Beat Generation

The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever. For me, Burroughs has an especial appeal. He went into realms that no one else dared to go. Nova Express... Burroughs realized such an inherent truth to reality when he warned: Stop answering the machine! Don't give in to the clip-clap of Maya.

Hi SV, welcome to the forums. I have to go back to the Ivory Tower...I guess to me it means a mountain top where there is nothing. The shear beauty and wonder of which will make the signifcance of our civilised world seem cold and non-existant. I firmly believe this, and have wandered many a torn and beautiful landscape above 10,000 feet at a slow and ambulatory pace with no desire other than to witness. SV, I like that comment at the end, and refer to Maya as Mammon. I think that it is an appropriate substitution.

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Originally Posted by B-Mental

Hi SV, welcome to the forums. I have to go back to the Ivory Tower...I guess to me it means a mountain top where there is nothing. The shear beauty and wonder of which will make the signifcance of our civilised world seem cold and non-existant. I firmly believe this, and have wandered many a torn and beautiful landscape above 10,000 feet at a slow and ambulatory pace with no desire other than to witness. SV, I like that comment at the end, and refer to Maya as Mammon. I think that it is an appropriate substitution.

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Oh mountains, pyramids, ivory towers... All examples of elevating ourselves above the medocrity of the mundane and base existence. This is the heart of spiritual enlightenment: namely- ascension. Rising, "Running up that Hill" (to quote Kate Bush). What that vantage point does, is put our modern, civilized world in its proper perspective. When compared to the sheer majesty of nature, nothing we create parallels. And the beauty of it is, that by climbing, we have the blessing of breaking away and realigning ourselves with the bigger picture.
Indeed mammon and Maya are analogous. The idea being that the material world that we manifest is illusiory and if believed in as the "truth", we will always be misled- but when the illusion is seen through, then it is like metaphorically climbing the pyramid to see the world as it is, not as it appears to be... Thanks for the welcome, and much Metta to you...

To paraphrase William Blake: "If the doors of perception were wiped clean, every thing would appear as it really is."


i think the ivory tower gives that vantage point of the mountain, but its glass ceiling blocks the wary traveller who only contemplates or gestures about the road. no coincidence Kerouac was talking about being ON The Road.

"The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever."
~ Starving Buddha

and as John Clellon Holmes put it in his final book about the Beats: "Nothing More To Say"

great posts, BM/SV.

Thanks jon1. I always found the "ceiling blocks" to be the clouds or skies above the mountain which is the esssence between matter and spirit.

I read Kerouac's Dharma Bums, and in it he ends up going up to a remote mountain to watch for forest fires. He really did this. Anyways, he writes that it is impossible to fall off of a mountain. I've fallen off of mountains, but always ascend again.

This is a very interesting thread.

i'm on that mountain too and see those clouds and sky you're talking about. i think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it. next time you're near a lake, look into it's reflection. There is essence, jump right in, naked! :)

good point about Dharma Bums---if you read Kerouac's Desolation Angels, it's actually two books that his publisher encouraged him to publish together. bad move. anyway, the first section picks up at the end of Dharma Bums as he heads for the mountain to watch forest fires. in the second he comes down from the mountain and shortly later On The Road is published and on its way to becoming a bestseller.

Eleven years later, Kerouc dies from severe stomach bleeding induced by years of heavy drinking.

maybe he should have stayed on the mountain, maybe not.


In a letter seven years earlier, he wrote to a friend:

"I thought I was dying last summer when I started throwing up blood but I decided then and there in bed that I didn't give a s### about anything but heaven anyway..."

RIP, Jack

I have read Desolations Angels, but was too bored to try to recall it.

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I think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it.

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Yeah, I believe this to be true. The clouds are the appearance of the ceiling. I think he used ceiling to relate to those who sleep indoors...or live in society.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

i'm on that mountain too and see those clouds and sky you're talking about. i think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it. next time you're near a lake, look into it's reflection. There is essence, jump right in, naked! :)

good point about Dharma Bums---if you read Kerouac's Desolation Angels, it's actually two books that his publisher encouraged him to publish together. bad move. anyway, the first section picks up at the end of Dharma Bums as he heads for the mountain to watch forest fires. in the second he comes down from the mountain and shortly later On The Road is published and on its way to becoming a bestseller.

Eleven years later, Kerouc dies from severe stomach bleeding induced by years of heavy drinking.

maybe he should have stayed on the mountain, maybe not.


In a letter seven years earlier, he wrote to a friend:

"I thought I was dying last summer when I started throwing up blood but I decided then and there in bed that I didn't give a s### about anything but heaven anyway..."

RIP, Jack

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In civil disobedience, there's a brilliant quote by Thoreau where he says that he muses because even inside the jail cell, he is more free than the ignorant people living on the outside. That is the essence of what all these artists and poets are trying to say: we create our own prisons, and we also hold the keys to release ourselves...

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Originally Posted by Starving Buddha

In civil disobedience, there's a brilliant quote by Thoreau where he says that he muses because even inside the jail cell, he is more free than the ignorant people living on the outside. That is the essence of what all these artists and poets are trying to say: we create our own prisons, and we also hold the keys to release ourselves...

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i doubt we all have that "key," for if we did there'd be more releasing. or say we do, how many have the jahones to leave their own prison? better yet, what does releasing mean exactly, anyway?

your thoughts?

B-Mental: Desolation Angels is considered to be the highest expression of Beat spirituality taken almost verbatim from Kerouac's journals when he was up on that mountain.

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

i doubt we all have that "key," for if we did there'd be more releasing. or say we do, how many have the jahones to leave their own prison? better yet, what does releasing mean exactly, anyway?

your thoughts?

B-Mental: Desolation Angels is considered to be the highest expression of Beat spirituality taken almost verbatim from Kerouac's journals when he was up on that mountain.

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Oh but we do all posses the key! If any one has it, then we all do! This is the universal spiritual message. Sure, most fear leaving the prison. There is comfort there. There is also desire. But beneath it all, there is suffering.
Release means no longer being a victim of the illusion.

Hey jon1, my previous statement should read, "I read Desolation Angels, and loved it. I was too bored and absentminded to recall the name correctly." I think it was part of my motivation to quit my high paying job, and move to Montana. While I was there I was a skibum actually a snowboarder. I spent five of the best years of my life there.

The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

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oh, i figured you were locked in your room listening to that newly released piece of recording of James Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake. :D

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Originally Posted by B-Mental

Hey jon1, my previous statement should read, "I read Desolation Angels, and loved it. I was too bored and absentminded to recall the name correctly." I think it was part of my motivation to quit my high paying job, and move to Montana. While I was there I was a skibum actually a snowboarder. I spent five of the best years of my life there.

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B-Mental, i must ask the same question to you that had been asked to Thoreau after he left Walden Pond:

if you had the best years of your life there, why'd you leave?

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Originally Posted by Starving Buddha

Oh but we do all posses the key! If any one has it, then we all do! This is the universal spiritual message. Sure, most fear leaving the prison. There is comfort there. There is also desire. But beneath it all, there is suffering.
Release means no longer being a victim of the illusion.

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my concern is that once the chains are broken and the fear dispelled, are we not equally vulnerable to being confined to this new philosophy of freedom, preaching this mantra of life and never venturing on to anything new again?

any thoughts anys ones? :)

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

my concern is that once the chains are broken and the fear dispelled, are we not equally vulnerable to being confined to this new philosophy of freedom, preaching this mantra of life and never venturing on to anything new again?

any thoughts anys ones? :)

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Well yes... But that is until you realize there isn't anything new. Nirvana is the extinguishing of the karmic fire (the fire of desire and fear). It is the idea that there is something more to experience here that keeps us returning to the cycle of suffering. Attachments- clinging to sense stimulai. Until we consciously break these fetters, we are prisoners.