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"I don't care," said the old cook, with lidded eyes, and I told Japhy and he said, "Perfect answer, absolutely perfect. Now you know what I mean by Zen." (16)

I don't see how this answer explains what Zen is. I think it might have been an acceptable explanation if Japhy was talking about agnosticism, but not Zen. Or maybe, on some subtle level, it is about Zen. Officially, Zen is the belief that you must experience the ultimate truth, rather than learning it from a teacher. Therefore, you don't need to care about the history of Zen, because it's meaningless in the big picture of finding the ultimate truth.

"Finally he learned Chinese and Japanese and became an Oriental scholar, and discovered the greatest Dharma Bums of them all, the Zen Lunatics of China and Japan." (9)

I suppose Zen Lunatic is another phrase coined by either Japhy or Ray, but I would have liked to have gone into it a bit more and in detail. What exactly constitutes a Zen Lunatic? The usage of the word 'lunatic' suggests that a type of militant or fundamentalist Zen movement may exist, or the word 'lunatic' could simply be used to imply that an individual is obsessed with Zen to the point of being unreasonable.

"... Samadhi Ecstasy, which is the state you reach when you stop everything and stop your mind and you actually with your eyes closed see a kind of eternal multi-swarm of electrical power..." (33)

The swarming sparks of color Ray is seeing are fatigued cones and rods recovering from staring at one area for far too long. When you stare at a certain color or a certain area for a period of time, the color receptors in your eyes become fatigued, and when you close your eyes, your receptors will send off misfires that result in a color show at the back of your eyelid. Same concept as blinking into a bright light. Nothing spiritually related at all.

"Lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and I had really no lie come to a point where I considered lust as offensive and even cruel." (29)

Lust and sex are basic human instincts which lead to the preservation of the human race. Does it result in more death? Logically, yes, since it causes more birth, and everyone must die. But maybe it causes even more death to not engage in intercourse? Without humans, the world's food chain and ecosystem will collapse, and most life-forms on the planet will die, resulting in a complete worldwide reform of sorts. So, is it really all that evil, as Ray tends to feel?

"But it was the evil city and I had my virtuous desert waiting for me." (156)

A recurring theme in this book is the duality in Kerouac's life, the duality between calmness and insanity, the pure and the tainted, and the good and the bad. In between brief stints of staying in a corrupt and tainted and insane city, he heads out into the wilderness to relax and meditate and contemplate the good and pure in the world. Immediately after his long afternoon with the Mexicans and the marijuana, which to him is like a bad dream, he heads out into the desert and sleeps under the stars whilst contemplating the roaring silence of the blood rushing through his ears.

"I'm gonna get married, soon, I think, I'm getting tired of battin around like this."
"But I thought you'd discovered the Zen ideal of poverty and freedom."
"Aw, maybe I'm getting tired of all that" (170)

This quote tells me that even the most determined Zen lunatic has trouble becoming a Zen master and sticking with it his whole life. It's a lot harder than just living through life the same way everyone else is living their life. All the meditation and koan undoubtedly gets old after a while, and Japhy is becoming disenchanted with his Zen lifestyle because of all the depressing things going on in his life. Japhy is probably doubting whether Zen is just an idea that doesn't work or not.