Abstract

When violence, hate, and capitalism seemed to dominate the world, the Beat Generation sought after love, hope, and oneness. In the mid-twentieth century, their quest landed them on the path of engaged Buddhism as a political ideology of compassion and their writings became informed by Buddhist doctrines such as karma and metta, forever changing the creed of American counterculture. This paper explores how the writers of the Beat Generation sought out and employed Zen Buddhist traditions to create a political alternative for the strict and conservative American society they inhabited during the early years of the Cold War. This paper also examines how the writers of the Beat Generation’s use of Buddhism in creating a compassionate political alternative during the fifties sustained their Buddhist informed social influence into the 1960s. While previous scholars have recognized Buddhism as a political alternative, the Beat Generation’s use of Zen Buddhism is unique in the way they incorporated and presented Buddhist lessons in their writings, as this paper finds by examining their Buddhist informed work and how they challenged the mainstream American society to consider more earthly and humanistic alternatives to the destructive and violent America they knew during the Cold War. Moreover, this paper aims to highlight the impact made by the Beats’ utilization of Buddhism and assesses the success of their goal to shift American focus on materialism, mass media, and fear of the “other” towards kindness, oneness, and understanding of a higher Truth by surveying their continued influence on politics and society today.

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