The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [72]
Nobody would buy even that.
“You and your Buddha, why don’t you stick to the religion you were born with?” my mother and sister said.
“Everything’s gone, already gone, already come and gone,” I yelled. “Ah,” stomping around, coming back, “and things are empty because they appear, don’t they, you see them, but they’re made up of atoms that can’t be measured or weighed or taken hold of, even the dumb scientists know that now, there isn’t any finding of the farthest atom so-called, things are just empty arrangements of something that seems solid appearing in the space, they ain’t either big or small, near or far, true or false, they’re ghosts pure and simple.”
“Ghostses!” yelled little Lou amazed. He really agreed with me but he was afraid of my insistence on “Ghostses.”
“Look,” said my brother-in-law, “if things were empty how could I feel this orange, in fact taste it and swallow it, answer me that one.”
“Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it’s actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don’t you see that? By itself it’s a no-thing, it’s really mental, it’s seen only of your mind. In other words it’s empty and awake.”
“Well, if that’s so, I still don’t care.” All enthusiastic I went back to the woods that night and thought, “What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I’m a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I’m empty and awake, that I know I’m empty, awake, and that there’s no difference between me and anything else. In other words it means that I’ve become the same as everything else. It means I’ve become a Buddha.” I really felt that and believed it and exulted to think what I had to tell Japhy now when I got back to California. “At least he’ll listen,” I pouted. I felt great compassion for the trees because we were the same thing; I petted the dogs who didn’t argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They’re wiser than their masters. I told that to the dogs, too, they listened to me perking up their ears and licking my face. They didn’t care one way or the other as long as I was there. St. Raymond of the Dogs is who I was that year, if no one or nothing else.
Sometimes in the woods I’d just sit and stare at things themselves, trying to divine the secret of existence anyway. I’d stare at the holy yellow long bowing weeds that faced my grass sitmat of Tathagata Seat of Purity as they pointed in all directions and hairily conversed as the winds dictated Ta Ta Ta, in gossip groups with some lone weeds proud to show off on the side, or sick ones and half-dead falling ones, the whole congregation of living weedhood in the wind suddenly ringing like bells and jumping to get excited and all made of yellow stuff and sticking to the ground and I’d think This is it. “Rop rop rop,” I’d yell at the weeds, and they’d show windward pointing intelligent reachers to indicate and flail and finagle, some rooted in blossom imagination earth moist perturbation idea that had karmacized their very root-and-stem…. It was eerie. I’d fall asleep and dream the words “By this teaching the earth came to an end,” and I’d dream of my Ma nodding solemnly with her whole head, umph, and eyes closed. What did I care about all the irking hurts and tedious wronks of the world, the human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars. “I am Bhikku Blank Rat!” I dreamed.
What did I care about the squawk of the little very self which wanders everywhere? I was dealing in outblownness, cut-off-ness, snipped, blownoutness, putoutness, turned-off-ness, nothinghappens-ness, gone-ness, gone-out-ness, the snapped link, nir, link, vana, snap! “The dust of my thoughts collected into a globe,” I thought, “in this ageless solitude,” I thought, and really