Introduction

I was listening with very great interest to a recent book review broadcast by Kenneth Rexroth on KPFA in which he was discussing a recent book poems by the San Francisco poet Philip Lamentier. And he was saying that you have to make a very clear distinction indeed between ecstasy and sanctity. I'm not quite sure that this is the happiest pair of opposites one could produce because after all sanctity has special overtones of a person who has perfected himself in a certain morality or role of life. But I think it's terribly important to understand that if you're interested in Eastern philosophy, if you're studying Hinduism or Buddhism or something of that kind, at this point Kenneth Rexr