HUNDREDS ATTEND BUDDHIST FUNERAL FOR POET ALLEN GINSBERG
Copyright (c) 1997, Agence France Presse

A Buddhist funeral for poet Allen Ginsberg drew several
hundred people here Monday to honor one of the leading
writers of the 1950s antiestablishment Beat Generation.

Ginsberg died Saturday of liver cancer. He was 70.

A coffin containing Ginsberg's body was draped with
yellow, red and white silk embroidered with a sun, the
emblem of the Shambala community with whom the poet made
frequent retreats.

Ginsberg had converted Buddhism years ago and began each
day with meditation.

The celebritystudded crowd of mourners, including
singer Patti Smith and Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg's companion
for four decades, took off their shoes and knelt before two
altars, then assumed the lotus position on floor cushions.

"There is no birth and no cessation," chanted the
participants to the beating of gongs.

The media was excluded from the funeral ceremony itself,
which was to have been conducted in English, then Tibetan.
Ginsberg's remains were to be cremated.

He was only recently diagnosed with terminal liver
cancer. He had a heart attack late Thursday and fell into a
coma, before dying Saturday in New York.

The freewheeling and homosexual poet was born June 3,
1926, in the neighboring state of New Jersey.

He first erupted on the international literary scene in
1956 with the publication of "Howl and Other Poems," a
collection that drew lawsuits because of its obscenities.

Ginsberg was a leading figure in the socialpolitical
unrest that marked the 196070s, including antiVietnam
War protests and drug experimentation.

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AFP