H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
MARC OLMSTED
I Celebrate Myself
notes to Bill Morgan
Whether
apocryphal, a number of accounts said that Allen phoned Huncke
after the car
crash
with Little Jack Melody and surreptitiously said, “Clean the place up.” He came to
the
apartment to find Huncke literally sweeping, and the
cops arrived almost immediately
after.
My understanding
was only part of Neal’s Joan Anderson letter was lost – and the
remainder
is what winds up being printed in Charters’ “Beat Reader.”
Other accounts
indicate that yage that was brought back to the
States by both Burroughs
and
Ginsberg was inert, which would explain why it had no effect on Kerouac, as
well as
why
Allen would be so eager to travel and sample it.
“Hare Krishna,” is
how Allen spells it himself in intro to BHAGAVAD GITA AS IT IS,
rather
than “Hari.”
“Boom Boom Shivaya”
is probably “Bom Bom Shivaya” as in
Allen’s poem, “Hum Bom.”
This may just be
me, but Allen seems to go back and forth on keeping his early poetry
vow
re: not reading for $, and since it is just stated without your comment, it is
a little
confusing.
The American flag
was actually placed around Kerouac’s shoulders by the Pranksters
before
he folded it up – as is documented in footage frame enlargements in the book
“Angelheaded Hipster.”
I think one thing
that has gotten blurred in your account is that, though Allen was
interested in Buddhism throughout the 60’s, he was in many ways just
as interested in
Hinduism.
As a result, as was the case with the Hippies in general, the views were
kind
of
mixed up. After his 1968 car
accident, Allen gave an Oracle interview where he asked
rhetorically “what happens when you get carcrash
instead of cocksuck?” In other words,
the
Leary view of “Stay high and love God” was the essential problem with relating
to
Hinduism for Allen
– the spiritual materialism of at least his Western approach: ego
trying
to stay high by spiritual means.
Allen was drawn to Trungpa for just this
reason –
Trungpa was brutal on the subject. Buddhism values suffering because it
can be brought
the
path as a way to wake up.
Suffering is not sought after – there is plenty enough to go
around
– but it can be used, and is therefore useful.
Still the process
of arriving to be Trungpa’s student involved some
pilgrimage. Allen
was with Swami Muktananda for a year and a half around 1970, of whom he
said, “I
think he comes from
the same or related lineage as the Vajrayana
practitioners”
(Shambhala Sun, July 1994).
Happy Traum and Gary Snyder appranetly
introduced him to the Tibetan Buddhist so
called
“vajra guru” mantra, OM AH HUM VAHRA GURU PADMA
SIDDHI HUM.
This also led to
an association with Tarthang Tulku
Rinpoche and a benefit for his
Nyingma Institute.
When he “re-met” Trungpa on the streets of New York (far from that first
1963 India
encounter
they’d both forgotten) – rather than a silent meeting, Allen recalled that he
asked
“May I borrow your vehicle?” This “accidental” phrasing was later particularly
ironic
to Allen, because he in fact later “borrowed” Trungpa’s
“Diamond Vehicle”, which
is
the literal translation of Vajrayana. Trungpa’s
student recognized Allen and quickly
introduced them. Allen
then said “OM AH HUNG VARJA GURU PADMA SIDDHI
HUNG,” as he
relates in the New Age Journal
interview “This is Allen Ginsberg?”
The
student
arranged for them to meet again on the spot, apparently, so Allen later had the
opportunity to ask Trungpa what he thought
when Allen said the “vajra guru” mantra to
him. Trungpa
replied, “I wondered if you knew what you were talking about.” In fact,
when
Trungpa either observed or heard that Allen was using
the mantra for public group
chanting,
he told him to stop it because “you’re giving them a buzz with nowhere to go
with
it.” This is how AH replaced it,
along with the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra mantra
GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA, both which Trungpa
suggested
were more grounding. When Ginsberg
visited Trungpa through the student’s
instigation, Trungpa had the student bring
out some marijuana, although Trungpa himself
did
not smoke it. “He seduced me with
his marijuana,” Allen told me. Trungpa also
“seduced” him by getting poetry
advice on his translated Sadhana of Mahamudra.
It helps to place
the context Allen was coming out of.
The most prominent guru of the
day
was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – Barry Miles was wise to include a huge color photo
of
Maharishi with the Beatles in his HIPPIE volume. Maharishi had tremendous post-acid
cultural
impact. But Trungpa
was the antithesis of this – a suit, smoking a cigarette, the
appearance of drunkenness, an impeccable Oxford accent. This, along with his brilliant
oratory,
helps to explain what the attraction was.
Francis Coppola’s City magazine, had
Trungpa on the cover and called him a “Tibetan
beatnik” around 1974. It is hard
to see in
your
account what made Trungpa so magnetizing to Allen.
As I mentioned in
a previous e-mail, you refer too early to Trungpa’s Shambhala training
- “meditation training” would suffice.
Re: Trungpa’s “No nirvana” – ultimately speaking, no
enlightenment to be obtained by
“somebody” – enlightenment already
primordially all-pervasive. Trungpa was shocking
spiritual
materialism by saying this – as with the koan “when
you meet the Buddha on
the
road, kill him.”
[“Just understand
that birth-and-death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and
death
to be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you
realize
this
are you free from birth and death.” ––Dogen,
"Moon in a Dewdrop"]
“Darshan” is a Hindu term, and although not without
application, is not used for the
teacher-student transmission in Buddhism. The Tibetan hand drum is generally
transliterated as “damaru,” not “dameru.”
In terms of the
infamous Seminary party with W.S. Merwin and
girlfriend, it is said
Trungpa ordered them brought down, then stripped.
Actually, Allen
had congestive heart failure and never made it when he was supposed to
read
“Kaddish” at that 1991 San Francisco conference that
included Gordon Ball and
Barry Miles. He was also supposed to do a benefit
for my Tibetan teacher’s organization
(which didn’t come together again
until 1996). In ’91, I was called by a newspaper man
and
thinking I was speaking off the record, I wound up being quoted about Allen’s “fluid
around
the lungs” and unwittingly becoming the source for a nationwide wire. Bob
Rosenthal was mad
at me for leaking it, but Allen said my description was “accurate and
tasteful.”
Finally, would be
nice to be known in yr. book as poet, and that my relationship extended
into
Allen’s final days, rather than just weekend-that-failed. As he had me say in
DEATH & FAME:
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran
of the thousand
day
retreat ––" since his shamatha instruction did
directly lead to 3-year retreat as
recorded
in my book WHAT USE AM I A HUNGRY GHOST?
(for which he wrote
“Intro”). {and
for the record, the sexual aspect of our relationship was active over 6
years}…
[Bill Morgan appreciatively said he would make
these corrections in a second edition, so I purposely left these points out of
the review I wrote: (see PoeticDiversity, Nov, 2006––ed.)
These
notes were originally written for Bill, not publication, but Jim [Cohn] found
them of interest, so I agreed to publish - MO]
[Originally
published in NHS 2007, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs06/MOlmsted.htm.]