[Buddha-l] "while you are not safe i am not safe"

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 15 November 2006 07:31, curt wrote:

> Happy 50th anniversary everyone. 50th anniversary of a "free speech
> landmark":

Ah, it brings back a wonderful memory of one dreary Saturday afternoon in 
1965. I was sitting with a friend of mine in the student union at Beloit 
College. We were discussing James Joyce, as was our wont, reciting our 
favorite passages from Finnegan's Wake. Suddenly my friend said, "I have a 
recording of Ginsberg reading 'Howl'. Would you like to hear it?" Then he 
observed that the student union had a turntable, so we put the vinyl record 
on the turntable. Since only two other people were in the student union at 
the time, we saw no reason not to turn on the public address system so we 
could all hear "Howl" better. After about a minute of hearing this divine 
poetry, we were approached by one of the other two people in the building. He 
said "Turn that filthy garbage off, or I'll break your fucking wrists." (He 
was evidently not as enthusiastic about Ginsberg---and about free speech---as 
my Joycean friend and I.)

A generation later, I was at another university and saw students were lined up 
around the block hoping to get inside to hear Ginsberg read poetry and say 
outrageous things about wicked governments. But that was in Canada. People 
are more civilized there than in Ginsberg's home and native land. 

I miss Ginsberg. The older I get, the more I miss him. I have never quite 
forgiven him for illustrating to a skeptical world the truth of the Buddhist 
principle that everything is impermanent. If the world were a better place, 
there would be immortals. And Ginsberg would be one of them, along with Mark 
Twain and Walt Whitman. But not Walt Disney. Immortality is not for everyone.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes