4 posts tagged “dharma bums”
Believe that the world is an ethereal flower, and ye live. (137)
All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therfore we can't possibly exist. How strange, how worthy, how good for us! What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal. (134-5)
There were a lot of passages from Dharma Bums that really appealed to me today, and this was one of them. It's so true - if any of this were real it would be a tragedy. Good thing the universe is just smoke! I may have just read the Dharma Bums but that memory is smoke drifting off in the sky as I write this; time to burn more experience! Brad was telling me how he has this fantasy of being an old man in retreat in the mountains, and meandering down to some mountain town once a month for supplies and to meet up with like-minded mountain-dwellers for revelry before returning to the meditative seclusion. I was thinking how it's all about freedom - we spend our whole life building imaginary cages that keep us from such a care-free life. There are all those people would think I was wasting all my higher education to drop out and take to the mountains in spiritual pursuit, while I would think I had finally stopped wasting time. This thought brings to mind my writing; Buddhism is all I ever want to write about. It's so exiting for me and coming to a deaf audience sometimes. Kerouac describes the same sentiments: "the feeling I always got when I tried to explain the Dharma to people, Alvah, my mother, my relatives, girl friends, everybody, they never listened, they always wanted me to listen to them, they knew, I didn't know anything, I was just a dumb young kid and impractical fool who didn't understand the serious significance of this very important, very real world" (110-1). Seriously significant, very important, very real world my ass. *grins*
It's South Park night so I'm off to Bradford's to watch the boys ridicule homeless people!
I noticed something interesting when reading Dharma Bums this week. Japhy is explaining yabyum, but either he or Kerouac has a misunderstanding about the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. He is associating this mantra with yabyum, but that mantra is the mantra of the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. "This is what they do in the temples of Tibet. It's a holy ceremony, it's done just like this in front of chanting priests. People pray and recite Om Mani Pahdme Hum, which means Amen the Thuderbolt in the Dark Void. I'm the thunderbolt and Princess is the dark void, you see" (28-9). Om Mani Padme Hum actually means 'the jewel in the lotus'.
"The middle part of the mantra, maṇi padme, is often interpreted as 'jewel in the lotus,' Sanskrit maṇí 'jewel, gem' and the locative of padma 'lotus', but according to Donald Lopez it is much more likely that Maṇipadme is in fact a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called Maṇipadma, 'Jewel-Lotus'. The oṃ is straightforward as the sacred syllable prefixed to many mantras, and the hūṃ is an exclamation or interjection, the like of which are also frequently found in mantras" (Wikipedia.org).
The lotus flower is an important part of Buddhist symbolism. As a river flower, the lotus grows up out of the mud and the murky water towards the sky and glowing sun. This is like a mind that overcomes the "mud and murky water" of ignorance and misconception, and thereby reaches the infinite-clear sky of enlightenment. Once it overcomes the mud and murky water, it blossoms, and the jewel in the lotus is Bodhicitta (roughly translated as the attitude of compassion or altruism). Yabyum is the symbolic joining of wisdom and compassion, though as far as I know Avalokiteshvara isn't usually/ever the deity depicted as the deity representing compassion in yabyum imagery.
I feel like Kerouac would know this
since he mentions elsewhere in the book that he ascribes to the
Mahayana/Tibetan Buddhism tradition, and that Avalokiteshvara is his
"favorite Buddhist saint" (12).
Works Cited:
I've been heading down the rail trail to this old rusted out bridge over the Mascoma river. The river is especially high this time of year because of all the thawing snow, but there are still some rocks above the surface under there. I climb down, take a seat, and read the Dharma Bums.
I've really been enjoying this book, which really reflects Kerouac's later (later than On the Road) appreciation for Buddhist philosophy and... bums. I think the idea of the 'dharma bum' is incredibly romantic and entirely too appealing to me. I have a rucksack too! Maybe it's time to bum around the country and take a bite out of life. I jest, of course... at least I have this wonderfully escapist literature, and I nice place to escape to and read it.
