FWIW The Dharma Bums on sale

[thelerner]

A common misunderstanding is that this is supposed to be a Taoist site.  As I understand it's supposed to be eclectic and include spiritual practices of all kinds.  The name came from Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.  Which is onsale now $1.99 for the deluxe version Kindle version- https://www.amazon.com/Dharma-Bums-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe-ebook/dp/B000W4RFHK?_bbid=10159524&tag=bookbubemail7-20

 

*note no kindle needed.  I often read books with the kindle app on my phone. 

 

from Amazon-

"First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans--mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer--whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras."
 

 

I paged through the book along ago.  I don't even remember if I liked it,a but for $1.99, may as well take another swing.  After all, at heart aren't we all dharma bums. 

[Papayapple]

Kerouac is gold, but I haven't read this crucial novel yet. Only On the road, and not the whole book.

[Apech]

Love The Dharma Bums - great book - better in my view than On the Road.

 

 

[Ant]

“Then I suddenly had the most tremendous feeling of the pitifulness of human beings, whatever they were, their faces, pained mouths, personalities, attempts to be gay, little petulances, feelings of loss, their dull and empty witticisms so soon forgotten: Ah, for what? I knew that the sound of silence was everywhere and therefore everything everywhere was silence. Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all? I staggered up the hill, greeted by birds, and looked at all the huddled sleeping figures on the floor. Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?” 

 

Love The Dharma Bums, a beautiful and relatable book. I enjoyed On the Road, but I also found it exhausting. And I tried to read one other of his but couldn't get further than a couple of pages, the free form style of it was just too much for me. 

[Aaron]

If you want to learn about the person Japhy Ryder was based on, it was Gary Snyder, one of the early Western Zen Monks, who also is an amazing poet who helped bring Buddhism to main stream America. Ray Smith's character is based on Jack Kerouac himself, or maybe Neil Cassidy, I can't remember. 

Edited June 21, 2018 by Aaron