There's a terrific SF story by Walter Jon Williams, 'Prayers on the
Wind,' (in The Good New Stuff [1999] among others), in which the 42nd
Incarnation of a Bodhisattva takes the 'Short Path' -- which the
representatives of a warlike alien species finds 'terrifying.'
Might be interesting to read about, but I (I suppose like Merwin) would
not like to be caught in front of any so-called master on that path....
Doug
On 11-Jul-05, at 10:05 AM, MJ Walker wrote:
> The NY Times article I read says this:
>
> >>One thing Naone and Merwin shared was an interest in Buddhism. Early
> in their relationship, they were invited to the Naropa Institute in
> Boulder, Colo., a center for Buddhist studies where Allen Ginsberg was
> teaching. Naropa was presided over by a Tibetan guru, Chogyam Trungpa,
> a tireless drunk and womanizer. At a Halloween party while Ginsberg
> was away, Trungpa ordered everyone to undress. Merwin and Naone
> refused. Trungpa's bodyguards tried to batter down the door to their
> room. "I was not going to go peacefully," Merwin recalls. "I started
> hitting people with beer bottles. It was a very violent scene."
> Trungpa's bodyguards stripped them, and the two figures cowered
> together before the guru like a chastened Adam and Eve.The incident
> came to be mythologized as "The Great Naropa Poetry Wars." Naropa
> became an epitaph for an era, a paradigm of the difference between two
> kinds of poetry -- between Ginsberg's passionate, declamatory style
> and Merwin's restrained, Western formalism. Despite what happened at
> Naropa, Merwin is still a Buddhist. <<
> The following link is fairly detailed -
> http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/trungpa.asp .<>
> Apparently Ginsberg later, though not present (as all seem to agree),
> affirmed the guru-rightness of Trungpa's actions. Both Tom Clark and
> Ed Sanders have apparently published reports on this bit of 60s (?at
> least in spirit) Boys Behaving Badly - and apparently there is
> correspondence between Ginsberg & Merwin on the subject. But who shall
> scape whipping when that Great Scorer comes to mark against his/her
> name? While Waiting for the End quite a few of the Boys - and a Girl
> or two - behaved very Badly during the last century. And who doesn't
> like to dish the dirt with the rest of the girls?
> Martin
Douglas Barbour
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