The Dharma Bums: The Walking Tradition Reimagined

 In The Dharma Bums, walking is primarily meditation and escape. It is meditation because the walkers pronounce themselves Buddhists practicing the Buddhist tradition. It is an escape in that the narrator treats walking as a nonconformist path, away from the capitalist movements and desires of the narrator’s modern world. 

    We have seen a similar approach to walking in the Peace Pilgrim, a woman who used walking as a protest, or less actively, a means through which to promote a countercultural movement. The Dharma Bums and Peace Pilgrim both, in varying degrees of assertiveness, walk for this purpose. The Dharma Bums revise the Peace Pilgrim’s tradition by internalizing their countercultural mission. They adopt an attitude which is totally separate from the Peace Pilgrim’s in that they do not impart their philosophy on the public. In this way, they revise Martin Luther King’s walk of protest as well. The Dharma Bum’s mission is innately introverted, making their walking an introspective and independently nourishing activity. This, however, is not new. Thoreau internalizes his mission and departs from society in a similar way: to revel in his thoughts and opinions. 

What is new, or distinctly different, about The Dharma Bums in our entire study on walking this semester, is their dedication to Buddhism as their guiding religion rather than forms of Christianity. They devote themselves to meditation practices and live by its teachings, (though reimagined by themselves and their desires) such as the law of detachment. While the Eastern philosophy of Buddhism is anything but modern, Kerouac’s characters adopt the practice and repackage it to suit their modern, unemployed, hedonistic, American lifestyles. 


Comments

  1. Dr. GaykMarch 24, 2026 at 7:11 AM

    A thoughtful reflection on how religion shaped walking (as both meditation and protest) at this particular moment in history. Nicely done!

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