The Asia Foundation
38, The Mall - P.O. Box 378
Lahore, Pakistan.
June 21, 1961
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis,
K-482 Kunj St.
Abbottabad
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Thank you for your letter of June 11 which I read with great interest. I am, as you say, very much in favour of Americans and Asians sitting down and talking together as human beings.
In your next to last paragraph you refer to a Foundation conference in Abbottabad. I believe you have in mind the Summer Seminars which we had expected would take place in Abbottabad this year. These seminars are participated in by Pakistani college teachers in cooperation with some of the senior professors at Pakistan’s universities, and American visitors. When I mentioned this to you when we met in Lahore, the plan was to have some of the seminars at the Public School in Abbottabad. Since sufficient accommodations were not available there, it has been necessary to hold them in Peshawar instead.
I hope to see you, however, if I do get a chance to cane to Abbottabad. Please likewise drop in to see me if you happen to be in Lahore.
Sincerely yours,
William S. Metz
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco 8, California
Mailing address: P. O. Box 3223, San Francisco 19, California
November 18, 1963
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
58 Harriet Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Mr. Lewis:
As Bill Eilers is traveling on Foundation business, I would like to reply to your letter of November 9.
Regarding Professor Khawar Khan’s plan for obtaining a doctorate in Islamic Studies, I believe she could select from a number of excellent institutions. Near and Middle East Institute, Columbia University; Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal; Department of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania; and several others would certainly serve her need well. Should she wish to correspond regarding specialized advice on different departments in this country, I suggest she address the Middle East Institute, 1761 N Street, N.W. Washington 25, D.C., which, though not a teaching institution, is in close contact with all matters in this field.
With best wishes.
Sincerely yours,
James H. Noyes
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco 8, California
Mailing address: P. O. Box 3223, San Francisco 19, California
Office of the President
September 2, 1966
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Sam:
This will acknowledge your letter of August 29, enclosing a copy of a letter to President Johnson.
In accordance with your request for an interview on the subject of cultural exchange, I would suggest that you call Dr. Mary Gray of our Program Services Division, who is directly in charge of all of our exchange programs with Asia and is an expert on the subject of cultural exchange.
Sincerely yours,
William J. Sheppard
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California
Office of the President
November 1, 1966
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Many thanks for sharing with us the copy of your letter to Mr. Art Hoppe of the Chronicle. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.
Sincerely yours,
William J. Sheppard
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California
Office of the President
June 6, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco 3, California
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Your letter of May 14 has reached me for reply, and in the name of The Asia Foundation I would like to thank you for your kind words about the Foundation “as the great light … of what Americans can and should do….” We are pleased to have your letter as one of the many we have recently received complimenting the Foundation on its efforts in Asia and with Asians.
I have shared your letter with Mr. Smith and know he will read it with interest. We were pleased to see that you will be mentioning UCLA in your will and hope that you will do likewise for The Asia Foundation, which as you know, welcomes such bequests.
With best wishes for the continuation of your own good work.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Norman Coliver
Books for Asian Students
451 Sixth Street, San Francisco, California 94103
July 5, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina Street
San Francisco, California 91103
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Your fine collection of journals will be of primary interest and usefulness to teachers and students in Asia. We greatly appreciate your kind interest and help in our program.
A copy of the quarterly report which describes the activities and progress of Books for Asian Students is enclosed.
With renewed thanks and every good wish.
Sincerely yours,
Carlton Lowenberg
Enclosure
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California
October 12, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, California 94110
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Please accept my apologies for not having answered your letter of August 3rd sooner. Although The Asia Foundation was unable to send a representative to attend the formal opening of your new home, I trust the evening was a success.
With regard to your god-daughter, Miss Khawar Khan, since she does have a Ford Foundation scholarship for study at Oklahoma State University, it would probably be best for her to remain at Oklahoma State until she completes whatever provisions are in her grant from the Ford Foundation. If, at the time she fulfills the provisions of the grant, she still feels she wants to come to California to study Home Economics, I suggest that she write the Office of Education of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. They publish a list of institutions which offer home-economics training entitled “Home Economics in Institutions Granting Bachelors’ or Higher Degrees, 1961-1962.”
I hope this will be of some help to you, and, again, please forgive me for having been so late in answering.
Sincerely,
Dr. Mary F. Gray
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue, San Francisco, Calif. 94110
April 25, 1968
Asia Foundation
550 Kearny St.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94111
My dear Friends:
Our Two Cultures and Peace in Asia.
I hope to release now a letter written originally at the suggestion of Senator Percy of Illinois and addressed to the two Senators from California and the two Congressmen from San Francisco. It is an odd thing that we claim to be fighting in Vietnam to introduce, or impose an electoral democracy and at the same time a citizen who has been a participant in the actual events involved is given no more consideration than anybody else who has—one vote, but it happens that soon this person will have a large number of votes, not that he is seeking any particular prestige, but the young, who are in protest prefer the direct experiences of a nobody to all the directors and dialectical sermons from the some bodies—who were never there.
And it is most unfortunate that to maintain the present anti-communist dialectics on which the press, the Foreign Office and most of the “experts” from the dialectical anti-democratic “far right” to and through “far left” are equally unwilling to comprise their subjective philosophies for hard facts. Hard facts are unwelcome and unwanted.
Agriculture in Asia This subject was discussed in “Asian Surveys” published by the University of California and details reports from a convention of social scientists and economists who accepted without question the official reports of God knows who. The report, mislabeled (who cares anyhow?), did not cover Asia but Thailand, India and Pakistan which happen to be the three countries I have lived in and where I made a firsthand study of agriculture in situ.
These reports have been discussed with the agronomists and other scientists on at least five campuses, touched lightly on one other, and one only met colleagues who have been given exactly the same treatment. Those who are in charge of channels of communication, on or off campuses, are interested in policies, and those who have garnered fasts have little to say about the establishment of policies.
Prof. Hyder was for years the Department of Asian Studies on the Berkeley campus. If I received a free meal from Armenians, I received as abject apology in India from savants. I challenged their whole educational system on the point of their ignorance of their own folk-lore and offered them every cent I had if they could point out a single problem of the day which did not have its solution in “Pancha Tantra” or correlative literature. And I regret to say— although it is natural—that there are instructors on the Berkeley campus that know very little of their predecessors, and so there is not always a continuum where such continuum would be very valuable.
This is mentioned because I have failed to find even in the greatest of enthusiasts a full appreciation of achievements first of the Berkeley Campus and then of the whole Multiversity structure and this may give you some ideas for your broadcast. This becomes more important to some of us because the University has been brought into the wrong arenas of public discussion—discussion yes, but the arenas should be selected, as in dueling by the challenged!
Asian Affairs. It is mentioned above that I have been a guest of honor here, there and there. The list is as long as it has been unheralded. When a book on “History of Thailand” was published, the official historian was Prof. David Wilson of UCLA and he included a chapter on “Problems.” I wrote him that every problem mentioned in the book had been met, even solved by colleagues on other campuses. He sent for me, I named the people and place and this has led into a great complex which concerns both international affairs and my own will, leaving manuscripts to UCLA which are even now of great value (only recently the possibilities of their being published).
Personal Affairs have improved greatly and give signs of improving more. Publishers have accepted these manuscripts, largely of great real Zen and Ch’an Masters, etc., etc. Only there has been no secretariat. I am glad to say his has now been provided.
Food Problems of Asia. Lord Snow’s The Two Cultures seem to hold and I have long advocated the “grill system” where professors of dinner subjects covering the same area meet occasionally and exchange knowledge.
There was a great conference on this subject at UCSF a few years back and I was appalled at the lack of knowledge by some of the Multiversity’s greatest representatives of achievements of lesser lights on the various campuses. But nobody is to be blamed. It takes six months to two years to get out brochures and the only “solution” would be to have more inter-campus exchanges.
One can hardly expect human cultural exchanges with professors who do not respect their own colleagues in the same field. Both the accomplishments and researches of the University of Colleague staff in trying to solve food problems (the real ones) is far beyond the ken of social scientists and the press.
For example the report on Pakistan totally ignores the completion of Mangla Dam by a local corporation (Guy Atkinson) and the resulting effects on agriculture and industry.
All the reports ignore the accomplishments of Rockefeller Foundation. My own conclusions were so in accord with the accomplishments of this Foundation, but in another area of Asia that there is nothing more to be added. Nor need it be added for Pakistan has accepted the efforts of Rockefeller Foundation, but the press and “social scientists” who can deduct so much about the unfinished Assouan Dam ignore both Rockefeller and Guy Atkinson.
The oddity is that we are presumably fighting the encroachment of communism and at the same time selling our own industrial accomplishments short.
The Temple of Understanding. While we are fencing to see where a “peace” conference can be held anent Vietnam, the real religious leaders of the real world are planning an international conference under American auspices, to be held this year. There Asians and Americans will sit down together as they do at Asia Foundation meetings, commune and communicate and endeavor to effect results.
This sort of accomplishments—to contrast with subject editorials can, and I believe will, save the world from anarchy.
Making Friends with Asians. A friend of mine, close to a high official of the United States Government recently asked if I could name Americans who might act as emissaries in Asian lands because of established good-will with actual Asians.
I do not know what will come of it. A citizen cannot make factual reports to the Foreign Office, no matter the nature; he is always treated as an underling. Everybody, reads. “The Ugly American” and “Sarkhan” but there is no change of policy.
One of the men suggested is Rev. Iru Price who is a real Buddhist who has had considerable real Buddhist training and is returning from a visit to Lama Anagarika Govinda. The Lama is expected to come in September and Rev. Price will act as his manager. I hope to arrange a visit to Asia Foundation’s offices at that time.
Prof. Huston Smith Arrives in August to present a course on “Living Religions and Philosophies of Asia.” I have been in touch with this man for some time and wish to encourage attendance at his lectures. This could do much to bridge the unfortunate and unnecessary cultural gap.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
cc: Burton
cc: Milliard
410 Precita
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
November 14, 1968
Asia Foundation
550 Kearney Street
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
My Dear Friends:
I am writing you now for several reasons. The most immediate being a request for an appointment some time on Friday, November 22nd, the exact hour to be confirmed by telephonic call etc. The reason is that our good friend, Dr. Thick Thien An, instructor in Vietnamese Culture and Buddhism, expects to arrive in this city on the previous night. I think especially in view of the many compilations involving his country, a Vietnamese should occasionally be given some consideration. My whole antipathy to our Asian policies is that we grant objective existence to powerful count rims and persons with whom we do not agree—often extremely antipathetic to—while we disregard the civilizations and persons of small, but often important, lands.
It is most unfortunate that under the guise of “realism,” we have almost totally disregarded also the contributions of our own citizens toward a better understanding of Asia. The most flagrant example of this is our bypassing, locally and otherwise, the completion of Mangalore Dam in Pakistan by one of our own corporations, while giving undue publicity to potential efforts—and I mean efforts—of inimical nations.
Along with the works of Guy Atkinson, and other American engineering firms, I must report now that an average American housewife, Mrs. Dickerson Hollister of Greenwich, CO has gone a long way toward promoting better Asian and also world understanding with The Temple of Understanding. I shall be glad to furnish you with details when received, if you do not get them otherwise.
Perhaps equally important in actual world affairs is the progress being made at Auroville, near Pondicherry in India, under the aegis of another American lady, Miss Julie Medlock. It is most unfortunate that the public on the whole has almost no information of successes by Americans in far, and especially, Asian parts.
Of another order, on visits here parallel to that of Dr. Thich Thien An above. My lifelong friend, Mr. Paul Reps, long-time Asian traveler and author of many books, has just been here, and again will appear in Sausalito, on Saturday, November 23rd. I saw Mr. Reps recently immediately after a visit with Swami Swahananda, who is now officiating at the local Vedanta temple. This visit looked like a verse out of Kipling which I shall not quote here.
Swamiji informs me that his Principal, Swami Ranganathananda, President of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Order, will be here in January. I consider this holy man one of the greatest living authorities and both mystical experience and Asian literature. If I may, I suggest your contacting him sometime; perhaps some of your staff knows him already.
I am also expecting, either in person or by news, our good friend, Master Seo Kyung Bo of Korea, although it is possible also that I may be visiting him in Philadelphia next year.
Of further interest perhaps, is the fact that my God-daughter, Miss Saadia Khawar Khan is now matriculating at Cornell University. She is a Professor of Punjabi University in Lahore and has met several of your staff members abroad. I consider her presence in the United States will be very helpful toward promoting both religious and cultural understanding.
My own efforts in the campaign “Joy without Drugs” have resulted in a constantly increasing following among the young. The presentation of mystical and esoteric knowledge through dances, dervish, yoga, and ceremonial, are much more effective than the dualistic verbal methods of platform orators.
Along with this has been a rather edifying private life, including the establishment of a Sufi Khankah, perhaps the first in the United States, in the city of Novato in Marin County. One cannot cover all of Asia, but personal and private relations with living Asians representing every part of the whole continent have brought nothing but satisfactory results this year.
My poem “The Rejected Avatar” has been published and at least one complimentary copy will be presented to you shortly. Now that a secretariat has been established here a great deal more may follow on subject matters which have been reported before. I am totally interested in all efforts of my fellow Americans to promote better understanding and real cultural exchange with all Asians outside those smothered by subjective dialectics.
Sincerely and Cordially,
Samuel L. Lewis Sufi Ahmed Chisti
410 Precita
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
Sept. 30, 1969
Asia Foundation
550 Kearney Street
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
Dear Friends:
I sometimes regret that I am not cooperating more with you. I am enclosing a carbon of a letter to American Society for Eastern Arts which gives some of the news of events in my private life. I mention there my Pakistani God-daughter who is now at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She is a remarkable character, a graduate of the American University at Beirut, a Haji, and was for a while the youngest woman University professor on the whole continent of Asia. She is in this country with a permit to stay until she obtains her PhD degree in textiles and home arts, and there is every possibility that this will occur, God willing.
I am now being recognized in distant places and also locally for my researches and the accompanying knowledges of the religions of Asia. The big thing of course will be the international conference in Istanbul next year.
I am intensely interested in your undertakings and regard Asian Student as the very best publication in the field.
If there is anything I can do for you in going to Turkey I should be glad to cooperate; and if you wish any reports, I shall be glad to send them on. I am not only a representative of the Sufis, but also on excellent terms with the top mystics in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, to say the least. There will also be a minuscule gathering in this region in a few days, and attempt to bring the various spiritual leaders to the public. Of course one does not know the result beforehand but it cannot help but to increase better understanding between Americans and Asians.
Cordially,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti
cc. the Russell Smiths
The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California
October 9, 1969
San Francisco, CA 94119
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, California 94110
Dear Mr. Lewis:
You were nice to offer to do something on our behalf while in Turkey. Since our own staff travel from time to time, it is possible for them to take care of whatever assignments we might have in countries where The Asia Foundation is not represented.
I will pass on your kind comments about The Asian Student to its editor. With best wishes for a good trip,
Sincerely,
Mrs. Norman Coliver
January 4, 1970
The Asian Student
c/o The Asia Foundation
550 Kearny St.,
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Friends:
I cannot over-praise you for the publications of the picture of Mangla Dam which appear on page 4 of the issue of December 27.
My whole life—not very successful as yet—has been dedicated to an unnecessary war between reality and “realism.” The example I have used the most, and to no avail, has been the successful construction of this Mangla Dam, and the new hush-hushed reports of Aswan Dam. To me there is such a vast difference between American accomplishments and communist programs that it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory logical conclusions. But logical conclusions and fasts are not wanted. I find myself in total agreement with Lord Show that there are two cultures—the scientific and the literary humanist—the latter including practically all our editors and commentators.
What I deplore, and continue to deplore, is the lack of consideration given to some of our local engineering corporations, in this case Guy Atkinson of South San-Francisco. I am in no way connected with this corporation or any similar institution anywhere. But I have seen with my own eyes, or came very close the seeing with my own eyes, great constructions by American engineers and technicians in many lands.
I am not engaged in any crusades against communism. I am personally against any from, against all forms of dialectics. And perhaps my American background makes me sympathetic to pragmatic outlooks. But I believe these pragmatic outlooks and their successful adaptations to the problems of the day can and should make all of us optimistic.
I believe the same holds true with the efforts of some of the great Foundations, especially in the fields of agriculture and exposition.
The Asian Student stands out to me as one bright light in the whole field of Oriental relations and Asian accomplishment. I hope the time comes when more of the press, when more of the radio and television stations, will stress more about accomplished fasts then about policies, ideas, and programs of anybody whatsoever, whomsoever.
Wishing you a happy New Year.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
May 15, 1970
Asia Foundation
550 Kearny St.
San Francisco, Calif. 94111
Dear Sirs:
I cannot over praise your recent essay contest and even more what might be considered the skill and fairness of the judges. I have seen no better article than “A Balanced Approach Needed” by Tran Thanh Dang. And perhaps he also has benefited from the type of “mind training” which is either received or is inherent in certain types of Buddhist culture as reflected in the article of Chul Hong Park, the second prize winner.
For a long time “The Asian Student” has stood to me almost alone in what I call the endless battle of “reality versus realism.” I still do not know what “realism” is but I do know that the world is suffering from endless conflicts between various camps and schools of “realism.” Even now while there is bloodshed at home or abroad, practically nose of the emotionalists involved have shown the slightest concern for the cultures of Vietnam or Cambodia making one almost doubt if they are inhabited by “human beings.” Or bringing about a conclusion that these people are between human and non-human as were the slaves of the South in other days.
But to carp does not help. I have returned recently from a real summit meeting of the leaders of the real religions of this world. It was held at Geneva add ignored almost unanimously if not unanimously by the “realistic” press of this land. (My picture was taken innumerable times and appeared in some European publications.) To find that the personal representative of His Holiness Pope Paul; the leaders of both the synagogues and mosques; Her Serene Hughes, Princess Peon Diskul, President of the World Buddhist Federation were there, mingled and intermingled on terms of amity and high morality—in a conference almost dominated by Swami Ranganathananda Maharaj of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Order, and nobly seconded by Prof. Nasr representing the real Sufis of this world—was a wonder. We are back to a renewal of the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Fair of 1893, with Swamiji repeating the role of Vivekananda.
The real leaders of the real religions cooperated for world peace, not the empty verbalisms that we delight in, but in its potential reality. One was forced to throw all one’s eggs in the basket of peace for the Near East or S.E. Asia and chose the former.
One’s program is very close to the philosophy of Tran Thanh Dang. One is concerned with Ecology in the older sense and not in what this writer calls the attitude of “experts” (his term, to which one assents).
No doubt you can obtain record of the proceedings of the Geneva conference and I shall certainly try to assist in this.
One has piles of material—actual facts, data, evidence, to support the thesis of Tran Thanh Dong. But one has equal evidence and data for the Near East. One is making some efforts to ascertain if rabbis and other clerics will actually grant interviews. And in this one has an over-all program for the scientific-ecological restoration—whether this has any relation for the term “ecology” as used by sociologists and the press, I do not know.
A Peace program for the Near East requires attention to water problems and desert reclamation. For S.E. Asia to water problems of another sort, plus multi cropping.
One is optimistic enough to believe that practically all the problems of Asia have been solved—at least by scientists and technicians, but it is at most impossible to get recognition from the press, TV organizations of foreign offices, so to speak.
Asians can speak for Asia.
After leaving Switzerland we were guests of the World Congress of Faiths and Royal Asiatic Society and also met some of the top Orientalists privately. Now I have to leave San Francisco again to teach the young the Oriental philosophies and techniques learned from Asian-Asians and also present “Dances of Universal Peace,” heritage from the late Ruth St. Denis.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
cc- Russell G. Smith
cc- KQED