MD Pirsig in Lila: Beat inspiration or plagiarism ?

From: Kolthof, dhr. A.R. (AKolthof@cvz.nl)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 13:39:11 GMT

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    Lila p.324 Dutch version: ' (...): reference to On the Road by Jack Kerouac-
    R.P. mentions how this writer is the voice of a movement, the so-called
    hippies, which- by the way- is the movement my parents hated, and how those
    hippies missed a big chance, not noticing the difference between the
    biological "level" and DQ (in their refutation by action of the intellectual
    level). The thing I would like to discuss: was Pirsig inspired by the
    following transscript from Desolation Angels by Kerouac- because the
    similarities (as I mentioned, p. 324 of the Dutch version of Lila) are there
    I think...
    I dare you to look for the section in which Pirsig discusses much the same
    thing (if you can't find it I'll be more than happy to look for it myself)
    and then you tell me: inspiration or a mild form of plagiarism...
    Here is Kerouac (mention his use of "Lila"):
    (.) Because by far the sweetest gift on earth, inseminating a woman, the
    feeling of that for a tortured man, leads to children who are torn out of
    the womb screaming for mercy as tho they were being thrown to the Crocodiles
    of Life- in the River of Lives- which is what birth is, O ladies & Gentlemen
    of gentle Scotland- 'Babies born screaming in this town are miserable
    examples of what happens everywhere,' I once wrote- 'Little girls make
    shadows in the sidewalk shorter than the Shadow of death in this town,'I
    also wrote - Both the Ruths had been born screaming girls but at age 14 they
    suddenly got the urge sexily & snakily to make others scream & scream - It's
    awful - The essential teaching of the Lord Buddha was: 'No More Rebirth' but
    this teaching was taken over, hidden, controverted, turned upside down and
    defamed into Zen, the invention of Mara the Tempter, Mara the Insane, Mara
    the Devil- Today whole big intellectual books are being published about 'Zen
    ' which is nothing but the Devil's personal war against the essential
    teaching of Buddha who said to his 1250 boys when the Courtesan Amra and her
    girls were approaching with gifts across the Bengali Meadow: 'Tho she is
    beautiful, and gifted, 't were better for all of you to fall into a Tiger's
    mouth than to fall into her net of plans.' Oyes ? Meaning by that, for every
    Clark gable or Gary Cooper born, with all the so called glory (or Hemingway)
    that goes with it, comes disease, decay, sorrow, lamentation, old age,
    death, decomposition- meaning for every little sweet lump of baby born that
    women croon over, is one vast rottewn meat burning slow worms in graves of
    this earth.
    But nature has made women so maddingly desirable for men, the unbelievable,
    the impossible-to-actually-believe wheel of birth and dying turns on and
    turns on, as tho some Devil was turning the Wheel himself hard and sweaty
    for suffering human horror to try to make an imprint somehow in the void of
    the sky - As tho anything, even a Pepsi Cola ad with jetplanes, could be
    printed up there, unless the Apocalypse - But Develish nature has so worked
    it that men desire women and women scheme for men's babies - Something we
    were proud of when we were Lairds but which today makes us sick to think of
    it, whole supermarket electronic doors opening by themselves to admit
    pregnant women so they can buy food to feed death further - Bluepencil me
    that, UPI - But a man is invested with all this trembling tissue, the Hindus
    call it 'Lila' (Flower), and there's nothing he can do with his tissue save
    get him to a monastery where however horrible male perverts sometimes wait
    for him anyway - So why not loll in the love of belly wheat ? But I knew the
    end was coming'...

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