For Kerouac, the embodiment of American Zen was Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buddhist poet and essayist, who he fictionalized as Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums. Snyder was a practicing Buddhist and a translator of classic Chinese texts before Kerouac met him. He was the Zen guru of the Beats at the same time that Alan Watts popularized Buddhism for middle-class Americans in best-selling books and magazine articles of the late 1950s. Snyder had studied with Watts for a while but thought him 'square.' 'He was cool in relation to the people around him, ' Snyder once said, referring to 'middle class, needy' Americans, but he was 'never actually cool.' Then Snyder added with a wink, '[and] you know what I mean, as the Big Bopper says, ' invoking the rock-and-roll classic 'Chantilly Lace' for those hip and in-the-know. . Joel Dinerstein
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  1. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi

  2. The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion. - Alan W. Watts

  3. Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. - Ray Bradbury

  4. Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar - Jim Butcher

  5. Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be. - Bob Dylan

More Quotes By Joel Dinerstein
  1. For Kerouac, the embodiment of American Zen was Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buddhist poet and essayist, who he fictionalized as Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums. Snyder was a practicing Buddhist and a translator of classic Chinese texts before Kerouac met him. He was...

  2. Men will always create new arenas for honor if traditional rituals fade.

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