Wake Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

and sees no more differentiation of various creatures and phenomena, who entertains no more definite conceptions of self, other selves, many divided selves, or one undivided universal self, to whom the world is no longer noticeable, except as a pitiful apparition, yet without arbitrary conception either of its existence or non-existence, as one thinks not to measure the substantiality of a dream but only to wake from it; thus Tathagata, piously composed and silent, radiant with glory, shedding light around, rose from under his Tree of Enlightenment, and with unmatched dignity advanced alone over the dreamlike earth as if surrounded by a crowd of followers, thinking, “To fulfill my ancient oath, to rescue all not yet delivered, I will follow out my ancient vow. Let those that have ears to hear master the noble path of salvation.”
     
    A few pages later, we get a hint of where Kerouac gets his title: “For to these ancient monks, clearly perceiving birth as the cause of death, and deeds of lust as the cause of birth, the Buddha was like one standing on the bank calling to the worldly man drifting down the current ‘Ho there! Wake up! the river in your dream may seem pleasant, but below it is a lake with rapids and crocodiles, the river is evil desire, the lake is the sensual life, its waves are anger, its rapids are lust, and the crocodiles are the women-folk.’”
    Kerouac homes in on the key mantra, in the words of the disciple Ashvajit: “Whatever things proceed from a cause, of them the Buddha has stated the cause and what their dissolution is. This is what the Great One teaches.” Om ye dharmah hetusvabhavah hetun tesham tathagata hi avadat tesham cha yo nirodho evam vadi mahashramanah.
    Kerouac also touches on the eventual happiness of the Buddha’s father Suddhodana, and here I can imagine his fantasy of reconciliation with his own father, Leo, which never really happened, as I understand from scholars: “Having heard from his son how to cast off fear and escape the evil ways of birth, and in a manner of such dignity and tenderness, the King himself left his kingly estate and country and entered on the calm flowings of thoughts, the gate of the true law of eternality. Sweet in meditation, dew Suddhodana drank. In the night, recalling his son with pride, he looked up at the infinite stars and suddenly realized ‘How glad I am to be alive to reverence this starry universe!’ then ‘But it’s not a case of being alive and the starry universe is not necessarily the starry universe’ and he realized the utter strangeness and yet commonness of the unsurpassable wisdom of the Buddha.”
    A third of the way through Wake Up, Kerouac describes the Buddha as the supreme “Dharma bum,” in an unbelievably brilliant passage I feel compelled to repeat:
     
    Buddha accepted food both good or bad, whatever came, from rich or poor, without distinction, and having filled his alms-dish, he then returned back to the solitude, where he meditated his prayer for the emancipation of the world from its bestial grief and incessant bloody deeds of death and birth, death and birth, the ignorant gnashing screaming wars, the murder of dogs, the histories, follies, parent beating child, child tormenting child, lover ruining lover, robber raiding niggard, leering, cocky, crazy, wild, blood-louts moaning for more blood-lust, utter sots, running up and down simpleminded among charnels of their own making, simpering everywhere, mere tsorises and dream-pops, one monstrous beast raining forms from a central glut, all buried in unfathomable darkness crowing for rosy hope that can only be complete extinction, at base innocent and without any vestige of self-nature whatever; for should the causes and conditions of the ignorant insanity of the world be removed, the nature of its non-insane non-ignorance would be revealed, like the child of dawn entering heaven through the morning in the lake of the mind, the Pure, True Mind, the source,