Thinking A Little About Gary Snyder

In the nineteen fifties when, thanks in large part to DT Suzuki and his popularizer, Alan Watts, Zen hit the intellectual communities across America and it bled into things and deeply informed Beat culture, some of the poets and writers decided rather than just to be inspired in their work to go a little closer to the source. One of them, Gary Snyder, traveled to Japan.

He became a serious Zen practitioner, and would continue to practice on to today. It is my understanding that with Robert Aitken’s counsel he began to do some teaching, but it wasn’t his dharma and he stopped, preferring the practitioner’s pillow to the teacher’s seat.

Of course he is a teacher for all of us who practice Zen. And well beyond that small crowd.

I only encountered him once. I was working in Moe’s books in Berkeley, running the register when he came up with a pile of books. We had a pleasant and brief conversation about one or two of the books he was purchasing. I felt no need to tell him that we had practice connections.

But I do remember that small encounter as a small treasure.

Silly how we do such things…