Thoughts on Dharma Bums

"Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live."

What begins as a happy-go-lucky tale of a young American bum, hot on his luck, hitching and catching freights across the country becomes a highly personal exploration of the young man's spiritual experience. In many ways, Ray is the perfect "bhikkhu." He pays attention to any and all of this thoughts and actions, chronicles them intently, self-criticizes, self-praises, and, most of all, self-reflects through his writing. On the other hand, Ray could be compared to a Zen puppy dog, mind always a-springing, lapping up traditional Zen literature with seemingly no judgement, over-stimulated and over-eager to fit into a culture that exists thousands of miles, leagues even, away from his own. In so many ways, Ray juxtaposes himself. He meditates on the buddha-mind, an enlightened mind that has little interest in the physical world, yet also he obsesses over his writing and documenting of his experience. The very publication of the book itself is a contradiction: a lengthy rant about a spirituality that is in many ways wordless. The contradictions here don't negate Ray's sincerity, rather, they seek to hilight the contradictory nature of Zen itself, and they illustrate his eventual understanding of the Zen mind. 

Zen tradition is full of wit, trickery, and irony. Its philosophies are full of contradictory statements, its teachings play off of impossibilities that are laid out to seem utterly possible. "Finding Nirvana is like locating silence." In this way, the beginner Zenist, like Ray, may be caught off guard. An influx of literature that calls one to act, then subsequently disproves itself against that action might at first confuse a person. Ray is taking this all in with wide, eager eyes. He is innocent and accepting, and he takes Zen farther than it is meant to be taken. But that is the point. In order for Ray to learn that Zen really teaches you that you already know all there is to be known, he must first let himself feel as though he is learning something new and exciting. He must unleash his thoughts in order to enjoy reigning them in. 

At the end of the novel, Ray says goodbye to his campsite with the simple statement, "thank you. Blah." By saying this, we get the idea that Ray has gleaned some insight from his Zen practice. The book spins itself into a close. It expands, like Ray's mind, with puppy dog enthusiasm, and then learns to reign itself in, finally finishing with just, Blah. Blah -- in other words, you don't have to say it. In other words, anything to be learned is already known. Blah -- in other words, that's the point of it all anyway, that there is no point.