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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.

-Gary Snyder

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But If You Do

Gary Snyder

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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.

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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.

We . . . Must Try To Live Without Causing Unnecessary Harm, Not Just To Fellow Humans But To All Beings. We Must Try Not To Be Stingy, Or To Exploit Others. There Will Be Enough Pain In The World As It Is.

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.

Being The Stream Meditation Is Not Just A Rest Or Retreat From The Turmoil Of The Stream Or The Impurity Of The World. It Is A Way Of Being The Stream, So That One Can Be At Home In Both The White Water And The Eddies. Meditation May Take One Out Of The World, But It Also Puts One Totally Into It.

I See A Vision Of A Great Rucksack Revolution Thousands Or Even Millions Of Young Americans Wandering Around With Rucksacks, Going Up To Mountains To Pray, Making Children Laugh And Old Men Glad, Making Young Girls Happy And Old Girls Happier, All Of 'em Zen Lunatics Who Go About Writing Poems That Happen To Appear In Their Heads For No Reason And Also By Being Kind And Also By Strange Unexpected Acts Keep Giving Visions Of Eternal Freedom To Everybody And To All Living Creatures.

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.

Walking Is The Great Adventure, The First Meditation, A Practice Of Heartiness And Soul Primary To Humankind. Walking Is The Exact Balance Beween Spirit And Humility.

Walking Meditation

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

Our Relation To The Natural World Takes Place In A Place.

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

Place And The Scale Of Space Must Be Measured Against Our Bodies And Their Capabilities.

I Pledge Allegiance To The Soil Of Turtle Island, And To The Beings Who Thereon Dwell One Ecosystem In Diversity Under The Sun With Joyful Interpenetratio N For All.

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.

I Recalled When I Worked In The Woods And The Bars Of Madras, Oregon. That Short-haired Joy And Roughness America Your Stupidity. I Could Almost Love You Again.

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.

Today We Are Aware As Never Before Of The Plurality Of Human Life-styles And Possibilities, While At The Same Time Being Tied, Like In An Old Silent Movie, To A Runaway Locomotive Rushing Headlong Toward A Very Singular Catastrophe

The Buddha Taught That All Life Is Suffering. We Might Also Say That Life, Being Both Attractive And Constantly Dangerous, Is Intoxicating And Ultimately Toxic. 'toxic' Comes From Toxicon, Pendell Tells Us, With A Root Meaning Of 'a Poisoned Arrow.' All Organic Life Is Struck By The Arrows Of Real And Psychic Poisons. This Is Understood By Any True, That Is To Say, Not Self-deluding, Spiritual Path.

Clambering Up The Cold Mountain Path, The Cold Mountain Trail Goes On And On: The Long Gorge Choked With Scree And Boulders, The Wide Creek, The Mist-blurred Grass. The Moss Is Slippery, Though There's Been No Rain The Pine Sings, But There's No Wind. Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among The White Clouds?

As A Poet I Hold The Most Archaic Values On Earth . . . The Fertility Of The Soil, The Magic Of Animals, The Power-vision In Solitude, The Terrifying Initiation And Rebirth, The Love And Ecstasy Of The Dance, The Common Work Of The Tribe. I Try To Hold Both History And The Wilderness In Mind, That My Poems May Approach The True Measure Of Things And Stand Against The Unbalance And Ignorance Of Our Times.

In Paul Friedrich's Book Proto-indo-european Trees He Identifies The "semantic Primitives" Of The Indo-european Tribe Of Languages Through A Group Of Words That Have Not Changed Much Through Twelve Thousand Years - And Those Are Tree Names: Especially Birch, Willow, Adler, Elm, Ash, Apple And Beech (bher, Wyt, Alysos, Ulmo, Os, Abul, Bhago). Seed Syllables, Bija, Of The Life Of The West.

In Western Civilization, Our Elders Are Books.

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

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

When Making An Axe Handle The Pattern Is Not Far Off.

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

Grandfather Space. The Mind Is His Wife

The Other Side Of The "sacred" Is The Sight Of Your Beloved In The Underworld, Dripping With Maggots.

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

O, Ah! The Awareness Of Emptiness Brings Forth A Heart Of Compassion!

Knowing Where And Who Are Intimately Linked.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Should Really Know What The Complete Natural World Of Your Region Is And Know What All Its Interactions Are And How You Are Interacting With It Yourself. This Is Just Part Of The Work Of Becoming Who You Are, Where You Are.

Becoming Who You Are

Read Carefully, Then Don't Read; Work Hard, Then Forget About It; Know Your Tradition, Then Liberate Yourself From It; Learn Language, Then Free Yourself From It. Finally, Know At Least One Form Of Magic.

The Mercy Of The West Has Been Social Revolution; The Mercy Of The East Has Been Individual Insight Into The Basic Self/void.

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

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

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

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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.

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.

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Burning The Small Dead Branches Broke From Beneath Thick Spreading Whitebark Pine. A Hundred Summers Snowmelt Rock And Air Hiss In A Twisted Bough.

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Nature Is Orderly. That Which Appears To Be Chaotic In Nature Is Only A More Complex Kind Of Order.

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

True Affluence Is To Not Need Anything.

After Weeks Of Watching The Roof Leak I Fixed It Tonight By Moving A Single Board

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True Affluence Is Not Needing Anything.

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Doom Scenarios, Even Though They Might Be True, Are Not Politically Or Psychologically Effective. The First Step . . . Is To Make Us Love The World Rather Than To Make Us Fear For The End Of The World.

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Sometime In The Last Ten Years The Best Brains Of The Occident Discovered To Their Amazement That We Live In An Environment. This Discovery Has Been Forced On Us By The Realization That We Are Approaching The Limits Of Something.

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

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Why Should The Peculiarities Of Human Consciousness Be The Narrow Standard By Which Other Creatures Are Judged?

Zen Aims At Freedom But Its Practice Is Disciplined.

Poetry A Riprap On The Slick Rock Of Metaphysics

Stay Together Learn The Flowers Go Light

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

Streams And Mountains Never Stay The Same.

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You Don't Want To Be Victimized By Your Lesser Talents.

Thought Is Just An Apprehension Of Touch.

Revolutionary Consciousness Is To Be Found Among The Most Ruthlessly Exploited Masses: Animals, Trees, Water, Air, Grasses

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