are Intimately Linked.

Human Beings Everywhere In The World Are Affected By The Global Media Now. Still, What I Have Noticed In The East Asia, In The Indigenous World, Alaska In Particular, And In Back Country Farm And Ranch Country, Is A Higher Sense Of Etiquette, And More Respectful Manners. Urban Middle Class Cosmopolitan World Peoples Of All Races Have Become Speedy And Rude. This Is A Pretty Big Generalization Though.

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Walking Meditation

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Wildness It Is Perennially Within Us, Dormant As A Hard-shelled Seed, Awaiting The Fire Or Flood That Awakes It Again.

Forests In The Tropics Are Cut To Make Pasture To Raise Beef For The American Market. Our Distance From The Source Of Our Food Enables Us To Be Superficially More Comfortable, And Distinctly More Ignorant.

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Streams And Mountains Never Stay The Same.

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If, After Obtaining Buddhahood, Anyone In My Land Gets Tossed In Jail On A Vagrancy Rap, May I Not Attain Highest Perfect Enlightenment.

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In The 40,000 Year Time Scale We're All The Same People. We're All Equally Primitive, Give Or Take Two Or Three Thousand Years Here Or A Hundred Years There.

When The Mind Is Exhausted Of Images, It Invents Its Own.

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