Eastern Thought in the Works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s a fascination with Eastern thought developed, focusing on Buddhism Zen and Taoism. This attraction can be explained in part by the complete alienation of these thought forms to Western ideals. Buddhism's denial of reality and Daoism's wu-wei or flowing with life were revolutionary ideas for people of the late 1950s raised on consumerism, patriotism, Christianity, and the suburbs. As people began to rebel against this cookie-cutter society, Eastern thought became a tool for revolution, denying previously indubitable truths such as reality, attachment, and God. This polar opposite belief system, though it worked well as a slap in the face to conservative America, it had difficulty being accepted in its purest totality. Many aspects were too rigid, too foreign and even too conservative to adequately adapt to the atmosphere of revolution and freedom. Thus began the “domestication” process. In order for these belief systems to be embraced by revolutionaries, some sort of purification had to occur. Writers such as Kerouac and Ginsberg combined Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and forms of Tibetan mysticism with parts of Western religions to create a blend of traditions far more liberal in practice than any of its component belief systems. This "corruption" of Eastern thought began with the inclusion of sex, drugs, and even aspects of Christianity and other Western ways of thought to produce a hybrid of spirituality, and ended up as an accepted mode of belief among revolutionaries in a way in the purest forms. of these religions he could never. Jack Kerouac in his book, The Dharma Bums, and Allen...... middle of paper......beliefs with their own, or trace the traditions to their purest roots and take the religion from there. It has been a long road, but the sincerity of the Dharma Bums and other poets and writers of the 1960s left a legacy of religious freedom, breaking the barriers of Central American Christianity and moving towards the new frontier. Kerouac reflects on this in The Dharma Bums, "'Yes, Coughlin, it's a shining present and we've done it, we've already brought America like a shining blanket into that bright nothingness" (138). Works CitedAllen, Donald ed. The new American poetry 1945-1960. Berkeley: U of CA, 1999. Ginsberg, Allen. “Kaddish.” Allen, pp. 194-201 Ginsberg, Allen. "Sunflower Sutra". Allen, pp. 179-180. Ginsberg, Allen. "A supermarket in California." Allen pp. 181-182. Kerouac, Jack. Dharma wanderers. New York: Penguin, 1986.