The Holy Contour of Life

In 1955, Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), gave us his "List of Essentials" for his style of writing, and, in many ways for how he enjoyed living from the aesthetic and beatnick beatific zen point of view.  


"1. Write on, can't change or go back, involuntary, unrevised, spontaneous, subconscious, pure
2.  Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for you own joy
3.  Submissive to everything, open, listening
4.  Be in love with your life every detail of it
5.  Something that you feel will find its own form  
6.  Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7.  Blow as deep as you want to blow
8.  Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind  
9.  The unspeakable visions of the individual  
10.  Not time for poetry but exactly what is
11.  Visionary tics shivering in the chest  
12.  In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you  
13.  Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition  
14.  Like Proust be an old teahead of time 
15.  Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16.  Work for pithy middle eye out, from the jewel center of interest, swimming in language sea  
17.  Accept loss forever
18.  Believe in the holy contour of life  
19.  Write in recollection and amazement of yourself  
20.  Profound struggle with pencil to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
21.  Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
22.  No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language and knowledge
23.  Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures
24.  In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness 
25.  Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
26.  You're a Genius all the time
27.  Writer-Director of Earthly Movies produced in Heaven, different forms of the same Holy Gold"
-  Jack Kerouac, List of Essentials, 1955   


I have always enjoyed reading the following book:  "Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation," edited by Carole Tonkinson, Riverhead Books, 1995.