$7.95  The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (Pocket Poets Series) - Book |
$10.50  Dharma Bums - Book |
$10.50  Big Sur - Book |
$10.46  Desolation Angels - Book |
$9.75  Mexico City Blues - Book |
 [Larger view] | Some of the Dharma
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| A true Arhat is a Tao Hobo | |
| Wow! I am soooo glad that this book was finally published- and that it was executed so well! This is more than perhaps the all time best example of personal spiritual exploration by a major writer- it is a storage battery of spiritual energy. I've never seen a work this dense with meaning- both in terms of what is in the lines, between the lines, and in mystic juxtaposition between the two. It is a shame that probably not one American in thousand will "get" it- and even fewer outside the culture.
It is obvious to me that Jack understood the Dharma. He also had the concept of Tao intuitively nailed. I just can't understand why he said that he wasn't a Mahayana Buddhist- a person with his great heart and soul was hardly "cold enlightened." It also hit me for the first time that "beat" means "extinguished" in the sense of approaching Nirvana. I had thought that I had read everything that Kerouac had published (except for that first straight-jacket of a Wolfe-clone novel) but this is perhaps the best of all. Think of it as _The Scripture of the Golden Eternity_ raised to the third power. Every time I pick this book up I find something new. It is no doubt going to occupy me for years and years to come. | |
| THE BEST of Kerouac's work | |
| He did not realize these notebooks would be published, so this is Kerouac at his very core. I have been an avid, hungry devotee of Kerouac's work not since reading On the Road, but since getting my hands of a copy of THIS BOOK. Some of the Dharma is the most inspirational book I own - dare I say even more inspiring than my Bible - his random poems about everything ranging from vulgar liquids all conjoined in your earthly body, to the serious issue of the Boddhisatva... Every writer, reader, English teacher, English learner should all read at least parts of this book at some point in their lives. | |
| Metaphysical Poet | |
| What is so unusual and valuable about this book is that it represents a prolonged experiment in inventing fresh ways to express metaphysical ideas in English prose and poetry. Most philosophers are poor prose stylists and most prose stylists steer clear of weighty metaphysics. But in this book we find a passionate, inventive prose stylist deeply engaged with pondering such topics as the One and the Many, substance and the composite nature of objects, time and space, the relation of thought and perception to reality, the nature of desire and happiness, mortality and immortality. He approaches these topics through a starting point in Buddhism but going wherever his mind takes him. The book contains many gems of expression as Kerouac pours his ponderings into his strange, striking prose. To criticize this book because Kerouac's scholarship is weak is to miss its point. |
