Kevin M. Moist, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communications
Penn State Altoona
Abstract
This article focuses on the influence of Eastern “ways of
liberation” such as Buddhism and Taoism on the creative activity
of a vibrant visionary subculture in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury
district from 1965-1969. Part of a larger study of psychedelic rock
concert posters, this paper addresses the particular influence of
Eastern mystical philosophy on the visual rhetoric of these San
Francisco posters and its cultural impact as it radiated outwards
from there. In addition to visual elements such as iconography and
visual style, the posters are seen as attempting visually to represent
the paradoxical logic central to the “enlightenment” experience
of those and other mystical religious traditions.
Introduction
[1]
For a brief moment in the mid-1960s, the eyes of the world focused
on a small district of the city of San Francisco called the Haight-Ashbury,
where a group of energetic dropouts was engaged in rewriting the
rules of their society and culture. All sorts of accepted conventions
in music, art, literature, lifestyles, religion, social patterns—all
seemed up for grabs, as the given world was treated by this subculture
as so much raw material, capable of being recombined into new forms
whose limits were only those of the imagination.
[2] While the superficial trappings of the scene would go on to
influence the world of style and popular culture, many of those
who were there have argued that the deeper import is often missed.
Gary Duncan, guitarist for the Quicksilver Messenger Service, one
of the most influential rock bands to come out of that “scene,” points
out that “What was really going on in San Francisco […]
was a whole other thing most people don’t know about. The
underground scene was really a lot heavier than what was publicized
and what people think happened—you know, hippies playing music
with flowers in their hair, all that crap.”1 The “heavier” aspects
of the Haight’s cultural expansions were in several crucial
ways tied to a wide-ranging engagement with philosophies and wisdom
traditions that lay outside the Western canon, and with the modes
of thought that went along with them. As Zen poet Gary Snyder put
it in a 1967 San Francisco public group discussion with Tim Leary,
Alan Watts, and Allen Ginsberg, “The drama is changing. What
people are interested in is not things but states of mind. That
is the cultural shift that is taking place” within this “visionary” subculture.2
[3] While the local rock bands were at the time felt to be at the
forefront of the various reorderings being undertaken in the Haight,
many of the underlying philosophical changes can be seen even more
clearly in the body of posters produced by local artists to advertise
concerts by those groups. Indeed, rock historian Joel Selvin points
out that this small and busy group of artists “turned out
a rich series of images that encapsulated the social, musical and
cultural inventions taking place.” On the one hand, the posters “re-wrote
the language of contemporary graphic arts”; to this day, the
swirling and unreadable lettering characteristic of the posters
carries “psychedelic” cultural associations to whole
new generations. But the posters did a lot more than just serve
as advertisements. They were, Selvin argues, “nothing less
than part of the socialization process themselves”3 in that
they embodied the very beliefs and experiences of the subculture
in which they were created.
[4] As will be shown below, some of the central aspects of those
beliefs grew from a dialogue with and influence from Asian art and
thought, and in particular from Eastern mystical philosophies such
as Zen, Taoism, and Vedanta. I should note right from the start
that I will not be making any case for broad-based immediate influence
on the “whole culture” (whatever that is) of American
society, as I have a sense that intercultural dialogues take place
not all at once or in toto but in specific terms within situations
that allow or call for them. What I am looking for are certain points
of contact—in the electrical sense of the term, spots where
currents are transduced, energy Zap!ped from one place to
another—in the ongoing dialogue between American culture and
Eastern ways of thought. These cultural currents are visualized
in this body of poster art at a number of levels, including style,
iconography and visual rhetoric. These will be discussed in turn
below, after a brief discussion of the general theoretical approach
that informs my project, and a whirlwind tour of this visionary
subculture and its activities.
Theory/Method
[5] Over the past few years, the study of art and culture has opened
up some new lines of possibility for the consideration of images
as part of their social context. More specifically, the field of “visual
culture” has developed as an interdisciplinary terrain that
stretches across the fields of art, media studies, art history,
rhetoric, and other previously separate scholarly areas. The point
behind this critical response involves undermining the assumed distinctions
between these disciplines’ objects of study, reconceptualizing
the role of images in the process.
[6] In a recent reader devoted to such work, editor Nicholas Mirzoeff
observes that contemporary Western culture can be characterized
by its “tendency to picture or visualize existence.” This
process of picturing our world is not limited specifically to art
galleries, television programs, or billboards; it “is not
created from one medium or in one place as the overly precise divisions
of academia would have it.” Rather, “visual culture
directs our attention away from structured, formal viewing settings
like the cinema and art gallery to the centrality of visual experience
in everyday life.” The reason for this reframing of the role
of images, according to Mirzoeff, is that our visual culture is
composed of “visualization(s) of things that are not in themselves
visual”—ideas, concepts, identities, philosophies.4
Similarly, rhetoric scholar Bruce Gronbeck points out that, “What
we come to know about the world visually is conditioned by how we
are taught to see and what we are taught to look at—that is,
by culturally based formalizing processes and by culturally contoured
content.” Thus, “while seeing and comprehending are
in fact cognitive processes, yet that cognitive processing is a
psychocultural activity”—that psychological act takes
place within an already existing system where certain norms and
perceptive patterns are already in place, and the act of creative
visualizing then further contributes to or alters those systems
and norms.5
[7] In general, this is the ground on which my larger study operates.
However, my interest also extends to the ways that images actually
produce these impacts, how they “work” in particular
situations. The field sketched out above by Gronbeck and Mirzoeff
provides a fine vantage point on systems and structures, but is
perhaps not so strong in considering action. I wish to consider
images not as objects or reflections, but as actions, as
events in the world created in particular situations with particular
motivations. My general approach here draws from a reconsideration
of the work of the great rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke. Burke
views rhetoric as necessarily concerned with issues of power—rhetoric
as an act that attempts to make something happen, a social event
designed to produce some outcome. Images would then be seen as expressive
of attitudes toward the world, with the implied component of a plan
of action (and a theory of images that places them as social acts),
a way of doing things, that goes along with those attitudes. A given
image attempts to have an effect by marshaling socially meaningful
visual components in a certain distinctive way, presenting a particular
culturally located picture of the/a world. Images thus can be considered
as representations of a “visual community”—a social
grouping that shares certain ideas and modes of expression, and
that expresses/“visualizes” those in some way.
Context
[8] With that in mind, we can consider the nature of the visual
community of this body of posters, the Haight-Ashbury subculture
that they represented. Entire books have been written about this
group and their activities—about subsets of the group even—such
that a full presentation would be far too large for this space.
Instead I will try to highlight some salient elements of the subculture’s
activities and ideas about what they were doing, ones relevant to
the topic at hand.
[9] No one is completely sure how or why, originary causes being
so hard to fix, but for a few years in the mid-1960s an incredible
amount of cultural creative energy erupted from a small neighborhood
in San Francisco called the Haight-Ashbury district. The most publicly
visible face of this creative activity was the exploratory improvisatory
rock music played by several waves of groups living there at the
time. Collectives with surreal designations like the Grateful Dead,
Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and
the Fish, and Moby Grape presided over weekly psychedelic rituals
centered around two primary venues: the Avalon Ballroom, run by
a communal collective calling itself the Family Dog, and Bill Graham’s
famous Fillmore Auditorium. These concerts were fully interactive,
involving elaborate experimental light shows that subsumed band
and audience in a collective swirl of activity. The patrons were
part of the experience as well, dressed in bizarre costumes seemingly
drawn from some sort of archetypal historical consciousness. Concerts
were usually scheduled for three or four days each weekend, and
often involved an out-of-town touring artist (running the gamut
from Jimi Hendrix to jazz musicians such as Roland Kirk and Miles
Davis, to bluesmen like Albert King and Buddy Guy) as well as a
selection of local groups.
[10] These new rituals needed some way of calling the faithful in
off the streets, and the promoters turned to the time-tested format
of poster announcements. The posters were a crucial way to get the
word out to the hip community about upcoming events. Grateful Dead
drummer Mickey Hart remembers that “One of the great things
about San Francisco in the ‘60s was walking down the street,
and looking up and seeing these amazing posters by Stanley Mouse,
Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso and David
Singer. […] There were no [commercial] radio spots, no newspaper
ads. We spread the word by posters.” An important factor here
is that the posters were produced from within the subculture; none
of the poster artists were such by trade, but were simply creative
people with some visual talent who were connected to the community
in various ways. As such, the posters were a direct expression of
community ideas and spirit, which made them instantly identifiable.
In Hart’s words, “The posters looked like what we were
playing. They were an open call to come and have fun, which is what
we were all about anyway. The posters didn’t just announce
the concerts, they resonated with the styles of the times and described
visually what the Grateful Dead, Big Brother, Quicksilver and the
Airplane were doing at the Fillmore and the Avalon the following
nights.”6
[11] Over the next few years, a rotating, fluid group of a dozen
artists produced at least a design a week for the two ballrooms,
and many other projects besides (concerts in other regional venues,
posters for plays, other local events, and so on); a full count
of just the posters for the ballrooms and related venues would tally
upwards of 350 images. The artists came from a variety of backgrounds:
Rick Griffin had drawn a popular comic strip for surf magazines,
Stanley Mouse (who with his partner Alton Kelley made up the Mouse
Studios poster team) had done auto detailing and hot rod cartoons,
Bonnie MacLean did management and on-site design for the Fillmore
before stepping into poster design, and so on. Only one of the artists,
Victor Moscoso, had formal art school training. Other notable artists
included Wes Wilson, David Singer, Lee Conklin, Randy Tuten, and
Jim Blashfield; a number of other artists designed but one or two
posters before moving on.
[12] The posters were basically distributed as advertisements, hung
on telephone poles and store windows, wherever there was a space.
They instantly proved quite popular; by mid-year Graham discovered
that people were making off with the posters as soon as he hung
them. Soon afterward both he and the Family Dog started up a poster
division of their operations, printing extras each week to sell
in local shops in order to meet public demand. As the images spread,
as is well known, they would go on to influence everything from
advertising to high art within the next few years.
[13] In addition to music and poster art, the Haight also saw creative
ferment in terms of literature (with a thriving poetry scene carried
over from the 1950s Beats), fine art, and theatre. But holding it
all together was the street scene, which any local would acknowledge
as the real center of the action. The Diggers or someone else were
almost constantly stirring up some sort of surreal community event,
and apparently anything could happen at any given moment. A number
of stores run by members of the hip community also opened, the most
prominent of which was the Psychedelic Shop, which specialized in
posters, paraphernalia, and especially reading material. Social
historian Jay Stevens observes that an early 1966 visitor to the
Psych Shop would likely have been struck by the eclectic esotericism
of the books available in the store. “Among fiction, Herman
Hesse was the obvious best-seller—sales of A Journey to
the East, Steppenwolf, and Siddhartha would make
Hesse the largest-selling German author in America by the end of
the Sixties”, closely followed by imaginative science fiction
novels of various stripes. In addition, “balancing the fiction
was a section of technical works on the psychedelic experience,
Leary, Huxley, Watts, plus a variety of Eastern and occult texts,
ranging from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to the Zohar.”7
The Psych Shop became a central gathering place for the local tribes.
[14]
As suggested by a number of examples above, the Haight-Ashbury became
a hot spot for growing interest in a variety of the world’s
mystical traditions. Scholar and historian Rick Fields observes
that the Haight “was just a short stroll from a Soto Zen mission,
and its American offshoot, the San Francisco Zen Center,” which
was being run at the time by the revered Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.8
A significant amount of the hip underground was also involved in
the Zen community in a significant way, and many others were at
least familiar with it, to the extent that there was a strong Zen
presence and influence on the subculture right from the start. This
can be seen in a November 1966 benefit concert for the Zen Mountain
Center, another local zendo, held at the Avalon Ballroom and featuring
the cream of the local rock bands. The poster for the event is probably
as close as the poster images came to directly adapting the general
characteristics associated with Zen and Taoist art—misty landscapes
rising out of fog, mountainous and indefinite.
[15]
While Zen was a central ingredient in the local philosophical stew,
it was not alone. Fields notes that the community interests encompassed “North
American Indians, Shiva, Kali, Buddha, tarot, astrology, Saint Francis,
Zen, and tantra”,9 all shot through with the energy of intercultural
dialogue as the young people expanded outside of the secular scientism
within which most of them had been raised. As noted by editor Jesse
Kornbluth in a late-1960s compendium of writings from the underground
press, the Haight was distinguished by its “ability to accept
differences. It is this love of diversity within the subculture
as it struggles for life that is most seductive to those who seek
the renewal of spiritual affinities.”10 For this reason, it
is probably not accurate to refer to this subculture as a “counterculture” in
the conventional sense of the word, since they were clearly not
defining selves solely or even primarily in opposition to (“counter”)
the wider culture. In fact, the local community was often as critical
of the New Left and protest movement as they were of the mainstream,
feeling that the protestors were caught in a limiting dualism, defining
themselves only in the negative.11
[16] And of course one must also make note of the central catalytic
role in these cultural-philosophical developments of LSD and other
consciousness-expanding substances, which the community, as influenced
by a number of cultural observers—Aldous Huxley, Andrew Weil,
Leary, Alan Watts—interpreted in terms of mystical experience.
However, neither were all of the locals totally in line with the
public face of the psychedelic revolution, Timothy Leary and his
followers—though the Haight crowd was certainly not against psychedelics.
The difference lay within their approaches to putting the influence
into action. Leary had been drawing fairly literal parallels between
the LSD experience and the experiences of Asian mysticism, publishing
books that actually rewrote classic texts in “hip” sixties
argot, recasting Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the central
expression of perennial Chinese philosophy, as a book of “psychedelic
prayers”, and turning the Tibetan Book of the Dead into
a manual for psychedelic experience.
[17] Many in the Haight subculture were not so sure that was a wise
option, to try and give up their own cultural background and simply
step into another culture’s belief system. A more significant
inspiration for the Haight group was the surreal antics of author
Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, whose three-month tour
across America in a psychedelic schoolbus in summer 1964 was the
stuff of legend in the community. Kesey’s gang disdained an
over-scholarly attitude towards the eternal mysteries—they
called such approaches the “crypt trip”—though
supposedly they all studied the Chinese I Ching carefully.
As a group, they wanted to transcend through their American
cultural background, warts and all, rather than by running away
from it. Thus, as lovingly detailed by their chronicler Tom Wolfe,
there were
no water spouts of Acadmie Francaise cherubim and water babies
here, and no reverent toga-linen-flapping Gautama Buddha Orientals
breathing out the spent Roquefort breath of spiritual detachment.
Instead, somehow they’re going to try it right down the main highway,
eight lanes wide, heron-neck arc lamps rising up as far as the eye
can see, and they will broadcast on all frequencies, waving American
flags, turning up the Day-Glo and the neon of 1960s electro-pastel
America, wired up and amplified, 327,000 horsepower, a fantasy bus
in a science-fiction movie, welcoming all on board, no matter how
unbelievably Truck Stop Low Rent or raunchy…12
Working with such materials, it is no surprise that the cultural
output of the community did not bear a direct resemblance to the
surface aspects of the various Eastern spiritual traditions. As
will be discussed below, the influence came more in terms of how the
materials were dealt with.
[18] So what sort of goals did the subculture seem to have? Helen
Perry, an older sociologist who was living in the Haight at the
time and wrote a book about her experiences in 1970, captures the
community spirit in terms evocative enough to be quoted at length.
She compares the subculture’s activities to what James Joyce
did with written language, freeing its action by smashing some of
its old patterns. In much the same way, she suggests, the young
people of the Haight were
freeing behavior, for they separated all the values and the actions
of the core society and spread them out on their huge work
table alongside the values and the actions of various peoples
from every corner of the earth and from all periods of history.
And in the process of separating out all these pieces and trying
to fit them back together again, they smashed some of the behavior
of the middle-class society, and all of us have been affected.
For the values-by-words and the values-by-action of the core
society did not fit together when one looked at them closely,
so new action was necessary to fit some of the revered values
from the past; and some values from other cultures were found
that seemed superior to some of the values of one’s own
culture and that required further experiments in new action.
And bending over their huge work table, still sorting, still
fitting, the seekers sometimes seemed disorganized and their
task chaotic, for they had literally scrambled hundreds of huge
jigsaw puzzles. But a new and often beautiful pattern was
slowly emerging; and some of the old pieces of the puzzle, which
had once seemed to form such a polished and unbroken unit, now
seemed only tawdry and misshapen pieces in the bright light.13
[19] This can certainly be heard in the music that formed such a
large part of the subculture’s life, as the local rock bands
all enthusiastically hybridized elements from a variety of sources.
With a repertoire that drew heavily on older blues and country songs
and stylistic elements, those basic sources were elaborated into
lengthy arabesques influenced by the improvisatory methods of jazz
and Indian classical music, plus the energy of early rock’n’roll
and the Beatles, all amplified to the point where the sonic waves
could produce physical effects. Such eclecticism was also part of
the moving light-shows that accompanied the bands’ performances
in the ballrooms, as a rich panoply of cultural icons from America
and beyond swirled in and out of flashing strobe lights, liquid
oil projections, experimental films, and so forth. This ongoing
process of cultural collage shows up in the posters used to advertise
those shows as well, especially in the iconographic elements the
posters draw upon. Before exploring those however, it is worth discussing
a bit further some of the broader stylistic elements of the posters,
especially since some of these also trace back to Eastern influences.
Style and Iconography
[20]
The body of posters draws on a remarkably wide range of stylistic
influences—or rather, appropriations might be a better
term, since the concept of artistic influence implies working within
or extending a particular tradition. However, the Haight poster
artists rarely treated their visual resources with undue reverence.
[21] Believing that the main goal of a poster is to grab people’s
attention, their designs usually involved a strong central image,
in many cases a “found” image lifted directly from some
other source. The artists became noted for their wide-ranging disregard
for proprietary values, seeing the history of visual production
as basically a graphic flea market. According to critic Dominy Hamilton, “Reproductions
of old masters, movie stills, and comic books were all considered
potential visual material. [They] applied the same criteria to the
finely wrought artifacts of ancient civilizations as to the homely
or poignant truths revealed by the camera.”14 Poster historian
Walter Medeiros writes that their “use of established images
was not a matter of plagiarism or poverty of imagination,” but
rather an expression of the “openness and freedom” at
the heart of the Haight philosophy, and also of the “age of
media with its heavy dosage of visual input, especially from television.
For them, all images were part of a common visual vocabulary,” as
trademarks and other commonplace images were used to create a “flash,” a “‘hit’ of
fun [or] beauty” by appropriating and recontextualizing “references
to experiences common to their peers.”15 An additional important
factor is that, as mentioned above, these visual references were
rarely “played straight” by the artists—rather
they were almost always given a sharp twist through being creatively
juxtaposed and recombined, and also usually through being enfolded
by bright, flashing colours and swirling visual patterns that recalled
both the ballroom dance concerts and the perceptual effects associated
with psychedelics. The implications of this mode of presentation
will be dealt with further below.
[22]
One aspect of the posters that displays most clearly the scrambling
and reconstruction of cultural jigsaw puzzles mentioned above by
Helen Perry involves the choices of iconographic elements. Given
the approach to the world of images as a “graphic flea market” waiting
to be plundered, combined with the wide-ranging philosophical openness
of the community, it is no surprise that the specific sorts of images
appropriated ran the gamut from the ridiculous to the profound.
It is also no surprise that symbols of the world’s mystical
traditions—including a great preponderance of Eastern derivation—were
among the most common elements, though again usually given some
sort of spin.
[23]
The poster artists’ central concern here was clearly not how
the borrowed images fit in with conventional Western cultural hierarchies.
They were as likely to steal popular images such as the “Zig-Zag
Man” rolling paper logo or Mad magazine’s Alfred
E. Newman as they were to burgle classic pieces of Western art such
as the Venus de Milo or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
And, just by way of suggesting that they were totally aware of what
they were up to, a small legend at the bottom of Mouse Studios’ Zig-Zag
Man design reads, “What you don’t know about copying
and duplicating can’t hurt you.”
[24]
Many of the images were, however, unabashedly spiritual in derivation.
In working out their intercultural puzzle, the artists showed no
trepidation about drawing from their own society’s belief
systems, photomontaging famous statues of Christ or incorporating
the familiar Christian “fish” symbol, as in a 1967 poster
that rock band Country Joe & the Fish used to advertise their
first LP—though in keeping with the recombinatory tactics
the fish ends up being juxtaposed with a Chinese Tai Chi symbol,
a psychedelic pinwheel, and an all-seeing eye. The artists did not
limit themselves to the “official” Western tradition
either, drawing on images from Medieval alchemy and its extension
in Freemasonry—the “eye-in-the-pyramid” that found
its way onto U.S. currency due to the Masonic associations of the “founding
fathers” made its way into several posters, greatly psychedelicized
of course. The historical roots of the Western tradition were fair
game too, and mythological figures from Neptune to Mercury (occasionally
used as a verbal punning representation of the local rock group
Quicksilver Messenger Service) were popular elements for recontextualization. “Western” tradition
also took on a different spin through the popularity of Native American
imagery—both images of Native Americans and also enthusiastic
incorporations of the imagery of totem poles, Inca icons, and the
like.
[25]
And, as mentioned above, a great number of the posters took their
inspiration from cultural dialogues involving Eastern images. To
some extent, this direction had also been being explored by other
local (fine) artists such as painter Michael Bowen, whose incorporations
of mystical symbols in works such as “Yantra! India” and
many others were instrumental in influencing an East-West visual
dialogue since the late 1950s. The sorts of imagery drawn on by
the poster artists could be every bit as esoterically obtuse, as
seen in a 1967 Randy Salas design that seems to combine Kabballistic
and Egyptian icons, though they could also be much lighter in tone,
as in Victor Moscoso’s eye-grabbing 1967 design for a “Sphinx
Dance”. One of the more famous mystical images in the posters
was another “second-generation” engagement. Mouse Studios’ “skeleton
and roses” design, a recontextualized illustration from The
Rubayyat of Omar Khyaam, became visually synonymous with the
rock band the Grateful Dead, in spite of the fact that the band
at first resisted its use. The group had supposedly taken its name
from an ancient Buddhist text they had been reading that described
enlightened beings as “grateful dead” and they favoured
those associations; for that reason they were resistant to becoming
associated with images that might be seen as popularizing death
or the macabre. After learning where the image came from however,
they took to it and utilized it and similar images often thereafter.
[26]
Of course, many images did refer directly to Asian mystical traditions.
One of the most famous posters was a collaboration between Stanley
Mouse and Michael Bowen for the massive January 1967 “Human
Be-In” event in Golden Gate Park. The Be-In brought the local
underground way out in the open, drawing more than 30,000 attendees
ranging from hippies to Buddhists to police to Hell’s Angels
to young children, and received much national and international
media coverage. The image the artists chose to encapsulate the spirit
behind the event was a photo of an Indian fahkir, third eye
wide open and projecting light, framed by ornate Victorian scrollwork.
Other Indian imagery showed up occasionally, but by far the most
common iconic borrowing in the whole body of posters was the Chinese
Tai Chi symbol. Both instantly recognizable and open to a variety
of meanings and applications, the icon could be reworked in a wide
range of settings. In a 1967 poster advertising an exhibition of
the community’s posters all the way east in Texas, Victor
Moscoso symbolized the output of the whole gang of artists in the
form of a floating Tai Chi symbol vibrating with a pattern simultaneously
Victorian and densely optical. Mouse Studios worked the symbol into
their work often, and generally somewhat lightheartedly, as in a
metaphorical August 1967 image involving a huge suspended Tai Chi
icon towering over five Old Western old-timers stuffed into a small
rowboat. It was also a symbol that allowed for cross-cultural pollination,
as in the Country Joe poster discussed above, or a famous 1968 Rick
Griffin/Victor Moscoso collaboration that involves a gaggle of Tai
Chi symbols dancing around a giant Egyptian scarab beetle that seems
to be holding up the sun. Further creative ways the artists found
to integrate this icon will be mentioned below.
Pattern
[27]
Another element of cultural interface that can be seen in the posters
also arises from the questioning of certain aspects of Western thought
as it entered into dialogue with beliefs and ideas of other cultures.
These influences are more philosophical in nature, and expressed
themselves in the posters at the level of form and pattern.
[28] The basis of this engagement flows from a question of the philosophical
presumption, current in Western thought since at least Descartes,
of a dualistic split between mind and body, individual and world.
For Western thought, philosopher Alan Watts notes, the “‘nub’ problem
is the self-contradictory definition of man himself as a separate
and independent being in the world, as distinct from a special
action of the world.”16 The latter view, he observes,
is a central part of philosophies such as Taoism and Vedanta, which
take a more holistic approach to particular situations, rather than
the Newtonian billiard-ball mechanics or Cartesian dualisms that
long predominated in Western thought. This holistic picture, he
notes, “is not to say only that things exist in relation to
one another, but that what we call ‘things’ are no more
than glimpses of a unified process. Certainly, this process has
distinct features which catch our attention, but we must remember
that distinction is not separation.”17 These Eastern philosophies,
Watts argues, tend not to think in terms of action and response,
cause and effect, subject and object, but rather “think of
situations as moving patterns, like organisms themselves. […]
As the Chinese say, the various features of a situation ‘arise
mutually’ or imply one another as back implies front, and
as chickens imply eggs—and vice versa. They exist in relation
to one another like the poles of the magnet, only more complexly
patterned.”18 Thus the perceived “relation between and
organism and its environment is mutual, neither one is the
cause or determinant of the other since the arrangement between
them is polar.”19
[29]
For obvious reasons, an engagement with these sorts of ideas could
and did significantly alter conventional Western thinking about
everything from psychological issues of identity formation to broader
concerns about the natural environment. These engagements continue
vigorously in our contemporary culture.20 Perceiving individuals
as smaller processes within larger and more complex processes calls
for a move away from Newtonian billiard-ball thought, and also from
the mind-world split put forth by Descartes, a move in the direction
of process-oriented thinking, complex pattern, and moving form.
Whether flowing directly or indirectly from the East-West engagement,
this seems to have been the direction of much contemporary science,
philosophy, and cultural theory.
[30]
One type of influence such thoughts might have on visual creativity
can be seen clearly in a number of the Haight-Ashbury concert posters
as well. While many of the previously discussed posters drew on
and recontextualized iconic images, an even more common element
of the poster graphics was the human form, presented in a manner
that reconfigures the basics of Western portraiture in the direction
of the philosophical engagement discussed above. These posters rarely
involve any sort of naturalistic perspective, elements are not arrayed
in any kind of three-dimensional frame; and rather than standing
out strongly against the environment they dominate, the human forms
in the Haight posters flow with their surroundings, figures interpenetrating
with grounds, organisms swirling into environments.
[31] One mode of visualizing this was to place a human form not
as a dominant form against a surrounding background, but instead
as a stylized element in a swirling and morphing flow, playing up
an interpenetration between individual and world. In both a June
1967 Bonnie MacLean design, and a February 1967 Wes Wilson creation,
a female form emerges from optically swirling eddies even as her
hair and other bodily elements become part of those swirls, which
also include the information about the musical acts at the concert.
This both plays up the transactional nature of organism and environment
discussed above, (one that was also felt to be part of
the LSD experience), and also makes reference to the ballroom dance
concert environments in which the outlines of the individual would
become subsumed into the pulsating patterns and liquid flow.
[32] Another way of approaching the visual representation of these
concepts was to utilize clashing patterns to create perceptual confusion
as to figure and ground. An October 1966 Mouse Studios design shows
this clearly, problematizing the organism-environment relationship
via optical patterning and contrasting colours forming an electrically
pulsating human head, also again perhaps recalling the ballroom
light shows. Such images reconfigure the individual human form as
patterns of energy rather than substance or stuff, flashing electric
vibrations that interpenetrate with an environment of the same.
[33] Probably the epitome of this approach in the ballroom posters
can be seen in a September 1967 poster by Victor Moscoso, one that
I would like to consider in a bit more depth to tease out the material
references and philosophical resonances visualized. On the surface,
this image has a material reference in the local dance concerts,
a man and woman grooving ecstatically (and nakedly) to the sound.
Underground press editor Jesse Kornbluth wrote in the late 1960s
of these electric rituals that, “although it is nothing if
not impermanent, there are moments when the audience and the band
fuse in a continuum of light, sound, and motion,”21 and this
image seems on one level to suspend in time just such a moment.
The bodies themselves have actually become the flashing, pulsating
patterns of energy.
Victor
Moscoso: "Mist Dance," Family Dog/Avalon Ballroom,
September 1967.
Image appears courtesy The Family Dog.
[34]
Continuing to meditate on the image, another connection with the
music can be found in the patterning that charges the bodies. The
lower part of the dancing forms is filled with a rolling, regularly
repeating rounded rhythmic pattern—just like the driving danceable
rhythms that formed the foundation for the music of the local bands.
The torso/midsection area also features a regular pattern, here
more of a natural plant-like blossoming that grows out from the
rhythmic pulsations below—a representation perhaps of the
organic old blues and folk songs that formed the repertoire of many
Haight bands, songs with their roots in the earth. The heads of
both figures form windows onto flashing floating stars arrayed in
no set pattern, just like the starry spaceward improvisations that
danced overtop of the music played in the ballrooms.
[35]
Such a description of the patterns also begins to suggest some of
the deeper mystical nature of the image. Both bodies are constituted
from patterns that seem to represent earth, organic natural growth,
and infinite sky all within the same form, recalling the mystical
tenet that the human body works as a microcosm of the universe—as
above, so below. This connection can be explored further in relation
to Chinese philosophy, in particular the teachings of esoteric Taoism.
Ancient Taoist philosophy held that all things in the universe—and
of course humans are things in the universe—are imbued with
three different forms of life-giving energy; enlightenment lay in
harmonizing those energies as they occur in one’s body with
the larger cosmological processes in which they also occur. As translated
by philosopher and scholar John Blofeld, these energies are ching,
or essence; ch’i, or vitality; and shen, or
spirit.22 The first of these, ching, has to do with bringing
form into the universe, creative energy that gives matter tangible
substance; at the coarsest human level, it also refers to the reproductive
processes. Ch’i refers to cosmic vitality, the “breath” of
the universe; at the material human level, it is closely associated
with breathing, and the natural processes of heart, kidney, and
pores, all of which bridge the individual essence with the cosmic
spirit. It is also worth noting that Chinese philosophy locates
the seat of individual consciousness in relation to these processes
in the heart-and-lungs area, in contrast to Western convention,
which usually places consciousness in the brain or mind. Finally, shen refers
to cosmic spirit, pure undifferentiated being, or at the human level,
mind; the ideal state of mind for Chinese philosophy thus has to
do with a unity with cosmological being, not with rationalized thought
processes, which are considered to be a helpful but often neurotic
add-on.
[36] Thus the ideal state of enlightened being for Taoism involves
the integration of these energies at the human level with their
more subtle and cosmic forms. This seems to find a strong visual
representation in Moscoso’s poster image—generative
rhythmic pulsations of ching, flowering organic growth of ch’i in
the torso (it is also significant that the band information is placed
at this level, as the personalities of the groups would be located
at that conceptual level of consciousness), and starry (improvisatory)
cosmos of shen for the mind. The connection seems to be completed
by the dance of the male and female figures. The Chinese Tai Chi
symbol, as mentioned above, represents the harmonious interplay
of conceptual opposites, one of which at the material level is male
and female. Thus this image can be seen in terms that are both material
and cosmic, the mystical integration of levels of being, worldly
opposites reaching a higher state through voluptuous cosmic interplay,
actualizing their shared energies by losing their selves in the
pulsating swirl of the dance.
[37] Was Moscoso directly aware of such comparisons? It would be
difficult to say, probably even by him (since, as the old saw says, “If
you can remember the sixties you probably weren’t there.”).
It would likely be a stretch to suggest that he created the image
with a book of Chinese philosophy open in front of him, as simple
illustrated philosophy. I might even suggest it to be somewhat of
a moot issue as to how relevant such specifics are in terms of the
study of culture. But my larger point is that the image was made
within and appeals to a socio-cultural milieu in which such forms
of thought were common, in which the problematizing of the relationship
between individual and world was an issue that was on the table
for discussion, reconceptualization, and public (visual) dialogue.
Koan
[38]
A final area of East-West engagement I would like to address has
to do with an even subtler element of the posters’ construction,
one that has to do with what we might call their “mode of
enunciation,” their way of “speaking.” It applies
to a large number, perhaps even most, of the images that made up
the body of posters, and could be considered as a fundamental aspect
of their visual rhetoric. Rhetorically speaking, we might consider
the preceding elements at the same level that a scholar of verbal
or written rhetoric might consider such elements as word choice,
figurative language, and so on. But it is also worth considering
some broader issues involving the modality in which these posters
speak.
[39] Clearly, a significant aspect of the posters is that the elements
and motifs discussed above only very rarely occur in isolation.
Rather, they are overlaid, hybridized, or simply piled on. Even
within individual posters, discontinuous elements are combined,
juxtaposed, played with. Not to mention the sheer semiotic density
of the posters—lettering becoming decorative, images imparting
information, illegibility a conscious strategy rather than an accident,
a transactional interplay of elements conventionally considered
categorically separate. In some ways, this density is directly in
keeping with the basic experiential reality of the subculture: flashing
patterns in an old-timey setting, subsuming the human form in elaborate
whorls, surrounded by vintage Americana and enigmatic icons from
mystical other worlds—this could be a basic description of
a night at the ballrooms. But equally clear from the above examples
is that the mode in which these elements were used, their combined
references and unreadability and symbolic overload, were conceptualized
within a visionary framework: a move to Zap! the perceptual
system to a higher level of functioning, engendering a state of
higher consciousness through confounding the normal modes of sense-making
just as the ballroom concerts, street theatre, and visionary poetry
also aimed to do.
[40] However, these posters are not unreadable chaos; in fact, many
are quite classically ordered, with a surprising amount of formal
clarity and symmetry. And as we’ve seen above, they also utilize
extensively what might be called “vernacular” images—commonplace
forms and styles that resonate strongly with the Haight’s
cultural and historical environment. Unlike the high Modernist art
of the period just preceding the posters, but in some ways quite
consistent with 1960s Pop Art, the posters retain and reinvigorate
the use of recognizable forms from a variety of sources. Rather
than the pure expression of a heroic individual, these posters announce
their stake as social/rhetorical objects by utilizing familiar styles;
what is significant is the mode in which they are used, the way they
are expressed. Just as the rock bands drew on familiar musical bases,
so did the visuals of the posters often adapt cultural readymades
and familiar icons to quite new uses and expanded sorts of significance.
By drawing on commonly recognizable materials, they opened up further
possibilities for that “zap” of insight by juxtaposing
opposites—expressing the transcendent in a commonplace format,
a shared mode of speech of mystics throughout the ages.
[41] My point here is not to do a detailed analysis of the posters,
breaking them down and categorizing them along the lines of various
paradoxical figures of speech. Rather, I want to use them in a metaphorical
sense, to suggest that the posters “work” in similar
ways, the mode of expression employed in the ballroom concert posters
setting up modes of audience engagement with similar intent. The
posters “speak” in such a way that they, like the riddles
of classical Greek philosophy and myth, challenge the viewer “to
combine impulsive leaps of intuition with caution, playfulness with
serious reflection, and a child’s openness of mind with the
knowledge and wit of an adult.”23 The caution comes from the
pure semiotic overload of the images, as a slow deciphering process
is often necessary to make out any of the informational content
in many of the posters; however, intuition is spurred onwards by
the associative (il)logic of the posters’ construction and
(dis)organization and the allusiveness of the imagistic content.
Clearly the posters are created in a playful frame of mind, as can
be seen in all of the visual puns and appropriated icons, and they
call forth such attitudes in “reading” them. At the
same time, as we’ve seen above there is often a more serious,
or rather profound, meaning that grows out of the way those potentially
silly elements are used—the goof, that is to say, is often
a cosmic one. And while the knowledge of an inquisitive adult is
called for in recognizing all the references within the posters
and in considering the varied levels of meaning, the posters also
clearly speak with a childlike sense of wonder and freshness in
their gleeful reconfigurations of accepted “reality” (from
the conventions of advertising design to the commonplaces of everyday
logic). Philosophical scholars David Hoffman and Sharon Hoffman
write that the riddles of Greek philosophy “demand openness
of the minds they confront, an ability to think beyond the habitual
usages of words and objects and to approach the matter at hand as
if for the first time.”24 This seems remarkably close to the
visual imagination expressed in the posters.
[42] Of course, Greek philosophy and culture is hardly the only
source of such paradoxical rhetorical forms. The Asian traditions
of Taoism and Buddhism, especially Zen, abound with oxymorons. Japanese
Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki notes that visionaries of all stripes have
long been fond of expounding their views via “mystic irrationalities,” though
differences can be noted among the traditions. While the Greeks,
for example, were fond of playful riddling, Zen Buddhism is “more
daringly concrete in its paradoxes than other mystical teachings.
The latter are more or less confined to general statements concerning
life or God or the world, but Zen carries its paradoxical assertions
into every detail of our daily life.” Instead of expressing
its principles via lofty abstractions, Zen “has no hesitation
in flatly denying all our most familiar facts of experience.”25
The characteristic form of this speech within the Zen tradition
is the koan—a sort of riddle designed to produce the
enlightening Zap! known as satori by being completely
insoluble within the bounds of normal linear logic.
[43] The koan, as discussed by Suzuki, takes a number of
different forms historically, but all share certain psychic elements.
The basic impulse behind the koan is “to bring about
a highly wrought-up state of consciousness” through confounding
normal thought processes. In attempting to process the koan,
an individual’s “reasoning faculty is kept in abeyance,” the
superficial activities of the mind tied in knots so that the “profounder
parts which are found generally deeply buried can be brought out
and exercised.”26 Finally the mind reaches its most “stumped” state
through the total concentration of one’s attention on an object
that simply refuses to make “normal” sense. Here, Alan
Watts writes, the individual is brought to a point of feeling completely
stupid, as if encased in a huge block of ice. But then, for no obvious
reason, “the block of ice suddenly collapses, this vast lump
of unintelligibility comes instantly alive. The problem of what
it is becomes transparently absurd—a question which, from
the beginning, meant nothing whatever.” The tense knot produced
by linear thought trying to grasp the impossible is suddenly loosed,
at which point “there is no more sensation of a hard core
of selfhood standing over against the rest of the world”,
bringing about the state of consciousness known in Zen as satori
or enlightenment.27 Rather than attempt the impossible task
of explaining the concept of satori through the limited medium
of conventional linear logic, the goal of the koan, according
to Suzuki, is “to unfold the Zen psychology in the mind of
the uninitiated, and to reproduce the state of consciousness, of
which these statements are the expression.”28
[44] Given the position and role of Zen in San Francisco, I believe
we can certainly see some of this paradoxical logic in the posters,
though in a much different style from the Asian traditions. Japanese
and Chinese art is historically often minimal and suggestive, allowing
the mind to fill in details, drawing in the viewer by subtlety and
seeming incompleteness. In keeping with the Pranksters’ embrace
of dirty electric neon eight-cylinder warts-and-all mid-1960s America,
however, the posters necessarily “speak” in a more densely
overloaded tone. However, the concreteness of expression shines
through. Dr. Suzuki further explains the logic behind Zen’s “graphic
irrationalities”, and the mystical significance behind their
use:
“The flower is not red, nor is the willow green,” is
one of the best known utterances of Zen, and is regarded as the
same as its affirmative: “The flower is red and the willow
is green.” To put it in logical formula, it will run like
this: “A is at once A and not-A.” If so, I am
I and yet you are I. An Indian philosopher asserts that Tat twam asi,
Thou art it. If so, heaven is hell and God is devil. To pious orthodox
Christians, what a shocking doctrine this Zen is!29
The influence of this kind of thinking shows up in a large number
of the posters; many of the above examples base their free-wheeling
appropriations and recontextualizations in just such direct (il)logic.
It is worth noting that this aspect of the posters was actually
noticed at the time, though not necessarily approvingly. Many commentators
and art critics remarked negatively on the head-stumping confusion
the posters produced, and a 1967 article in Time magazine
derided them as flatly “irrational” (most likely without
realizing that such an evaluation would be high praise for someone
attempting to design a visual koan).
[45] While the koan-logic can be seen across the body of
posters, it is worth mentioning a few of the modalities it took
within the images. One way of scrambling normal sense-making might
be to take a familiar image and suggest a completely different meaning
or context (just as verbal koans would do with words). One
of the most famous and audacious instances of this was an October
1967 Mouse Studios poster that directly lifted the central image
from a famous Art Nouveau design by Alphonse Mucha advertising “Job” brand
rolling papers. Due to the revival of Nouveau, this image would
have been familiar to many of the general public at the time. Mouse
and Kelley strip away the original lettering and dainty patterning
in the background in favour of wide flat areas of dayglo red and
hot pink, giving the woman nuclear green hair to boot! Suzuki’s
assertion that the willow is not green would be on the same level
of paradoxicality as Mouse Studios’ suggestion that the hair
of the woman in Alphonse Mucha’s “Job” ad actually is green—a
flat and funny denial of a basic fact of conventional perception,
here given an electric-age further twist by the playful recontextualization
of a recognizable image.
[46] The reworking of familiar types of cultural communication provided
endless possibilities for the production of viewer confusion. A
1967 Rick Griffin poster for the Family Dog looks exactly like the
front page of the Sunday newspaper comics section—until one
gets close enough to realize that the titles of the funnies are
the band names, and the comic strips bring together Mickey Mouse
(wearing the stars’n’stripes), Griffin’s old comic
character Murph the Surf, the back of a Camel cigarettes pack, word
balloons filled with runes and invented characters, and a sense
of design and placing that would not be out of place in a Salvador
Dali painting. The whole thing keeps threatening to make linear
sense, winding the viewer tighter and tighter by playing on the
expected in a narrative comic format, until a Pop Art explosion
in the penultimate panel leaves the viewer with nothing but a big Zap!.
[47] Other types of puzzles were more obvious and more optical.
Victor Moscoso was especially fond of op-art patterning, often turning
the informational content into dense geometrical designs in viciously
clashing colours. In one 1966 poster the lettering becomes the entire
image, bending and swirling into a large Tai Chi form that takes
shape in the center of the poster—the lettering makes up the
icon, the icon is the lettering, the eye-gouging colours twist and
flash the viewer’s normal faculties of perception until the
whole thing begins to twirl… and only then does the information
become readable.
[48]
One particular Stanley Mouse solo poster takes the koan concept
to heart directly. Inside of a cleanly classical Art Deco-style
frame Mouse placed a series of apparently unconnected images including
yellow flowers, a shining sun, and an X-ray of a human hand. The
goal, he said later, was for the images to work together in an allusive
fashion to suggest meaning rather than provide it: “I called
it my Haiku poem,” he said, “because I saw it as a series
of visual syllables.”30 This apparently senseless, yet evocative
and potentially profound, poster also came to be known by fans and
collectors as the “Cosmic Collage”.
Stanley
Mouse, "Haiku Poem," Fillmore Auditorium/Winterland
Auditorium, December 1967.
Image appears courtesy Wolfgang's Vault (www.wolfgangsvault.com).
Conclusion
[49] In conclusion, I would just like to make note of a few potential
criticisms of these posters and of the type of cultural dialogue
represented in them. In 1968, reporter Nicholas Hoffman published
a book expanded from his news stories about the people of the Haight.
He paid particular attention to critiquing their attempts at intercultural
engagement, seeing it as little more than a juvenile flight from
good honest American Liberalism, not to mention messy and confusing
as well. The community’s artistic experiments, and especially
their interest in a variety of non-Western philosophies, in Von
Hoffman’s words, “strikes outsiders as irrational, internally
inconsistent, and so devoid of programmatic content as to be useless
for any kind of application.”31 The subculture was critiqued
from the political Left as well; committed protestors tended to
see all this mystical mumbo-jumbo as evidencing little but a fearfulness
to get involved in the inevitable revolution that was destined to
sweep the land. Even some of the more pious American adherents of
Buddhism and other Eastern religions weighed in, seeing this Westernizing
of the eternal mysteries as too crass, too tacky, diluting the purity
of the form as it should properly exist.
[50] I’m afraid I have little response to such arguments;
I believe that the posters (and the music, and so on) speak clearly
for themselves. And whenever possible, I try to avoid arguing with
purists anyway. However, it may be worth noting a few words from
those wiser than myself who have engaged in such debates.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche (also known as Khyentse Norbu), one of
the living masters of Tibetan Buddhism, argued recently that if
the central experiences and ideas of Buddhism are “found in
a path or a philosophy, it doesn’t matter if you call it Buddhism
or not […] You could have a surfer giving you teachings on
how to sit on a beach watching a sunset”; if what she says
contains those truths and experiences, it expresses the heart of
Buddhism.32 Similarly, Alan Watts notes that in situations outside
of Japan or China, teachers have been known to use books germane
to those cultures to illustrate the paradoxical nature of Zen logic
and the koan: “the late Sokei-an Sasaki, working in
the United States, found that an admirable manual for this purpose
was Alice in Wonderland.”33 Khyentse Rinpoche argued
in a recent interview that the real point is the point, however
it is expressed, rather than the external appearance:
As long as the fundamental view of Buddhism is not lost, there
is no problem. We may try for sentimental reasons to preserve
the traditional aspects as much as possible, but they will eventually
change. Don’t
forget that the customs and traditions that we are trying to preserve
today were once modern and progressive. […] I see Westerners
wearing chubas and showing off their malas. But I think the more
people do that, the more they forget the essence, the actual point
of Buddha’s teaching. It’s amazing to see how
eager some people are to adopt what is not essential, and
throw out what is essential!34 (Roberts, 32-33)
As part of an ongoing dialogue between Eastern and Western modes
of thought, the Haight posters seem to make a similar argument,
focusing not on the trappings but on the experience—and equally
importantly the sharing of that experience through the re-imagination
of popular art forms.
Note on Image Copyrights
We would like to thank the copyright holders for permission to use
the images included in the article:
The Family Dog, Chet Helms, d.b.a. Family Dog Productions, 786 Bush
St., P.O. Box 42, San
Francisco, CA 94108, 415-391-2423
Wolfgang's Vault, Bill Graham Presents Archives, (415) 543-4530, www.wolfgangsvault.com
Notes
1 Quoted in James Henke and Parke Puterbaugh, Eds, I Want to
Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era 1965-1969 (San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1997), 25.
2 Quoted in Jesse Kornbluth, Editor, Notes from the New Underground:
An Anthology (New York: The Viking Press, 1968), 170.
3 Joel Selvin, foreword to Stanley Mouse, Freehand: The Art of
Stanley Mouse (Berkeley: SLG Books, 1993), 10-11.
4 Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader (New York:
Routledge, 1998), 4-5.
5 Bruce Gronbeck, “Reconceptualizing the Visual Experience
in Media Studies”, in Judith S. Trent, ed. Communication:
Views from the Helm for the 21st Century (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 1998), 292.
6 Mickey Hart, foreword to Stanley Mouse, Freehand: The Art of
Stanley Mouse (Berkeley: SLG Books, 1993), 7.
7 Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New
York: Grove Press, 1987), 303.
8 Rick Fields, “A High History of Buddhism.” Tricycle:
The Buddhist Review, Fall 1996, 48.
9 Fields, "History," 48.
10 Jesse Kornbluth, Notes from the New Underground: An Anthology.
(New York: The Viking Press, 1968), 121.
11 For more on the problems of the “counter”-culture
concept, see Stephen MacEdo, Editor. Reassessing the Sixties:
Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1997); and Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture:
Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (Garden
City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969).
12 Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York:
Bantam Books, 1968), 148.
13 Helen Swick Perry, The Human Be-In (New York: Basic Books,
Inc., 1970), 111.
14 Dominy Hamilton, quoted in Paul Grushkin, The Art of Rock:
Posters From Presley to Punk (San Francisco: Artabras, 1988),
76.
15 Walter Medeiros, quoted in Ted Owen and Denise Dickson, High
Art: A History of the Psychedelic Poster (London: Sanctuary
Publishing Limited, 1999), 62.
16 Alan W. Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who
You Are (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 88-89.
17 Watts, The Book, 90-91.
18 Watts, The Book, 96.
19 Watts, The Book, 99.
20 For more on how continuing changes in spirituality affect the
wider culture, see Eugene Taylor, Shadow Culture: Psychology
and Spirituality in America (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999);or
peruse any issue of periodicals such as the Shambhala Sun, Tricycle,
or The Empty Vessel.
21 Kornbluth, Notes, 99.
22 John Blofeld, Taoism: the Road to Immortality (Boston:
Shambhala, 1978).
23 David Hoffman and Sharon Hoffman. “Enigma, Paradox, Parable.” Parabola:
Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning, Summer 2000,
21.
24 Hoffman and Hoffman, "Enigma," 14.
25 D.T. Suzuki, “’Empty-Handed I Go’: Comments
on the Zen Koan.” Parabola: Myth, Tradition, and the Search
for Meaning I (Summer 2000), 82 (originally published 1927).
26 D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956), 149-150.
27 Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York: Vintage Spiritual
Classics, 1999 [1957]), 166.
28 D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, 135.
29 D.T. Suzuki, “Comments on the Zen Koan”, 82.
30 Stanley Mouse, quoted in Gayle Lemke, The Art of the Fillmore:
1966-1971 (Petaluma, CA: Acid Test Productions, 1997), 93.
31 Nicholas Von Hoffman, We Are the People Our Parents Warned
Us Against. (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 136.
32 Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, “Buddhism in a Nutshell: The
Four Seals of Dharma.” Shambhala Sun, March 2000, 40-41.
33 Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, 167.
34 Kelly Roberts, “Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche: What Changes
and What Doesn’t.” Shambhala Sun (November 2000),
32-33.
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