photo by Lisa Law Brief Memories
2-28-09 - Gary Snyder in conversation at the Commonwealth Club in SF which ends with the following quote: Suzuki Hiroshi [sic - transcribing error for Roshi] who founded the Zen Center in San Francisco, said to me when I first came back from Japan in 1969, "Do you know what's wrong with Americans? They're too serious. They don't have enough sense of humor." I knew just what he was saying, because the Japanese Buddhist world has this knack for seeming very formal and very strict on the surface, and then just having a freewheeling, very tolerant time behind the surface. That's a trick. A lot of American Buddhism is still crypto-Protestantism. - thanks to Palden McLennan |