'The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.'

Well, today’s Literary Snippet is in tune with our theme for the day, on Hills and Mountains in Literature!

I hit upon this renowned Jack Kerouac’s 1958 classic titled, The Dharma Bums in which Jack chronicles his journey to a remote mountain, where he finds great peace and infinite wisdom in solitude.

First for the definition part!

A ‘Dharma Bum’ is a kind of wanderer on the world in search of real true meaning or dharma! In general terms, it could connote to mean, someone who spends most of their time doing any work that they love  doing, or going to a place that they love going to! So there could be a beach bum, a yoga bum or even a reading bum!

Just for a couple of lovely quotes from this read for y’all to motivate us all the way, in praise of mountains and solitude!

Wait please!

Before you read the following lines from Jack Kerouac, I would suggest you watch out for the way he uses his words, his phrasing, his lines and yes, his diction in general! They’re so amazingly cool, and were supposed to be deviants from the ‘normative narratives’!

That’s the Beat Generation for us all, known for their rejection of ‘standard narrative values’ to their lives and to their books as well!

So now, here goes a few lovely snippets from this Jack Kerouac read for us all -

Dharma Bums refuse to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway, such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume!

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures!

And one lovely definition that I so enjoyed reading was this:

"When you come into this house though you've got to take your shoes off, see those straw mats, you can ruin 'em with shoes."

So I took my soft-soled blue cloth shoes off and laid them dutifully by the door and he threw me a pillow and I sat crosslegged along the little wooden board wall and he offered me a cup of hot tea. "Did you ever read the Book of Tea?" said he.

"No, what's that?"

"It's a scholarly treatise on how to make tea utilizing all the knowledge of two thousand years about tea-brewing. Some of the descriptions of the effect of the first sip of tea, and the second, and the third, are really wild and ecstatic."

"Those guys got high on nothing, hey?"

"Sip your tea and you'll see; this is good green tea." It was good and I immediately felt calm and warm.

And yet another one on the sippa!

"Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin."

Japhy got out the tea, Chinese tea, and sprinkled some in a tin pot, and had the fire going meanwhile, a small one to begin with, the sun was still on us, and stuck a long stick tight down under a few big rocks and made himself something to hang the teapot on and pretty soon the water was boiling and he poured it out steaming into the tin pot and we had cups of tea with our tin cups.

I myself'd gotten the water from the stream, which was cold and pure like snow and the crystal-lidded eyes of heaven. Therefore, the tea was by far the most pure and thirstquenching tea I ever drank in all my life, it made you want to drink more and more, it actually quenched your thirst and of course it swam around hot in your belly.

"Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy.

"Remember that book I told you about the first sip is joy the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."

Yes! Why wait? Let’s sip our cuppas, and let’s go up the mountains to breathe the serene joyous air of solitude, and let’s make the children laugh, make the old people glad, the young people happy, and let’s write poems that appear in our heads for no reason, and be kind, and let’s do strange unexpected acts of kindness, and let’s give visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures as well!

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