What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics
HOW THE LITERATURE WE LOVE CONVEYS THE AWAKENING WE SEEK
Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth , The Catcher in the Rye , Moby-Dick , and The Bluest Eye .
Some of us were lucky enough to have one passionate, funny, inspiring English teacher who helped us fall in love with books. Add a lifetime of teaching Dharma — authentic, traditional approaches to meditation and awakening — and you get award-winning author Dean Sluyter. With droll humor and irreverent wisdom, he unpacks the Dharma of more than twenty major writers, from William Blake to Dr. Seuss, inspiring readers to deepen their own spiritual life and see literature in a fresh, new as a path of awakening.
Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth , The Catcher in the Rye , Moby-Dick , and The Bluest Eye .
Some of us were lucky enough to have one passionate, funny, inspiring English teacher who helped us fall in love with books. Add a lifetime of teaching Dharma — authentic, traditional approaches to meditation and awakening — and you get award-winning author Dean Sluyter. With droll humor and irreverent wisdom, he unpacks the Dharma of more than twenty major writers, from William Blake to Dr. Seuss, inspiring readers to deepen their own spiritual life and see literature in a fresh, new as a path of awakening.
- GenresNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
Published March 29, 2022
21 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 27, 2022
Easily the most marvelous book I've read this year. Ordered it on a whim after hearing the author speak on a podcast. Wonderfully written, profoundly insightful and funny. Books, plays, poems I enjoyed at school, but couldn't say I really understood, are revealed to spark and fizzle with meaning as the author points out moments divine transcendence in great literature. All these authors expressed their experience of enlightenment in words. We sense that, it uplifts us, even if we can't grasp how. This book explains. A work of this standard deserves a wide readership (and, um, maybe a bigger publisher...)
My favorite chapters were those on Emily Dickinson (not so well known here in the UK) and Walt Whitman. One was a miniaturist, finding glory in the tiny and the simple; the other a maximalist whose working material was all of creation. Both arrived at the same place: the boundless infinite.
This book put me in such a positive mood. Made me look beyond life's surface and its I-centered irritations, to the vast OK-ness of everything beyond.
My favorite chapters were those on Emily Dickinson (not so well known here in the UK) and Walt Whitman. One was a miniaturist, finding glory in the tiny and the simple; the other a maximalist whose working material was all of creation. Both arrived at the same place: the boundless infinite.
This book put me in such a positive mood. Made me look beyond life's surface and its I-centered irritations, to the vast OK-ness of everything beyond.
September 21, 2022
My best teacher was my high school lit teacher. She had a remarkable way of sharing her profound appreciation of literature so that we became better readers and marveled at the magic of good writing along with her. Dean Sluyter reminds me of her. Each of his analyses has brought the selected work to life for me, whether I have read that work or not. He not only offers his unique spiritual take on these works but also celebrates the beauty and power of language as ART. I really love this book and will return to it for inspiration, I am sure.
April 5, 2022
A FLAT OUT FUN RIDE!!
If you pick up a copy of Dean Sluyter’s Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature you will be in for a fun ride. As Sluyter says in the introduction, “We’ll let excitement be our guide…like surf bums following the waves we’ll be Dharma bums following the light wherever it leads us, wherever we find the juiciest act, the most fun. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?”
I wish I could have had a teacher who was as much fun as Dean Sluyter is! When I read his book Cinema Nirvana years ago my eyes were opened in a new way to movies I had loved over the years, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting for him to be able to do the same with western literature. Boy was I wrong! He took me on a ride through books I had read years ago and some I had never read (or at least had thoroughly forgotten) and helped me see them in a new light. Sluyter’s knowledge combined with his great sense of humor makes for captivating reading and a flat out fun ride. I had a blast getting enlightened!
If you pick up a copy of Dean Sluyter’s Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature you will be in for a fun ride. As Sluyter says in the introduction, “We’ll let excitement be our guide…like surf bums following the waves we’ll be Dharma bums following the light wherever it leads us, wherever we find the juiciest act, the most fun. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?”
I wish I could have had a teacher who was as much fun as Dean Sluyter is! When I read his book Cinema Nirvana years ago my eyes were opened in a new way to movies I had loved over the years, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting for him to be able to do the same with western literature. Boy was I wrong! He took me on a ride through books I had read years ago and some I had never read (or at least had thoroughly forgotten) and helped me see them in a new light. Sluyter’s knowledge combined with his great sense of humor makes for captivating reading and a flat out fun ride. I had a blast getting enlightened!
April 4, 2022
In a time when life feels so upside down, Dean Sluyter inspires us to trust something beyond what we see or what we think we already know - to willfully turn "with" the canvas and allow gravity and grace to reveal something new: the pigments of awareness suspended in emotion … in our language, in our stories, and in the universal “stuff” that binds us!
I felt like I was sitting in a shared classroom (with much delight) - engaged by that personal and impersonal charisma, knowledge, and passion that makes “Dean, Dean” – inspired by his embodied, curious, and patient unfolding of each author, while stoking the reader for renewal.
This is an artful, mindful canvas of Western thought meets Eastern strokes awaiting our authorship - a valuable resource for those "looking for different ways of looking," and a Source of connection for all.
I felt like I was sitting in a shared classroom (with much delight) - engaged by that personal and impersonal charisma, knowledge, and passion that makes “Dean, Dean” – inspired by his embodied, curious, and patient unfolding of each author, while stoking the reader for renewal.
This is an artful, mindful canvas of Western thought meets Eastern strokes awaiting our authorship - a valuable resource for those "looking for different ways of looking," and a Source of connection for all.
April 8, 2022
Dean Sluyter is the high school lit teacher you never had, funny, accessible, wise, and holding the door open for you to a world you do not yet know and, so early on, barely suspect. He invites you through that door with kindness and light. His book is a joy, what happens when eastern philosophy marries western literature and they have a baby. Sluyter takes that baby, and you, out to a number of different author parks to play. What a delight.
September 14, 2022
I loved listening to this book! Felt happy for the author to get to combine two of his life loves- literature and the spiritual quest he has been on. It helps to have passages from so many masterful writers and his own prose was also excellent as was his reading of this book. Highly recommend. Some passages with quotes from other authors labeled as such.
Emily Dickinson : “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were been taken off I know that is poetry.”
Blake “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
Sluyter:
The ocean is present in every wave.
Even as you walk the path kiss the Joy in whatever form it assumes right now in this moment, the only moment, the pulsing eternity of now.
In the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. John 16:33
Frederick Douglass’ great liberation came from realizing that he was not chattel, not a slave. He was a person who had become enslaved. In this deeper liberation we realize we are not a person but luminous aware open space that has been enpersoned. You’ve experienced this yourself. In those moments of eternity when you become so absorbed in dancing or gardening or anything else that time melts away. When that happens the self, the sense of a separate identity, an ego zipped into a bag of skin, melts along with it.
Emerson:
Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight under a clouded sky without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
Our faith comes in moments yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space all mean egotism vanishes I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal being circulate through me I am parted or particle of God.
Sluyter
A poem is a Pebble. When it’s dropped into the pond of human consciousness it makes ripples and rings that go out and out until it reaches parts of the pond that the pond didn’t know it had. you are the pond. A great poem makes rings that go out forever because you go out forever.
Liberation is not gained, it’s finally noticed. The clouds of our confusion part and we noticed the ever deep sky of being. The kingdom of heaven is with in us and has been all along.
The river doesn’t flow to freedom, the river is freedom.
Emerson: “We grant that human life is mean how did we find out that it was mean? What is the Ground of this uneasiness of ours of this old discontent? What is the universal sense of want an ignorance but the fine innuendo with which the soul makes its enormous claim?”
Sluyter
Life seems bleak. Alright. Compared to what? Holding our breath in anticipation of future ease we create present unease and it’s always the present.
When you pray, move your feet.
Coltrane it is said once told Miles Davis “I don’t know how to stop “.
Miles replied “ Why don’t you try
taking the horn out of your mouth.“
Emily Dickinson
Silence is infinity.
A flask of dew, a bee or two, A breeze, a caper in the trees and I’m a rose.
Some keep the sabbath going to church I keep it staying at home with a bobolink for a chorister and an orchard for a dome. God preaches, a noted clergyman, and the sermon is never long, so instead of getting to heaven at last, I’m going all along.
I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there’s a pair of us. Don’t tell! Theyd advertise you know. How dreary to be somebody. How public, like a frog. To tell someones name the live long June to an admiring bog.
Whitman:
I depart as air.
I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
If you want to see me again look for me under your boot soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.
Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
Sluyter:
The real proof of our unshakable nature comes in the dark night when our life is most shaken. When you get sick or you get fired, when your big project or your cherished relationship hits the rocks, when you’re in a foul mood and all the teachings ring hollow that’s the time to ask yourself, to look and ask yourself:“ through all these changes what remains the same? Amidst all this loss what is it I never lose and CAN never lose?” That’s it! That simple irreducible beingness, that ‘I’ awareness that’s aware of foul moods and fair moods and remains untouched by both.
Kerouac said, “All is well. Practice kindness. Heaven is nigh”
Emily Dickinson : “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were been taken off I know that is poetry.”
Blake “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
Sluyter:
The ocean is present in every wave.
Even as you walk the path kiss the Joy in whatever form it assumes right now in this moment, the only moment, the pulsing eternity of now.
In the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. John 16:33
Frederick Douglass’ great liberation came from realizing that he was not chattel, not a slave. He was a person who had become enslaved. In this deeper liberation we realize we are not a person but luminous aware open space that has been enpersoned. You’ve experienced this yourself. In those moments of eternity when you become so absorbed in dancing or gardening or anything else that time melts away. When that happens the self, the sense of a separate identity, an ego zipped into a bag of skin, melts along with it.
Emerson:
Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight under a clouded sky without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
Our faith comes in moments yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space all mean egotism vanishes I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal being circulate through me I am parted or particle of God.
Sluyter
A poem is a Pebble. When it’s dropped into the pond of human consciousness it makes ripples and rings that go out and out until it reaches parts of the pond that the pond didn’t know it had. you are the pond. A great poem makes rings that go out forever because you go out forever.
Liberation is not gained, it’s finally noticed. The clouds of our confusion part and we noticed the ever deep sky of being. The kingdom of heaven is with in us and has been all along.
The river doesn’t flow to freedom, the river is freedom.
Emerson: “We grant that human life is mean how did we find out that it was mean? What is the Ground of this uneasiness of ours of this old discontent? What is the universal sense of want an ignorance but the fine innuendo with which the soul makes its enormous claim?”
Sluyter
Life seems bleak. Alright. Compared to what? Holding our breath in anticipation of future ease we create present unease and it’s always the present.
When you pray, move your feet.
Coltrane it is said once told Miles Davis “I don’t know how to stop “.
Miles replied “ Why don’t you try
taking the horn out of your mouth.“
Emily Dickinson
Silence is infinity.
A flask of dew, a bee or two, A breeze, a caper in the trees and I’m a rose.
Some keep the sabbath going to church I keep it staying at home with a bobolink for a chorister and an orchard for a dome. God preaches, a noted clergyman, and the sermon is never long, so instead of getting to heaven at last, I’m going all along.
I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there’s a pair of us. Don’t tell! Theyd advertise you know. How dreary to be somebody. How public, like a frog. To tell someones name the live long June to an admiring bog.
Whitman:
I depart as air.
I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
If you want to see me again look for me under your boot soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.
Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
Sluyter:
The real proof of our unshakable nature comes in the dark night when our life is most shaken. When you get sick or you get fired, when your big project or your cherished relationship hits the rocks, when you’re in a foul mood and all the teachings ring hollow that’s the time to ask yourself, to look and ask yourself:“ through all these changes what remains the same? Amidst all this loss what is it I never lose and CAN never lose?” That’s it! That simple irreducible beingness, that ‘I’ awareness that’s aware of foul moods and fair moods and remains untouched by both.
Kerouac said, “All is well. Practice kindness. Heaven is nigh”
October 20, 2022
This review originally appeared on The Magical Buffet website on 10/20/2022.
Fun fact, at one point in my life I was an English major. I was considering becoming a high school English teacher. I didn’t pursue that path but a big takeaway was, I am not a fan of classic literature. Seriously. Most of the required reading I did in high school showed me that my idea of great literature and a school board’s idea are not the same thing. However, I am a big fan of Buddhism and that’s why when offered the opportunity to read a book intended to show the Dharma hidden in Western literature, I couldn’t say no.
“The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics” by Dean Sluyter is an entertaining and thought provoking read. Sluyter discusses expected classics, such as “The Great Gatsby”, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, and “Moby Dick”, but also adds the unexpected like “The Cat in the Hat”, Frederick Douglass “The Slave Narrative”, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” “The Dharma Bum’s Guide” isn’t claiming these were written from a Buddhist perspective, but that the Dharma is so universal, it can be found in everything….including Western literature.
Sluyter’s exploration of the authors, as well as their works, can make Buddhist thought more accessible to the Western mind, and can occasionally make a person carrying a disdain for classics (like yours truly) reassess their previous stances. “The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature” by Dean Sluyter is a fantastic book for anyone interested in Western literature, or Buddhism, or both.
Fun fact, at one point in my life I was an English major. I was considering becoming a high school English teacher. I didn’t pursue that path but a big takeaway was, I am not a fan of classic literature. Seriously. Most of the required reading I did in high school showed me that my idea of great literature and a school board’s idea are not the same thing. However, I am a big fan of Buddhism and that’s why when offered the opportunity to read a book intended to show the Dharma hidden in Western literature, I couldn’t say no.
“The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature: Finding Nirvana in the Classics” by Dean Sluyter is an entertaining and thought provoking read. Sluyter discusses expected classics, such as “The Great Gatsby”, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, and “Moby Dick”, but also adds the unexpected like “The Cat in the Hat”, Frederick Douglass “The Slave Narrative”, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” “The Dharma Bum’s Guide” isn’t claiming these were written from a Buddhist perspective, but that the Dharma is so universal, it can be found in everything….including Western literature.
Sluyter’s exploration of the authors, as well as their works, can make Buddhist thought more accessible to the Western mind, and can occasionally make a person carrying a disdain for classics (like yours truly) reassess their previous stances. “The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature” by Dean Sluyter is a fantastic book for anyone interested in Western literature, or Buddhism, or both.
November 4, 2025
3.5 stars. I liked this book … which is saying something, as it’s not really my style. We read it for book club, 1 chapter per meeting. Seemed a good way to do it. I definitely learned something. I’m not a student of great literature, & it was nice to have a teacher do the hard work of summarizing & excerpting. I loved the short excerpts from the famous authors, most of whom I hadn’t read. Sure wish I’d had a literature teacher like him in high school! Not so sure about the focus on dharma, but it’s as good an organizing concept as any. And he does have a great sense of humor.
February 20, 2025
Whimsical, witty, and wise, each essay is as insightful as it is funny. Sluyter is a joyous author with a deep grasp of Eastern philosophy: he is the eccentric, observant, and dry-wit English teacher of Americana legend. His down-to-earth writing makes the reader feel as if they, too, were one of his English students, exploring The Greats with curiosity and humility. A book I'll be purchasing for my personal library.
October 19, 2025
Very interesting look at Western literature through the view of Eastern Philosphy. Some times the connections made by the author feel forced but the book follows the promise of using Eastern Philosphy and Religion to study various classics. Connects previous reviewed classics with latter reviewed classics. Like being in a fun Highschool English teachers class except the teacher is obsessed with the Dharma. The thought I had at the end of the book was that I wished there was more.
April 11, 2022
This book is absolutely delicious! It guides and immerses the reader to the deepest understanding of our true nature. Dean’s wisdom and wit enliven the books that I either didn’t read or didn’t understand in high school. He reveals, in a way that only Dean can, that enlightenment teachings can be found anywhere. Thank you, Dean, for showing me, not only where, but HOW to look.
May 29, 2022
I really enjoyed the first third of this book and then the middle section, not so much. The last third hit the mark for me. I began each chapter, but frankly I ended up skipping a couple because I just couldn't relate. I like the way Sluyter writes, though, because in addition to teaching me, he has a great sense of humor.
December 27, 2023
Fun, ish. Kind of an introduction to Buddhism, slowly building out the system, talking about a new element with each writer. Autobiographical antidotes- Buddhism is a lived philosophy after all. A little preachy and repetitive, but so it goes. Lots of leads to follow of course. Will circle back after some transcendental reading.
December 5, 2024
I heard Dean Sluyter speak a couple years ago and I’ve wanted to read this book since then. He teaches high school English at a private school and in this book explores profound messages to be found in well known literary works. Did all the writers intentionally insert this wisdom into their work? No. But as the author says, “If the infinite is infinite, there’s nowhere it isn’t.”
August 13, 2022
An English teacher’s entertaining and educational trip through all those books you had to read in school, and a few more, plus Mr. Rogers and Aretha, and the anthem, with analysis of the dharma messages contained therein. Actually fascinating and recommended.
November 25, 2024
Loved the artful and beautiful language of redescribing so many classics in light of the Eastern enlightenment Dharma and Zen Buddhism focusing on non duality oneness and the Golden rule as well as kindness and compassion for all .
March 27, 2022
Just got it yesterday- halfway through and I’m completely hooked. This is my favorite book in a while!
Read
April 9, 2022Something like this was much needed. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in the intersection between western classics and eastern enlightenment.
April 22, 2022
Loved it - especially the last chapter!
November 7, 2023
Underlined a lot. Deep, funny, insightful. Talked to friends about it. The first chapter on William Blake blew my mind and, from there, it kept happening.
February 11, 2024
Great read. Entertaining and inspiring reviews of 22 books.
January 19, 2025
A fantastic read for English teachers, seekers, and lovers of literature.
April 26, 2024
I went in skeptical—jaded veteran of English Departments that I am—but this is actually one of the most wonderful books I’ve come across in a while. Sluyter re-examines the literature we all had to read in school through a lens of wide-ranging spiritual experience and pure wonder; whenever I picked it up I found my mood spontaneously improving, which is not something I’ve ever said about literary criticism before.
He writes in a conversational, “cool teacher who has couches in his classroom and drops an occasional f-bomb” style, but skates just clear of the dreaded realm of Cringe. In fact, there’s a depth of insight, an unpretentiousness, and a genuine love for this stuff that’s quite endearing. I mean, he admits that he taught Moby-Dick for decades without having read it. Then, having finally read it, he explicates a passage in Moby-Dick that had always been taught to me as purely homoerotic (and it is) but finds another, more transcendent meaning in it.
This knack for seeing familiar literature differently is where Sluyter excels. How many times had I read the opening of A Farewell to Arms? How many analyses of Hemingway’s style had I been subjected to? But I’d never thought to connect it, as Sluyter does, to the Japanese haiku tradition and from there to the Zen principle of directly experiencing the world as it is, and from there to our true nature as witness awareness.
This is one to keep on the shelf and pull out just to read a chapter now and again.
He writes in a conversational, “cool teacher who has couches in his classroom and drops an occasional f-bomb” style, but skates just clear of the dreaded realm of Cringe. In fact, there’s a depth of insight, an unpretentiousness, and a genuine love for this stuff that’s quite endearing. I mean, he admits that he taught Moby-Dick for decades without having read it. Then, having finally read it, he explicates a passage in Moby-Dick that had always been taught to me as purely homoerotic (and it is) but finds another, more transcendent meaning in it.
This knack for seeing familiar literature differently is where Sluyter excels. How many times had I read the opening of A Farewell to Arms? How many analyses of Hemingway’s style had I been subjected to? But I’d never thought to connect it, as Sluyter does, to the Japanese haiku tradition and from there to the Zen principle of directly experiencing the world as it is, and from there to our true nature as witness awareness.
This is one to keep on the shelf and pull out just to read a chapter now and again.
April 21, 2025
This book felt like a class at one of those liberal arts schools that allow everyone to design their own curriculum. Stretching common interpretations into a pretzel. Cerebral.
“The transcendentalists were widely dismissed as weirdos and kooks. Some of them were. But they were the shock troops who first opened up the space in American society that is now often taken for granted - the clear, relaxed, open space, free of dogma and tradition, where we make our own choices and pursue our own awakening, buoyed by our confidence that the capital T Truth lies within. When I was in high school, one of the campus clubs was the Future Farmers of America. I think of Transcendentalists as the Future Buddhas of America.”
“The transcendentalists were widely dismissed as weirdos and kooks. Some of them were. But they were the shock troops who first opened up the space in American society that is now often taken for granted - the clear, relaxed, open space, free of dogma and tradition, where we make our own choices and pursue our own awakening, buoyed by our confidence that the capital T Truth lies within. When I was in high school, one of the campus clubs was the Future Farmers of America. I think of Transcendentalists as the Future Buddhas of America.”
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews