Book review #44: The Buddhist Years

Kerouac's Oriental religious period in focus

The Buddhist Years: Selected Writings by Jack Kerouac, edited by Charles Shuttleworth (Rare Bird Books/Sal Paradise Press, 2025)

By Nina Živančević

THE BUDDHIST Years is a brand new volume of previously unpublished writings from the archives of one of the Beat Generation ‘fathers’. Jack Kerouac has had a number of compilers and editors of his work, some of whom I personally met (with his daughter Jan) at the legendary Kerouac Conference in Boulder in 1982. However, very few of his biographers-cum-editors were willing or able to explain his writing or his working method, heavily influenced by his spiritual approach to life and, in this latest book, the author’s Buddhist practices.

Charles Shuttleworth, in his role as editor, gives us a real treat by compiling, annotating and publishing Kerouac texts which not only show his spiritual angle on life but also highlight a particular spiritual quality of Kerouac’s that shines brightly thanks to the discreet contribution of Shuttleworth himself.

In the editor’s overall commentary on the material in his introduction to the anthology we do not encounter Kerouac’s preaching hour on Buddhism but we read, one after another, his numerous chronological texts which emerged out of his profoundly enlightened approach to the Oriental religions.

Shuttleworth’s stance on Kerouac’s texts here is quite illuminating and his choice of entries, stretching over 250 pages, almost immaculate. However, as a fifty-years long student of Vajrayana Buddhism myself, I would simply add that if there was a flaw in the editor’s approach to Kerouac’s thinking, it would concern his attitude towards religions other than Buddhism or even misunderstanding of some of the basic Buddhist principles.

I tried to reach several levels of Mahayana Buddhism, each step more difficult and demanding than the previous one, but, at each higher level of my studies, all Tibetan lamas I’ve studied with would adamantly apply their Diamond truth telling me that ‘all religions are just the same’ and that ‘there is no difference between Buddhism and Christianity, Zoroastrianism alone!’ (here enter my memories of the teachings of Lama Tenzin Rinpoche and Lama Tarchin, as well as the termas of both Tertons Tsogyal).

By the same token, and in the light of their ‘non-discriminative’ mind and thinking, who was there to judge Chogyam Trungpa’s or Jack Kerouac’s penchant for drinking? And were not those human forms of a bright lama, such as Trungpa or Kerouac’s own, nothing but the strange examples of ‘Buddhist crazy monks’ with their ‘crazy wisdom’ cherished and praised by both branches of Zen and the Dzogchen (Mahayana) followers?

Shuttleworth’s perspective on Jack Kerouac’s writing is both scholarly and entertaining. The editor focuses strictly on the author’s most prolific years marked by his Buddhist learning and contemplation encompassing the period largely from 1954 through 1956. All of these 25 previously unpublished and original Kerouac texts and poems are preceded by the standard academic units such as ‘In text citation abbreviations and additional works cited’, ‘Transcription notes' and followed by the responsible mention of 'Sources’, ‘Acknowledgments’ as well as a ‘Table of images and figures’.

We must give due credit due to the editor’s close work on this edition, especially to the efforts that he mentions in the ‘Transcription notes’. His task demanded not a small amount of skill and bravery in proofreading the original which included adding a certain number of words or signs which would then enable an average reading to interpret correctly Kerouac’s original entries.

He explains: ‘…As for interpreting Kerouac’s handwriting, which in some cases is challenging…expressionistic, full of sound words and unconventional spelling (Chapter 3, “The Legend of Three Houses”, in particular) I’ve taken great pains to get the words right…Overall, I have used my best judgement.’

For the sake of clarity of the texts compiled herein, Shuttleworth risks a lot as the systematic corrections and spellings applied to the abbreviations such as ‘cd’ into ‘could'‘ and '‘wd’ back to ‘would’ can certainly enhance the general comprehension of Kerouac writing but they can also easily damage the rhythm and music of his writing. The style of this unique Franco-Canadian author was above all innovative and, as such, he is still being praised for his spontaneity and notorious short-cuts both in his breathless life and writing!

The selection of the author’s newly found writing starts with two short pieces, ‘My Sad Sunset Birth’ (1941) and 'The Story Just Begins’ (1949), which were written, according to his editor, in the period preceding Jack’s Buddhist phase. They reveal the 19-year-old author, in the first instance, as ‘introspective and something of a depressive’. Both of these pieces of honest and passionate writing question the real meaning of existence which Kerouac, aged 6, experienced as an awakening of consciousness.

At the beginning of the 1950s though, Kerouac abandoned his hope of a lucrative writing career: his first novel did not sell well and his early version of On the Road (1951) was, according to Shuttleworth, considered too outlandish for publication both in style and substance. Kerouac remarked that ‘like Dostoyevsky he was doomed to suffer out all his life to “draw breath in pain”.’

It was at that time that he devised his fast sketching technique of writing, that is his Beat-cum-Buddhist approach to sentences, which was summed up as the ‘First thought, best thought’, a motto that Allen Ginsberg also considered his very own personal trademark. Kerouac’s personal take was perhaps better described though in his own words. When addressing a journalist once, he uttered: ‘Write what you want.’ He further commented: ‘I did not dream any of it [that is, his own work] would be published except in the madhouse…’

The word ‘madhouse’ could clearly be attributed to some painful years of Jack’s alcoholism and turbulent writing before he magically retreated from the world; 1953 was the year when the author discovered Thoreau and his subsequent yearning for Eastern religious practices. This budding tendency would reach its full flame in the years to follow.

In 1954, he reached the height of this proliferation as he wrote ‘I Was Born at Five in the Afternoon’, ‘Reflections on Birth’ (in Dharma Notebook), ‘Morning March 12 1922’, ‘Confessions of the Father’, ‘First Memories’, ‘The Heart of the World: The Legend of Duluoz’, ‘The Legend of Three Houses’, ‘The Long Night of Life’, two versions of ‘A Dream Already Ended’, ‘The Universe is Empty’, ‘Dharma Fragments’ and a long list of tasks to be accomplished on his path to enlightenment compiled in his ‘Ascetic Plans for the Future’.

He wrote down a long meditation such as ‘Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.’ These story-like meditations started haunting him after his reading of Thoreau’s references to ‘Hindoo’ philosophy. However, as Shuttleworth justly remarks, his musings on the Buddhist way of thinking did not make him apply the same precepts to his real life so ‘by the end of his life he re-embraced Christianity and died alcoholic’.

As a matter of fact, even in his excessive drinking and somewhat like his Dharma teacher Chogyam Trungpa, Kerouac attested to the fact that everything in this life, be it ascetic or excessive, was just a part of our big illusion. Kerouac was quite engaged with the Mahayana branch of Buddhism but it is not true that Kerouac was never strictly an all-time Buddhist; he was never strictly a Christian either or a religious follower of any sort but rather an explorer of the anthropologically-oriented Comparative Religions studies.

All of his interests, according to his biographers, have inspired his own work as a writer as they endowed his creativity with new meanings while enriching his vocabulary with unusual expressions. Throughout his introductory essay, Shuttleworth points at the fact that Kerouac was a highly spiritual writer, but not only in the Buddhist stricto sensu meaning of the word.

His novels, such as The Dharma Bums, Big Sur or The Book of Dreams, attest to the presence of his search for higher spirituality manifested either in form of the ‘love-for-nature’ oriented attitude towards the Japanese Zen or Chinese Dao (and exemplified in his Daoist observations of ecology vs. nature) or simply manifested in his Christian yearnings towards the absolute humanity in the world.

The excellent choice of pieces written in the latter part of his short-lived life as presented in this volume, pieces such as ‘On The Path’ (1955), ‘Avalokiteshvara’ (1957) or the final ‘Letters to Myself’ (1960) accentuate his desire to explore a field of the so called Universal Wisdom.

Shuttleworth concludes in his highly instructive introduction that ‘the climax of Kerouac’s Buddhist phase came in 1956 with his upbeat conclusion to Some of the Dharma on March 15th followed in April by The Scripture of the Golden Eternity which is ultimately a syncretic merging of all religions.’

‘Golden Eternity?’ Here the editor quotes again the remaining words of his favorite author: ‘…The golden eternity by another name would be as sweet. A Tathagata, a God, a Buddha by another name, an Allah, a Shri Krishna, a Coyote, a Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah, an Amida, a Maitreya, a Palalakonuh, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet.’ Signed by the essential Kerouac.

Reviewer’s note: I would like to highlight the fact that all the names and titles mentioned in my article come from the book Jack Kerouac: The Buddhist Years, which appears in his ‘Collected Writings’ series published by Rare Bird Books and Sal Paradise Press in the United States. Further biographical detail and information, including an extensive bibliography of Kerouac’s which I consulted here, both in English and French, have encouraged my somewhat pioneer study of this aspect of his writing.

Editor’s note: Nina Živančević is a poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator and contributing editor to NY Arts Magazine. Serbian-born, she has published 15 books of poetry. She has also written three books of short stories, two novels and a book of essay on Milosh Crnjanski (her doctoral thesis) published in Paris, New York and Belgrade. The recipient of three literary awards, a former assistant and secretary to Allen Ginsberg, she has edited and participated in numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry. As editor and correspondent she has also contributed to Modern Painters, American Book Review, East Village Eye and Republique de lettres and lectured and taught at Naropa University, New York University and La Sorbonne. She lives and works in Paris.

See also: ‘Ginsberg talks Dylan: Fond thoughts on a long friendship’, February 23rd, 2024