The Dharma Bums

"I really dont know, Ray, but I appreciate your sadness about the world."

"When I was a little kid in Oregon I didnt feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values but and when I discovered Buddhism and all I suddenly felt that I had lived in a previous lifetime innumerable ages ago and now because of faults and sins in that lifetime I was being degraded to a more grievous domain of existence and my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom."

"Maybe Ill be rich and work and make a lot of money and live in a big house." But a minute later: "And who wants to enslave himself to a lot of all that, though?"

"Pray tell us, good buddy, and dont make it muddy, who played this trick, on Harry and Dick, and why is so mean, this Eternal Scene, just whats the point, of this whole joint?" I thought maybe I could find out at last from these Dharma Bums."

"By God, youre right, all those sedentary bums sitting around on pillows hearing the cry of a triumphant mountain smasher, they dont deserve it."

"So the party was divided into three parts all the time: those in the living room listening to the hi-fi or thumbing through books, those in the yard eating and listening to the guitar music, and those on the hilltop in the shack brewing pots of tea and sitting crosslegged discussing poetry and things and the Dharma or wandering around in the high meadow to to go see the children fly kites or old ladies ride by on horseback. Every weekend was the same mild picnic, a regular classical scene of angels and dolls having a kind of flowery time in the void..."

"Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked up to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or another."

"Only one thing Ill say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: theyre not hurting anyone"

"And suddenly I saw that the Northwest was a great deal more than the little vision I had of it of Japhy in my mind. It was miles and miles of unbelievable mountains grooking on all horizons in the wild broken clouds, Mount Olympus and Mount Baker, a giant orange sash over the Pacific-ward skies."

"I got him off talking about his trouble to talk about the Last Things and he said, "Yeah, those whore good stay in Heaven, theyve been in Heaven from the beginning," which was very wise."

"Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?"

"It was the realer-than-life Japhy of my dreams, and he stood there saying nothing. "Go away, thieves of the mind!" he cried down the hollows of the unbelievable Cascades."