Beginning of the Zen

Holden's enlightenment poem...

"She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddamn carrousel just in time. ... I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God I wish you could've been there."

Miss Vi Klessig took me aside in my sophomore high school english class and said. "I want you to read The Catcher In The Rye. You can't tell any one I told you to. It's by J.D. Salinger and the book is banned in the California school system."

So of course I read it right away.

I went on the read everything by Salinger. I was stunned and amazed at the beauty of the everyday language and content of his internal dialogue. 

He kept making references to zen/buddhism in the most positive and curious ways.

I just had to find out what the zen was all about.