The Poetry of Jack Kerouac Read online

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26

  All these selfnesses have already vanished.

  Einstein measured that this present universe is an

  expanding bubble, and you know what that means.

  27

  Discard such definite imaginations of phenomena

  as your own self, thou human being, thou’rt a

  numberless mass of sun-motes: each mote a shrine.

  The same as to your shyness of other selves,

  selfness as divided into infinite numbers of beings,

  or selfness as identified as one self existing

  eternally. Be obliging and noble, be generous

  with your time and help and possessions, and be

  kind, because the emptiness of this little place

  of flesh you carry around and call your soul,

  your entity, is the same emptiness in every direction

  of space unmeasurably emptiness, the same, one,

  and holy emptiness everywhere: why be selfly and

  unfree, Man God, in your dream? Wake up, thou’rt

  selfless and free. “Even and upright your mind

  abides nowhere,” states Hui Neng of China.

  We’re all in Heaven now.

  28

  Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent

  mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.

  29

  Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are

  the true sins, and sin is only a conception of ours,

  due to long habit. Are you generous and are

  you kind, those are the true virtues, and they’re

  only conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond

  sin and virtue, is attached to neither, is attached

  to nothing, is unattached, because the golden

  eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one

  mold. The field has curves but it is one field.

  All things are different forms of the same thing.

  I call it the golden eternity—what do you

  call it, brother? For the blessing and merit

  of virtue, and the punishment and bad fate

  of sin, are alike just so many words.

  30

  Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is

  nothing but teeth. Rest and be kind.

  31

  There’s no need to deny that evil thing called

  GOOGOO, which doesnt exist, just as there’s no

  need to deny that evil thing called Sex and Rebirth,

  which also doesnt exist, as it is only a form of

  emptiness. The bead of semen comes from a long

  line of awakened natures that were your parent,

  a holy flow, a succession of saviors pouring from

  the womb of the dark void and back into it,

  fantastic magic imagination of the lightning, flash,

  plays, dreams, not even plays, dreams.

  32

  “The womb of exuberant fertility,” Ashvhaghosha

  called it, radiating forms out of its womb of

  exuberant emptiness. In emptiness there is no

  Why, no knowledge of Why, no ignorance of Why,

  no asking and no answering of Why, and no

  significance attached to this

  33

  A disturbed and frightened man is like the

  golden eternity experimentally pretending at

  feeling the disturbed-and-frightened mood; a

  calm and joyous man, is like the golden eternity

  pretending at experimenting with that experience;

  a man experiencing his Sentient Being, is like

  the golden eternity pretending at trying that out

  too; a man who has no thoughts, is like the golden

  eternity pretending at being itself; because

  the emptiness of everything has no beginning

  and no end and at present it is infinite.

  34

  “Love is all in all,” said Sainte Thérèse, choosing

  Love for her vocation and pouring out her

  happiness, from her garden by the gate, with

  a gentle smile, pouring roses on the earth,

  so that the beggar in the thunderbolt received

  of the endless offering of her dark void.

  Man goes a-beggaring into nothingness.

  “Ignorance is the father, Habit-Energy is

  the Mother.” Opposites are not the same

  for the same reason they are the same.

  35

  The words “atoms of dust” and “the great

  universes” are only words. The idea that they

  imply is only an idea. The belief that we live here

  in this existence, divided into various beings,

  passing food in and out of ourselves, and casting off

  husks of bodies one after another with no cessation

  and no definite or particular discrimination, is

  only an idea. The seat of our Immortal Intelligence

  can be seen in that beating light between the eyes

  the Wisdom Eye of the ancients: we know what

  we’re doing: we’re not disturbed: because

  we’re like the golden eternity pretending at

  playing the magic cardgame and making believe

  it’s real, it’s a big dream, a joyous ecstasy of

  words and ideas and flesh, an ethereal flower

  unfolding and folding back, a movie, an

  exuberant bunch of lines bounding emptiness,

  the womb of Avalokitesvara, a vast secret

  silence, springtime in the Void, happy young

  gods talking and drinking on a cloud. Our

  32,000 chillicosms bear all the marks of

  excellence. Blind milky light fills our night;

  and the morning is a crystal.

  36

  Give a gift to your brother, but there’s no gift

  to compare with the giving of assurance that he

  is the golden eternity. The true understanding of

  this would bring tears to your eyes. The other

  shore is right here, forgive and forget, protect

  and reassure. Your tormentors will be purified.

  Raise thy diamond hand. Have faith and wait.

  The course of your days is a river rumbling over

  your rocky back. You’re sitting at the bottom of the

  world with a head of iron. Religion is thy sad

  heart. You’re the golden eternity and it must be

  done by you. And means one thing: Nothing-

  Ever-Happened. This is the golden eternity.

  37

  When the Prince of Kalinga severed the

  flesh from the limbs and body of Buddha, even

  then Buddha was free from any such ideas as

  his own self, other self, living beings

  divided into many selves, or living beings

  united and identified into one eternal self.

  The golden eternity isnt “me.” Before you

  can know that you’re dreaming you’ll wake up,

  Atman. Had the Buddha, the Awakened One,

  cherished any of these imaginary judgments

  of and about things, he would have fallen

  into impatience and hatred in his suffering.

  Instead, like Jesus on the Cross he saw the

  light and died kind, loving all living things.

  38

  The world was spun out of a blade of grass:

  the world was spun out of a mind. Heaven

  was spun out of a blade of grass: heaven was spun

  out of a mind. Neither will do you much good,

  neither will do you much harm. The Oriental

  imperturbed, is the golden eternity.

  39

  He is called a Yogi, he is called a Priest,

  a Minister, a Brahmin, a Parson, a Chaplain,

  a Rôshi, a Lao
shih, a Master, a Patriarch, a Pope,

  a Spiritual Commissar, a Counselor, an Adviser,

  a Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, an Old Man, a Saint,

  a Shaman, a Leader, who thinks nothing of

  himself as separate from another self, not

  higher nor lower, no stages and no definite

  attainments, no mysterious stigmata or secret

  holyhood, no wild dark knowledge and no

  venerable authoritativeness, nay a giggling sage

  sweeping out the kitchen with a broom. After

  supper, a silent smoke. Because there is no

  definite teaching: the world is undisciplined

  Nature endlessly in every direction inward

  to your body and outward into space.

  40

  Meditate outdoors. The dark trees at night

  are not really the dark trees at night, it’s

  only the golden eternity.

  41

  A mosquito as big as Mount Everest is much

  bigger than you think; a horse’s hoof is more

  delicate than it looks. An altar consecrated to

  the golden eternity, filled with roses and lotuses

  and diamonds, is the cell of the humble prisoner,

  the cell so cold and dreary. Boethius kissed the

  Robe of the Mother Truth in a Roman dungeon.

  42

  Do you think the emptiness of the sky will ever

  crumble away? Every little child knows that

  everybody will go to heaven. Knowing that

  nothing ever happened is not really knowing

  that nothing ever happened, it’s the golden eternity.

  In other words, nothing can compare with telling

  your brother and your sister that what happened,

  what is happening, and what will happen, never

  really happened, is not really happening and never

  will happen, it is only the golden eternity.

  Nothing was ever born, nothing will ever die.

  Indeed, it didnt even happen that you heard about

  golden eternity through the accidental reading of

  this scripture. The thing is easily false. There

  are no warnings whatever issuing from the

  golden eternity: do what you want.

  43

  Even in dreams be kind, because anyway there is

  no time, no space, no mind. “It’s all not-born,”

  said Bankei of Japan, whose mother heard this

  from her son and did what we call “died happy.”

  And even if she had died unhappy, dying unhappy

  is not really dying unhappy, it’s the golden eternity.

  It’s impossible to exist, it’s impossible to be

  persecuted, it’s impossible to miss your reward.

  44

  Eight hundred and four thousand myriads of

  Awakened Ones throughout numberless swirls

  of epochs appeared to work hard to save a grain

  of sand, and it was only the golden eternity.

  And their combined reward will be no greater and

  no lesser than what will be won by a piece of

  dried turd. It’s a reward beyond thought.

  45

  When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it

  away. If you cant understand this scripture,

  throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

  46

  O Everlasting Eternity, all things and all truth

  laws are no-things, in three ways, which is the

  same way: AS THINGS OF TIME they dont

  exist and never came, because they’re already gone

  and there is no time. AS THINGS OF SPACE they

  dont exist because there is no furthest atom than

  can be found or weighed or grasped, it is emptiness

  through and through, matter and empty space too.

  AS THINGS OF MIND they dont exist, because

  the mind that conceives and makes them out does

  so by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting,

  and mentally-noticing and without this mind they

  would not be seen or heard or felt or smelled or

  tasted or mentally-noticed, they are discriminated

  from that which they’re not necessarily by imaginary

  judgments of the mind, they are actually dependent

  on the mind that makes them out, by themselves

  they are no-things, they are really mental, seen only

  of the mind, they are really empty visions of the

  mind, heaven is a vision, everything is a vision.

  What does it mean that I am in this endless universe

  thinking I’m a man sitting under the stars on the

  terrace of earth, but actually empty and awake

  throughout the emptiness and awakedness of

  everything? It means that I am empty and

  awake, knowing that I am empty and awake,

  and that there’s no difference between me and

  anything else. It means that I have attained

  to that which everything is.

  47

  The-Attainer-To-That-Which-Everything-Is,

  the Sanskrit Tathagata, has no ideas whatever

  but abides in essence identically with the essence

  of all things, which is what it is, in emptiness and

  silence. Imaginary meaning stretched to make

  mountains and as far as the germ is concerned it

  stretched even further to make molehills. A

  million souls dropped through hell but nobody

  saw them or counted them. A lot of large people

  isnt really a lot of large people, it’s only the

  golden eternity. When St. Francis went to heaven

  he did not add to heaven nor detract from earth.

  Locate silence, possess space, spot me the ego.

  “From the beginning,” said the Sixth Patriarch

  of the China School, “not a thing is.”

  48

  He who loves all life with his pity and

  intelligence isnt really he who loves all life

  with his pity and intelligence, it’s only natural.

  The universe is fully known because it is

  ignored. Enlightenment comes when you dont

  care. This is a good tree stump I’m sitting on.

  You cant even grasp your own pain let alone

  your eternal reward. I love you because you’re

  me. I love you because there’s nothing else

  to do. It’s just the natural golden eternity.

  49

  What does it mean that those trees and

  mountains are magic and unreal?—It means

  that those trees and mountains are magic and

  unreal. What does it mean that those trees and

  mountains are not magic but real?—it means

  that those trees and mountains are not magic

  but real. Men are just making imaginary

  judgments both ways, and all the time it’s

  just the same natural golden eternity.

  50

  If the golden eternity was anything other than

  mere words, you could not have said “golden

  eternity.” This means that the words are used

  to point at the endless nothingness of reality.

  If the endless nothingness of reality was anything

  other than mere words, you could not have said

  “endless nothingness of reality,” you could not

  have said it. This means that the golden eternity

  is out of our word-reach, it refuses steadfastly

  to be described, it runs away from us and leads

  us in. The name is not really the name. The same

  way, you could not have said “this world” if this

  world was anything ot
her than mere words. There’s

  nothing there but just that. They’ve long known

  that there’s nothing to life but just the living of it.

  It Is What It Is and That’s All It Is.

  51

  There’s no system of teaching and no reward

  for teaching the golden eternity, because

  nothing has happened. In the golden eternity

  teaching and reward havent even vanished let alone

  appeared. The golden eternity doesnt even have to

  be perfect. It is very silly of me to talk about

  it. I talk about it because there’s no command or

  warning of any kind, and also no blessing and no

  reward. I talk about it simply because here I am

  dreaming that I talk about it in a dream already

  ended, ages ago, from which I’m already awake, and

  it was only an empty dreaming, in fact nothing

  whatever, in fact nothing ever happened at all.

  The beauty of attaining the golden eternity is

  that nothing will be acquired, at last.

  52

  Kindness and sympathy, understanding and

  encouragement, these give: they are better

  than just presents and gifts: no reason in the

  world why not. Anyhow, be nice. Remember

  the golden eternity is yourself. “If someone will

  simply practice kindness,” said Gotama to

  Subhuti, “he will soon attain highest perfect

  wisdom.” Then he added: “Kindness after all

  is only a word and it should be done on the spot

  without thought of kindness.” By practicing

  kindness all over with everyone you will soon

  come into the holy trance, definite distinctions

  of personalities will become what they really

  mysteriously are, our common and eternal blissstuff,

  the pureness of everything forever, the great bright

  essence of mind, even and one thing everywhere the

  holy eternal milky love, the white light everywhere

  everything, emptybliss, svaha, shining, ready, and