So we unpacked our packs and laid things out and smoked and had a good time. Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads.

'They're so silent!' I said.

'Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waiting for us to stop all our frettin and foolin.' Japhy got out the tea, Chinese tea, and sprinkled some in a tin pot, and had the fire going meanwhile, a small one to begin with, the sun was still on us, and stuck a long stick tight down under a few big rocks and made himself something to hang the teapot on and pretty soon the water was boiling and he poured it out steaming into the tin pot and we had cups of tea with our tin cups. I myself'd gotten the water from the stream, which was cold and pure like snow and the crystal-lidded eyes of heaven. Therefore, the tea was by far the most pure and thirstquenching tea I ever drank in all my life, it made you want to drink more and more, it actually quenched your thirst and of course it swam around hot in your belly.

'Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea,' said Japhy. 'Remember that book I told you about the first sip is joy the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.'

'Just about old buddy.'

The rock we were camped against was a marvel. It was thirty feet high and thirty feet at base, a perfect square almost, and twisted trees arched over it u and peeked down on us. From the base it went outward, forming a concave, so if rain came we'd be partially covered. 'How did this immense sonumbitch ever get here?'

'It probably was left here by the retreating glacier. See over there that field of snow?'

'Yeah.'

'That's the glacier what's left of it. Either that or this rock tumbled here from inconceivable prehistoric mountains we can't understand, or maybe it just landed here when the friggin mountain range itself burst out of the ground in the Jurassic upheaval. Ray when you're up here you're not sittin in a Berkeley tea room. This is the beginning and the end of the world right here. Look at all those patient Buddhas lookin at us saying nothing.'

After looking at a GR reader's list of 'books read' today, I was wondering about Kerouac and thinking, {I am quite sure I read more than "On The Road" back in the day}, so I looked at the GR list of Kerouac books.

I read "On The Road" in about 1957 - I was 16. I had been 'into' early rock 'n roll since '55 and I was listening to folk music about the same time. Rock was very cool and although I loved Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Louis, Little Richard, et al., I was more inspired by folk music, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie etc., and what they, and their music, represented.

Coffee shops, or coffee houses, were the 'go' back then and the owners encouraged young 'folkies' to audition for the positions as resident singers. I couldn't get enough of our own folk-singers, all of whom sang what today are called "covers", no-one would have dreamed of writing and singing their own songs. So, for the cost of a couple of cups of coffee, plus maybe some toasted raisin bread, I could spend hours in a dimly lit coffee lounge, (candles, n  regular candlesn like those we saw at church, nothing fancy) and absorb the music and enjoy chatting with the customers, and the folkies. Several years later, at age 20, I was the Tuesday night 'resident folkie' at a coffee lounge not far from my home. I was learning classical guitar at the time, so it was good practice for my 'finger-style' playing, so beloved of folkies at the time. This was before my all-time hero, Bob Dylan, changed to 'steel strings' and then, a bit later, he introduced his bloody electric guitar! We older folkies all screamed "Sacrilege!" but he is still the best of the best to me

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac is an exhilarating, soul-stirring journey into the heart of American counterculture. With vivid prose and raw honesty, Kerouac captures the beauty of nature, the search for meaning, and the wild joy of spiritual exploration. It's a poetic, life-affirming read that inspires freedom, friendship, and a deeper connection to the world. A true gem!

Classic Jack- full of poetry and wandering and mountains and drinking and musing on life and death and good-times and crazyness!

This novel still retains Kerouac's characteristic style and does not feel heavy with his lamentations about his life as a known author, as what happens in most of his other novels.

It's well written, humorous with good scenes and memorable characters.

I think it's fair to say I really enjoyed this one.

I got my copy in Chicago for a dollar
My friends frienzied onward toward the train
I had the whole thing read by Indiana
and I had been forever changed.

I started, for some time, to weep
about the beauty in a lonely life
stumbling back to his shade tree, Jack found
a magic trap door in his mind.

The nature, she beckons, relententlessly
dewy sweaters on sweet, green leaves
taste like tripping the child right out of me
to dance mercilessly among the marching trees

push, pull, shove, stop step the hell around
let my child and the trees find their own way
back into the underground
I refuse to feign the consistent changes that abound
for this is the day that sorcery hath made
I shall rejoice and be glad I'm found.

And it was never about the girl
on the distant horizon by his side
she had no chance and even less circumstance
to track, tame, or chase the tide

Now, 3 floors below me, from a windowsill
a goat boy swings his feet
his beer, sweat, and breathing in the wind
reminds me that I am just as free

I used to get incensed by the elusive difference
between myself and Mr. Robert Zimmerman
but I am Jack's warrior id, dream time consequence
I can't make excuses for my drawn pistol zen.

Video review

Kerouac's novel of wandering in search of meaning & religion is as likely to get on someone's nerves as to leave them in awe, but some of its lyrical passages - and its portrayals of American nature - are beyond beautiful.

For some reason I recently got it into my head that I should read The Dharma Bums in the near future, so when I spotted a pristine copy on my library's "New Arrivals" shelf it seemed like fate. Now that I've read it, I'm bewildered. What is this book? Are we meant to take it seriously? I was alternately amused, annoyed, disturbed, and edified by it, and there was no overlap in these feelings. I never felt amused AND annoyed; never felt disturbed AND edified. Only one thing at a time. And so I will take these feelings one by one.

I was amused!

Most of The Dharma Bums is written in a casual style and is simply about "Ray Smith" (Jack Kerouac) and his friends "Alvah Goldberg" (Allen Ginsberg), "Japhy Ryder" (Gary Snyder), and other lesser Beats hanging out together. This casual, conversational style had the effect of making me feel like I was there with them. Pretending I was in the room with these obnoxious party people who are somehow some of the most revered writers of the 20th century was fun! I imagined how I would laugh at the way they drunkenly ran their mouths off, so in love with their own brilliance. I pictured myself rolling my eyes when they suggested I participate in "yabyum." I thought about what it would be like to laze around Berkeley and Oakland, bumming rides off people, drinking jugs of port (did people do this a lot back then? There seemed to be jugs of port everywhere), and crashing on other people's floors. It was like a vacation to a world I never knew I wanted to visit.

I was annoyed!

Except for an amusing episode when Kerouac and his friends decide to climb Matterhorn Peak, The Dharma Bums had no narrative momentum whatsoever. Despite the book's appealing elements, it was easy to put down and easy not to pick up again. It was self-indulgent to an absurd degree. And it was pretty sexist and occasionally racist. I was expecting that so it wasn't a dealbreaker for me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't unpleasant. Kerouac and his friends are all about personal freedom, but only when it comes to young white dudes like themselves.

I was disturbed!

Jack Kerouac depicts himself as an obvious alcoholic, yet it somehow doesn't seem obvious to him. He's unable to do anything without the ubiquitous jugs of port, and when his friends and family call him on it, he's dismissive. The poet Gary Snyder is both his best friend and his biggest challenger in this regard, asking him how he expects to be mindful when he's in a near-constant state of intoxication, often wondering why he spends so much time lying around drinking instead of doing things. Kerouac just brushes it off. At one point while hiking with Snyder, Kerouac idly wonders which of them will die first. As of this writing, Gary Snyder is still alive. As of this writing, Kerouac has been dead for nearly 50 years, succumbing to alcohol-related ailments 12 years after the events of this book, at the age of 47. Knowing this cast a shadow over the book that was impossible to ignore.

I was enlightened!

I said "edified" above, because this book doesn't literally cause enlightenment. It is, however, a fascinating document of the way people try to live out their Buddhist ideals. Kerouac often depicts himself meditating and trying to be at one with the natural world, but he's also willing to admit that he's sometimes depressed on his solitary travels and has to take a few moments to cry. The arguments he has with Snyder and Ginsberg about the various tenets of Buddhism and how they should play out in their lives were fascinating, real, and unlike anything I've read before. And Kerouac's compassion for people in general comes through all the time. He laments the way people seem mesmerized by TV ("everybody's thinking the same thing") but also has faith in their ability to be better; while hitchhiking he talks about meditation with a random stranger who picks him up, and isn't surprised with the stranger admits that he's always wanted to try it himself. "Everybody knows everything," Kerouac says approvingly, and as a reader you can really believe it, that everyone is trying to be better, that everyone has the answers deep inside of them if only they can get in touch with them. But it's a process that's full of contradictions. Kerouac spends a couple of months on fire lookout high in the mountains of Washington State, where there's a daily battle between his awed appreciation of the natural world, and his complete isolation. He has moments of sadness and depression but then is shocked awake by beauty: "Okay world," he says, "I'll love ya." These contradictions and battles are at the heart of Kerouac's entire personality, his entire view of the world and his place in it. At one point, Kerouac marvels at a sunset high in the mountains, the light seeming to illuminate a hope that's "brilliant and bleak beyond words." He could just as easily have been describing himself.

„Ó, Ray, életed útja olyan, mint egy esőcsepp az örök ébrenlét végtelen óceánjában.”

Egy igazi élmény olvasni Kerouac csavargóiról, az első mondattól minden egyes betűn át, egészen az utolsó szóig. Velük utazunk, velük fejlődünk és kerülünk egyre közelebb és közelebb a dharmához. A szabadszellemű életfelfogásból nem volt hiány, és azt hiszem, ha mondjuk fél évvel korábban olvasom ezt a könyvet, sokkal kevésbé nyeri el a tetszésem, vagy talán egyáltalán nem is kerülök egy hullámhosszra vele.
Ahogy stoppolásokkal eljut az ország akármelyik szegletébe, ahogy hátára veszi hátizsákját és maga mögött hagyja a világot a hegyekben, ahogy hálózsákjában gyakorlatilag bárhol álomra hajtja a fejét, ahogy nem törődik a romlott társadalom elvárásaival, az egy olyan mértékű szabadságérzettel tölti el az embert, hogy látva színtiszta, önfeledt boldogságát és zavartalan, gondtalan napjait, az olvasónak kedve támad letenni a könyvet, és útra kelni.
Magunk mögött hagyni a feleslegesen ránk ruházott felelősséget, túllépni a modern társadalom által kínált hamis boldogság csábító vonzerején, kizárni életünkből a gátlásokat, a látszatra mérhetetlen nehéz, ám valójában üres gondok terhét, a szorongást, a depressziót; amelyek csupán újabb és újabb láncokat kötnek közénk és az egyre inkább önmagába fulladó világ közé: így lehetünk mi is a dharma csavargói.

„Bukott angyalok vagyunk tán, akik nem akarják elhinni, hogy a semmi valóban semmi, így aztán arra születtünk, hogy egyenként elveszítsük a szeretteinket és a drága barátainkat, s aztán végül a saját életünket is, csak hogy bizonyosságot nyerjünk róla?”

For me this book draws the ideas of Jack Kerouac full circle (ensō). A beautiful meditation on the transitory nature of existence. How I wish I could have just hung out with Jack; think he is the kind of person that would have helped you see yourself more clearly from just having gotten to know him.

Too much bum, not enough dharma.

من عاشق فیلمای جاده‌ای و کتابای جاده‌ای ام؛ علی‌رغم این‌که زندگی خودم فرسنگ‌ها با این سبک زندگی توصیف‌شده فرق می‌کند. و شاید همین باشد دلیل این شیفتگی، ��ه یک گریزگاه تخیلی در زندگی روزمره‌ی ناخوشایندم بوجود می‌آید با این ادبیات.

ولگردهای دارما، اوقات را به خوشی می‌گذرانند و هر وقت که نیاز مبرم به پول پیدا کنند، یک کارِ روزمزدی انجام می‌دهند. به هدف این‌که از چرخه‌ی کار-مصرفِ تحمیل‌شده فرار کنند. اما، اگر فرض کنیم هدف کوله‌گردی «رهایی» باشد، این‌جور گشتنِ جهان، دیگر تو را آزاد نمی‌کند؛ بلکه صرفا یک شغل با درآمد کم و فرساینده‌ی بدن انتخاب کرده‌ای برای باقی زندگی.
راوی کتاب، بعد از این‌که خودش شیفته‌ی کوهنوردی می‌شود، می‌رود و چند دست لباس و پوتین و کوله می‌خرد. مقلدان کتاب (و کتاب حقیقتا هر خواننده‌ای را وسوسه می‌کند تا کوله‌گرد بشود برای باقیِ عمر!) با انجام همین خرید، عملا تن به مصرف‌گرایی می‌دهند، خرید کالاهایی که واقعا ضروری نیستند.

و خب، حرف‌های بودیستی در تمام طول کتاب بیان می‌شوند. بنظرم، امروزه دیگر دولت‌ها خیلی هم راضی‌اند که شما ذن‌ت رو انجام بدی و بقول بودا، به اصحاب قدرت کاری نداشته باشی.
راوی داستان، خواسته‌های نفسانی‌ش، الکل، شکلات... را با انواع کلماتِ رستگاری و تهی‌بودگی و غیره توجیه می‌کند. و در عین حال یک سری روزه‌ی خودخواسته هم می‌گیرد، مثل کنار گذاشتن شهوت.
بحثی هم در می‌گیرد در کتاب، در مقایسه ی بودیسم و مسیحیت، یا هر خدایی اساسا. که بالاخره همه می‌خواهند انسان را از یک ترس مشترک برهانند و آرامش این جهانی بهش بدهند. حالا یا اسم سنتی و مومن به آدم می‌چسبد، یا در این مکاتب جدید، بودیسمِ روشنفکرانه و مراقبه.

بیشتر کلمات کرواک، در توصیف مناظر و فعالیت‌هاست، و کمتر آدم‌های غریبه را وصف می‌کند و قضاوت‌شان می‌کند. یعنی، یک برابری و یکسان بودنِ جایگاه کسایی که دارند حرف می‌زنند در کتاب دیده می‌شود، که فوق‌العاده است. مثلا راوی برخلاف جافی، می‌گوید عامه، اونقدرا هم بد نیستند.

و یک ویژگی‌ای که ولگردهای دارما دارند و من آن را در خودم دیده بودم و در موردش نوشته بودم، میل همزمان به تنهایی و بودن با رفقاست. کیف کردن از مهمانی‌ها و دوستی‌ها، و انزواپیشگی در کل طول تابستان و دوری از جماعت دنیا!