{"id":3105,"date":"2020-11-24T15:26:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T23:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theliteraryarts.com\/?p=3105"},"modified":"2024-07-22T16:16:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T23:16:01","slug":"10-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theliteraryarts.com\/es\/10-views\/","title":{"rendered":"Encontrar el Grial en el norte de California"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h3>\n

An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Yearbook of the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities of the School for Spiritual Science (Verlag am Goetheanum: Dornach, 2002) and the Newsletter of the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities of the School for Spiritual Science in North America. The present essay has been edited and revised in the light of research and the many experiences that have occurred during the past two decades.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

10 Views Toward Grail & Tamalpais: <\/strong><\/h1>\n

A Ritual Circumambulation<\/strong><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTom’s most well now and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

ONE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

1. \u201cPlaying with the Mountain\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1965 the Beat poet Gary Snyder accompanied by his poet-friends Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg decided to conduct a ritual circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California just across the bridge from San Francisco.i<\/sup> Their intention was to honor the natural and spiritual presence of the mountain. As Snyder described it:<\/p>\n

\u201cRemembering my trails around Tam [that he had hiked in the early to mid 1950s] I thought I would consecrate Tamalpais as a sacred mountain for future generations to do the same kind of pilgrimage on\u201d (Real Matter 134).<\/em><\/p>\n

Accordingly, on the morning of October 22, 1965, a day chosen because \u201cit just happened to be the day we could all get together\u201d (124), the three American Buddhist poets met at the parking lot of Muir Woods National Monument just off Highway One and set off following the Dipsea Trail that crosses a creek and then rises steeply through a lush forest. Here and there as they traversed clockwise the quite varied terrain of this remarkable northern California landscape, they paused to honor place and process by reciting poems and chanting sutras.<\/p>\n

Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.\u2028Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them.\u2028Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it.\u2028The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.ii<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

At various \u201cstations\u201d along the route (Snyder\u2019s poem lists ten; Whalen\u2019s poem lists eight), the company paused for recitations and observations.<\/p>\n

How were these stations chosen? Freely and playfully, it appears. According to Snyder: \u201cWe just felt the magic vibrations. We decided on them the day that we walked it, by being finely tuned\u201d (127).<\/p>\n

Snyder and Whalen characterized these ceremonial gestures as \u201cplaying with the mountain.\u201diii<\/sup> Yet, like all true play\u2014the play of children, the play of drama, music, or the (inter)play of wind and wave and sunlight\u2014a certain gravitas held sway, a purposeless purpose. It was a gesture that Friedrich Schiller might have appreciated or perhaps endorsed.iv<\/sup><\/p>\n

As Whalen said:<\/p>\n

Well, you know, I think that in some respect or other it is about getting Buddhist tradition or feeling established in this country, where it is so foreign, where it is so disconnected from anything real\u2026 [Circumambulating Mt. Tamalpais] was entertaining, and people might pick up on the idea. (Real Matter 134)<\/em><\/p>\n

If you build it, will they come?v<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TWO<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

2. St. Joseph of Arimathea by Wm. Blake<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a bright and cheerful sunrise in northern California, March 19, 2001\u2014the feast day of St. Joseph. My son Jonathan and I are speeding down Interstate 80 to Mt. Tamalpais. I called in sick, and we got an early start. Jonathan and I made our first circumambulation of Tamalpais in the early 1990s when Jonathan was eleven. The route these days is better known.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jonathan\u2019s at the wheel. I am reading aloud from Jack Kerouac\u2019s novel, The Dharma Bums<\/em>, a book dedicated to Cold Mountain poet Hanshan.vi<\/sup> I am reading the chapters toward the end of the book where Kerouac and Snyder, shortly before Snyder\u2019s departure to Japan to study Zen Buddhism, sneak away from a three-day party to hike together one last time on the trails that crisscross Mt. Tamalpais.<\/p>\n

The scene is the 1950s. Buddhism and most especially Zen Buddhismvii<\/sup> has taken root in the soil of American poetic imaginations. It\u2019s been happening for several decades.viii<\/sup> Japhy and Ray discuss Buddhism as they walk the Marin trails and shake off hangovers.<\/p>\n

Kerouac is disturbed. Raised a French-Canadian Roman Catholic, he struggles to resolve the intellectual contradictions between a Christian outlook and Zen.ix<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u201cJaphy,\u201d he says (Japhy Ryder is the name for Gary Snyder in The Dharma Bums) \u201cdo you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so, he would have to be mean.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Japhy is nonplussed. His childhood was not like Jack\u2019s. Reared in the wilds of Oregon outside any orthodoxy of any Church, he can\u2019t find much meaning in Kerouac\u2019s question.<\/p>\n

\u201cHo, who would you mean by God?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cJust Tathagata, if you will.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cWell, it says in the sutra that God, or Tathagata, doesn\u2019t himself emanate a world from his womb but it just appears due to the ignorance of sentient beings.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cBut he emanated sentient beings and their ignorance too. It\u2019s all too pitiful. I ain\u2019t gonna rest till I find out why, Japhy, why.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cAh, don\u2019t trouble your mind essence. Remember that in pure Tathagata mind essence there is no asking of the question why and not even any significance attached to it.<\/em>
\n\u201cWell, then nothing\u2019s really happening then.\u201d<\/em>
\nHe threw a stick at me and hit me on the foot. (201)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THREE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

3. We Pick up a Hitchhiker<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Jonathan and I arrive at the empty parking lot at Muir Woods, I say to my son Jonathan, a religion major at Reed College in Portland, Oregon (where Snyder and Whalen went to school): \u201cThis is life, imitating art, imitating life, imitating art . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan grins. It\u2019s important that we get an early start. Pay attention! The hike is fourteen to sixteen miles, depending on detours, give or take. And we want to allow time for \u201ccelebrations and cogitations\u201d and lunch and some journal writing and other important BS. This is not a clocked affair; it\u2019s more of a meander. A river.<\/p>\n

Indeed! In an essay called \u201cWalking,\u201d Henry David Thoreau developed similar Beat notions in lectures given repeatedly in New England in the 1850s.<\/p>\n

I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks\u2014who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived from \u201cidle people who roamed the country in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,\u201d to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, \u201cThere goes a Sante-Terrer,\u201d a Saunterer\u2014a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all: but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more a vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. (295)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FOUR<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

4. A Glastonbury Romance?<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the rough plank bridge that crosses the stream that separates the parking lot from the Dipsea trail that leads up the mountain, I pause and clap my hands twice, a habit I learned from Aikido. \u201cI\u2019m awake; you\u2019re awake.\u201d That\u2019s the intention. \u201cSomething\u2019s happening!\u201d But do we notice?<\/p>\n

Jonathan and I trudge up the steep mountainside, through ferns and forest and poison oak. I start to breathe more deeply. I\u2019m in shape, but my left knee is sore from surwari waza<\/a><\/strong> practice.<\/p>\n

Silent during the initial steep ascent on the Dipsea Trail, I start to free associate. My thoughts spiral to Parzival<\/em>. I\u2019m teaching Wolfram von Eschenbach\u2019s Parzival<\/em> at the once vibrant now-defunct Rudolf Steiner College on Friday evenings this spring semester, and I think about Parzival and Galahad and Glastonbury and the Wound.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the European Christian era, Joseph of Arimathea sauntered with assorted family, women, and hangers-on from the Holy Land toward a sacred mountain. According to the medieval account by Robert de Boron, Joseph’s family carried with them the sacred Grail chalice that had caught the blood of Christ Jesus during the crucifixion. Legend tells us that the Grail chalice eventually came to rest in or near or under the sacred mountain at Glastonbury, where Joseph planted a sacred thorn tree by striking his staff into the soil of Wearyall Hill.<\/p>\n

Another Grail narrative comes to mind: this one from Wolfram von Eschenbach\u2019s Parzival<\/em>. In Book Five of that adventure, after Parzival fails to ask the right question during his first visit to the Grail Castle, Wolfram writes that \u201chis adventures now begin in earnest.\u201d Between Books Five and Nine in the poem, when Parzival gets a second wind and second chance, he spends a lot of time roaming around. He saunters, as it were, and bums it across the Territory. We don\u2019t hear much about this walkabout. Instead, in Wolfram\u2019s poem, Gawain handsomely steps forward. Parzival shows up now and then, but mostly he\u2019s in the scenery, sauntering, spiraling, searching, biding his time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FIVE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

5. Tree in Rock<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jonathan and I arrive at a station on the route, and we take a brief pause. The station has the name Tree in Rock (or sometimes Oak and Rock) because a live oak tree native to California grows intrepidly from a rock. A sword in stone?<\/p>\n

We clap and make acknowledgement, and then we continue up a steep trail through the woods to emerge at a magnificent vista meadow from which we can see the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia, one might imagine. To the south along the coastline, we espy San Francisco in the factual here and now.<\/p>\n

We sit in the Circle in the Grass and take a few pictures and have a snack. Then we move north and uphill until we arrive at a Greek-style amphitheater set into the mountain among some trees.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SIX<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

6. \u201cBuddhism is very physical . . .\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life imitating art imitating life imitating art . . .<\/p>\n

The mirror-play of narratives in my mind (Parzival, Gawain, St. Joseph, Mary of Egypt, Thoreau, Gotama, St. Francis, Japhy, Ray) appeals to my sensibility as a dreamer. The narratives shimmer like a magic wonder glass through which I appraise this Glass Mountain on which we saunter.<\/p>\n

Ray and Japhy also arrived at this amphitheater once upon a wrinkle in time. This Mountain Theater looks Greco-Roman, although it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. Theatricals, plays, and musicals have been staged here. The acoustics are good. The stone seats face out over hill and wood toward the distant metropolis. Kerouac described the setting as an \u201coutdoor theater, done up in Greek style, with stone seats all around a bare stone arrangement for four-dimensional presentations of Aeschylus and Sophocles\u201d (206).<\/p>\n

I take out my copy of The Dharma Bums<\/em> and read aloud.<\/p>\n

The two companions in the novel, Japhy and Ray, wax poetic at this \u201cRoman\u201d ruin. They \u201csat and watched the silent play from the upper stone seats,\u201d the book tells us. In the old country, ruined theaters such as this are remnants of mystery cults and temples. Have Jonathan and I become some shadow-chorus?<\/p>\n

Japhy is inspired. He clearly enjoys the play of nature, and he resents the arrival of a noisy actor\u2014aka some self-important Faustus filled with metaphysics who out-herods Herod. Japhy finds emptiness the truest drama. Is it not, perhaps, an authentic shining of original mind . . . a Lichtung<\/em>x<\/sup> . . . and he extols an \u201cunpeopled watershed, wet snowy mountains fading into dry pine mountains and deep valleys like Big Beaver and Little Beaver with some of the best virgin stands of red cedar left in the world.\u201d (206).<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, Buddhism is very physical,\u201d Philip Whalen said in an interview about Tamalpais. \u201cIt\u2019s very complicated and at the same time very straightforward, very simple. So, here is this mountain, which the Native Americans held in some regard, and then here is this Buddhist tradition of going to the mountains and walking around them, meditating, reciting sutras. This was something to do, something that you actively, physically and mentally, of course\u2014do.\u201d (135)<\/em><\/p>\n

My son and I eat some apricots and chat. We sit on the stones of the amphitheater and look out toward Mill Valley and Sausalito. The spirit of Alan Watts floats in the breeze and tickles us.xi<\/sup><\/p>\n

I turn to another passage from Kerouac\u2019s novel. I read the part where Japhy says to his conflicted Christian friend (later to die of alcohol abuse in the care of his widowed mother . . . a \u201cson of the widow\u201dxii<\/sup> . . .)<\/p>\n

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. All these people thinking they\u2019re hardheaded materialistic practical types, they don\u2019t know shit about matter, their heads are full of dreamy ideas and notions. (206)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SEVEN<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

7. Cold Mountain<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Japhy, like Henry David, longed for a better way. He wants to get his hands on the right stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese woods are great here in Marin, I\u2019ll show you Muir Woods today, but up north is all that real old Pacific Coast mountain and ocean land, the future home of the Dharma-body. Know what I\u2019m gonna do? I\u2019ll do a new long poem called \u2018Rivers and Mountains without End\u2019 and just write it on and on on a scroll and unfold on and on with new surprises and always what went before forgotten, see, like a river, or like one of them real long Chinese silk paintings that show two little men walking in an endless landscape of gnarled old trees and mountains so high they merge with the fog in the upper silk void.\u201d (200)<\/p>\n

The novel I am reading, I tell my son Jonathan, is dedicated to \u201cCold Mountain\u201d\u2014or in other words, to Hanshan the legendary 8th century Chinese Taoist Zen hermit who lived in a cave like Milarepaxiii<\/sup> and practiced \u201ccrazy wisdom.\u201d Hanshan is celebrated worldwide, and he exerted great influence on contemporary North American poetics, especially in this neck of the woods.<\/p>\n

In another section of the novel, I find a passage where Japhy describes one of the Cold Mountain poems he (Snyder) is translating in the middle 1950s.<\/p>\n

Cold Mountain is a house, without beams or walls, the six doors left and right are open, the hall is the blue sky, the rooms are vacant and empty, the east wall strikes the west wall, at the center not one thing . . . (202)<\/em><\/p>\n

And then, I produce . . . a Miracle! The Time Being demanded it.<\/p>\n

On a handy cellphone, I play a recording of Japhy aka Snyder reading the very same poem that Kerouac reported in the book.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/theliteraryarts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/16-Cold-Mt-is-a-House-.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

The spirit of Alan Watts floats in the breeze and tickles us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EIGHT<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

8. Uriel\u2019s Treason!<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

We saunter on. At Rifle Camp we find a snaky path that follows the western slope.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we on a circumambulation or on a pilgrimage?\u201d Jonathan inquires.<\/p>\n

As a student of religion at Reed, he understands that western literature has a long relationship to the gesture of the pilgrimage and to the character of the pilgrim on some adventure to some Great Place.<\/p>\n

\u201cDante is the great artist of pilgrimage, making the journey to firsthand experience an ideal in art and life alike, and inspiring countless artists and pilgrims to imitate him.\u201d (The Life You Save May Be Your Own<\/em>)<\/p>\n

“It is a problem of circle and line,” \u00a0I begin to think.<\/p>\n

Thoreau\u2019s fellow poet and doughty Grail\u2011companion,\u00a0Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote a poem in\u00a0which he related how at one time in the\u00a0distant past Uriel the archangel of the summer season\u00a0refused to acknowledge line\u00a0or linear development as a determining factor in the universe: \u201cLine in\u00a0nature\u00a0is not found \/ Unit and universe are round.\u201d Like Prometheus, Uriel got into a whale\u00a0of\u00a0trouble for his opinion. He got gaslighted. But Emerson developed the notion\u00a0into a poetics.<\/p>\n

Ernst Lehrs first drew my attention to Emerson\u2019s famous poem,\u00a0and I find the\u00a0memory again on this day of St. Joseph on Tamalpais as I peer\u00a0through the\u00a0magic glass of literature, imagination, and remembering.<\/p>\n

Uriel, Lehrs told me, tried his best to argue some\u00a0common sense with the archangels. He made the\u00a0case for wiggliness,\u00a0but the other\u00a0archangels, sober, strict, systematic, linear thinkers, said: \u201cDude.\u00a0No Way!\u201d<\/p>\n

“This was necessary and what man needed for the development of his Ego in striving toward its goal on earth. But in the present age man must learn to bring the cyclic principle into his life again, without abandoning the linear. It is in this sense that Rudolf Steiner has helped us to understand the festivals of the year. And so, the time has also arrived when Uriel can again come into his own.” (Lehrs 2)<\/p>\n

Well, maybe . . . \u00a0But right now, the Uriel team seems kind of down on the scoreboard, eh?<\/p>\n

Regarding Jonathan\u2019s question about circumambulation or pilgrimage, I decide to quote the original hippie. I say: \u201cIt\u2019s as you like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

. . . tongues in trees, books in running brooks,<\/em>
\nSermons in stones, and good in every thing.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NINE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

9. Collier Springs & Inspiration Point<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stations on the Way. We\u2019re moving purposefully now, eager to reach the summit with enough time to rest and write poetry before the descent. It\u2019s a long way down, almost three thousand feet, and since it\u2019s the season of equinox, we don\u2019t want to run out of daylight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWHERE IS THE MOUNTAIN?\u201d wrote Philip Whalen, all caps.<\/p>\n

Thus pondering, we reconnoiter an empty parking lot on East Peak.<\/p>\n

I wax rhetorical. Have we \u201cConquered the Mountain?\u201d Have we \u201cOpened It?\u201d Have we \u201cPlanted our Flag?\u201d Have we struck our collapsible hiking poles into the heathen submissive soil of a Wearyall Hill?<\/p>\n

While thus soliloquizing, Jonathan buys a red RC cola from a solitary red vending machine. We sit at a vista and look out toward Alcatraz. The cola is cold and sweet.<\/p>\n

With sweetness as incentive, I cast the I Ching.<\/p>\n

Before Completion (64) changing to Creative (1).<\/p>\n

And then I write a poem.<\/p>\n

Thus oracled, we progress. After a rugged drop through scrub and scree, we arrive at a fire road used by mountain bikers. From here we reach the fire station. We cross a trafficked road and join ourselves on the other side to a trail that snakes down from Mountain Home parking lot into the shadow of redwoods. We do not pause. We avoid the trail that leads to the Boy Scouts. On the long way down through Muir, I only enjoy the rhythm of my feet.<\/p>\n

Another Beat and Buddhist, Lew Welch, a friend of Snyder\u2019s who inspired the name of a zendo on San Juan Ridge, \u201cRing of Bone,\u201d said this in an interview about Mt. Tam:<\/p>\n

I have taken Mt. Tamalpais as my goddess in a very real way, like a priest takes a vow. I mean it. I ask her, Mt. Tamalpais, about this, about that, and I listen to what she tells me. A lot of people think I am being goofy about it, you know, or being poetic about it, but I mean it. I really mean it and the only way to say it is in the poetry. The praises. Prayer. (Golden Gate 161)<\/em><\/p>\n

Practice is physical, rooted in ritual attitude of body\/mind. Didn\u2019t the romantics already tell us that already? \u201cIf poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree it had better not come at all,\u201d wrote Keats in a landscape from a distant time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TEN<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"

12. \u201cOeheim, waz wirret dir?\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s dark. We made it down.<\/p>\n

Jonathan and I drive home on the interstate that connects the east of North America to the west, ocean to ocean.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking about circles and lines and wiggliness and about the Grail\u2014its transformations and perambulations\u2014and about the future Maitreya, the Buddha who is to come, the Anointed One who sits in a chair to signify readiness to take action in the world, and about compassion and the problem of the so-called east and the so-called west, and about this Roman-spirited road we call I-80 and the internal combustion engine that makes it all possible, in a certain real sense.<\/p>\n

Where is the sacred Homeland to be found?<\/p>\n

What is this thing that human beings call the Grail?<\/p>\n

\u201cI ain\u2019t gonna rest till I find out why, Japhy why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parzival surely worked it out for himself once upon a time . . . this thing about circles and wiggliness. Parzival went on his walkabout to Munsalvaesche\u2014circling and spiraling. Thus, the sacred Dharma makes its way.<\/p>\n

This hidden human knowledge which is flowing \u201cimperceptibly to begin with, into people\u2019s ways of thinking\u201d is like unto a river.<\/p>\n

\u201cSymbolically, this hidden knowledge, which is taking hold of humanity from the other side and will do so increasingly in the future, can be called the knowledge of the Grail\u201d (Esoteric Science 388).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____________<\/p>\n

Works Cited and Consulted<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Batchelor, Stephen. The Awakening of the West<\/strong>.<\/em> London: Thorsons, 1994.<\/p>\n

Davis, Matthew and Scott, Michael Farrell. Opening the Mountain: Circumambulating Mount Tamalpais, a Ritual Walk<\/strong>.<\/em> Emeryville, CA: Avalon, 2006.<\/p>\n

Elie, Paul. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage<\/strong>.<\/em> New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.<\/p>\n

Fields, Rick. How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America<\/em><\/strong>. Berkeley: Shambhala, 1992<\/p>\n

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums<\/em><\/strong>. New York: Viking, 1958.<\/p>\n

Lehrs, Ernst. \u201cThe St. John\u2019s Tide Impulse and the Redemption of Science.<\/strong>\u201d Photocopy of lecture given in 1958.<\/p>\n

Powys, John Cowper. A Glastonbury Romance<\/em><\/strong>. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1967.<\/p>\n

Robertson, David. Real Matter<\/em><\/strong>. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1997.<\/p>\n

Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man<\/em><\/strong>. Trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willloubhy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.<\/p>\n

Snyder, Gary. Mountains and Rivers Without End<\/em><\/strong>. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1997.<\/p>\n

—. Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems<\/em><\/strong>. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009.<\/p>\n

Steiner, Rudolf. An Outline of Esoteric Science<\/em><\/strong>. Trans. Catherine E. Creeger. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997.<\/p>\n

Watts, Alan. In My Own Way: An Autobiography<\/em><\/strong>. New York: New World Library, 2007.<\/p>\n

Whalen, Philip. Selected Poems<\/em><\/strong>. New York: Penguin, 1999.<\/p>\n

Thoreau, Henry David. \u201cWalking.\u201d The Great Short Works of Henry David Thoreau<\/em><\/strong>. New York: Harper, 1982. 294-326.<\/p>\n

Welch, Lew. Golden Gate: Interview with Five San Francisco Poets<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong> Ed. David Meltzer. Berkeley, CA: Wingbow Press, 1976.<\/p>\n

Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival<\/em>.<\/strong> Trans. Helen M. Mustard and Charles Passage. New York: Vintage, 1961.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Images in the Text<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u201cSunrise on Mt. Tam\u201d photo by Bruce Donehower<\/li>\n
  2. \u201cJoseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Britons at Glastonbury\u201d by William Blake<\/li>\n
  3. Henry David Thoreau<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cEntering the Way\u201d photo by Bruce Donehower<\/li>\n
  5. \u201cTree in Rock\u201d photo by Bruce Donehower<\/li>\n
  6. \u201cMountain Theater\u201d photo by Bruce Donehower<\/li>\n
  7. \u201cCold Mountain\u201d photo by Bruce Donehower<\/li>\n
  8. \u201cJerusalem, plate 100\u201d by William Blake<\/li>\n
  9. \u201cThe Sacred Mountain\u201d by Paul Gauguin<\/li>\n
  10. Parzival<\/em> \/ Wolfram von Eschenbach<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Thoughts After the Hike (Conversations with the Living and the Dead)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    A ritual breathes and lives with fresh performance, and each fresh performance lives differently from the last one you have in mind. The wiggly nature of Nature, as Emerson observed, resists ruling.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve done this hike on Tamalpais many times over more than a quarter century, sometimes with a friend, sometimes with a group, sometimes solo. One year, when I needed recentering after a crisis, I did the hike solo several times. Each hike is unique, although the route is a settled gesture.<\/p>\n

    In November 2021, at the festival season of All Souls and Dia de los Muertos, I organized a poetic ritual on the mountain for friends and members of the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities of the School for Spiritual Science in North America who meet regularly via Zoom in Fair Oaks. Our group is fortunate to include several poets. I explained the ritual to my poet friends and invited them to write a poem or two for the occasion. I asked that the poem be written during the festival of All Souls. I felt that this seasonal festival, when the veil between the worlds wears thin, was very important to the gesture.<\/p>\n

    I took the poems and read them on the mountain and made a video of the event. Some poems were read at sites chosen from “Scripture”\u2014by that I mean, the improvised Scripture that Snyder and his friends created when they marked out what they thought were power points along the route. But script and Scripture soon got tossed aside during the day of the hike, and I followed my imagination, intuition, common sense, and the teachings of the mountain. The landscape spoke; the power points had shifted; and wiggly Nature had its own ideas of how she should be entertained.<\/p>\n

    Our 16-mile \u201ccircumambulation\u201d occurred on a Saturday. On the next day Sunday, I went back to the mountain with my wife and son, and we shot more videos spontaneously as the spirit moved us.<\/p>\n

    May the viewer flourish!<\/p>\n

    Celebrating the Mountain: An All Souls Festival of Poetry on Tamalpais<\/strong><\/h3>\n