Those familiar with the biography of Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and other books that influenced a generation — in the 1950s and ‘60s, and beyond — know that the writer spent time exploring Buddhist texts and learning from Buddhist teachers. The Catholic-born Kerouac, in fact, looked to the experience of the Buddha as inspiration for “hitting the road,” as the Buddha before him went wandering homeless seeking inspiration.
This period of two years, from 1954-56, is captured in this book of writings in the most complete form published to date. Editor/compiler Charles Shuttleworth had the cooperation of the executors of the Kerouac literary estate to include writings that have previously sat in archives.
As with all of Kerouac’s writing, these too have an experimental feel. It is clear that he is trying to answer essential questions of life, and writing was Kerouac’s way of finding his way.
In his lengthy introduction, Shuttleworth summarizes it well: “The purpose of this volume is to share the wealth of previously unpublished writings reflecting Jack Kerouac’s Buddhist thinking, to show how Buddhism influenced his work … giving him a new vocabulary to discuss spiritual questions that he’d been asking himself all along.”
The school of Buddhism with which Kerouac most closely identified was Mahayana — as Shuttleworth explains, “as it believes in the divinity of the Buddha and emphasizes the cultivation of love and compassion for all living beings.”
