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Dharma
Zen Buddhism is a school of East Asian Buddhism that emphasizes personal meditation practices (often under the oversight of a teacher) over study and knowledge of scripture. Japhy specifically reveres and follows Zen Buddhism, while Ray spends more time reading the sūtras and studying the broader Mahayana Buddhism tradition, of which Zen forms just one part.
Zen Buddhism Quotes in The Dharma Bums
The The Dharma Bums quotes below are all either spoken by Zen Buddhism or refer to Zen Buddhism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 13
Quotes
“I've been reading Whitman, know what he says, Cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots, he means that's the attitude for the Bard, the Zen Lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em.”
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Zen Buddhism Term Timeline in The Dharma Bums
The timeline below shows where the term Zen Buddhism appears in The Dharma Bums. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...“Dharma Bum.” Japhy grew up in the woods in Oregon, studied American Indian mythology and Zen Buddhist philosophy in college. At the same time, he was also interested in anarchism and...
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...like a goat, or a “mudface.” Ray says that he’s more into Mahayana Buddhism than Zen Buddhism, which he considers a cruel intellectual game. But over the course of a long,...
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...the restaurant’s cook about Buddhism, but the cook doesn’t care, which Japhy says is perfectly Zen.
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Chapter 9
...Ray admires how gracefully Japhy moves, and Japhy tells Ray that climbing is just like Zen Buddhism: it should be automatic and subconscious. They make their way up, slowly exhausting themselves...
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Chapter 10
...with a Cherokee trucker in Texas. Reading the star map, Japhy looks like a Chinese Zen Buddhist master. He and Ray eat chocolate pudding and then part ways for to meditate...
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Chapter 11
...survive. He waits briefly on a ledge to contemplate the suffering of existence and the Zen Buddhist aphorism “When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing,” which horrifies...
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Chapter 13
Japhy recites a poem about wandering to Japan in search of the Zen master Hakuyu, who supposedly lives in a cave in the mountains and has special teachings...
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Before falling asleep, Ray reflects on his newfound buddies, the “Zen Lunatics,” and ponders the absurdity of suburban American life: everybody spends all day glued to...
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Chapter 16
...it. But it’s a traditional Chinese Buddhist temple, so Japhy is uninterested—he only cares about Zen Buddhism. The preacher tells them that God will reward their devotion, and they part ways.
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