The summary, discussion, introduction, sample meditation, and example of Kerouac's are almost done. The review of literature, small as it is may add an extra week to the process. As both will inform the review of Tom Clark’s The Great Naropa Poetry Wars, that will have to wait as well.
Commentary and Interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s 1958 Essay, “The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose.”
by Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
Abstract
Jack Kerouac and many of the poets around him are variously thought to have created a new art movement or a new means of a foray into spontaneous poetry and prose partially inspired by their involvement in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and partly as a development out of modernism, existentialism, and the avantgarde. Jack Kerouac was particularly well-known and successful in this area and credited with leading the movement. His essay, “The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” is a description of and instruction in this method. It is rather clumsily written and presupposes an ability to understand and apply the principals therein described which may be too obscure for the average reader. In this essay, I attempt to describe and interpret Kerouac’s description from within the experience of an individual with Western academic training and experience who has spent 30 years doing the Zen and Tibetan practices and with experience describing psychological and contemplative practices and states.
- Introduction.
The essay is divided into five sections: a) a brief introduction, b) brief description of the history of, interest in, and experiments with spontaneous prose, c) a review of the literature (largely non-existent) in instructions in spontaneous prose, d) a commentary on the instruction, and e) a guided meditation meant to indicate the application of Kerouac’s instruction. Kerouac’s original 1958 essay is included in the appendix.
- History of, Interest in, and Experiments with Spontaneous Prose.
- Review of the Literature (Largely Non-Existent) of Instructions on Spontaneous Prose.
- Commentary and Interpretation on Kerouac’s Essay.
In Jack Kerouac’s 1958 essay, “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” (see appendix), his description of the steps necessary to participate in his artistic discovery, he describes a 9 step process toward the writing of spontaneous prose. The essay is clumsily written and written with more of a “beat” than an effort toward clarity of description, organization and communication except for the “telephathic shock.’ That is, in his own words, he may have relied on his own dictum to “satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind” the sort of belief that derailed many, beats, hippies, and new agers into thinking they “got it” by merely getting a nod at the right time from a poet, a leader or guru or breezing through an instruction for the “transmission,” “the telepathic shock,” that would excuse them from reading, research, thinking through, study, and the work of getting Kerouac’s style on a more effective and practical level as well as an excuse to dismiss other methods and disciplines, always looking for the transmission, the telepathic shock as a means of self-justification of genius equal to or coming from Kerouac or other leaders.
There are a few topics that need to be discussed in some detail before going into a discussion of the practical application of the technique: a) Kerouac’s background, training, and experience with Buddhist meditation techniques and practice b) the rather profound technique he discovered and pioneered in general rather than in its specifics, c) the alternation of exhalation and inhalation with very specific rather than general use of an object, as well as d) his specific rather than general.object itself.
a)Kerouac’s background, training, and experience with Buddhist meditation techniques and practice
Kerouac’s interest in and appreciation for Zen and Buddhist meditation is undoubted, but his actual knowledge of the techniques and training and actual experience and success with them seem quite limited. The technique he describes seems more intuitive than trained and comes also from western literary traditions as indicated by quotes from ... . This lack of experience, training, and study is no crime certainly and his technique does seem pretty close to genuine Buddhist meditation techniques and states in many ways; however, there was always a clear danger, one that was realized in the many of the beats, the hippies and the new agers, that others would see themselves equally as talented and equally as not requiring long hours on a cushion to attain to their own technique and experience.
The technique certainly is a meditation, a contemplative practice because of the increased mindfulness of an object and a working on it with the breath as a focal poiint, but it is questionable how much it can be considered a Buddhist meditation in that the specific focus of the technique (the breath work and the nature of the object) indicate something quite other. In particular, his focus on particular, immediate objects and a technique that focuses on particular words or thoughts (on the in breath) rather than universal objects and the dissolving of all particular thoughts into an “empty” state of mind are strikingly different.
The koan practice taught by the well-known Zen teacher and lineage holder, Aitken Roshi and the sitting practice of the well-known Tibetan teacher, ChogyamTrungpa Rinpoche illustrate the differences between the Kerouac technique and that of Buddhism as well as to illustrate the sort of techniques that were known at the time in the atmosphere of the beat generation and their interest in Buddhist philosophy, art, and meditation.
Trungpa Rinpoche and Shamatha Practice:
In the Tibetan technique taught by Trungpa Rinpoche, one sits on the cushion, takes a good posture, and regards the breath and the thoughts that arise. The outbreath is of particular importance as the work of the meditation: one allows thoughts to arise without resistance (as much as possible) on the in breath and then on the out breath one labels the entirety of them “thinking,” one term for the entirety of what occurs in thought without categorization or value judgment, just label the verbal thoughts and images “thinking” and let it all go: everything that occurs in the mind is “just thinking.” The in breath is ignored as the thoughts are allowed to arise as they will. The overall effort being one to discover the mind of non-thought and emptiness via letting go and exhausting the obscuring thought processes. An object is also possible with this technique but not used much in the Trungpaschool. Typical objects include an image of the Buddha, a geometric figure, a flower and so forth. Of crucial importance for the choice of a Buddhisst object of meditation is that it not be tied to time or place like a newspaper headline or current gossip: a wide universality such as the examples just given is required.
At much later stages in the development of one’s practice in the basic Tibetan techniques (months and years and many, many hours spent on the cushion with this technique), object practice is introducted and becomes more developed as one begins to focus on the deities of the Tibetan pantheon[[1]].
Aitken Roshi and Koan Practice:
The technique for koan practice taught by Aitken Roshi is similar to the sitting practice just described, at least initially. In the earliest stages one focuses on the out breath as with the Tibetan practice merely letting thoughts go while counting the out breaths and trying to get to a count of 10 (for a beginner getting to 2 or 3 without getting lost in thought is rare. The in breath is ignored and the thoughts are allowed to arise as they will as with the Tibetan technique. After long hours at this practice, if the student is interested, he can request permission to do koan practice and will be given a new technique for focusing on the outbreath.
In this secondary practice, the first koan is presented and the student is instructed to focus on the breathing of the word “mu” (Chinese for “not”) as the main technique and then during interviews with the teacher will try to answer the koansnderlying this practice. The first koan is the enigmatic question, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” and the student is given the initial answer “mu” or “not.” This is enigmatic because even the most beginning student of Buddhist philosophy is aware that all sentient beings are considered to have Buddha-nature, the potential to become a “fully enlightened one.” The practioner then keeps the question “at the ready” and breaths quite quietly the word “mu” on the outbreath hoping a response to the koan will arise as the obscuring thoughts are let go of and the mind of emptiness begins o arise.
Kerouac’s Technique:
Kerouac’s technique, described in more detail below, consists in “blowing” like a jazz musician on the outbreath while reciting a spontaneous poetry or prose in response to an object selected from daily life. On the in breath, one does not simply allow thoughts to arise but instead looks not for the proper word but for the “infantile pile-up of scatological, build-up words” which then become the inspiration or “fuel” to be transformed via the “blowing” of the out breath and the “expostulated statement.”
In a similar way, but with a more general object and the letting go of all thinking, the Tibetan spontaneous poems are meant to arise from that universal mind. There is no reference to particular objects, and the poetry is meant to express the universal mind. There is no looking for words on the in breath but an assumption that the thoughts of the obscuring mind have been cleared and that the poet is speaking directly from the universal, empty mind. For this reason, they are done “on the spot” as Trungpa says with no planning or editing or second guessing of any sort.
What needs to be emphasized is the contrast between Kerouac’s technique and typical Buddhist techniques: the object and the practice in Kerouac’s technique is focused on real world, daily life objects and is looking for a response to them and a poem or prose output. The Buddhist techniques are very, very general and mitigate against the specific and emphasize the general or universal, the latter being more indicative of the presence of the enlightened mind. Any responses or prose output stay within the general and do not address the specific.
This difference is rarely mentioned. It is reasonable to suspect that Kerourac thought it important to address specific issues much like the poet addressing the peace movement or something equally as important and timely and too demanding to wait for the universal. For the Buddhist purist, there is no need to address specific issues at all but assumes that all worldly issues and problems in the practioners life and in the world are being addressed simultaneously through the more universal technique. Thus, the main distinction between Kerouacian meditation and the Buddhist is the universal or general vs the specific, the Celestial vs the mundane, the classics versus rock and roll.
However, given this difference, should Kerouac be dismissed as a mere “Buddhist contemplative ‘wannabe’”? Should his work be dismissed as a near miss and relegated to the trash heap of failed noble experiments in the Western literary exploration of Buddhism? Probably not.Given an understanding of Buddhist meditative techniques and their results (a growing awareness of relationship to universal, emptiness mind). It is possible to see Kerouac’s technique as not only effective in this regard but also as a strong contribution to Western understanding of the Buddhist view of universal mind and as a good training in spontaneity that could actually lead (but may not actually need to) to the Tibetan purist spontaneous poetry of composing “on the spot” directly from the universal, emptiness mind.
To recognize this, it is necessary to look at the results of Kerouac’s alternation on the out breath and in breath of blowing on the object and using the infantile as fuel which is a clearing of the obscuring thoughts via a spontaneous expressing and clearing of them. The infantile fuel is further clarified and the poetic output expresses this clarification and perhaps communicates it to others, and it is reasonable to suspect that at some point this entire process will exhaust much of the obscuring thoughts, particularly that of the infantile fixations. The overall result of one poetic expression done correctly would be one of heightened relation to the mind of clarity and a deepening connection to it.
Are we further to assume that this is a discovery that the Buddhists were not aware of or one that was dismissed by them or one that may actually be covertly supported via the more general techniques? All three questions may be answered positively: the Buddhist emphasis on renunciation of the mundane life and world may have made the practions and teachers unaware of and disinterested in such a technique rooted as it is in ones daily life, it may also have rejected for just that one reason, and finally, it may have been covertly accepted by some – but why covertly?
It may have been covertly supported because of the inherent danger in it and the fact that it presupposes a tremendous awareness of one’s own thought processes and a pre-existing, perhaps innate discipline sufficient to maintain the technique. The danger is that it would be quite simple for the beginner to be overwhelmed by the infantile, not recognizing it sufficiently, and end up exhaling ones neurosis rather than clarifying it, a being taken over rather than a taking over and transforming of infantile neurotic thinking, resulting in a neurotic (perhaps psychotic) flare up. And far worse, it could be used by the unscrupulous to deceive competitors or enemies into thinking they are “beating” a poem on the path to enlightenment rather than “beating” a neurosis or psychosis into actualization and the self-destruction that would result.
Can we conclude from this that Kerouac was somehow enlightened or a “Boddhisattva” or something of that sort? This of course is quite unlikely as it would presuppose a tremendous stability in the universal that would preclude a need for or problem with the specific. The existence of the infantile neurosis itself also demonstrates that such an achievement is not possible in his case. However, it is necessary to conclude that he did have a deep intuitive recognition of the universal and a means to heighten that experience, though perhaps a particularly dangerous one for all those who cannot truly recognize the infantile fixations for what they are and thereby transform them.
One further note on his technique is perhaps warranted and that has to do with the notions of “embodied” and “disembodied” of the beats, terms which they used to refer to the state of mind of the beat poet. Having done some research into western psychology and having an awareness of dissociative states (disembodiedness, perhaps) and PTSD, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Kerouacian poetic-psychological, meditative technique is designed to address and return from a disembodied (dissociative) neurotic state and return to a better (embodied) awareness of oneself in the immediate. So rather than a direct technique for the enhancement of enlightenment, it may be better to see the Kerouacian technique as a Buddhist inspired western poetic-pscyhological technique to gain access to universal mind and art via working directly with particular life situations and the underlying, infantile fixations that may be contributing to them.
Is the Buddhist technique better? It would seem so in that it works with the entirety of obscured mind rather than the particular. However there are many who would approach the Buddhist techniques and are far too distracted by the pressing demands of the immediate and the neurotic and may need something like Kerouac’s technique as a supplement or as a step toward more direct and more universal Buddhist practices.
b)the rather profound technique he discovered and pioneered in general rather than in its specifics,
In his description, he provides 9 steps to the process: set up, proceedure, method, scoping, lag in procedure, timing, center of interest, structure of work, and mental state.
Given the description of Buddhist and the Kerouacian techniques above, it is useful to look at these subdivisions in this order:
In order to prevent the dangers described above it it good to have a sense of the goal of “enlightenment” The following short meditation gives an idea of what to look for in the end and a short preparation by which to take a look
Meditating with Phil
- Guided Meditation
There is a danger in trying Kerouac’s method without being very cautious about the difference between the outbreath of rhetorical exahalation over the jewel center of interest and the inhalation in which one touches in with the infantile scatalogical build up words for “fuel”/inspiration for the exhalation. If the latter becomes the source of the poetry rather than the former, it will be a kind of impulsive Beavis-ing rather than a sponteous artistic expression and will lead to negative consequences and behaviors. It is crucial that the exhalation from … be the source of the output and the inhalation merely the fuel.