To be a Dharma Bum...

Questions: Did many ‘Beats’ have such religious struggles?

After reading Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums I find myself in a wake on conflicting emotions, evoked by the powerful images and strong religious undertones found in the text. The title itself is extremely revealing. It acts like an embodiment of beatitude, itself, Dharma meaning a universal truth or righteous duty and then bum, a contrasting idea of the down and out, someone on the fringe of society. “Bums” are not confined by the boundaries of society or the city, they are transient and can pass freely with nothing holding them back or keeping them in any one place. The two images merge to create a vision for the reader of possible spiritual medians, released from the suffering of attachment, able to recede into the wilderness on a pilgrimage to Buddha. This is especially apparent when he says: “But then I really believed in the reality of charity and kindness and humility and zeal and neutral tranquility and wisdom and ecstasy, and I believed that I was an oldtime bhiku in modern clothes wandering the world…in order to turn the wheel of the True Meaning or Dharma, and gain future Hero in Paradise” (5). The first time I read this it’s meaning didn’t really resonate, but going back through I was able to extract much more philosophical significance. It is as though Kerouac himself can see the convergence of both the beat movement and values with the Buddhist faith and the Dharma.
In many ways Kerouac’s Dharma Bums is about Ray Smith’s coming into the Buddhist way of life, but on a much deeper level in depicts a series of struggles or a duality of ideals; whether it is the conflicting aspects of Catholicism and Buddhism or the wilderness opposed to the city. In a way his concerns and fears capitalize on those of the era in question.