The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [84]
“Did ya hear about the disciple who asked the Zen master ‘What is the Buddha?’”
“No, what?”
“‘The Buddha is a dried piece of turd,’ was the answer. The disciple experienced sudden enlightenment.”
“Simple shit,” I said.
“Do you know what sudden enlightenment is? One disciple came to a Master and answered his koan and the Master hit him with a stick and knocked him off the veranda ten feet into a mud puddle. The disciple got up and laughed. He later became a Master himself. ’Twasn’t by words he was enlightened, but by that great healthy push off the porch.”
“All wallowing in mud to prove the crystal truth of compassion,” I thought, I wasn’t about to start advertising my “words” out loud any more to Japhy.
“Woo!” he yelled throwing a flower at my head. “Do you know how Kasyapa became the First Patriarch? The Buddha was about to start expounding a sutra and twelve hundred and fifty bhikkus were waiting with their garments arranged and their feet crossed, and all the Buddha did was raise a flower. Everybody was perturbed. The Buddha didn’t say nothin. Only Kasyapa smiled. That was how the Buddha selected Kasyapa. That’s known as the flower sermon, boy.”
I went in the kitchen and got a banana and came out and said, “Well, I’ll tell you what nirvana is.”
“What?”
I ate the banana and threw the peel away and said nothing. “That’s the banana sermon.”
“Hoo!” yelled Japhy. “D’I ever tell you about Coyote Old Man and how him and Silver Fox started the world by stomping in empty space till a little ground appeared beneath their feet? Look at this picture, by the way. This is the famous Bulls.” It was an ancient Chinese cartoon showing first a young boy going out into the wilderness with a small staff and pack, like an American Nat Wills tramp of 1905, and in later panels he discovers an ox, tries to tame it, tries to ride it, finally does tame it and ride it but then abandons the ox and just sits in the moonlight meditating, finally you see him coming down from the mountain of enlightenment and then suddenly the next panel shows absolutely nothing at all, followed by a panel showing blossoms in a tree, then the last picture you see the young boy is a big fat old laughing wizard with a huge bag on his back and he’s going into the city to get drunk with the butchers, enlightened, and another new young boy is going up to the mountain with a little pack and staff.
“It goes on and on, the disciples and the Masters go through the same thing, first they have to find and tame the ox of their mind essence, and then abandon that, then finally they attain to nothing, as represented by this empty panel, then having attained nothing they attain everything which is springtime blossoms in the trees so they end up coming down to the city to get drunk with the butchers like Li Po.” That was a very wise cartoon, it reminded me of my own experience, trying to tame my mind in the woods, then realizing it was all empty and awake and I didn’t have to do anything, and now I was getting drunk with the butcher Japhy. We played records and lounged around smoking then went out and cut more wood.
Then as it got cool late afternoon we went up to the shack and washed and dressed up for the big Saturday night party. During the day Japhy went up and down the hill at least ten times to make phone calls and see Christine and get bread and bring up sheets for his girl that night (when he had a girl he put out clean sheets on his thin mattress on the straw mats, a ritual). But I just sat around in the grass doing nothing, or writing haikus, or watching the old vulture circling the hill. “Must be something dead around here,” I figured.
Japhy said “Why do you sit on your ass all day?”
“I practice do-nothing.”
“What’s the difference? Burn it, my Buddhism is activity,” said Japhy rushing off down the hill again. Then I could hear him sawing wood and whistling in the distance. He couldn’t stop jiggling for a minute. His meditations were regular things, by the clock,