The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)
by Jack Kerouac 
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Poetic meditations on joy, consciousness, and becoming one with the infinite universe from the author of On the Road During an unexplained fainting spell, Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac experienced a flash of enlightenment. A student of Buddhist philosophy, Kerouac recognized the experience as "satori, " a moment of life-changing epiphany. The knowledge he gained in that instant is expressed in this volume of sixty-six prose poems with language that is both precise and cryptic, mystical show more and plain. His vision proclaims, "There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one golden eternity." Within these meditations, haikus, and Zen koans is a contemplation of consciousness and impermanence. While heavily influenced by the form of Buddhist poems or sutras, Kerouac also draws inspiration from a variety of religious traditions, including Taoism, Native American spirituality, and the Catholicism of his youth. Far-reaching and inclusive, this collection reveals the breadth of Kerouac's poetic sensibility and the curiosity, word play, and fierce desire to understand the nature of existence that make up the foundational concepts of Beat poetry and propel all of Kerouac's writing. show lessTags
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The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac is a personalized collection of Beat interpreted Buddhism. The Open Road Integrated Media ebook version of the book uses their own typesetting which keeps the lines together and in their original format when you change text size. Many poems read better when the lines are presented when intended. In other ebooks, I am forced to go into landscape mode to retain line format. Unlike prose line breaks are important in many poems and can change the meaning of a line when the breaks are not in the right place.
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity is a collection of sixty-six poems written in what seems to me a prayer book. Each short poem is self-contained and is meant to be read and pondered show more on. Kerouac and the Beat version of Buddhism takes on its own unique form. Anyone with a knowledge of Buddhism who has read Dharma Bums understands this. It is not bad, but just a different Americanized, Beat interpretation.
Kerouac presents a compact version of his exploration into Buddhism and like many Americans he comes from a Christian or Catholic culture and attempts to reconcile his family religion with Buddhism. The Scripture of the Golden Eternity is a more mature view than the sometimes satirized Beat view that can be seen in Dharma Bums. A nice collection that is meant to be read and meditated upon. show less
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity is a collection of sixty-six poems written in what seems to me a prayer book. Each short poem is self-contained and is meant to be read and pondered show more on. Kerouac and the Beat version of Buddhism takes on its own unique form. Anyone with a knowledge of Buddhism who has read Dharma Bums understands this. It is not bad, but just a different Americanized, Beat interpretation.
Kerouac presents a compact version of his exploration into Buddhism and like many Americans he comes from a Christian or Catholic culture and attempts to reconcile his family religion with Buddhism. The Scripture of the Golden Eternity is a more mature view than the sometimes satirized Beat view that can be seen in Dharma Bums. A nice collection that is meant to be read and meditated upon. show less
Fun for a while, but after a while it feels kind of tacky in a proto-New Age sort of way. Best poem: "Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth. Rest and be kind."
Pristine condition
> Jack KÉROUAC, L'écrit de l'éternité d'or, tr. de l’anglais par Philippe Mikriammos, (Paris, Ed. de la Différence, 1979, 24x16 cm, 101 p., coll. « Philosophia perennis ».) ;
Jean BRUN, Les vagabonds de l'Occident. L'expérience du voyage et la prison du moi, (Paris, Desclée, 1976, 22x13 cm, 219 p., coll. « L’athéisme interroge ».)
Se reporter au compte rendu de A. REIX
In: Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger, T. 170, No. 3, L'homme-machine (Juillet-Septembre 1980), p. 383… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TSjkhXrfh2SuAQOZIvaKxfVlFPNVoGNb/view?usp=shari...
Jean BRUN, Les vagabonds de l'Occident. L'expérience du voyage et la prison du moi, (Paris, Desclée, 1976, 22x13 cm, 219 p., coll. « L’athéisme interroge ».)
Se reporter au compte rendu de A. REIX
In: Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger, T. 170, No. 3, L'homme-machine (Juillet-Septembre 1980), p. 383… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TSjkhXrfh2SuAQOZIvaKxfVlFPNVoGNb/view?usp=shari...
Sep 29, 2020French
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Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. His first novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1950. He considered all of his "true story novels," including On the Road, to be chapters of "one vast book," his autobiographical Legend of Duluoz. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969 at the age of forty-seven. (Publisher show more Provided) show less
Jack Kerouac has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Dedication
- Jack Kerouac died suddenly in 1969 at the age of 47.
- First words
- Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a conception in my mind I wouldn't have said "Sky" -- That is why I am the golden eternity.
- Quotations
- Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth. Rest and be kind.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The second teaching from the golden eternity is that there never was a first teaching from the golden eternity. So be sure.
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- English, French, German, Italian
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- Paper, Ebook
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