Jack Kerouac on Kindness, the Self Illusion, and the “Golden Eternity”
A great post I came across at The Marginalian. I have never really explored Jack Kerouac’s work, but love the mindful, in-the-moment orientation of his writing. The connections he makes with nature, the earth, human existence, and the larger gestalt of the universe is really humbling and grounding. And, as many things do – it all comes back to practicing kindness, love, and forgiveness constantly – to enable us fully be present in each moment. JB
Jack Kerouac on Kindness, the Self Illusion, and the “Golden Eternity” by Maria Popova
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”
From The Portable Jack Kerouac — an altogether terrific treasure trove of his stories, poems, letters, and essays on Buddhism — the missive is nothing short of exquisite. Kerouac sent one such letter to his first wife, Edie Kerouac Parker, in late January of 1957, writing:
I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.
Kerouac considers the illusion of the solid “self” as he contemplates the life and death of mountains:
We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.
He ends the letter with one of his free-flowing, uninhibited poems:
The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks don’t see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.