I. “The Heart of the World”

Charles Shuttleworth has done a remarkable job of excavating gem after gem of Jack Kerouac’s unpublished dharma writings, mostly from the collection at the Berg Library in NYC. What at first seemed a collection of scraps for the Kerouac completist quickly turned into a candy store of Jack’s thoughts that couldn’t be published by themselves until now. Take a look at some of these fragments.

[Heading and first line of “The Heart of the World”]

THE LEGEND OF DULUOZ                                        Apr. 19, 1954
1—Run On, Little Ghost
Finding My Well Full of Shadow
                                (1)
SLEEPING IN A GOLDEN DREAM, deep in the womb of mind.

[From “On the Path Chapter 2: I Head West”]

By which time, eight hours on that road with everybody staring angrily at you, cops included, I’d come across a lot of forgotten pre-Buddhist gurls, and growls cursing disapproval, and swearing.
“Ah Jack, now it’s all done—where’s your line of merit, measuring, those people aint real, that they dont give you a ride or DO give you a ride is sumptin goin on in unreality—reality isnt rides—reality didnt leave New York and aint goin to California.”

Shuttleworth neglected to describe his own relationship to Buddhism, so his publisher connected me to get some answers. What could drive someone to, quite simply, go to all this trouble? Some of his answers were surprising.

Shuttleworth: “I’m an agnostic. I admire elements of Buddhism… As a Kerouac fan, I’ve always preferred his more spiritual works for their warm tone and beauty of expression. The Dharma Bums’ focus on getting back to nature resonated with me early on, followed closely by the positivity and syncretism of The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. And in more recent years I learned to appreciate (decode) Mexico City Blues and to discover Some of the Dharma, which I consider a great postmodern text, as are Book of Dreams and Book of Sketches. Kerouac’s other Buddhist-inspired poems also appeal to me: the ones in Pomes All Sizes, the Desolation Blues poems, and ‘Heaven’ in Heaven and Other Poems. And it was really exciting to find more Buddhist-inspired material in the Kerouac archive and to put it together…”

[From “The Little Sutra”]

  Ripples on the sea (read my stanza, Chinaman)
  are no more illusion
  than the sea,
  but when the wind dies
  where do the ripples go?
  the ripples are the thoughts of your life
  the sea is Mind Essence
  beyond thoughts of life
  or non-thoughts of death.
Tathata, means, Essence, suchness; “gata,” means, “farer, arriver,” “He Who Has Arrived at Actual Isness” is the meaning of Tathagata.
As for your Chaplinesque Love, it is a lot of Lust. To be frank with you, I’m disgusted by Western Cupidity Hypocrisy. Why dont they come right out with it and admit the knifelike cock and the gashlike hole is what they mean by “love” and nothing could be less like love. The perfect love-filled imagelessness of Samadhi is “Not-Two”-ness. It’s nothing but the Great World Snake.

(Those who’ve read Kerouac’s Dr. Sax will recognize the World Snake—M.O.)

Jack’s Buddhism was always mixed with Catholicism, with references to crucifixion, the cross itself, God’s love sounding more like a catechism class than a sutra. So any case made from when Jack began his Buddhism to when he ended it really depends on which way the dial is twisted—from non-theistic emptiness to the Passion of Christ. To be honest, his Buddhist devotions get awfully close to a Creator God and a very definite Eternalist view—both ideas would be considered heretical in Buddhism.

Still, as a practicing Buddhist myself (AND a recovering Catholic), Jack’s exuberance and occasional startling philosophic clarity (“Mind alone/introduced the bone”—Some of the Dharma.) is terrifically inspiring. Jack and Thomas Merton have many similarities, which have already been pointed out by multiple scholars.

[From “Avalokitesvara”]

—Who do you think was on that Cross reincarnate? Who else? You! YOU AVALOKITESVARA, READER!
      On the sidewalk,
           a dead baby bird
     For the ants

II. “Mind alone/introduced the bone”

Elise Pearlman states in her Nothing and Everything that Kerouac was done with Buddhism “for good” by 1960. Here, The Buddhist Years definitively go to 1962. Also neglected, his Satori in Paris novella that was published in 1966, based on his trip the previous year. In one of Kerouac’s most famous interviews, conducted by Ted Berrigan in 1967 and published in Paris Review in 1968, Kerouac has quite a bit to say about the influence of Mahayana Buddhism on his work. His quotes Buddha by saying, “I cannot use your abuse, you may have it back,” paraphrased from the Akkosa Sutra, which is used again when he appears on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line in 1968, less than a year from his death. 

In all fairness, Kerouac declares himself a Catholic as well in that last TV appearance (and elsewhere), and though he asked Ginsberg to see the taping from the audience, he puts him down from the stage. This is a portrait of an emotionally confused man in the final depths of alcoholism. I have no doubt that Pearlman found declarations from Kerouac of being done “for good” with Buddhism not only in 1960, but all the way to his death. He also condemned Ginsberg on many occasions, but clearly reverses it again and again.

Kerouac could be seen as still attempting to sustain “the View” (in Maha Ati speak) at the end of his life, whether he called it Catholicism or Buddhism. (Alan Watts said Tibetan Buddhism was “Catholicism on acid.”) People have a lot of trouble understanding Jack’s alcoholic instability and contradictions at the end, thus solidly labeling him a conservative or Catholic. Gerald Nicosia declares in Memory Babe that Jack’s return to Catholicism is proven by his later use of the phrase “real world,” stepping back from his “everything’s a dream,” which had occurred in his writing even before his conversion to Buddhism.

Allen Ginsberg’s 1963 poem “The Change” might help in understanding “the real world” in context. Written after his Indian pilgrimage, “The Change” is a rejection of his own Blakean visionary grasping in exchange for “Zen Buddhist ordinary mind set in everyday reality,” Allen’s summation through scholar Gordon Ball. One can see “The Change” as some level of acceptance of being in a body, rather than tripping out. As Ginsberg says in the Cuban section of his Iron Curtain Journals, “I explained my Indian Mystery version of “get back in your skin” or return to the body, that Death was only a threat only if life is lived solely in the mental worlds but life opened to infinity like in Blake if lived in the feeling body—which means acceptance of this body that must die—” 

Shuttleworth’s work is indispensable to understanding Jack’s mysticism and its development. Bravo! 

OM MANI PADME HUM! echoes Avalokatesvara’s mantra….

But let’s end this with Jack himself….

[From “Avalokitesvara”]

     Voices of critics
            in the theater lobby —
     A moth on the carpet
I’ll hex you with haikus (haikus are little three-line poems)—Nobody from Time or Life can stop me now, go ahead and take my picture standing on my head, you think that’ll stop me from standing on my head? I got my alto horn and I’m gonna leave that horn unblown?
      A whole pussywillow
           over there,
      Unblown!
Clap! Clap! Here comes Charley Poonyak who lost his dream mind baby in Baltimore! Enough?

Kerouac: The Buddhist Years

by Jack Kerouac (Author), Charles Shuttleworth (Editor)

Rare Bird Books

Hardcover $35.00 Available May 6, 2025

Pre-order: Amazon | Publisher | Bookshop.org