410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
July 25, 1970
Prynce C. Hopkins
1920 Garden St.,
Santa Barbara, Calif. 93101
My dear Mr. Hopkins:
I have before as your letter of June 25th. Since leaving Lama in New Mexico I have not had a single day off or anything like it. I could not stay in Santa Barbara beyond a very brief visit with Mrs. Connaughton. She is a friend of some fifty years standing and has seen me through thin, and now, praise to God, thick. For the last two years have shown that with each endeavor there has been at least monetary satisfaction and now a growing group of young people have expressed satisfaction with what I have been attempting.
My main work of the present has been Dance of Universal Peace. The ideas and principles were “inherited” from the late Ruth St. Denis. A disciple decided to throw his “all” into taking pictures but this project has been snowballing, and I should say in the “right direction.” There are many wonderful personalities on earth about whom one dose not hear and who are doing what the editors, common stars and moralists are always talking about. This is just one small factor.
Evidently my appearance in Geneva, an unknown then, among the top spirituelles of the world must not have been in vain. The youngest person in attendance has come all the way here. True, in California we have a lot of “experts” who could not come before any real congregation of learned persons. They have not all departed from the scene. It was a matter of no small concern that in my home state professors of Europe, especially of German lineage, should have the prowess to limit even my appearance at East-West conferences. This also holds for the University of Hawaii although there it is persons of Jewish, not German or European lineage, who are able to block this person.
The silly thing about all these bombastic egotists is that they have roused opposition both among the learned and the wealthy. The University of California, especially the Berkeley campus, has been roused by excellently press-agented “Orientalists” with little depth of background. But now a rather wealthy man has come into our limelight. He was hunting for the real mystics and he believes he has found them. And when I gave him letters of introduction, he seized and acted upon them and this house is being visited more and more by persons who seek East-West understanding, and this is in total contrast to the last two generations with their socially-acceptable “experts.”
Everything has changed favorably the past two weeks. The efforts to bring Israelis and Arabs together (wrong person, of course) is progressing. My prayer with the lines: “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven excepting in Vietnam and the Near East” will probably be broadcast before long. And first three man of some note; Paul Reps, Vilayat Khan and Baba Ram Dass (Richard
Alpert) all notified their audiences they were leaving this land and should look to Sam Lewis!
The classes are growing; two secretaries lost to remunerative employment, and now the best disciples have come together with plans to help their “guru.” This is the best period of life.
In my own district I am known as the anti-litter champion, doing, not screeching. I wrote a strong letter to Dale Woelfl of “Science” calling attention to the danger of pollution of the English language by commentators and ivory-towered “experts” dominating the air-ways and literature. We saw a picture, “The Death of Lake Erie” (which now should be called “Lake Erie’) and the comments were horrible. “We are all to blame.” I have blamed smoke-poisons, factory discharges and sewage. “We are all to blame” is the standard nonsense of establishment-defenders.
Fortunately this week, Mr. Woelfl’s association, Phillip Abelson, has an article on the mercury poison dischargers, a real specific. And when I read in the papers today that the Department of Justice is getting into the act.
We are not all to blame. I have four times in my life been engaged in land-clearing projects with ecological factors being considered. I am now asked to start another this winter, elsewhere, of course. The organic gardens I am connected with are beautiful, and the crops large and tasteful. More and more disciples are being employed in health-food stores, so we are prospering. More and more telephone or mail inquiries to attend national convocations of “holy men.” More and more letters from foreign parts. Nothing bad but quantitative difficulties.
And more and more classes, and larger ones of young people who want the real Oriental philosophies and wisdoms. And now a class on Christian mysticism, to a wonderful start. Only surpassed by meetings on Jewish mysticism in this area where I sit in the audience.
“Goddess” Margaret Meade has damned the communes. Those I have been connected with are prospering. Others are written up, when they show signs of failure, sex or drug-abuse, but the successful ones! But this is true of India also and of Egypt where they were established by Americans, not by Russians!
But all efforts are being submerged, I hope, in campaigns for peace, for peace with understanding, not “with justice” (which even Hitlers can accept.)
This is a flyer being other activities. If, as and when I can move next time I shall write ahead.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
August 2, 1970
Prynce Hopkins,
1920 Garden St.,
Santa Barbara, Calif.
On Our “Culture” and Buddhist Art Objects
Bodhisattva:
It would appear now I must come south late in August on what might be important mission. I have always said that the two greatest achievements in my life were my being a guest of honor to the Imperial Palace in Japan and having a free meal from Armenians, but when it comes down to it the most outstanding fact has been the rejection thirty-three times of my paper on Vietnamese Buddhism. Our cultures simply do not want that kind of thing. Our cultures all rely on the way delegates sat at the first assemblages after the French Revolution and our particular relations to the resulting philosophies. If you don’t belong to one of them you are treated as non-existing. This covers everybody from the extreme Birch people to the latest “New Left” and all the “great” organizations whose “greatness” consists of memberships, not of achievements. (Every letter I write to scientists is answered; to non-scientists??????? Excepting the young.)
Now the long-distance calls increase and the young have the bizarre idea that an eye-witness might know more of events than the top essayists and commentators who were not there.
When the late Robert Clifton last visited this land in a vain effort to inform us what was really going on in Vietnam (he failed miserably and all us “respectables” are paying a tremendous price), I said to him: “Grand Phra, you and I are me nobodies. Together we can’t get thirty persons to come to our meetings. But I don’t think there is a king, prime minister, cabinet official, holy man, professors, or peasant from one end of Asia to the other whom we could not meet if we have not met them already.” “Too true, Samuel, how true.”
We pay billions, and permit anybody to write about Vietnam who is an important man. And I think all our groups almost, from one extreme to the other, including even your best friends and associates accept: “Liberty, Democracy, Humanity, and peasants, shut up!”
I can only say at the moment the young are calling on me more and more. This includes the youngest delegate to the conference of the real religions of the real world which met at Geneva. We have never permitted such a gathering since the original one at Chicago in 1993. In America the delegates are carefully selected and nothing is accomplished. But an unknown like myself who was totally successful at communicating and listening, is now being accepted. Here in San Francisco the audiences are in utter awe before Sir Zafrullah Khan, and at Geneva he was really humbled. Big people who accomplish nothing are beginning to be despised, as they should be.
Anyhow, the moral reactions (“Good-Buddhists” do not have to apply karma and theosophists even less) follow exactly what the teachings say. There is a steady increase toward increased emoluments, audiences, teachings and invitations among all those who want Realities, not “realism.’
Now I not only have been a guest of honor at the Imperials Gardens in Japan, I have seen tremendous Buddhist art collections in many lands and have even visited Takht Bhai. The museums of Peshawar and Lahore are under obligations to me, etc, etc., etc., etc. But what can one who has had his paper on “The Buddhism of Vietnam” rejected thirty-three times? That day of nonsense is over. Not only the young but at least one powerful publisher is now behind me. An I have started a number of things which will break out probably in Washington or Boston (not here) before the end of the year.
What does the above mean here? Absolutely nothing. I won’t repeat. But in cleaning up we found some most valuable Buddhist pictures—there may be other object in my collections also. I showed one of them to a Japanese friend who is a Japanese-Zen Buddhist (not an American surface devotee). He suggested what I should do and one of them was placed in the hands of Kennett Roshi who has a Zendo in Oakland. She was a disciple of the above-mentioned Robert-Clifton-Phra Sumangalo.
I am hesitating about others but am sending a copy of this to the Dr. Young Museum. They, having practiced the usual, very usual “Judeo-Christian” ethic, this fact is going to be made public. Only important people are important! But Lord Buddha (not “Buddhism’) taught of the vanity of the ego.
I have no doubt that the collection is worth thousands but I have no intention of selling anything. I may have just two or three but perhaps many times. I am half thinking of giving one to the Rudolph Schaeffer School here and another to the Asian Art Department of U.C.L.A. And as my memories are demanded I am going to make it very clear that the only way to have peace on earth is to have the open heart.
I was able to have two-way communication at Geneva with representatives of every living faith. Both Count Ohtani and the Senior Birla acceded to me, etc.
I don’t know yet of the purpose for my being summoned to Los Angeles, but after all I do know all the religions of the world and am so far, I believe, the only person who has passed the qualification to be a spiritual teacher in quite different religions.
I shall keep you informed of my schedule, etc. hope you are well. My physical and mental healths have been presented marvelously.
Faithfully, Samuel L. Lewis
cc-Brundage collection
cc-U.C.L.A.