Father of the Beat movement, literary iconoclast, apostle of ordinary mind, and “new Buddha of American prose;” Jack Kerouac became one of the biggest influences on American culture. A symbol of contrast and paradox, he was a devout Catholic who became instrumental in launching and popularizing American Buddhism. Inventor of the term “Beat Generation” and foundation for the hippie movement, counterculture and left, he cheered on Joe McCarthy’s anti-communism while smoking marijuana. Like most pioneering visionaries breaking out of status quo stereotypes; he endured with deep true heart the hostility of academia, journalistic jealousy, secret police, the incomprehension of even his best friends, his family’s repression, vast media attacks, and the selling-out of his publishers. Relatively happy in obscure poverty and the most simple life style, he was undone by fame and fortune. Alan Ginsberg described him as “the single greatest writer in the twentieth century.”
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Artists
“'They know not what they do' is a universal truth.”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Religions appear to be schismatic technical harangues, corruptions of some original pure Vision”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Taoism is a human religion rather than divine like Buddhism. Tao can be 'used' (as by... cackling architects of the eternal nod)”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Buddhism is a return to the Original mind”
from Some of the Dharma
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“all things are different appearances of the same emptiness”
from Some of the Dharma
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“sweet Buddha…I always did suspect that life was a dream, now I am assured by the most brilliant man who ever lived that it is indeed so”
from Some of the Dharma
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“He who is aware of the Male but keeps to the Female... has the Eternal power which never fails.”
from Some of the Dharma
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“To look everywhere and see nothing, that's the aim of wisdom”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Doubt is a condition of life quaking in the bone because the bone is on fire”
from Some of the Dharma
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“The world is full of blind children... People in the world are completely stupid, like poor animals and dogs.”
from Some of the Dharma
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“My reward is the perfect blue sky at dawn in the desert in a bird-resounding riverbottom grove”
from Some of the Dharma
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“My witness is the empty sky”
from Some of the Dharma
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“'Not one or the other or both or neither' explains away all arbitrary conceptions”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Fire results in smoke and ashes... poetry results in publishing and dust”
from Some of the Dharma
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“What advantage is there in multiplying need? REST AND BE HAPPY”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Money is emptiness, money is not different from emptiness, neither is emptiness different from money, indeed, emptiness is money.”
from Some of the Dharma
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“It's worse than death not to know that 'God' is the same thing as yourself”
from Some of the Dharma
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“the future is an evanescent dew, a shadow, a lightening flash, just as the past, just as now”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Buddhism is the understanding of the angels”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Catholic Dualism is behind the error of Western Civilization with its war of machines”
from Some of the Dharma
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“When your body vanishes... there remains what does not below to self but was only 'loaned' to it, a universal mind”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Truth is like a bird
Flying silently
In the silken sky
To a hidden tree
In the cottonmouth
night—”
from Some of the Dharma
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“Moonlight's Almost
Like someone
Was tryin to
Light my Way”
from Some of the Dharma
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“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
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“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
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“Like Proust, be an old teahead of time.”
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“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
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“What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.”
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