Hi again friends! This
latest blog entry revolves around my love of music and my ongoing fascination
with Buddhist philosophy.* I hope the word philosophy hasn’t scared anyone off!
I’ll try to keep it relatively simple. What got me going on this train of
thought is the fact that Buddhism, while it receives extensive treatment in Western
literature and film, is hardly ever linked to Western music, especially modern
rock. But modern rock is overflowing with Buddhist ideas! In what follows, we’ll
take a look at FOUR songs that
communicate important Buddhist principles. The four tracks, independent of one
another, are by no means Buddhist anthems. When considered together, however, these
songs can bring us to a deeper appreciation of Buddhism's influence on modern
rock.
The Beatles meditating with the Maharishi in 1968 |
In the
online community, there seems to be very little buzz concerning Buddhism’s
connection to Western music. For example, if you do a Google search for “Buddhism
in rock music” you’ll find the results are curiously meager. What a shame! Starting with The Beatles, who famously dabbled in transcendental meditation and
incorporated Buddhist ideas in their music, along with other influential artists
of the 60’s—such as Leonard Cohen, Donovan, and The Grateful Dead—the historical
influence of Eastern spirituality on rock n’ roll has been undeniable and significant. Later bands, like Oasis and The Verve, have even carried this
tradition to the present day. But it wasn’t long before popular culture picked
up on this trend as well... and promptly began ridiculing it.
In This is Spinal Tap, an 80’s mockumentary which pokes fun at the banal
excesses and naïve pretensions of rock bands, David St. Hubbins, the lead singer
of Spinal Tap, says, “Before I met Jeanine my life was cosmically a shambles. I
was using bits and pieces of whatever Eastern philosophy would drift through my
transom.”** In the more recent film Forgetting
Sarah Marshall, the rock star Aldous Snow, who steals the protagonist’s
girlfriend, is portrayed as an eccentric mystical-moron: “Let me tell you
something about these tattoos…” Sarah Marshall says, pointing at the symbols on
Aldous’s arms, “That is Buddhist, that is Nordic, that is Hindu, that’s just
gibberish! These are completely conflicting ideologies… that does not make you
a citizen of the world; it makes you full of shit!” As we can see, this notion
of the self-righteous, yet absurdly comical guru/artist is by now a commonly
abused cinematic cliché. And rightly so! We cannot help but laugh when the lead
singer of a hair metal band—complete with teased hair, running mascara, and a
cucumber stuffed in his pants—tries to play the part of the meditative
philosopher. Oh well! We have to work with what we’ve got! Thankfully, the four
songs I’ve chosen are no laughing matter; rather, they are each profound philosophical statements
that illuminate humanity’s struggle to find peace and enlightenment in a world
filled with suffering.
Before I
get to the songs, it will be helpful for those new to Buddhism to read some
sort of introductory summary. It’s important to remember that Buddhism is by no
means a fixed or static tradition. In Buddhism, there are a few different
branches (Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana) and many different schools (too many to list). With each school there
are subtle variations in practice, metaphysical outlook, and ethical
obligation. This is partly why Western interpretations of Buddhism have proven
so troublesome and incomplete; they tend to amalgamate the tradition into a
painfully inaccurate whole that suits the Western understanding, but does
little to represent the essence of Buddhism. Like any religion, however, there
are some incontrovertible principles and philosophical elements that run
throughout the entire tradition: To better understand these basic principles,
visit http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/intro_bud.htm (an introduction I highly
endorse), or get your hands on a copy of Buddhism:
A Very Short Introduction, by Damien Keown (it’s cheap, the guy’s an
expert, and the subject is treated broadly).
Take It Easy – The Eagles
While this
song isn’t necessarily modern, it’s one of those rare gems that deliver a kind
of deep, blue-collar wisdom. The Eagles aren’t known as advocates of Buddhism,
nor has the band ever been particularly profound in my eyes. Yet in the face of
all of life’s chaos, this song reminds us over and over again to simply, “take
it easy.” Though seemingly unsophisticated, this advice isn’t just some cheap
hippie slogan; there’s actually much more going on here. In my eyes, the song
is really about suffering—a particular type of suffering—and, in turn, letting
go.
In Buddhism, the first of The Four
Noble Truths states that, “Life is suffering.” But “suffering” (dukkha) can be
a confusing concept. When we typically think of suffering we imagine poverty,
starvation, illness and death. However, Buddhists have a much broader and more
thoughtful understanding of what suffering truly is. Suffering doesn’t just
happen when we experience physical pain or when we are lacking basic
necessities; it occurs every day to all of us, even the affluent. In American
culture, it is often assumed that the more material wealth one has, the less
one suffers. But this is not the case in Buddhism. Thus the second of The Four
Noble Truths is that suffering arises from craving, desire and attachment. Hopefully
most of us are familiar with the concept of the hedonic treadmill or hedonic
adaptation. Psychologists and philosophers use this concept in “happiness
studies” to explain that as a person begins to make more money or experiences an
increase in external pleasures, expectations and desires tend to rise in tandem
with those external changes, in turn leading to no permanent gain in happiness. This doesn’t mean
that experiencing pleasure or making money is intrinsically bad, but rather
that once our basic needs and wants are met, having more will not necessarily
lead to happiness. In Buddhism, the hedonic treadmill—which symbolizes the fool
who keeps running only to stay in the same place—is a process that invariably
leads to more suffering.
In this
way, “Take It Easy” is really a didactic story: We meet a man with “seven women
on his mind”—four of them want to “own” him and two want to “stone” him. Of
course, we see where this is going. Here is a man who is not satisfied with
only one woman; he must have seven. Our protagonist’s mind is filled with
desire and angst; he cannot balance his earthly pleasures and he has created
chaos. If this isn’t enough, the man further laments:
I'm
running down the road
Tryin' to loosen my load
Got a world of trouble on my mind
Lookin' for a lover
Who won't blow my cover
She's so hard to find
These
lyrics bring us back to the hedonic treadmill, as we realize the man is caught
up in a futile search. He longs to ease his troubled mind through pleasure and
satisfaction, but cannot seem to find it in the places he is looking. Given the
difficulty of reading too closely into a breezy song like “Take It Easy,” there
are sure to be alternate interpretations. Yet even my interpretation can admit
that the beauty of this song lies in the choruses, as the narrator reminds
himself to let go of his futile concerns, de-clutter his mind, and simply “take
it easy.”
Take it easy
Take it easy
Don’t let the sound of
your own wheels
Drive you crazy
The anxiety the man has manifested through his search for sensual pleasure is
indeed a form of suffering, and one that the man warns himself (or us) against:
“Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy,” he advises. This line
is one of the best in all of rock n’ roll and it clearly echoes, albeit
indirectly, the normative stance presented in the first two of the Four Noble
Truths—that 1) life is suffering, and 2) suffering is caused by craving (taṇhā)
and attachment (upādāna). The metaphorical significance of the vehicle is
clear: We are like ego-vehicles moving through the world—craving, acting, and
reacting. The word “wheels” conjures the image of mental gears driving and
striving for pleasure, acceptance, and understanding. And the word “sound”
represents the reverberation of this behavior and the suffering produced as a
result.
The third
noble truth, however—that suffering will only cease through extinguishing all craving
and desire—is where the Eagles depart from the Buddhist tradition. In the end, the
song is not actually telling us to do
away with all passion and desire, but instead to realize how short life is
and to place less emphasis on our attachment to fleeting trivialities. This is
almost directly stated in the first chorus, with the line, “Lighten up while
you still can. Don’t even try to understand. Just find a place to make your
stand. And take it easy!”
Waiting – Cake
This next song, by Cake,
is also about suffering. But again the suffering I’m talking about here is probably
not immediately obvious to the Western mind. “Waiting” is about the tendency of
human beings to live their lives in anticipation of events to come, rather than
living in the now. “You’ll always be
waiting,” John McCrea sings, “for someone else to call.” This message is
particularly relevant to our present condition, as we grapple with the constant
pull and distraction of various social media outlets. This sense of “waiting”
is satirized to perfection in the South Park episode, “You Have 0 Friends”. Check
it out!
But Cake’s
message is not a surface critique on our obsession with technology and social
media. No, the song, I think, is getting at something deeper; it is attempting
to describe a form of suffering that we experience in our everyday lives, a kind of
chronic dissatisfaction which stems from a mindset of craving, grasping, and
expectation. But what does this have to
do with waiting for someone to call? Well, anytime we are waiting in
expectation for something, we are necessarily not living in the present. Just
as anytime we are caught in an act of nostalgia, longing for the past, we too
are not paying adequate attention to the here
and now. But the song is also
attacking our material desires, and the thin ideological convictions we use to
convey to others who we are.
So we think that we’re
important
And we think that we
make sense
And we think there’s
something better
On the other side of this fence.
We’d do
well to remember this warning against ‘coveting thy neighbor’s goods’ is not
unique to Buddhism (the Bible actually goes as far as to say that one should
not covet thy neighbor’s “man-slave”… Apparently jealousy, in Christian
scripture, is a far worse offense than enslaving human beings). As if we hadn’t
learned enough, McCrea now turns his gaze to our flawed belief that material
possessions will lead to lasting happiness and satisfaction. He exclaims:
You can soak your bread
in gravy
You can soak your bread
in soup
But the car that you are
driving
Doesn’t really belong to you!
In other
words—to translate from Cake-speak to English—no matter what material pursuits
we choose to distract ourselves with, our fundamental condition as human beings
will not change. We are delicate, fleeting, momentarily existing organisms,
connected to the earth in ways we are only beginning to understand. The Muse
song “Time is Running Out” plays with a similar notion, critiquing our tendency
to “bury” and “smother” the fact of our own mortality. “Our time is running
out/ Our time is running out,” sings Matt Bellamy with ample vibrato, “You
can’t push it underground/ You can’t stop it screaming out”—(this song, I should
note, isn’t entirely morbid; it’s as much about life and love as it is about
angst and death.) Yet returning to McCrea’s point: Try as we might to sculpt
our identities through the things we collect, in the end we find these things
don’t even really belong to us in the first place; they are but small
components of a vast, unconcerned, rapidly expanding universe (not to drift into Carl Sagan land***). Or, if this notion is too vague or
sentimental, we can actually take McCrea quite literally. For the most part, we do not own our cars or our houses; the bank owns
them.
“Waiting” is truly an anthem of the anxiety and unsettledness of the
post-modern/post-industrial condition. And, no, neither our staunch ideological
convictions, nor our vain material strivings, will save us from this sense of
waiting and waiting and waiting… “for someone else to call.”
Zen Brain – Nada Surf
Zen
effectively means “enlightenment” or “meditation,” depending on whom you ask. The Random House Dictionary states that Zen is “a Mahayana
movement, introduced to China in the 6th century and into Japan in the 12th
century, that emphasizes enlightenment for the student by the most direct
possible means.” To put it plainly, Zen Buddhism de-emphasizes
knowledge of scripture and facts, instead placing its emphasis on experience
and meditation. The goal of Zen, if we can call it a goal, is to help
practitioners to become fully aware, to let go of all clinging to past and
present, and to live in the now. In
this way, Zen is about coming to one’s
senses. When we are truly living in the present moment—that is, focusing on
the task at hand—we are able to, in a sense, become whatever activity we are
pursuing. This is what athletes typically call being in “the zone.” In music, it
is called being in “the pocket” (the term is most widely used with bass
players, since bass, everyone knows, is the Zen-est
of all musical instruments!). Interestingly enough, the influential Nike
slogan—“Just Do It!”—was originally a saying used by the Korean Zen Master,
Seung Sahn. In fact, “Just Do It” pretty much sums up what Zen is all about. In the
Zen tradition, facts, concepts, and words can be valuable and even potentially
meaningful, but mistaking them for reality is a grave error. This is because
facts, concepts, and words about reality are not reality. As one Buddhist monk famously points out, “The menu is
not the food.”
Nada
Surf’s song “Zen Brain” harnesses
the spirit of this tradition, asking that we cultivate Zen Brain (the safest
equivalent to “Zen Brain” in the actual tradition is probably what the Japanese
call mushin no shin or “mind without mind”). “Zen Brain,” then, tells us to clear the mind of any and
all emotional or intellectual obstacles, so we may focus on the task at hand,
on the present moment. Zen master Takuan Soho writes, “The mind must always be
in the state of flowing, for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is
interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of
the mind.” This is ultimately the conclusion that lead singer Mathew Caws
(whose father is actually the notable philosopher Peter Caws) reaches in “Zen
Brain”.
Caws tells
us the story of his angsty youth and concludes “I need a new heart/ This
one’s hollow, always scheming.” In this song, again the root cause of suffering
turns out to be craving and expectation, or in Caws’ words, “scheming.” He goes
on in the prechorus, as the band begins to rise in crescendo, “You wait for
summer/ And then you wait for winter/ But there’s a total lack of
splendor”—again we get a sense of the futility of a life spent “waiting”—and
then the chorus explodes:
Zen Brain!
Throw away your crushes,
All your childhood crutches away.
Super-brain!
Never scared of nothing
Violence
or loving my way!
Here Caws, perhaps intentionally, employs a kind of mock adolescent language: To throw
away one’s “crushes” essentially means to free oneself from craving and
attachment. And to remove one’s “childhood crutches” is to rid oneself of the
obstacles of expectation and fear, which stem from clinging desperately to the
future. For Caws, and many Buddhists, spending all of one’s time preparing for
how one will react to future events is simply a crutch. Surely one who
cultivates “Zen Brain,” as Nada Surf recommends, would hardly need a crutch to
lean on, but would be supremely engaged in and focused on the task at
hand.
Tougher Than It Is – Cake
No doubt
about it! The song “Tougher Than It Is”—despite what I said earlier—is a
Buddhist anthem! In fact, the whole album Pressure Chief is overflowing
with Buddhist and Taoist ideas. It’s as if John McCrea wrote these songs with a
copy of the Tao te Ching or the Dhammapada in his lap. “Tougher
Than It Is” is informed by Taoist and Zen principles, but it is also driven by
more classical Buddhist arguments.
The song
starts out by exclaiming boldly, “There is no such thing as you! It doesn’t
matter what you do! The more you try to qualify, the more that life will pass
you by.” This notion, that there is no-self (anātman), is a central
aspect of Buddhist metaphysics and can be found in nearly all of the major
schools. There are really two different ways to look at this claim: The first,
and most thoroughly Western, is to treat anātman the same way that Christians
treat selflessness—as an ethical virtue. Buddhism, like most major world
religions, preaches selflessness and selfless love as its utmost virtue. Just
as Christ is said to have sacrificed himself for humanity, it is the job of the
lay practitioner and the Bodhisattva—a being who has reached enlightenment—to
help others reach spiritual enlightenment and become free of
samsara. But an even more important ethical factor is that focus on the self
invariably leads to suffering. As the link I provided notes, “We suffer because
we are constantly struggling to survive. We are constantly trying to prove our
existence… The harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships,
the more painful our experience becomes.”
While this view
surely sounds eccentric, impractical and wildly unintuitive to the average Joe,
it is indeed one of the oldest and longest standing philosophical positions
known to man. For a more thorough articulation of this dizzying subject, see
Garfield and Edelglass’s Buddhist
Philosophy (a text I was assigned as an undergrad), or, for a more
approachable explanation, the magazine New
Scientist has recently published several articles on this problem: http://www.newscientist.com/special/self.
My former advisor at SUNY Binghamton, Charles Goodman, gives a great verbal
explanation of why he believes you do not exist, here: Charles-Goodman-No-Self. That being said, try not to worry too much! Retaining a healthy self-identity is normal human behavior, and Buddhism respects this fact.
Because it is in our nature to go on living life as a “self”—and not as some unemployable,
amorphous, identity-less creature—Buddhism merely seeks to help people place
less emphasis on the self, and to
reduce the suffering that overemphasis on this self creates. All metaphysical speculation aside, this track is really about the ways in which we bring suffering upon
ourselves, causing life to seem much “tougher than it is.” McCrea expresses the song’s central message in a somehow familiar, yet highly original way:
Well the more you try to
shave the cat
The more the thing will
bite and scratch.
It’s best I think to
leave its fur
And to listen to it’s
silky purr.
Some people try to make life a little
tougher than it is.
In
essence, McCrea’s advice is similar to the famous analogy given by writer
and Zen enthusiast Alan Watts, who writes, “[Y]ou
cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it.
Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a
bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you
do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the
bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go of it
and let it run” (The Wisdom of Insecurity, 1951, p. 24). Cake, similarly, tells us that constantly
trying to grasp and control the external sanctions of life will invariably lead
to suffering. We can only experience the cat’s silky purr—or the sublimity of
life and nature, as the allegory suggests—if we “let it be” and do not seek to
oppose and control it, but rather live harmoniously with it. This includes not
only the objective external world, but the subjective internal. McCrea
sings, “Well there is no such thing as you/ It doesn’t matter what you do./ The
more you try to qualify,/ The more it all will pass you by.” In other words, as
we desperately try to prove to others that we are unique, attractive, smart,
worthy, charming, and righteous, there is a world out there waiting for us—one
that is filled with beauty, love, and most appropriately, music.--Jordan Hill
_______________________________________________________________________
Note: Since this is an informal blog, not an academic paper, I have decided not to include formal citation. My main references were the sites and books mentioned, and my undergraduate education!
Note: Since this is an informal blog, not an academic paper, I have decided not to include formal citation. My main references were the sites and books mentioned, and my undergraduate education!
* I am not a Buddhist. However, as an undergraduate, I majored in
philosophy and minored in South Asian Studies. I’m continually impressed and
inspired by the level of sophistication and rationality that ancient Buddhist
arguments and later commentaries possess. Aside from doctrines like Karma and
reincarnation, which modern Buddhists admit are, at best, speculative and
inexact, Buddhism is surprisingly naturalistic and even quite in-line with
modern science. Buddhism has no creation story and no creator God. The scholar
who has probably done the most work in de-mystifying Buddhism is Owen Flanagan,
who recently wrote a book called The
Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized. Or, for a shorter exposition,
check out his blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/owen-flanagan/do-american-buddhists-miss-the-point-of-buddhism.
** Please note: The word
“transom” is utterly meaningless in this context, and has no connection or
affiliation whatsoever to Eastern philosophy.
*** Carl Sagan is one of
my heroes! Carl Sagan’s famous series The
Cosmos may be somewhat outdated, but it has aged surprisingly well, which
is a testament to the man’s brilliance. If anything, Sagan found it his mission—somewhat like H.P.
Lovecraft—to contextualize and illuminate our smallness,
as human beings, relative to the vast cosmos. For Sagan, however, we are undoubtedly important. “We are a way,” writes Sagan, “for the
cosmos to know itself.”