Gary Snyder

Gary S. Snyder (born in1930) has been respected as a deep ecology laureate. In his radical vision, a wiser humanity will have to abstain from feverish quests for personal glories as well as from egotistic insistence on man’s survival in this world. His singular distinction consists in his making the ideas of Zen Buddhism harmonize and integrate with the cultural tenets of Native Americans, and also in making this unified consciousness positively relevant to modern America. It is inappropriate to regard Gary Snyder as an alien voice in the American world of letters, because his positive connectedness to luminaries like Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Pound, Muir and other great American thinkers cannot be belittled. But Snyder’s distinctive imaginary is a celebration of making the ancient ’Turtle Island’ of the Amerindians meet the ancient East of the Buddhists in equivalent terms. His conviction of Zen does not merely add meaning to life’s jejune sojourns on this planet, our home; it is the meaning full of zest and delight amidst the existential morasses.