A bhikku is a Buddhist monk. The term literally means “beggar” and refers to the way the Gautama Buddha’s original students gave up all material pursuits to wander from place to place, study full-time, and live off the charity of others. Ray and Japhy base their own lives on this monastic model and think of themselves as modern-day bhikkus.
Bhikku Quotes in The Dharma Bums
The The Dharma Bums quotes below are all either spoken by Bhikku or refer to Bhikku. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
I really believed in the reality of charity and kindness and humility and zeal and neutral tranquillity and wisdom and ecstasy, and I believed that I was an oldtime bhikku in modern clothes wandering the world (usually the immense triangular arc of New York to Mexico City to San Francisco) in order to turn the wheel of the True Meaning, or Dharma, and gain merit for myself as a future Buddha (Awakener) and as a future Hero in Paradise. I had not met Japhy Ryder yet, I was about to the next week, or heard anything about “Dharma Bums” although at this time I was a perfect Dharma Bum myself and considered myself a religious wanderer.
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Bhikku Term Timeline in The Dharma Bums
The timeline below shows where the term Bhikku appears in The Dharma Bums. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the wanderings that he narrates in this book. He thought of himself as a modern bhikku, traveling like a pilgrim around the U.S.—in other words, he was already a Dharma Bum,...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...Ray convinces Japhy to return to the first place. After Japhy proclaims himself an anti-materialistic bhikku, he eats voraciously. After dinner, the guys buy a bottle of wine and smoke a...
(full context)
Chapter 24
...months to do the same. Japhy remembers hitchhiking there with a shaved head, like a bhikku, and teaching everyone he met about Dharma. The landscape was harsh before the snow melted,...
(full context)
Chapter 32
...who drove him was speeding. Ray realizes that he won’t have the freedom of a bhikku while working this job. He learns the ropes at Fire School and meets Burnie Byers,...
(full context)
