Some of the Dharma

Rating:
Summary: A true Arhat is a Tao Hobo
Review: 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.