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by Charles Carreon
Every generation of poets derives inspiration from different sources.
Social conditions, living environments, economic fluctuations and wars, in
short, all the varied movements of life are the background for creative
expression in every period of time. Writers are moved to find styles,
forms, and mythic outlines appropriate to their experience, which help
them to say what they want to say.
In "Sunflower Sutra," Ginsberg has used the paradoxical philosophy of
Mahayana Buddhism to reconcile the decayed nature of our society with his
own unitive spiritual vision.
The anxiety brought on by what Alvin Toffler called "too much change, too
fast," has afflicted many persons with a sense of hopelessness, and the
eagerness of youth often finds itself with little to feed upon. Our
society has warred against mythical consciousness, which is the
nourishment of poetic minds. Scientific reductionism has consistently
triumphed over structures which once gave spiritual meaning to existence,
and questions of quality have been buried under a barrage of surplus
goods. The mythic landscape has been razed; the flower of life has been
killed by commerce and industry.
Allen Ginsberg, born in the Eastern U.S. grew up close to the chaos and
confusion of this age. His poetry has never ceased to be a reflection of
the anarchic conditions of our times, and yet it always rings with a
spiritual impulse. In "Sunflower Sutra," these two qualities are quite
evident, and the very title implies that the poem is some sort of
spiritual instruction. There is no tone of resignation in the poem,
despite an unpicturesque setting. For a Buddhist it is apparent that
Ginsberg is affirming the Buddha nature, which remains pure in all
circumstances, ever free from dualisms of all types. It is a part of the
Buddhist Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) path to affirm the supreme reality of
one's Buddha Nature, regardless of the apparent extremity of a situation.
"Even if the sun were to rise in the West, the Bodhisattva has only one
way," said Shunryu Suzuki, the founder of Zen practice in this country. By
this he meant that followers of the heroic path of Buddhism (Bodhisattvas)
are pledged to uphold the pure view of all phenomena as the play of an
intrinsically empty awareness "even if the sun were to rise in the West."
Ginsberg, like a good Bodhisattva, has taken up the standard of
enlightenment, though in a railway-yard he can find no better emblem than
the wilted, besooted corpse of a dead sunflower. The holding of the
sunflower "like a sceptre" parallels the symbolic postures of Tantric
deities in Tibetan Buddhist iconography. These deities, who depict various
aspects of the enlightened mind, often hold a ritual implement called a
vajra (diamond) sceptre, representing their possession of the untarnished
and indestructible quality of the pure, original mind. Almost comically,
and yet with absolute seriousness, Ginsberg takes the same sort of
posture. He is willing to stand up for the purity of beings, to affirm
their intrinsic beauty and worth, though it be hidden within the grime and
decay of phenomenal existence.
According to the Zen tradition there is only one place to look for
enlightenment, and that is in the world. The Sixth Patriarch, Hui Neng,
said: "To seek for enlightenment outside the world is as foolish as
looking for a rabbit's horn." Ginsberg's Sutra begins in the world, with a
restless, roving description of decaying objects in a bleak environment.
The sunflower is an ugly object in an ugly world. "... the gray Sunflower
poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of old locomotives in its eye --" He describes it with human
attributes: "... big as a man ... seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air ... leaves stuck out like arms ...
a dead fly in its ear ..." It is a pathetic figure, which Ginsberg
identifies as his own soul: "Unholy battered old thing you were, my
sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!" The sunflower, with "all that
dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin ... artificial
worse-than-dirt ..." is afflicted by civilization, but even worse it has
lost its identity as a living thing from long association with "rubber
dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping
coughing car, the empty lonely tin cans with their rusty tongues aslack,
what more could I name ..." The sunflower is estranged from itself just
like Allen and Jack: "rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the
riverbank, tired and wily." There is real tenderness, genuine compassion
in his question: "Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower?
when did you look at your sin and decide you were an impotent dirty old
locomotive?" And this is the turning point of the poem, which might have
led to a depressing dead end but instead turns, stirs almost astonishingly
to become a song of celebration, a defiance of appearances worthy of
praise. Standing aside from the tragedy, Ginsberg can say, "You were never
no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower," which is, after all, not
such an amazing thing to note. But then again, who else but Ginsberg would
do it?
It is said in the Bodhicaryavatara, a root Mahayana text, that to discover
compassion for other beings is like finding a jewel in a dunghill, because
compassion transforms every situation in life. Unlike many modern poets,
Ginsberg is able to use the magic of compassion to transform his
perceptions, and purify, as it were, a rotten situation. He is able to
assert, for his benefit as well as our own: "We're not our skin of grime
... we're blessed by our seed." He sees "golden hairy naked accomplishment
bodies" albeit "growing into mad black formal sunflowers." The insight of
this perception changes the tenor of the poem. The depleted, futile
atmosphere of the poem's beginning has gone. The static, disheartening
quality of "we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and
sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery" has
given way to an energetic vibrancy. Ginsberg's heroic declaration of life
has strengthened him, and the closing image is tight, coherent and
powerful: "... spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision." He has made
the enlightened gesture, or as the Chinese Master, Lin Chi said, "He has
spoken a good word." And that is all one can ask of a Sutra.
1979, Charles
Carreon
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