Are We All Just 'Dharma Bums'

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:02]Jack Kerouac wrote a book in the '50s called The Dharma Bums. It was several years after the iconic On the Road, and it actually described his life along the same kind of timeline. It's described his life several years after he wrote On the Road, which I've read a couple of times, but I've never actually read The Dharma Bums, but I am going to do. And what it does is it describes he and a friend, it describes their search for tranquility, a transcendentalism, a match between nature, the beauty, and the tranquility of nature, and the hedonistic hubbub of the burgeoning American jazz and drug scene. Now, I'm [snorts] I was born in 1954.

[00:00:59]So, I can kind of recognize some of this because I was experiencing our hippie time for Vera in the late '60s and the '70s. I was that hippie. I did have long hair. I did wear an Afghan, go to festivals and protests, and think I was every kind of rebel going. I did dabble in drugs.

[00:01:26]I did everything that was expected of me by society at the time.

[00:01:32]This is pretty much all grist to the mill for me because it's what I've been rambling on about for years on this channel, but I think it's very true that you cannot make a decision, you cannot have an opinion about one of these about peace of nature or the chaos and hedonism >> [snorts] >> of city life and condemn one and praise the other without actually and experiencing it.

[00:02:05]You You've got to actually experience it. You've got to have a counterpoint to every argument. And I think this goes for every argument in life and every debate in life that you've got to have experienced the lifestyle or the situation that the other person you're debating, the other person you're arguing with, you've got to have at least a working knowledge of what they're talking about. Put it this way.

[00:02:34]If you get somebody who lives out in nature on their own all their life without experiencing city life at all, without experiencing the hubbub of bars, of city life, of work, of the pressures that families are put under, they would have no counterpoint.

[00:02:59]So, they would probably see nature as >> [snorts] >> chaotic, as not as much the tranquility that the rest of us see it as because we've got a counterpoint.

[00:03:16]They will probably hear the morning chorus, the dawn chorus, and consider it a cacophony.

[00:03:27]Because they've never experienced true cacophony of city traffic, of the blaring constant television and radio, of the blaring constant announcements from those who wish to dictate how we live, and we think, and we function. I've lost Molly.

[00:03:51]Found her. She was sniffing away somewhere. No, where were we? Yes, we were talking about if you lived in the countryside your whole life and never experienced the city, would you consider noisy times in the countryside like the dawn chorus, would you consider that an uncomfortable cacophony because it's all you knew? It was the loudest thing you knew. It was the most aggravating noise that you knew even though the rest of us would consider it beautiful. If you lived all your life in the city and never went into the countryside, would you consider the noises of the city, the hubbub, would you consider the smoke and the smog and the smells and the shouting, would you consider that to be tranquility?

[00:04:45]How would you react to be dragged kicking and screaming into the countryside? What would you consider the sounds of the na- of nature? Would you consider it oppressive?

[00:05:02]Would you be able to on to handle the silence, the cloying deafening silence pressing in all around you, such an alien environment?

[00:05:16]So, we need the counterpoint.

[00:05:21]We need the yin to consider against the yang, don't we?

[00:05:30]Otherwise, we have no argument.

[00:05:33]We have no opinion because the opinion is all one-sided. And if opinion is all one-sided, it cannot be an opinion.

[00:05:43]So, has Jack considered the two environments, the beauty of nature, the noise and hustle bustle and excitement of the jazz clubs of New York and Chicago and San Francisco.

[00:06:03]It must have been easier for him because these were at their zenith. The beauty was unspoiled by anything.

[00:06:15]The city was at its vibrant best.

[00:06:22]It must have been easier to form an opinion. It must have been easier to find out the good and the bad in your opinion of both environments. It must have been easier to make a choice between the tranquility and peace of nature and the hustle bustle of city life. None is right and none is wrong.

[00:06:46]We still as humans tend to have this proclivity towards arguing our case without taking into consideration someone else's opinions or someone else's experiences I should say because we can say yes, I love the city. Who wants to go and stand in a muddy field or walking about in cow pats and getting nettled and falling over when I can have the warmth and comfort and the hedonistic pleasure of every drink and every drug and every food at my very fingertips. How can it get better than that? And the person out in the countryside is saying I've got this.

[00:07:28]I've got inner peace. I've got quiet.

[00:07:30]The music I listen to is the music of nature. The smells are unsullied by city life. Why would I want to live a life of debauchery in the city drinking, abusing my body when I can be out here in the cleanliness and peace of nature?

[00:07:58]Who's right and who's wrong?

[00:08:01]So, what do you want? I want the thrill of overstimulation.

[00:08:07]I want the peace and tranquility of silence. There's no right and there's no wrong and we all reach that point somewhere in our lives and I believe that that point is actually reached more by subliminal reckoning, subliminal investigation and exploration rather than a conscious effort to find one over the other. They are circumstances.

[00:08:37]They are memories of smells, of sights that make an impression.

[00:08:44]A memory of a view that whenever you think about it it brings you peace. The memory of a view that whenever you think about it it brings you a little bit of dread.

[00:09:00]It's all those little subliminal explorations and investigations that bring us to where we are now.

[00:09:10]And where we are now is the right place.

[00:09:14]No matter how you are, no where you are, no matter how happy or un-unhappy you are that is where your life experience is taking you and any decisions you make then to change, any decisions you make to move from the city to the country or the country to the city are very, very recent feelings and impressions and explorations and investigations and they are conscious ones. They are ones you've gone out, you've searched for.

[00:09:49]When you move from the city to the country, you don't do it on impulse, you investigate.

[00:09:56]You investigate the feelings. What's right? What's wrong? How will it suit your mood? How will it suit your need for stimulation?

[00:10:06]So, what you do, you compromise. You think, "Well, I want to get away from this pressure and hustle and bustle.

[00:10:15]But, I also need some of the stimulation.

[00:10:20]And all this goes into consideration.

[00:10:23]But, >> [snorts] >> leav- leaving it to its own devices, life takes you where it takes you and drops you off at the terminus and says, "Right, there you are.

[00:10:37]Here's your bag.

[00:10:38]Thank you for paying. Thank you for joining us on this journey. Now, off you go and find yourself."

[00:10:47]And it's all done subliminally.

[00:10:53]Jack investigated this.

[00:10:56]But, I think he invest- investigated it for a book. I don't think he investigated it at all. I think the investigation had already been done years before. I think all he was doing was putting into words his life experience.

[00:11:12]>> [snorts] >> Listen to them lot.

[00:11:19]Don't know what they Oh, they play bean geese. Bean geese in the I didn't know bean geese flew up through the trees like that. Didn't know they Anyway, there they go. Noisy buggers. So, I think that life leads us and I to [clears throat] where we are and I believe, like I said, that Jack all he was doing was documenting He was finding a reason. He was just finding a reason for being and doing what he had.

[00:11:51]He experienced both the beauty of the countryside of North America in the '50s and also the madness and the hedonisticness and the hedonistic lifestyle of the jazz clubs of the cities of North America in the '50s.

[00:12:07]And I believe when you read his books that he never actually concluded. He knew where he was, but I don't think Jack Kerouac actually could pinpoint the reason for being where he was.

[00:12:25]His experiences are vast. It's all vast and so interesting that he wrote a book about them, On the Road.

[00:12:37]A work of fact and fiction.

[00:12:42]An embellishment on his life throwing in things that happened things that he wished had happened and things that he thought had happened when he looked back at his life and haven't we all done that?

[00:13:01]Haven't we all done that and won't we all do that?

[00:13:08]And does that make us all just Dharma Bums?

[00:13:12]We should see you on the flip.

[00:13:15]Peace and love.