Jack Kerouac and the Dhamma
I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that the experience of Jack Kerouac changed my life. Yet it wasn’t love at first site. I couldn’t get through On The Road when I started it the first time, as I didn’t get the “point” of it all. That’s probably why just about every publisher rejected the draft out of hand for years. But once I got what Kerouac was pointing me towards, I read everything I could get my hands on. I read the well-known books several times over, and read all the lesser ones as well. Heck, I even read the unpublished drafts, the loose audio collections, and the letters of Kerouac, as well as devouring the works of Thomas Wolfe, one of Kerouac’s influences.
So you could say I was chomping at the bit to ask Alan Senauke, one of the shapers of the Engaged Buddhism movement (who like Kerouac had dropped out of Columbia University to head west) and who even ran with the Beats for a time. My interview with Alan did not disappoint. I found his assessment of Kerouac’s practice likely accurate, yet altogether tragic. It does leave open the question what Kerouac might have gone on to produce had he found the true satori he was looking for. I hope that in whatever existence Kerouac may find himself in now, he may find such peace and liberation.
“Kerouac was somebody who really seemed to get at the essences of things. And yet, they didn’t free him. Which is really painful.”
Alan Senauke: There's actually another aside to which you might call Beat Zen, which was a perspective on Zen that was being generated by some of the Beat poets, which was really like, ‘Zen is freedom.’ Zen is the freedom to do whatever you want! And we were sorting this out, but we were sorting it out by actually taking up the practice.
Host: Right, and with that mention of Beats, I have to go a little off script and just ask one question out of personal interest, or rather personal fascination. I know you've crossed circles with Gary Snyder and Alan Ginsberg. And as someone whose life was shaped in more ways than I can describe by Jack Kerouac, I'm really curious how you would characterize his understanding and practice of Buddhism.
Alan Senauke: It's hard for me to say, I mean, Kerouac was somebody who really seemed to get at the essences of things. And yet, they didn't free him. Which is really painful. I think in part that's because he lacked he lacked a teacher, he lacked the Sangha. He was really focusing on The Buddha as the expression of liberation. But as we know from practicing that there are three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And they're all really essential. But Kerouac was not somebody I knew. I didn't know Allen quite well. I knew Gary, and Phil Whalen. And all of them to one degree or other did recognize the Triple Treasure. I think that it's sustained them through their lives.
Host: That collection of Beat poets and writers who also had a Buddhist practice, was it more of a kind of passing or superficial interest? Because one of the criticisms you do hear is that when certain Eastern philosophies came to the US, and especially as they were picked up by people of a higher profile, that they were more just kind of touching at the edges and cherry picking what they chose and how they applied it. But for the group of people that you were closely in touch with, you felt that there was really a genuine experience of practice and understanding there?
Alan Senauke: Oh yeah! I mean, Gary lived in Japan for many years. He studied with a very rigorous Rinzai Zen teacher. Philip was a student of Suzuki Roshi was himself, a priest. And Allen was a very long term student of Tibetan Buddhism. So so they, they knew their stuff.