The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [54]
“What’s the crickets?”
“Big jar full of crickets, give me another drink Coughlin, about one tenth of an inch long with huge white antennae and hatch ’em myself, little sentient beings in a bottle that sing real good when they grow up. I wanta swim in rivers and drink goatmilk and talk with priests and just read Chinese books and amble around the valleys talking to farmers and their children. We’ve got to have mind-collecting weeks in our zendos where your mind tries to fly off like a Tinker Toy and like a good soldier you put it back together with your eyes closed except of course the whole thing is wrong. D’y’hear my latest poem Goldbook?”
“No what?”
“Mother of children, sister, daughter of sick old man, virgin your blouse is torn, hungry and barelegged, I’m hungry too, take these poems.”
“Fine, fine.”
“I wanta bicycle in hot afternoon heat, wear Pakistan leather sandals, shout in high voice at Zen monk buddies standing in thin hemp summer robes and stubble heads, wanta live in golden pavilion temples, drink beer, say goodbye, go Yokahama big buzz Asia port full of vassals and vessels, hope, work around, come back, go, go to Japan, come back to U.S.A., read Hakuin, grit my teeth and discipline myself all the time while getting nowhere and thereby learn…learn that my body and everything gets tired and ill and droopy and so find out all about Hakuyu.”
“Who’s Hakuyu?”
“His name meant White Obscurity, his name meant he who lived in the hills back of Northern-White-Water where I’m gonna go hiking, by God, it must be full of steep piney gorges and bamboo valleys and little cliffs.”
“I’ll go with you!” (me).
“I wanta read about Hakuin, who went to see this old man who lived in a cave, slept with deer and ate chestnuts and the old man told him to quit meditating and quit thinking about koans, as Ray says, and instead learn how to go to sleep and wake up, said, when you go to sleep you should put your legs together and take deep breaths and then concentrate your mind on a spot one and a half inches below your navel until you feel it get like a ball of power and then start breathing from your heels clear up and concentrate saying to yourself that that center just here is Amida’s Pure Land, the center of the mind, and when you wake up you should start by consciously breathing and stretching a little and thinking the same thoughts, see, the rest of the time.”
“That’s what I like, see,” says Alvah, “these actual signposts to something. What else?”
“The rest of the time he said don’t bother about thinkin about nothin, just eat well, not too much, and sleep good, and old Hakuyu said he was three hundred friggin years old just then and figured he was good for five hundred more, by Gawd which makes me think he must still be up there if he’s anybody at all.”
“Or the sheepherder kicked his dog!” puts in Coughlin.
“I bet I can find that cave in Japan.”
“You can’t live in this world but there’s nowhere else to go,” laughs Coughlin.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“It means the chair I sit in is a lion throne and the lion is walking, he roars.”
“What’s he say?”
“Says, Rahula! Rahula! Face of Glory! Universe chawed and swallowed!”
“Ah balls!” I yell.
“I’m goin to Marin County in a few weeks,” said Japhy, “go walk a hunnerd times around Tamalpais and help purify the atmosphere and accustom the local spirits to the sound of sutra. What you think, Alvah?”
“I think it’s all lovely hallucination but I love it sorta.”
“Alvah, trouble with you is you don’t do plenty night zazen especially when it’s cold out, that’s best, besides you should get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, homespun blankets and mother’s milk on your happy ragged mat floor like this one. Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go