Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 23 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 23 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 23 in one sentence:

With eight dollars of cash left, Ray hitchhikes out of El Paso, earns four dollars in New Mexico for helping move a piano, pays for a ride with a big Texan all the way to L. A., explains Buddhism to a poor Mexican couple riding with the Texan, walks to the railyards where a cop chases him away, comes back and hops a train right under the cop's nose, hops off in Santa Barbara for a swim at the beach and some food, then hops a flatcar on the Midnight Ghost to sleep all the way to San Francisco with a dollar left and Gary* waiting for him at the shack. 

*NOTE: This should be Japhy, but it is Gary in the text as this was a publishing error and they forgot to use Gary Snyder's pseudonym in this one instance.


Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 24 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 22 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 22 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 22 in one sentence:

Living in Sean Monahan's spartan shack on a hill in Corte Madera, Japhy waits for Ray, who, after a peaceful winter of meditation, finds hitchhiking harder than ever, Ray takes a bus through part of Georgia and ends up staying in a four-dollar hotel when he can't get another ride, he gets scared by a ride with a drunk Southerner and decides to take the bus to El Paso and then hop Southern Pacific freights, has the most beautiful sleep of his life in a sandy arroyo beyond the El Paso trainyards, eats canned pork and beans for breakfast, decides to camp there another night while he enjoys Juarez, leaves his pack in a train station locker and drinks and smokes marijuana in Juarez, and then returns to sleep in his sandy spot in the desert where he listens to "the mysterious roar of silence itself."

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 23 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 21 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 21 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 21 in one sentence:

One day his nephew Lou visits Ray at his new meditation spot under a twisted twin tree by a brook, (Ray calls it "Twin Tree Grove"), Ray spends a lot of days meditating there with the dogs, one day he gets word that he got an assignment for the coming summer as a fire lookout in the High Cascades in Washington State, he gets into an argument with his brother-in-law about meditating as well as unleashing Bob the dog in the woods, Ray gets mad and stomps off to the woods where he decides he'll pack up and leave but changes his mind after meditating on the matter, deciding "I was hurting deep inside from the sad business of trying to deny what was," Ray tries to explain emptiness from a Buddhist perspective to his family but they wish he'd stick to the religion he was born with, Ray returns to the woods and ponders what he will tell Japhy back in California, Ray has a vision and another moment of satori in the woods, then he has a vision that leads to curing his mom's cough (his first and last "miracle" lest he become vain), and on his final night in the woods Ray sees "there was nothing to do because nothing ever happened, nothing ever would happen, all things were empty light," then the next day he packs up and starts hitchhiking back to California.

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 22 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 20 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 20 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 20 in one sentence:

Ray continues to meditate in the woods and grow in his Buddhist understandings, while his brother-in-law is getting annoyed at him for hanging around and not working, and the "old tobacco-chewing stickwhittlers" Ray sees at the crossroads store are baffled by his eccentricities.

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 21 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 19 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 19 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 19 in one sentence:

Ray sets up his sleeping bag on the couch on the back porch, and after his family members (mother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew) go to bed he returns to the meditation spot he created the previous spring in the woods under a pine tree, Bob the dog and some strays go with him, he meditates for an hour before returning to the house where he falls asleep in his bag, the next night enjoys Christmas Eve with the family, thinks of Japhy, spends the next week alone (mother at a funeral in New York and the rest working) reading and studying and meditating in his woodsy spot, makes supper for the family, puts up a basket and shoots hoops, and one night after pacing in the yard Ray experiences satori (sudden enlightenment) after which he goes inside and feeds the cat.

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 20 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 18 in one sentence

Mexicali, Mexico

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 18 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions.


The Dharma Bums Chapter 18 in one sentence:

Ray catches various rides from Riverside all the way to the Mexican border and walks across to Mexicali where he is warned off sleeping in the riverbottom mudflats, eats some garbanzo soup, digs the people and places, recrosses the border at dusk, is searched by American guards, mistakenly thinks he can catch the Zipper to Colorado in El Centro (where he goes by bus), starts thumbing, gets a ride from a middlewestern man (Beaudry) who promises to take Ray to Tucson in his big truck if he shows him around Mexicali that night, Ray shows him a good time at the old saloons of real Mexico and a whorehouse, they cross back over and reach Tucson, Ray cooks him a big steak over a fire along the highway, Beaudry ponders his life compared to Ray's and offers to take Ray clear to Ohio, Ray has a Buddhist-tinged vision over the mountains of Alamogordo, they make only one overnight stop to sleep in a hotel in Independence, Missouri, Beaudry drops Ray off in Springfield, Ohio, Ray buys a bus ticket to Rocky Mount, changes his mind and tries to cash in his ticket but they won't do it, instead of waiting for the next bus he decides to hitchhike to the next town and catch the bus there, Ray finally reaches his mother's and looking at her he thinks of Japhy and decides that "People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism." 

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 19 and post a one-sentence summary.

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums Chapter 17 in one sentence

Your assignment for today was to read Chapter 17 of The Dharma Bums and summarize it in one sentence. Below is my one-sentence summary -- post yours as a comment. I'd also love to see general comments about the chapter, or questions. By the way, with this chapter we are officially half way to the end (Chapter 34)!

The Dharma Bums Chapter 17 in one sentence:

Reaching Riverside by bus, Ray wants to try out his new gear and camp out but is warned by someone at the bus station that the cops would arrest him, nevertheless he buys food at a supermarket and then bushwhacks through the woods toward the riverbottom under the highway bridge to a nice opening where he can't be seen, he sets up camp, stands on his head for five minutes to clear his head cold, remembers crying in L.A. the night before because "After all a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him," eats his food, prays and includes a little prayer for Rosie, spends a long time sitting crosslegged and meditating, sleeps well except for some bamboo joints under the leaves -- "Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree" -- wakes and makes up a little morning prayer, packs his gear, and washes up in a tumbling spring across the highway to ready himself for his "three-thousand-mile hitchhike to Rocky Mount, North Carolina" where his mother is waiting. 

Your next assignment is to read The Dharma Bums Chapter 18 and post a one-sentence summary.