Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (45 page)

Yes, publish Neal's Joan Anderson, it's a masterpiece and was the basis for my idea about prose, tho Neal himself doesn't care or understand; but that dense page where he breathlessly drew a diagram of the toilet window is the wildest prose I've ever seen and I like it better than Joyce or Proust or Melville or Wolfe or anybody.

Bill's Interzone Tangiers is great, haunting, it looks like he'll go very far on a hundred unpredictable tangents and be really a big writer especially because he is uncompromisingly amusing himself. His finger story is so accurate, the prose. Haunting concern with brevity. I should have written my ideas of that when I read his stories last week. I'm very mentally tired today; for two days I been wrestling like a mathematician with the problem of how the Seven Great Elements are sucked into action . . . a problem solved in the Surangama, but because of the poor translation or incomplete thought in Sanskrit, was not made manifestly clear; but this has wearied me so I rush this incomplete letter to you, begging for time to recoup. In my next letter I will simply chat awhile and then type up dharma notes. In them all the problems of karma, arbitrary conception, etc. Bah bah words words. Don't think for a minute I've lost my faith, no, I'm tired of words and writing letters like this; my progress is slow but sure. Carl Solomon must be in Denver seeing Rudolf Halley. How can I check on him? He musta left that place on Madison by now.

Bev Burford going to Frisco in March. One of the best parts in
Visions of Neal
is that part about Saturday Night Red Neons Making Me Think of Chocolate Candy Boxes in Drugstores, remember?—good for Crazy Lights—Excuse this tired letter. I very glad to be free of jail. Now I go to Frisco this spring or summer or fall and eat lotsa panfry chowmein and drink wine with Al—also will live in Chittenden Riverbottom and write more poems on tea—go to desert via the Zipper right outa 3rd and Townsend all the way to Yuma Desert—Here I am yelling about Dharma and I write nothing about it. Patience. Wait till my next. Meanwhile accept this, and enclosed stories by you and Bill, and write again if you have something. What are your virgin feelings concerning your first Buddhist studies?

Jack

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Richmond Hill, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

Feb 10 55

 

Allen,

Just idly reading your last letter in the afternoon, with glass of hangover wines (after big weekend at Tom Livornese with Ed and Maria, drinks and pianosingings) and I see the sad letter about the “X”—your metaphysical concerns and doubts—I understand the seriousness of your past path and applaud it and there is no difference between your past path and the Buddhist one you enter . . . As I have in my notebook writ,
The life of an enlightened man is like a dream that is self-enlightening in which the dreamer knows that he's dreaming before he wakes up
.

And the reason why there is an Eightfold Path (of Purity) and why lust is unadvised is because a man led around by his dong will not have a mind free to realize that the dream of life is only an arbitrary conception (a conception arbitrated by false terrestrial judgment) (as a Judge arbitrating a court dispute between “two”) and so he will go on perpetuating occasion for rebirth and seeking rebirth himself and thus the Ocean of Suffering rolls on and on thru Kalpa after Kalpa with no let-up, like traffic in a great superhiway and everybody driving to another birth and further graves and cribs and all longfaced and solemn in charnels of their own making, like butchers in bloody aprons at morn regarding the empty blue sky with self-believing huge ignorance . . . so.

Saw Lucien. He said he was actually an ancient ex-Buddha devoted now to the full enjoyment and investigation and digging of life, and suffering too, but I see that he's really only a dreamer absorbed in his dream, like my
Town and City
heroes Joe and Charley Martin
absorbed
fixing motors and so mystic Peter can't understand what their absorption is all about nor Francis' own silly absorption in denial. There is no way for a Buddha, an Awakened One, to reappear like a Lucien. But Lucien is beginning to know what I mean, his story is “I couldn't be less interested,” which I see in his eyes; incidentally I've discovered that my little nephew in the south, Lil Paul [Blake], is Lucien really, and will grow up and be the same. How strange that I have to be hungup now with another seven year old Lucien and be his uncle and charged with the responsibility of watching over him and taking him [on] walks and giving him spiritual instruction . . . a little blond, green eyed desperate tortured introspection Lucien with unhappy life.

Anyway, to reap the realization that you're dreaming, and that nothing necessarily exists after all if you don't notice it, live in a childlike unconcerned contemplative way in the forest solitude. Or the city solitude, like a Seymour [Wyse] by the window, or a San Francisco Blues Poet sitting in skidrow rocking-chairs. But the forest solitude, about which I know nothing yet, is traditionally handed down from the Buddhas and Buddies of old and
arhats
and cats and I am going to try it.

First I go to South, to help build the new family house, dig ditches and carry planks and saw boards. Then, July, I drive to NY with new auto license, in old panel truck of brother's, and pick up my mother and drive her back, with all our stuff. Then in August I go to New Orleans in bus and from NO to Del Rio Texas on Southern Pacific freights and from Del Rio to Villa Acuna across river and from there to south and plateau and sweet Actopan and thence on up to West Coast via Mazatlan searching for best seasons and areas for bhikku life of future. And if you in Frisco around October I will go, otherwise no reason. Will go on 1st class Zipper freight from Yuma on thru, fast and free.

Rebirth. Perhaps you been wondering. Coming back to the dream in a rebirth is like myself when I've been to the Village and Stanley Gould has scolded me for some silly camp I put down, I want to go back and do it over and redress the silly camp, there's a residue called “cause for regret”—and this is now the phantom dreamer seeks his rebirth because of unmatured undeveloped unredressed Karma from the previous life dream. Though it's hard for me to realize there's no Stanley Gould, no scolding, no silly camp, no going back, and no coming-from, and no “I” in the matter, no individual in the matter, nothing but wholly imaginary burbujas possessing no more strength than imaginary blossoms seen in the empty sky, no more strength than forgotten images in forgotten dreams in forgotten centuries long ago, yet, Go! Svaha! Be Saved! Take up thy Staff! This is the Holy Life!—nevertheless it's the truth, there was no Stanley Gould, there was no scolding, the silly camp was a gesture in a dream, I cannot go back and straighten it out because there is no straightening of gray space and open rain, there is no Jack Kerouac in the matter, I don't necessarily exist except as an arbitrary conception stated by some fools.

Sunday I had the Dhyana of Complete Understanding—A happiness was in me, beyond the happiness of mortality, and neither a happiness nor not a happiness; and it was revealed and laid bare, not as a result wholly of my actions and efforts to realize the truth, but because it was already there, with no beginning, no ending—it was the bliss of knowing that our lives are but dreams and arbitrary conceptions, from which the big dreamer wakes—What could be more like a dream, with birth the falling-asleep, and death the awakening from sleep?—a dream, with beginning and ending and plot—a dream, with that which is not itself, bounding both it's sides—a dream, taking place in dark sleep of the Universal night—I had a clear
physical
realization that it's only a dream—

Practicing meditation and realizing that existence is a dream is an
athletic
, physical accomplishment—now I know why I was an athlete, to learn physical relaxation, smooth strength of strong muscles hanging ready for Nirvana, the great power that runs from the brow to the slope shoulders down the arms to the delicately joined hands in Dhyana—the hidden power of gentle breathing in the silence—it's
athletic
—somehow I realized why Bill and Lucien liked me—And the big dreamer wakes from dream-after-dream and wants to keep going back to rebirth in a new life-body to redevelop his evil deeds (cause for regret) his good deeds leave no karma, no need to redevelop, to redress—but his bad deeds, his lies, lusts, cruelties and thefts do haunt him and he has to go back and work it over better, to Good—but if he becomes enlightened in the midst of the dream he sees all things as arbitrary conceptions merely (form that is emptiness, emptiness that is form), he realizes he himself, the ego-personality assumed in the dream is inexistent, he realizes that things, if you don't notice them, don't necessarily exist (the wisdom of the Tathagata, Suchness-Arrived, the Unborn) . . .
that they are illusions that have no hold on reality
. . . an unconditional void realization comes to the big dreamer and he awakes in the dream—even before death—and there will be no more rebirth for the phantom dreamer—but as long as the big dreamer fails to see that even karma, rebirth and death, dream and non-dream and the whole Dharma of Buddhas and Tathagatas, all conditioned conceptual things, including himself, exist only as arbitrary conceptions and not in reality, then the big dreamer will go on dreaming, perhaps in heaven, where he is not exempt from pain. Form is Dust and Pain.

When a dreamer is enlightened inside the dream, it means his karma was thus intended to reach its end as enlightenment became revealed—so when he leaves his body and the Five Skhandhas and Suzuki's “pernicious corollaries of egoism” there is no gnawing need to pick up again and resume the dreaming again, because it is seen that “to come back” is only a dream, only an arbitrary conception, and there
is
no coming back and never was—these are the rough outlines of a complete understanding of the truth—I sat incidentally for mental inside hip signposts for you, with feet comfortably crossed under my legs, with the big toe of my right foot nestled in the hollow between calf and shinbone of the left leg—letting all my breath out slowly so as to relax the dangerous tense diaphragm—do that—I entered the Halls of Nirvana and understood—the hosts of Buddhas were there, the Bodhisattvas touched my brow, I felt a distinct touch on the brow (imaginary)—I distinctly heard a Chinese sentence sung—I realized that Sages and Saints are real men with astounding discoveries of the Mind, sitting plainly in assemblies waiting for supper, but with a smile—like Charley Parker I can see a Chinese Saint with Bird Parker's face, Bird's quiet virility and leadership and faint smile among the cats and
arhats
—Everybody is happy as they realize that Nirvana is the happiness that never ends! and that it was already there!

Write soon,

Jean-Louis

 

The “silly camp” referred to was when Stanley showed me a drawing of Pound by [Sheri] Martinelli and I said “I don't know anything about Art” and Gould said “O don't give me that shit.” Incidentally, that was an afternoon spent with Stanley and Dave Burnett in a girl's pad (Marylou Little) in Village and blasting and when I told David that Chris McLaine said he was the best poet in Frisco I heard D. say “He's just a crazy knot”—saying “nut” with inconceivably elegant L.A. languidity . . . dig . . . but I find generally that the subterraneans are quippers only and feel they should honor the nihilism inherent in quippery and that is their substance . . . the nihilism of Bill and Allen and Lucien and Neal was greater tho not much smarter (and Joan [Burroughs] and Hunkey). Anton [Rosenberg] is their best quipper because he can come up with cries like Breboac Karrak Kerouac (from
Finnegans Wake
) but I find David inherently the most interesting one and kinder and more humane.

I have been translating rare works written in French and translated from the Tibetaine, the Mahayana Samgraha of Asanga, a great saint scholar of first century, and have a whole lifetime of translating ahead of me, of works done by Great Rimbarvian Frenchmen in the abbeys of Tibet, here is an example I done out; “Sentient beings ask themselves: ‘How can the inexistent be perceived?' To rid them of this hesitation, the Sutra compares dependent nature to magic (Maya) (magie)—” and etc., very easy and great career for me if I feel nothing to do. The Asanga was translated by Abbe Etienne Lamotte. Also I been looking up the secondary Buddhist works, such as Burmese etc. (Ledi Sayadaw) and the Tibetan book of the dead, etc., all about hallucinations, fantasies, etc. and I find generally that the scholars are merely secondary to the emotional geniuses of the sutra-writings. For instance, I believe the greatest writer in the history of the world, wrote the Surangama Sutra, without doubt, but we don't even have his name any more. But secondary scholarships, like this here that I translated, “If the object were really an object, the knowledge exempt from concept would not be born; without this knowledge, the state of Buddha could not be acquired.” (Mahayanasamgraha) is hungup on words etc.

[ . . . ]

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]

Feb 14 1955

 

Dear Jack:

Just got your second letter. I wrote Bill by the way and sent him $20 and will send him a little $$ now and then as I can afford. I owe him about 60 anyway. He sent me a story, which I'll forward to you presently, about man talking through his asshole. Also some notes on reports he's read about Englishmen making same mistake in William Tell as he.

Wish you would write him some encouragement re the method he's using toward prose, what he sends me is interesting like Kafka journals and fragments, he's worried apparently that the fragmentariness and “disorganization” of material depress him. I write back to let material take own form as it comes. You might advise him same from your knowledge to reassure that this
Naked Lunch
style from Tangiers is the correct procedure. Rexroth doesn't like Bill's work, Belson didn't nor does Gerd Stern. It will be difficult to promote to others or peddle.