Adam Creason - The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

    In his novel, Jack Kerouac recounts his travels around North America in 1955-56. In particular, he focuses on his friendship with the Buddhist environmentalist Gary Snyder. He dedicates himself to a quest for mental liberation and spiritual enlightenment, while spending most of his time hitchhiking and getting drunk. Once he befriends Snyder, Kerouac pursues enlightenment by practicing Buddhism and immersing himself in nature. Through this journey, Kerouac posits that people can achieve true happiness by meditating and connecting with the natural world, which in turn allows them to accept fundamental truths about their place in the universe.

                As suggested through Buddhism, Kerouac writes his book with plenty of insight, self-discipline, and meditation. He wonders through North America on an endless and directionless pilgrimage, with no home nor place. This connects with Dr. Redick’s article on Homelessness and sensuous communication. He orients all his travels and relationships around his desire to follow a path towards enlightenment. This path, however, requires him to spend time in the wilderness. He sees nature as a place in which people can directly perceive the underlying reality of the universe and achieve spiritual well-being. In nature, he feels no pressure to do anything but meditate. This allows him to focus on spiritual matters, rather than worldly ones that could occur if he were instead wandering through a city. As he takes in nature’s breathtaking beauty, he realizing his own insignificance and impermanence. He thus aims to shed the fear of death, which is a main cause of suffering according to Buddhism. At different points, Kerouac befriends birds, trees, and deer, which together remind him of the interconnectivity of all living beings. All things are made of the same universe and of the same basic elements. All of this allows Kerouac to realize that his problems are small and fleeting in relation to the entire universe.

                I read this book the same semester that I read Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, as there was surely a theme to that class. It helped to further my understanding Buddhist principles regarding spirituality and the environment. More than that, however, this novel acted as a catalyst for my further pondering of man’s spiritual relationship to nature. It was a novel I could relate to. In high school I had a group of friends that would get together and did as we please. Because we were young, often times the place for our shenanigans was in nature, in the hills and forests of Northwestern Virginia. Often times I would find myself with a drink in hand and a bowl in the other, staring onto the vast green nature from an overlook along the Appalachian. I began to truly connect with nature in a way that was raw, unintellectual, and without much cognitive realization. Kerouac embarks on a similar journey in his novel, in the beginning. This is what drew me in. As he moved towards the intellectual side, he described the principles of Buddhism and its relationship to the environment, I began to follow a similar journey to his as I read. I began to realize the awesome beauty of nature. Suddenly, my worldly issues became insignificant. It gave me a sense of freedom, to do what I want with my life, to follow on a path blazed by my own thought and respect for the environment I am a part of. I am not a Buddhist, nor am I religious, but I do consider myself to be spiritual. That spiritual aspect of myself is nothing without my respect for and connection to nature. This has also provided me with a worldview that I love. We are all of the same basic elements, a part of the same nature. We are connected. Human relationships have become central to my life. Worldly issues have become second. As long as I am connected with nature and those around me, I am happy. In the words of Kerouac as he represented the pointlessness of human nature yet its part in the interconnected whole of the universe, “Blah”.