The Dharma Bums: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Jack Kerouac

practice what the Chinese call “do-nothing.”

Alvah’s ideas about grasping after life as much as you can because of its sweet sadness and because you would be dead some day.

I’d rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.

After all a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him.

“Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time, I am empty space, I am all things. I have all the time in the world from life to life to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels”

“Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.”

The current song at that time was Roy Hamilton singing “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me.”

He was a good old joe, fat, happy, middlewestern. He liked me.

“Where’d you learn to do all these funny things?” he laughed. “And you know I say funny but there’s sumpthin so durned sensible about ’em. Here I am killin myself drivin this rig back and forth from Ohio to L.A. and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you’re the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who’s smart, you or me?” And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn’t enjoy any of it because he really wasn’t free. It was sadly true. It didn’t mean I was a better man than he was, however, he was a great man and I liked him and he liked me and said

we’d had a short nap at dawn, he in the truck, me in my bag in the cold red clay with just stars blazing silence overhead and a distant coyote),

Illinois and Indiana and into old snowy Ohio with all the cute Christmas lights making my heart joy in the windows of old farms.

People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism.”

I felt free and therefore I was free.

Strong warm winds whipped snow white clouds across the sun and dry air. Golden days with beauteous moon at night, warm, one emboldened frog picking up a croak song at eleven p.m. in “Buddha Creek” where I had established my new straw sitting place under a twisted twin tree by a little opening in the pines and a dry stretch of grass and a tiny brook.

There just isn’t any kind of night’s sleep in the world that can compare with the night’s sleep you get in the desert winter night, providing you’re good and warm in a duck-down bag. The silence is so intense that you can hear your own blood roar in your ears but louder than that by far is the mysterious roar which I always identify with the roaring of the diamond of wisdom, the mysterious roar of silence itself, which is a great Shhhh reminding you of something you’ve seemed to have forgotten in the stress of your days since birth.

The fog began to blow in from the Pacific, the trees bowed deeply and roared. From the top of the hill you could see nothing but trees, trees, a roaring sea of trees. It was paradise.

I couldn’t meditate indoors any more like Japhy had just done, after all that winter in the woods of night I had to hear the little sounds of animals and birds and feel the cold sighing earth under me before I could rightly get to feel a kinship with all living things as being empty and awake and saved already.

But then I’d find something like a dead crow in the deer park and think “That’s a pretty sight for sensitive human eyes, and all of it comes out of sex.”

“You better not drink too much,” he said, “you know we gotta go to Berkeley after this and attend a lecture and discussion at the Buddhist Center.” “Aw I don’t wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.”

The neons of stores and bars were glowing in the gray gloom of rainy afternoon, I felt great.

“No, to me Buddhism is getting to know as many people as possible.”

The party went on for days; the morning of the third day people were still sprawled about the grounds when Japhy and I sneaked our rucksacks out, with a few choice groceries, and started down the road in the orange early-morning sun of California golden days. It was going to be a great day, we were back in our element: trails.

“I think death is our reward. When we die we go straight to nirvana Heaven and that’s that.”

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.

“Yeah, those who’re good stay in Heaven, they’ve been in Heaven from the beginning,” which was very wise.

We drank coffee deep, and had a rich good meal.

Lo, in the morning I woke up and it was beautiful blue sunshine sky and I went out in my alpine yard and there it was, everything Japhy said it was, hundreds of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber, and below, instead of the world, I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds flat as a roof and extending miles and miles in every direction, creaming all the valleys, what they call low-level clouds, on my 6600-foot pinnacle it was all far below me.

Every time I felt bored I rolled another cigarette out of my can of Prince Albert; there’s nothing better in the world than a roll-your-own deeply enjoyed without hurry.

But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

“You are empowered to remind people that they are utterly free”

Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?…But

But cold morning would return, with clouds billowing out of Lightning Gorge like giant smoke, the lake below still cerulean neutral, and empty space the same as ever. O gnashing teeth of earth, where would it all lead to but some sweet golden eternity, to prove that we’ve all been wrong, to prove that the proving itself was nil…

I’d sing. Suddenly came the drenching fall rains, all-night rain, millions of acres of Bo-trees being washed and washed, and in my attic millennial rats wisely sleeping.