- Paperback
- Publisher: Penguin Books; Second Printing edition (1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140194746
- ISBN-13: 978-0140194746
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Kirkus Review is a piece of junk. This book is great Kerouac. Also Kirkus made a mistake. Burroughs did not make up the "cut-up" method, Brion Gysin did. Burroughs merely appropriated it. Also, Kerouac did not use the "cut-up" method. He used his own "Spontaneous Prose" which seems like the "cut-up" method, but is not. I repeat: Kirkus Reviews doesn't know crap!
Format:Hardcover
I agree with most of my fellow reviewers that the Kirkus review is rather harsh. To attack Kerouac on the basis of his alcoholism, his Catholic upbringing, and his lack of being able to live up to the aspirations of Buddhism is more a critique of him as a person rather than him as a writer. This book (if you read the foreword) was more a series of personal notes to Allen Ginsberg, rather than a finished piece of work for publication. To compare it with, say, 'On the Road,' is like comparing Camus's 'First Man' with 'The Stranger'- one is a preliminary sketch, the other a polished novel. If you read this, read it as a study of someone who was struggling to understand buddhism within his own personal context, not as a manual to buddhism. Read it as poetry, not scripture. Value it as a personal journey, a personal struggle. If you want to view it as a text on buddhism primarily, view it as something which enriches your own faith and desire for liberation.
Learning to benefit from all things, good or bad, is part of the path to liberation. Learn to benefit from this, and you WILL benefit from it.
Format:Hardcover
By way of providing a balance to Kirkus' rather grouchy review of Kerouac's "Book of the Dharma":
Kerouac's being unable definitively to seperate Buddhism from Hinduism and Taoism is hardly his fault. Early Hinduism is the religion which lies behind Buddhism, and all Vedic faiths. Tibetan Buddhism adopted and adapted Mongol imagery and concepts, and Sino-Japanese Buddhism is infused with Taoism and Confucianism. As for its connection with Catholicism, this is the religion Kerouac was brought up in, and which he struggled to reconcile with Buddhism for many years. It left him, perhaps with an overexaggerated sense of the first Noble Truth: "All life is suffering". The Buddhist text that Kerouac first encountered, Dwight Goddard's "A Buddhist Bible," is an eclectic collection of scripture drawn from all of these Buddhist traditions.
Christ claimed a path to redemption from suffering - so did Buddha - room for comparison at least?
Attacking Kerouac for his alcoholism is rather below the belt - can't a drunk be religious? Can he not aspire above his own weakness? Anxious and neurotic this text may be, even interminably confused, but then so is John Bunyan's "Confessions": at least it's vexedness indicates Kerouac's engagement with serious metaphysical questions.
Even so, one for die hard fans, I should imagine. B.Moderate.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
the spiritual foundation of kerouac
if you are the least bit curious of kerouac's spirtual quest as well as the roots of one of america's first boddhisatva's then this book is a must. Read more
Published on 27 Sep 1998
The ramblings of a genius
I agree with the previous statement that the Kirkus review was cursory. Actually, they just plain didn't get it. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 1998
Bottom of the barrel scraped for this one!
'Dharma' may be of interest to Kerouac scholars for obscure historical reasons, or to a few Kerouac fans for emotional reasons, but it doesn't stand on it's own as a work of... Read more
Published on 2 Sep 1997
Some of the Dharma unlocks new doors to Kerouac's genius.
Some of the Dharma, a maze of journal entries, prayers, thoughts, meditations set in a typeset facsimile of the original manuscript by the author is so vast and informed, it is... Read more
Published on 16 July 1997
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