the end of Some of the Dharma . But the following passage from The Dharma Bums might be the one he would prefer I quote:
What did I care about the squawk of the little very self which wanders everywhere? I was dealing in outblownness, cut-off-ness, snipped, blownoutness, putoutness, turned-off-ness, nothing-happens-ness, gone-ness, gone-out-ness, the snapped link, nir, link, vana, snap! “The dust of my thoughts collected into a globe,” I thought, “in this ageless solitude,” I thought, and really smiled, because I was seeing the white light everywhere everything at last.
The warm wind made the pines talk deep one night when I began to experience what is called “Samapatti,” which in Sanskrit means Transcendental Visits. I’d got a little drowsy in the mind but was somehow physically wide awake sitting erect under my tree when suddenly I saw flowers, pink worlds of walls of them, salmon pink, in the Shh of silent woods (obtaining nirvana is like locating silence) and I saw an ancient vision of Dipankara Buddha who was the Buddha who never said anything. Dipankara as a vast snowy Pyramid Buddha with bushy wild black eyebrows like John L. Lewis and a terrible stare, all in an old location, an ancient snowy field like Alban (“A new field!” had yelled the Negro preacherwoman), the whole vision making my hair rise. I remember the strange magic final cry that it evoked in me, whatever it means: Colyalcolor. It, the vision, was devoid of any sensation of I being myself, it was pure egolessness, just simply wild ethereal activities devoid of any wrong predicates . . . devoid of effort, devoid of mistake. “Everything’s all right,” I thought. “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form and we’re here forever in one form or another which is empty. What the dead have accomplished, this rich silent hush of the Pure Awakened Land.”
I felt like crying out over the woods and rooftops of North Carolina announcing the glorious and simple truth. Then I said “I’ve got my full rucksack pack and it’s spring. I’m going to go southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter! Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but do what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.” Sitting in my Buddha-arbor, therefore, in that “colyalcolor” wall of flowers pink and red and ivory white, among aviaries of magic transcendent birds recognizing my awakening mind with sweet weird cries (the pathless lark), in the ethereal perfume, mysteriously ancient, the bliss of the Buddha-fields, I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
“Colyalcolor” is a mystery for sure—it reminds me of Koorookoolleh, the name of the ruby-red goddess bodhisattva who is the archetype of passionate compassion. She stands in a dancing pose, stark naked except for garlands of flowers, and holds a flower bow with bee string, shooting flower arrows to open beings’ hearts. But I’m not saying that was what Jack’s amazing word really meant. Perhaps it is the name of the “Buddha-field” he will create when he perfects his “awakener-ship” someday. D. T. Suzuki was funny. When Jack reportedly asked him upon meeting if he could stay with him forever, he answered, “Sometime.” You can always get a sense of how someone really feels by how they explain the Buddha’s enlightenment and basic teachings. The only discordant note in his experience is “I have nothing to do but do what I want,” which evinces a trace of the “nothing matters after all” sort of nihilistic misunderstanding of emptiness and perhaps the kernel of his inability to take his alcoholism seriously enough to get free of it and preserve himself and his genius for our benefit somewhat longer