Working on this introduction, it has become apparent to me that Jack Kerouac was the lead bodhisattva, way back there in the 1950s, among all of our very American predecessors. To introduce Kerouac introducing Shakyamuni Buddha, I’m just going to be personal since I’m not a scholar of the Beats and their literature. But Kerouac’s interpretation of “beat,” that it stands for “beatific” (which is how I like to translate the sambhoga of a buddha’s sambhoga-kaya, “beatific body”—his celestial, universal bliss-form) rather than for “beat up”—those who can’t take the industrial slave life, with its productions and its banks and its wars—this won my heart right away. Obviously it did way back when, I just couldn’t remember till now. I am grateful for the opportunity to write this introduction. It has been nearly fifty years since I read The Dharma Bums. Now that my love for the Buddhadharma—“the reality of the Enlightened One,” “the teaching of the Awakener”
