Zen and the Beat WayEverything disappears into nothing at all, but out of that same nothing at all come all the new things, forever and ever. Alan Watts When Jack Kerouac wrote his novel Dharma Bums, his views on Zen Buddhism echoed the sentiments of the Beat Generation, who found in Zen a way of life unencumbered by the limits of "square" society. It was the philosopher Alan Watts who first wrote and spoke about Zen and Eastern culture in terms accessible to mainstream