The Beat Generation has always been associated, and rightly so, with themes related to sexuality. Beat writers were, and still are, famous for advocating sexual liberation and free love, being open about their homosexuality when this occurred (as Allen Ginsberg did throughout his life), and much of their literary output it is full of erotic experiences. . All this inevitably collided, or merged, with the Buddhist faith with which most of the Beats came into contact, for different time intervals and certainly with different results. The relationship between Buddhism and sexuality can be observed in Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, published in 1958. The protagonists of the novel are Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder, based on Kerouac himself and his close friend and writer Gary Snyder (who had widely known about Buddhism), on a semi-fictional journey of self-discovery in the wilderness. The two have completely opposite approaches to sexuality: while Ryder has fully embraced it, Smith can't find a way to reconcile it with his commitment to the Buddhist faith. Throughout the book there are several hints at the duality that troubles Smith and the difficulty he encounters in trying to reconcile his religious side with his sexual impulses. He sees sexuality as an obstacle to faith and a source of unhappiness, and explains that he “spent an entire year of celibacy based on the feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth, that it was the direct cause of suffering and death and I had truly no lie reached the point where I considered lust offensive and even cruel. “Pretty girls make graves,” was my saying” (Kerouac 31). This can be related to a Buddhist belief contained in the Sutta Nipata, in which Buddha declares that desire (tanha), and in particular sensual desire (kama), brings pain (dukkha) and constitutes an obstacle to obtaining a enlightened mind. “So one, always careful, should avoid sexual desires. Letting them go, he will cross the river like one who, having saved the boat, has reached the distant shore." (Kama Sutta, Sutta Nipata, 4.1) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Buddhist expert Barbara O'Brien, in her article What Buddhism Teaches About Sexual Morality, offers a more modern interpretation, arguing that "The second noble truth teaches that the cause of suffering is desire or thirst (tanha).This does not mean that cravings must be repressed or denied. Instead, in Buddhist practice we recognize our passions and learn to see that they are empty, so they no longer control us 'greed and other emotions. Sexual desire is no different.' ('O Brien 1) This seems more compatible with Japhy Ryder's views. He is much more confident than Smith, he is comfortable expressing his sexuality and even in explicitly linking her to religion In chapter five of The Dharma Bums, a girl named Princess wants to join the group through some sort of sexual initiation - "she wanted to be a great Buddhist like Japhy and being a girl is the only way she can." he could express it was this way” (Kerouac 31) – and “Japhy wasn't nervous or embarrassed at all and just sat there in perfect form just like he was supposed to” (Kerouac 30). He explains that “this is what they do in the temples of Tibet. It is a sacred ceremony, it is done exactly like this in front of the singing priests. People pray and recite Om Mani Pahdme Hum, which means Amen the Lightning in the Dark Void. You see, I am the lightning and the Princess is the dark void. (Kerouac 30) This is not just something thatRyder is completely making it up to legitimize his actions. Buddhist expert Peter Harvey, in his Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, states that some sexual practices are “necessary at the highest level for the attainment of Buddhahood,” although their use is “highly regulated. It is only permitted after years of training and[...] has historically been extremely rare." (Harvey 142) Smith is fascinated by this practice and has feelings of admiration and envy towards Ryder's freedom, but his own inhibitions, sense of guilt and fear of disappointing his beliefs prevent him from joining the sexual encounter. However, he cannot free himself from this conflict and constantly oscillates between the desire for sex and the feeling of repulsion for it or denying it to himself chapter twenty-five goes into detail about a social party he attended before deciding to undertake the Buddhist journey; he is with a friend, they are sitting in a corner, observing the behavior of others, and he describes it thus: “We were the old monks who they were no longer interested in sex but Sean, Japhy and Whitey were the young monks and they were still full of the fire of evil and still had a lot to learn. Every now and then Bud and I would look at all that flesh and lick our lips secretly. (Kerouac 178) This quote is the perfect example of his inner conflict: he thinks that people who give in to sexual desires are somehow weak, "evil" and lacking in wisdom, but he still can't help but desire "in secret" what they have. The conflict continues in chapter twenty-six: “I felt lonely seeing everyone coupled up and having fun and all I did was curl up in my sleeping bag in the rose bushes and sigh and say bah. For me it was just red wine in my mouth and a pile of firewood." (Kerouac 187) So, he regrets his self-imposed isolation and would like to be able to do like everyone else, but "then I would find something like a dead crow in the deer park and think 'It's a pretty sight for sensitive human eyes, and everything comes from sex." So I put sex out of my mind again. (Kerouac 187) Some might argue that such hesitation, such a binary viewpoint, is not a true Buddhist attitude. For example, 'O Brien comments that “the Western culture at the moment seems to be at war with itself over sex, with rigid puritanism on one side and licentiousness on the other. Buddhism has always taught us to avoid extremes and find a middle ground different decisions, but wisdom (prajna) and loving-kindness (metta), not lists of rules, show us the path” ('O Brien 1). While Smith is caught up in his contradictions, Ryder spontaneously and concretely internalizes Buddhist spirituality regarding sexual behavior. “There was no question about what to do about sex,” he says, “which is what I always liked about Eastern religion. […] I didn't feel American at all, with all that suburban ideal, sexual repression, and the general sad gray newspaper censorship of all our real human values” (Kerouac 32). It's easy to see Gary Snyder's personality and mentality behind Japhy's. In his article Buddhism Anarchism, Snyder himself defended a similar position. “The “free world” has become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulating greed that cannot be satisfied, sexual desire that cannot be satiated, and hatred that has no outlet except against oneself, the people who they should love each other,” he writes, “There is nothing in human nature or in the requirements of human social organization that inherently requires a culture to be contradictory, repressive, and productive of violent and frustrated personalities” (Snyder 1). It almost seems like it, 2007