302
ALLEN GINSBERG
Great Masturbator.
It
means that nobody can be a Buddha unless
everybody is a Buddha, nobody can be enlightened and safe unless
everybody is enlightened and safe. That means that the Yoga prac–
tice of the Bodhisattva, basically, to enlighten others before he him–
self, is finally enlightened and gets out of the Wheel of Time. It
means that you've got to work with other people, to help other peo–
ple, to be helped
by
other people, to breathe in their pain and
breathe out your peacefulness, to take on the bum effects of all the
bum causes floating around Western capitalist society and Eastern
Communist authoritarianism. It means, as with the image of Indra's
net that I was talking about, that one diamond in the net reflects
the sparkle of every other diamond, in every other corner of the net,
cause the net is tying all the diamonds of consciousness together,
and when you move one, they all reflect each other, and the whole
net shimmers and moves. So we're all reflecting each other's causes,
we're all reflecting each other's effects, we're all involved in the Great
Chain of Being, we're all involved in each other's
karma,
we're all
involved in each other's consciousness, we're all involved
in
each
other's money, we're all involved in each other's coal ashes, we're all
involved in each other's plastic, we're all involved in each other's
electricity, we're all involved in each other's murder, we're all
in–
volved
in
each other's napalming, we're all involved in each other's
bacteriological warfare, we're all involved in each other's taxpaying,
we're all involved in each other's national budget, we're all involved
in each other's rubber automobile wheels- so that one person
really can't make it by himself. So, for the Buddhists at any rate,
that's the built-in connection to social action. There's an interesting
early poem of Gary Snyder's, paraphrasing the Buddhist vow, from
1956, when he left for Japan. He says, "long as any hitchhiker on
the Pacific coast shivers in the cold and can't get a ride, I vow not
to enter Nirvana./ As long as any wage-slave is tricked by broken,
shoddy auto brakes, I vow not to enter Nirvana,/ As long as any
widow is starving
in
Oakland, I vow not to enter Nirvana." So what
I propose, for myself, right now, is at least one hour's daily sitting,
cross-legged, back straight, eyes open or closed, breath slow and
relaxed, belly out loose, abdominal breathing, with or without a
mantra,
concentration, meditation, every day, preferably in the
mornings, at a regular hour, before going out and accomplishing
whatever social actions are indicated to get other people out of
trouble and end other people's pain, and dissolve the police state
authoritarian capitalist conspicuous-consumption economy that's poi–
soning the planet.
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