All this new stuff goes on top turn it over, turn it over wait and water down from the dark bottom turn it inside out let it spread through Sift down even. Watch it sprout. A mind like compost.

Gary Snyder

Categorized in : Water Dark Waiting

True affluence is to not need anything. by Gary Snyder

True affluence is to not need anything.

affluence needs

Thought is just an apprehension of touch. by Gary Snyder

Thought is just an apprehension of touch.

apprehension

Streams and mountains never stay the same. by Gary Snyder

Streams and mountains never stay the same.

streams mountain

Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma.

cutting animal war

The size of the place that one becomes a member of is limited onl... by Gary Snyder

The size of the place that one becomes a member of is limited only by the size of one’s heart.

members size heart

In Western Civilization, our elders are books. by Gary Snyder

In Western Civilization, our elders are books.

western civilization book

For those who can, one of the things to do is not to move. To stay put. That doesn't mean don't travel; it means have a place and get involved in what can be done in that place. That's the only way we're going to have a representative democracy in America. Nobody stays anywhere long enough to take responsibility for a local community.

responsibility mean moving

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

rushing style today

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.

gossip home weather

Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars - and goes yet beyond that - beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us - Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife

gratitude stars sky

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.

names book years

Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness

consciousness character mean

To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture by Gary Snyder

To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture

behalf culture

stay together learn the flowers go light by Gary Snyder

stay together learn the flowers go light

light flower together

I never did know exactly what was meant by the term "The Beats," but let's say that the original meeting, association, comradeship of Allen Ginsberg, myself, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, who's not here, Lew Welch, who's dead, Gregory Corso, for me, to a somewhat lesser extent (I never knew Gregory as well as the others) did embody a criticism and a vision which we shared in various ways, and then went our own ways for many years.

vision criticism years

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.

coffee beer dirty

A great poet does not express his or her self; he expresses all o... by Gary Snyder

A great poet does not express his or her self; he expresses all of our selves.

poet self doe

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the w... by Gary Snyder

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

wilderness preservation world

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.

brain discovery years

With no surroundings there can be no path, and with no path one c... by Gary Snyder

With no surroundings there can be no path, and with no path one cannot become free.

surroundings path