The Beats: Bringing to America a Zen Aesthetic

Gary Snyder presents in his prose essay collection A Place in Space a culture and artistic aesthetic connecting all humans to the oneness of the world found in Buddhism. In his essay "A Single Breath," Snyder compares poetry to meditation creating a background for what today is known as the "Zen aesthetic" (115). Additionally, in comparing the aesthetic developed through "A Single Breath"" to his "Notes on the Beat Generation, " one can easily see a connection between the beat poets' values and lifestyles and the Zen aesthetic.

Snyder begins "A Single Breath" in establishing basic differences between meditation and poetry stating that, "Meditation looks inward, poetry holds forth. One is for oneself, the other is for the world. One enters the moment, the other shares it" (109). Thus, the two are eternally separated as you cannot be entering the moment, while sharing it--it is one or the other. And yet, the two have a fascinating tie: in order to really re-live and share an experience, you need to experience it profoundly and let the experience itself twinge, clang, or simply strum the inner strings of your soul creating a music, an art--a bit of "Magic" (15).

Snyder continues stressing the distinction between these two practices: meditation and writing poetry, "Yet poetry (and the literary world) has sometimes been perceived as dangerous to the spiritual career." (112). This concept is not limited to the Buddhist realm of though as it has also pervaded Western thought in the form of Milton's Paradise Lost, where the speaker struggles with the fact that in writing poetry he is acting as a creator, and in trying to be a creator, he is trying to be God, and thus, becomes a devil with a heightened ego thinking he could ever be God. Milton then is left distanced from God and religion (and also society and it's values) in his creation of poetry. The beats too were left distanced from society in their beliefs and values expressed through their poetry and other forms of creation, "When [Kerouac's] novel On the Road was published in 1957, the word beat became famous and overnight America became aware that it had a generation of writers and intellectuals on its hands that was breaking all the rules" (9). The beats strongly felt that, "A regular job ties you down and leaves you no time. Better to live simply, be poor, and have the time to wander and write and dig (meaning to penetrate and absorb and enjoy) what was going on in the world" (9). This simple life and process of reflection valued so deeply by the beat generation coincides with the Zen aesthetic as well. In a way, "digging," as Snyder defines it, can become a synonym to meditation.

Another danger expressed by Snyder which limits the poet's "spiritual career" is a desire for fame, "Ikkyu, a fifteenth-century Japanese Zen master an a fine (and strikingly original) poet himself, laughingly ridiculed his fellow poets, knowing as he did the distractions and temptations that might come with literary aspirations" (112). The beats too often shunned such aspirations seeking only to create and invent. Societal acclaim for them was a by-product of their search for art and experience of life. The desire to live simply, while not achieving fame, Snyder conveys in stating, "[This new generation] published its poems in its own little magazines, and didn't even bother to submit works to the large established highbrow journals that had held the monopoly on avant-garde writing for so long" (9). Although the aspect previously mentioned of sharing poetry is still valued, the goals in sharing their creations for the beats are not the "literary aspirations" which Ikkyu ridicules. The beat generation in a innovative philosophic movement seeks to write and observe truths more than to achieve acclaim.

The beats also work to illustrate the word simply as it is, stumbling upon profound truths in their observances of ordinary things rather than to gaudily transform reality through highbrow literary allusion and other tactics. Snyder relates that "In Zen circles it is said, 'Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary" (115). Thus, once again, beat beliefs and values coincide with the Zen aesthetic. Snyder further develops this aesthetic, "In poetry and in meditation you must be shameless, have no secrets from yourself, be constantly alert, make no judgment of wise and foolish, high or low class, and give everything its full due" (116). The beats, as is clearly seen through Ginsberg's Howl have no shame, no secrets, and make no judgments. Snyder explains, "The beat generation can be seen as an aspect of the worldwide trend for intellectuals to reconsider the nature of the human individual, existence, personal motives, the qualities of love and hatred, and the means of achieving wisdom" (13). Thus, in conclusion, the beat generation is a contemporary American enactment of the Zen aesthetic as presented by Snyder. For the beats, poetry is simple and real--"There is no self-pity or accusation or politics, simply human beings and facts" (10). The beat generation worked with this facts of life and created a beautiful, deeply real collection of literary art through their own development of a Zen aesthetic.