Buddhism and the Beats – the on-going history of Buddhist transmission in the West
– the particularities of not just Buddhism but an American Buddhism. It is impossible to underestimate or understate the profound connection, instigating connection, Beat culture presents – How The Swans Came To The Lake – Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism,
the myriad, wayward and continuing spread of the dharma.
Lotus Girl, Helen Tworkov‘s new book (out this week) shines an inspired and inspiring light on this path
Mark Epstein writes:
“Not since Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums has there been a work that so captures the excitement, the charm, and the thrill of discovery of the Western encounter with Buddhism. Helen Tworkov’s Lotus Girl is exhilarating from start to finish. I loved it. It is sober, smart and completely unpretentious while soaring to unimaginable heights. This is a brilliant and moving book.”
and Pico Iyer writes:
“Other books have told us, engagingly, of how West began to meet East in the 1960s and beyond. But none I have read cuts through every illusion and projection with the warmth, the clarity, the unflinching self-awareness of Helen Tworkov’s indispensable memoir. She takes us, exhilaratingly, to Kyoto, Saigon and Kathmandu and she offers us fond, indelible portraits of some of the seminal figures of our time. But the great gift of Lotus Girl is to share with every reader a wise, undeluded, deeply searching enquiry into mind and how we can start to transform it.”
Charles Johnson agrees:
“Lotus Girl is not only a beautiful memoir of one strong, Buddhist woman’s journey through the social and political upheavals of the 1960s until now, it is also one of the most powerful and compelling accounts I’ve read of how Buddhist practices found their way into American culture…”
Her good friend, Pema Chödrön writes:
“My favorite parts of this very American and far-ranging story chart Helen Tworkov’s deeply personal discovery of the vast, boundless dimensions of mind. As she recognizes mind itself as the source of suffering and the key to liberation, we are treated to a forthright account of an absorbing journey filled with honesty, humor, and wisdom.”
Praise too (and gratitude) from Philip Glass:
“With Tricycle magazine, [Tworkov was, notably, founding editor of Tricycle magazine]
Helen Tworkov had the vision to create a forum for dialogue about Buddhism in the West. Lotus Girl provides an inside look at how her art world background and the political issues of those days prompted her personal search for wisdom and spiritual development. This rich and unique memoir has value for any reader interested in the possibilities of positive change.”
and from Laurie Anderson:
“This beautiful and moving self-portrait is filled with unexpected and marvelous juxtapositions. .. we learn that Helen Tworkov never stops questioning conventional perceptions or orthodoxy of any kind… Through it all, Tworkov’s tenacious search for what’s real and what’s true will enrich anyone fortunate enough to read this important book.”
This unflinching, honest, self-aware, unpretentious, discrimination is one of the qualities that shines through this book.
Here’s Helen in the ’60’s, alone and cogitating, in Varanasi (Benares), India:
“Allen Ginsberg, always quick to take off his clothes in public, had jumped right into the Ganges when he and Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, and Joanne Kyger had visited Benares a few years earlier. Maybe Ginsberg had been transported by spiritual ecstasy or maybe he was just showing off, but part of me had wished that I too could jump into the Ganges and swim, without inhibition or fear, in waters alive with death… Of course I would not jump into the Ganges. I was a girl, alone without friends, and already self-conscious, and uptight and conspicuous. I envied the freedom that those guys had, but India was not where I wished to challenge the limitations of my gender – at least not any more than I was doing.”
Here’s her (further cogitation) back in America:
“The same day I returned to the United States after an absence of almost ten years, I heard of a massive protest against the American war in Vietnam in New York City planned for the following day. What good timing. I immediately learned from my parents that everyone we knew had voiced their opposition to the war. My own had percolated in relative isolation. and now the prospect of solidarity provided a welcome dimension to my homecoming. Gary Snyder, visiting from Japan, would be at the front of the march with other poets, and he invited me to come to Allen Ginsberg’s apartment in the East Village afterwards where he was staying.
At Allen’s, a group of about ten people sat on the floor, including the Swedish former model Nena von Schlebrugge, whom I had known slightly in Millbrook when she had been married to Timothy Leary. That evening she was with her new boyfriend, Robert Thurman. In another fifteen years Bob would be a leading scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, and Free Tibet’s most passionate and vocal champion. Also in attendance was Alex Wayman, an eminent scholar of Buddhist and Sanskrit studies at Columbia University, and his wife. The conversation moved from poetry to the war in Vietnam, from Zen in Japan to Vajrayana in Tibet.”
“What good timing” – Tworkov seems to have met everyone and been everywhere – ubiquitous, (a veritable “Buddhist Zelig“, as her friend Carole Corcoran wittily remarked!), perfectly located, “at the crossroads of Buddhism and America”. And the reader benefits accordingly.
She was there at Allen’s passing. This is her account:
“In April 1997, we (Carole Corcoran and I) were having dinner out when Gelek (Rimpoche) called and asked us to join him at Allen’s. Allen was in his final hours, and he lay in a hospital bed at the far end of block-long loft that stretched from Thirteenth to Fourteenth Streets. The dissolution had progressed, his inhale spasmodic with squeaky gasps. Friends sat on chairs encircling the bed at a distance giving anyone a chance to pull a chair close and speak to him in private. At the other end of the loft, a group that included Allen’s brother Eugene talked quietly. In between, Gelek gathered students who read Tibetan texts and chanted prayers, recreating the fluidity, openness, and welcoming availability in Allen’s dying as it had been in his living…”
Regarding Tricycle (and Allen’s clear mind):
“That Allen Ginsberg agreed to be an advisor was very special to those of us who had admired him for such a long time. But in truth, there were few requests that Allen denied. He was very generous. And very busy. But occasionally I did seek out his advice and came to value his big sky-like view about Buddhism, into which all cheap dharma politics disappeared like passing clouds.”