China and the West

Kerouac, Jack. Some of the dharma [ID D34296].
Sekundärliteratur :
Sarah Haynes : Kerouac was influenced both by Buddhist texts and by practicing North American Buddhists whom he encountered in his travels. With the publication of Scripture his fascination with Buddhism became known to the world. Dharma has allowed readers and scholars alike to delve into the realsm of his American Buddhism, a world constructed in a formless void of prose, poetry, drawings and one-liners.
The first of Kerouac's Buddhist texts, Some of the dharma, exemplified what came to be recognized as his unique style of writing. The spontaneous prose that became Kerouac's hallmark was simply one of the unconventional techniques he employed in the writing of Dharma. The presentation of this text was unconventional for its time, as well as an innovation for the author. The presentation was aesthetically different, the form, organization of materials and ideas from most of the works of the post-war era. A central preoccupation is the Buddhist notion of impermanence and how everything is formless. Technically and literally, this text has form and a definite structure ; however, in light of the teachings expounded by Kerouac's Buddha nature and written while engaged in daily dhyana, it indeed does not have a clear form, only existing as an arbitrary relative condition. His enthusiastic interest in Buddhism led to the writing, but in the content of the material one can also see that many other factors were influential in its completion. While the main focus of Dharma was the teachings of the Buddha, it was through this content that Kerouac revealed much about his own life. He begins Book one with basics, definitions of fundamental concepts such as nirvana, karma, dharma and kama, and a bibliography for beginning Buddhists. His main focus came to rest mostly on the notion of suffering and its causes. On the one hand he outlined a strenuous regime of 'modified ascetic life', while on the other he could not resist the temptations of friends, drugs, alcohol and women, all of which brought him tremendous suffering. Kerouac resolved to lead a monastic life ; however, this resolution, written relatively early in the text, was broken short eight days later.