Jim Harrison is a respected author whose recent book, "Returning to Earth" is getting good reviews. I was listening to a tape (After Ikkyu) of him reading and commenting on his poems and heard this amazing quote:
"...I do not remotely consider myself a 'Zen Buddhist,' as that is too ineptly convenient, and a specific barrier for one whose lifelong obsession has been his art rather than his religion. Someone like Robert Aitken Roshi is a Zen Buddhist. I'm still a fool. Early on in my teens I suffocated myself with Protestant theology and am mindful, in Coleridge's terms, that, like spiders, we spin webs of deceit out of our big hanging asses, whether with Jesus or the Buddha."
For more poems by J.H. click HERE