Customer Reviews

Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the first Jack Kerouac book that I have ever read, so I am not a follower of his. However, I have read many books on Buddhism, and this is one of the best. It covers the story of Buddha's life and his enlightened teachings in concise, but rich language, much of which is attributed to direct quotes from the Buddha. So even though this book is from a "famous" writer, its value is the remarkable story of the Buddha and his beliefs, and the author's writing skill comes through, but not the writer's beliefs, which aids the clarity of the presentation.

A bonus here is the long introduction (22 pages) by noted American Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman. His writing is almost "a book within a book" and points out some key passages in the text, that then become more meaningful when you see them in the body of the book.

This book will be a treasure to any spiritual seeker.

In the early 1950s, Jack Kerouac (1922 -- 1969)became fascinated with Buddhism. In 1955, he wrote this short, highly personalized biography of the Buddha, "Wake Up". The biography was serialized in 1993 in the Buddhist magazine "Tricycle" but it has never before appeared in book form. The book was published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's most overtly Buddhist novel, "The Dharma Bums" which has also appeared in a new commemorative edition this year.

"Wake up" is a small gem. The writing is a passionate mixture of Kerouac and Buddhist texts. The book shows fervor and commitment and explains what Kerouac found valuable in Buddhism. The Buddha is treated as almost an Asian equivalent of Jesus. Kerouac never left the Catholicism in which he was raised. He was among the first of a long generation of Americans that have tried to combine the insights of the Buddha with a western religion.

For an American in the 1950s Kerouac had read widely if unsystematically in Buddhism. Thus this biography draws on texts from different Buddhist traditions which are not fully consistent with each other. In much of the book, Kerouac drew on a book called "The Buddhist Bible" in which an earlier American writer, Dwight Goddard, who likewise was attracted to both Buddhism and Christianity, translated some basic Buddhist texts. Kerouac had great problems with alcohol, drugs, and sex througout his life. As often is the case, the writer was wiser than the man. "Wake up" evidences an excellent lay understanding of the Buddhism which so inspired Kerouac. While this book is introductory, informal and nonscholarly, Kerouac had a sympathetic grasp of his subject.

Kerouac describes the purpose of his book at the outset: "I have designed this to be a handbook of the ancient Law. The purpose is to convert." But this, Kerouac meant to transform the reader by showing the life-changing character of Buddhist teachings.

Here is how Kerouac begins his biography.

"Buddha means the awakened one. Until recently most people thought of Buddha as a big fat rococo sitting figure with his belly out, laughing, as represented in millions of tourist trinkets and dime store statuettes here in the western world... This man was no slob-like figure of mirth , but a serious and tragic prophet, the Jesus Christ of India and almost all Asia." (p7) Kerouac describes how the Buddha grew disillusioned with his life of luxury, his dancing girls, and even his lovely wife when, at the age of 29, he was confronted with the facts of aging, sickness and death. He left the life of a prince and became a wanderer in search of understanding human suffering for the purpose of alleviating it.

Kerouac loosely follows the story of Buddha's life, focusing upon his Englightenment experience six years after his wandering began. The Englightenment is described in a mixture of Buddhist texts and Kerouac's inimitable prose. As Kerouac describes it in part:

"Ho there! Wake up! the river in your dream may seem pleasant, but below it is a lake with rapids and crocodiles, the river is evil desire, the lake is the sensual life, its waves are anger, its rapids are lust, and the crocodiles are the women-folk."(p44) Earlier, Kerouac quotes an "eminent writer" who said that in looking for the cause of human unhappiness Gotama had "sought for it in man and nature, and found it not, and lo! it was in his own heart!" (p.21)

Kerouac leads the reader through the Buddha's ministry, his disciples, and his teachings including the famous "fire sermon" with a focus on the difficult Buddhist teachings of dependent origination and emptiness, which he explains well. Near the end of the book, Kerouac offers a long metaphysical discussion of the nature of reality and emptiness based upon a text known as the Surangama Sutra, which Kerouac knew from the translation in Goddard. The book closes with a Sutra-based account of the Buddha's death in which Kerouac writes

"The moon paled, the river sobbed, a mental breeze bowed down the trees.".... Voluntarily enduring infinite trials through numberless ages and births, that he might deliver mankind and all life, foregoing the right to enter Nirvana and casting himself again and again into Sangsara's stream of life and destiny for the sole purpose of teaching the way of liberation from sorrow and suffering, this is Buddha who is everyone and everything." (pp 145-146)

The book features an introduction by the noted American Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman which discusses Kerouac's understanding of Buddhism as it appears in "Wake Up" and in "The Dharma Bums" and which explores Kerouac's understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and the Catholicism to which he was born.

Readers interested in Buddhism or in Kerouac will enjoy this little-known book.

Robin Friedman

ANOTHER "new" Kerouac book...denied publication until now...originally penned in the mid 1950's. Amazing. Make no mistake, this book is great great great and; as a source of enlightenment, unsurpassed. It's every bit as enlightening as his other Buddhist book, "Some of the Dharma," every bit as enlightening as selelcted poems from Mexico City Blues and many other poetry books as well. Kerouac's poetic abilities shine clear & bright as his special talent for expressing ecstatic dharma. Interestingly, I did not find this book in the Kerouac section in a big bookstore...they had it shelved in the Buddhism section! Just as well, I guess. This is no "minor" Kerouac book like, say, Pic or Satori in Paris. It is a treasure of meditative ecstasy. Jack Kerouac was the greatest writer who ever lived.

My last Amazon post reviewed "The Dharma Bums," so I pair this 1955-penned, 2008-published meditation. It collates a somewhat stilted, often moving, distilled version filtered through Kerouac's own practice of Buddhist "Law," as he puts it, or truth-teaching. It's a serious, intense series of reflections, not of the author himself, but as a transparent medium transmitting the Buddha and his core dharma 2,500 years later. It certainly mirrors the author's own awareness, at the height of his immersion; Japhy in "DB" warns that "Ray" will revert to his Catholicism on his drunken deathbed. Who's to say that his childhood faith is not incompatible with his love of Buddhism?

Robert Thurman thinks the two outlooks can be reconciled. A pioneering Western-born exponent of Tibetan Buddhism, he's a child of the Beat generation. His thoughtful introduction argues that we need not regard Jack as macho-bullish as Gary Snyder-"Japhy Ryder" in an uncompromising Zen attitude; we also need not assume Kerouac, comfortable with both Jesus and the Buddha, rejected his Christianity in the way Thurman did, at 17, when reading "Dharma Bums," renouncing Protestantism, and running away from Phillips Exeter Academy! He proposes that Kerouac found himself able, as a Catholic, to relate to the rich panoply of Tibetan or Mahayana forms of Buddhism more easily than the austerities of Zen. Thurman excerpts a lot of key passages, but as a previous reviewer states, these alert us to the importance and eloquence of these learned citations when they appear in the text.

As largely a newcomer to such topics, I found JK's summation of overcoming the Hindu "Atman" concept of an Oversoul intriguing: "all of it a mind-made mess, much as a dreamer continues his nightmare on purpose hoping to extricate himself from the frightful difficulties that he doesn't realize are only in his mind." (20) This fits the urgency of the title: "All is empty forever, wake up!" (68) that permeates the whole text. Here the "dharma bums" and "Zen lunatics" of his novel turn into their inspirations, "bhikshus" or wandering holy men following Gotama after he finds enlightenment and turns himself after long struggle into the historical Buddha.

As with the Gospels, the narrative combines dusty journeys with elevated preaching. It demands that you focus on intricate perspectives. Kerouac himself's absent as a character. He erases his presence so as to direct us towards the dharma's insight. The story ends beautifully; some of the Buddha's last inspiring words: "From the 'desiring-little' we find the way of true deliverance; desiring true freedom we ought to practice the contentment of 'knowing-enough.'" (141) Kerouac knows enough to stay out of the way of his subject!

It's an erudite presentation. For instance, cadences summing up how mental ignorance gives rise within us to endless cycles of trapped karma: "a sentient being's inheritance, the womb which bears him out of it, the womb to which he or it must resort; Karma is the root of morality, for, what we have been makes us what we are now. If a man becomes enlightened, stops, and realizes perfect wisdom and enters Nirvana, it is because his Karma had worked itself out and it was in his Karma to do so; if a man goes on in ignorance, angry, foolish and greedy, it is because his Karma had not yet worked it out and it was in his Karma to do so." (28-9)

For me, this played into the stereotype that many entertain of a fatalistic Eastern acceptance of one's destiny, but I may be wrong. Kerouac as a practitioner may have been reflecting his sources with far more insight than I possess. Either way, these ideas do test our Western mind, our notions of good and evil, reward and merit, predestination and free will, guilt and justice! [Buddhism also challenges our ideas of what an ethical philosophy can achieve, not an "-ism," but a moral system freed of gods and Hindu contexts that probably the Buddha himself, agnostic Stephen Batchelor argues in his existentialist "Buddhism Without Beliefs," was not entirely free of, being a messenger to/for/from his own time and place!]

Ananda plays the straight man, respectfully posing the questions that the Buddha elucidates. Still, wisdom proves elusive. "Ananda stood dazed hoping for a clearer interpretation of this instruction in the kind and gentle tones of the Master and he waited with a pure and expectant heart." (81) You may sympathize with Ananda's confusion as the Buddha by Socratic dialogue in the Shurangama Sutra tries to define the essential non-existence of one's own mind within, rather than apart from, a universal essence of mind! We mistake delusion for reality, but discrimination eludes facile phrasing. "They concentrate on the dream instead of the Mind that makes it." (82)

Our imperative: to recover free from grasping desire in "the two illusions of appearing and disappearing" (124) the "reality of the Shining Emptiness that is Essence of Mind." (107) Compared with eternal perception, the rest is "puppet-shows and racing up and down the Buddha-mountain." (122) If this sounds like gibberish, take the hundred pages preceding again and start over! I found the Seven Elements explanation easier than that of the six senses. The book's full of not superficial glimmers into truth but loaded with weighty ore that demands refinement and transformation out of this "Sea of Mystery" into gold-- or "Diamond Knowledge."

It's usually slow going; the nature of the dense, compressed material creates a weighty if slim volume. However, one editorial shortcoming, thus my subtracted star. This text lacks what would have enriched its usefulness to a wider audience, embracing Beat admirers probably more than Buddhist adepts. Take "the ten quarters of the universes," or "the realms of Tusita." Such terms need a glossary. Many Sanskrit terms Kerouac copies faithfully but these lack easy familiarity or quick recall for Westerners. Also, analogies such as "imaginary blossoms" and "morbid mist" regarding essential perception vs. that of the senses stayed for me rather obscure, despite the patience of the Buddha with Ananda and Kerouac's earnest reiteration of their recondite conversation. Footnotes or endnotes would have helped the general reader's perception of intricate concepts in a foreign language. Make no mistake: this is tough going for anyone who reads this sobering discourse carefully.

I'd recommend this for contemplative reading and patient reflection-- perhaps after finishing the four books mentioned below. The archaic tone forces you into a fresh reception to its philosophical instruction, conveyed in a folkloric or antiquated manner. The King James Version-cadences highlight the venerable registers of Kerouac's sources as he studied them-- translated into probably high-Church diction-- but their depth also slowed me down, pressuring me to concentrate on the necessity where "a sentient being sees the Light that was previously obscured by his brain as moon by cloud." (100) Thus, verily I say unto thee, regard this not as revelation to be taken within thy mind neither with lightness nor levity.

(P.S. This primer compliments Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse's "What Makes You 'Not' a Buddhist, Damien Keown's "Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction," Karen Armstrong's "Buddha" [Penguin Lives], and Thubten Chodron's "Open Heart, Clear Mind," all reviewed by me on Amazon.)

Many passages of this short book are beautiful, striking and poetic. Kerouac was sincerely impressed and inspired by the Buddha and WAKE UP was his meditation on the life and example of Buddha. For that alone, I would call this an important book.

For someone seeking information, it falls woefully short. Kerouac has written a poetic version of Buddha stitched together from various uncited sutras. There is a long philosophical discussion in the middle with Buddha instructing his disciple Ananda which seems murky as if Kerouac was copying from a translation he didn't completely understand. Also, Kerouac's subsequent career and life showed that he was not practicing Buddhism in a practical sense. His assertions about what he perceived Buddhism to be should be taken with a grain of salt.

After reading several scholarly biographies of the Buddha, the poetic stream of consciousness style that Kerouac adopted was very refreshing. One needs to read this book when in the mood for a mystical turn of mind and enjoy the poetic gems that swim to the surface. On the negative side, stream-of-consciousness does not lead to greater coherence when discussing obtruse philosophical points.
For a better explication of the philosophy, I'd recommend THE BUDDHA SAID by Osho.

Ultimately, this book may be interesting and valuable for people who are interested in a better understanding of Kerouac, and as a landmark point in the development of American Buddhism.

Kerouac fan? Nominal Buddhist? And surprised you haven't heard of this book before? There's a reason. Most of this book has been taken from Buddhist sutras. There is little of Jack Kerouac in it. Moreover, the book lacks a coherent narrative, which is really a problem for biography. It's really just an edited reader of other texts. If you want a good biography of the Buddha, read Karen Armstrong's book "Buddha."

"Wake Up" is Jack Kerouac's biography of the Buddha cum study of Buddhist teaching. The writing style is typical Kerouac, a non-stop stream of consciousness. Kerouac does an excellent job of seamlessly blending details of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, the original Buddha, with his first person teaching. Much of the book consists of the Buddha instructing his followers and, through the pages, us.

As I was going through this book I was comparing it to other works with which I am familiar. At times, the concepts of selflessness bring to mind the tenets of Christianity. At other times, the repetitive nature of the Buddha's teaching is reminiscent of "Gilgamesh." I found this book to be an attention holding introduction into the nature and teachings of Buddhism. I found it an interesting way to learn, but did not find much to recommend itself in that religion. I think that the most attractive facet of this book is Kerouac's writing, the constant flow from one thought to another, always entrancing, always holding your interest. I find that Kerouac's writing (see my Amazon review of "On The Road") to be spellbinding! For that I recommend this book.

i'm a huge Kerouac fan. this book was compiled or distributed or whatever you want to call it, to profit off his legacy. It rambles and it lacks the divine moments that can be had when reading on the road, the darma bums, or big sur. read darma bums if you want to see jack's true thoughts, feelings, experimentation, and journey into buddhism and religion and spiritual awakening.