Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – I – Introduction)

July 15, 2017Simon Pettet

A real treat this weekend – with gratitude to Robyn Brentano and students from the NYU Ethnographic Film Program – “Buddhism and the Beats.”. “In 1993, Allen Ginsberg spoke to a gathering of students of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Samten, about the impact of Buddhist thought and practice on himself, the Beat writers, and American culture at large”. The full hour-and-a-half tape is transcribed below (continuing tomorrow, and with the Q & A session to be featured here next weekend)

AG: Well, good evening, Rinpoche [Lobsang Samten Rinpoche] and I met very recently at the house … Read More

Trungpa Visits Allen’s Class – 4 (Q & A – 3)

July 21, 2015admin

 

[Allen Ginsberg

 

[Richard Roth]

 

     

[ChogyamTrungpa Rinpoche]

 

[David Rome]

Student  [in media res]…..he says why talk about the “”I’ which interests me not at all, and he goes on to describe other things. He wasn’t interested in describing himself as (in) personal history, so, in that sense, there wasn’t (that) sort of obsession locked inside, he was always pushing it out

Allen Ginsberg:  Well..Returning to the outside to the look..Yeah
 You had a hand up, Richard Roth 
Richard Roth: I’d like to ask Rinpoche a question? Allen’s being dividing poetics up into Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. The first … Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 101 – Haiku and Trikaya – 2

June 2, 2015admin

It struck me that the one perfect haiku  that I wrote in Court the other day (sic), in Golden Courthouse, [Golden, Colorado] did actually examine, ((in) hindsight, written before (Chogyam) Trungpa (Rinpoche)’s discourse), did actually fit into that (three-part [trikaya] conception). The first line was – “In Golden Court, waiting for the judge, breathing silent”. So there’s an open space where there are bodies and breath. Then an identification of the personages there, recognition – “Prisoners, witnesses, police”. And then the comment (not in the form of a moral, but in the form of another issue, another image, … Read More

The 1996 National Security Archive Interview – part 2

May 31, 2015admin

 

                 

[Allen Ginsberg, reading at The Knitting Factory, New York City, 1995]

Allen’s 1996 Interview for the National Security Archive at George Washington University continues from here

AG: So I found I was kicked out by the Prague police and the Havana police. Then, when I got back, I took part in various anti-war demonstrations. But I found that the day I arrived in Prague, I had been put on the dangerous security list of J.Edgar Hoover as a crazed, violent, or.. I don’t know what he thought I was! – And that he should talk, I must say! … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 61 – (Michael McClure)

June 4, 2014admin

 

                                           GOOOOOOR! GOOOOOOOOOO! 

GOOOOOOOOOR! GRAHHH! GRAHH! GRAHH! Grah gooooor! Ghahh! Graaarr! Greeeeer! Grayowhr! Greeeeee GRAHHRR! RAHHR! GRAGHHRR! RAHR! RAHRIRAHHR! GRAHHHR! GAHHR! HRAHR! BE NOT SUGAR BUT BE LOVE looking for sugar!
GAHHHHHHHH! ROWRR! GROOOOOOOOOOH!

        Student: I want to mention that Michael McClure has created something called  a Grahh language.. AG: Yeah, beast language. Student: (It’s in) Ghost Tantras. AG: Ghost Tantras, yeah. Student:  ..which is, all the way, what is it, ninety-nine? AG: Ninety-nine poems, or so [ninety-nine]. He was inspired by listening to the lions in the San Francisco Zoo, and listening to whale sounds and coyote

… Read More

Spiritual Poetics – 9 (Milarepa Didn’t Have A Tape-Recorder)

August 10, 2011admin

Allen Ginsberg’s Spiritual Poetics class continues from – here 

AG: Before going on, I would like to read, in that context, a couple of texts – William Carlos Williams, and a little scribbling by (Jack) Kerouac . But I wanted also to continue with the notebook/tape-machine problem. Means. With tape-machines.. if you want to carry them around.. because they’re harder to carry around than a notebook, though it seems, for media-oriented kids, or people grown up in the last ten years, they’re so available, and the petro-chemical wonderland is so bewildering, it seems it may be just as basic … Read More

Spiritual Poetics 6

August 5, 2011admin

Allen Ginsberg on Spiritual Poetics continues

Student: It encourages me that India has had this experience of yoga and meditation for a millennia, tho’ I don’t get the sense that Hindus write poetry like yours.
AG: They sure do!
Student: They write the Vedas and the write the hymns to the deities, but they don’t write things about suicide-notes and they don’t subject you to the garbage of the mind
AG: If you think the mind is.. I don’t know if I want to buy that “garbage” phrase, I mean, the mind is the mind.
Student: You don’t have to … Read More

The Dharmic Dirty Old Man – Jim Edwards Interviews Allen Ginsberg

November 15, 2010admin

[Allen Ginsberg (left) with James Edwards (University of Tulsa)]

A fantastic interview digest that offers a snapshot of Allen in the late 1970s. Originally published in The Collegian in 1977, it’s reprinted here online in Oklahoma’s This Land In case you might end up wondering, the “Cotten-clad-One” (sic) referenced is Tibetan yogi Milarepa.

The following is an interview with Allen Ginsberg originally published by the University of Tulsa’s student newspaper The Collegian in 1977. It is reprinted here with permission from the Collegian’s publication board and TU’s University Relations office.

GIinsberg Was Here – Dharmic Dirty Old Man, gay … Read More