Life is Worth Living
Other times, the Zen life
wasn’t enough. “I was sitting in the meditation hall one afternoon,” said
Cohen, “and I thought, ‘This sucks. This whole scene sucks.’ And I moved from
that into cataloging the various negative feelings I had for the mother of my
children. I found myself descending into a bonfire of hatred, you know – that
bitch, what she’d done to me, what she left me with how she wrecked the whole
fucking scene. I was in there, I was in my robes, and the furthest thing from
my mind was spiritual advancement. The furthest. I mean, I was consumed with
rage.”
That day, Cohen’s rage
gave way to a moment of unexpected grace, a kind of temporary epiphany. “There
was sunlight on the floor of the cabin, where we were waiting to go see Roshi,”
he said. “There were leaves outside and the shadow of these leaves was on the
floor. The wind moved, something moved, and I disappeared into this movement.
The whole scene blew up. A dog started barking, and I was barking. And
everything that arose was the content of my being. Everything that moved was
me. In certain blessed moments, we experience ourselves as the reality that is
manifesting as everything. There’s no ‘I am one with the universe,’ which is
the cheapest mystical slogan,” he continued, “and it decides that life is worth
living. I was barking with the dog, but there really was no dog.”
-- Leonard Cohen, as
quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, Dec. 15-29, 2016 issue
Hallelujah
I wanted to stand with
those who clearly see G-d’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find
the courage or the heart to praise it.
--Leonard Cohen, on the
writing of the song Hallelujah, as quoted in Rolling Stone magazine,
Dec. 15-29, 2016 issue
In Spite of It
Depression has often been
the general background of my daily life. My feeling is that whatever I did was
in spite of that not because of it. It wasn’t the depression that was the
engine of my work. That was just the sea I swam in.
-- Leonard Cohen, as
quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, Dec. 15-29, 2016
I’ve Been Saved
Ramesh Balsekar was a
Hindu mentor who lived in Mumbai and wrote about a concept called “nondualism,”
developed in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In 1999, Cohen departed Mount Baldy
and headed to Mumbai. [Cohen had spent five years as a Buddhist monk at Mt.
Baldy Zen Monastery in California. He happened upon a book by Balsekar, and
attracted to his teachings, he left the monastery to study with him.] He spent
a year studying with Balsekar. “The model I finally understood,” he recalled,
“suggested that there really is no fixed self. The conventional therapeutic
wisdom today encourages the sufferer to get in touch with his inner feelings –
as if there were an inner self, a true self, the real self that we have
glimmerings of in dreams and insights. There is no real inner self to command
your loyalty and the tyranny of your investigation. What happened to me was not
that I got any answers, but that the questions dissolved. As one of Balsekar’s
students said, “I believe in cause and effect, but I don’t know which is
which.”
Slowly, the depression
eased. “By imperceptible degrees, something happened, and it lifted,” Cohen
continued. “It lifted, and it hasn’t come back for two and a half years. That’s
my real story. I don’t feel like saying, ‘I’ve been saved,’ throwing my
crutches up in the air. But I have been.”
-- Leonard Cohen, as
quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, Dec. 15-29, 2016 issue
Sighing Eternally
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally
--from Pennyroyal Tea, by
Kurt Cobain
Lights, Shadows and
Love
Life is composed of lights
and shadows, and we would be untruthful if we tried to pretend there were no
shadows.
--Walt Disney
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord
--Leonard Cohen, from the
first and title song from his last album
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine
--Leonard Cohen, last
lyrics from the last track of his last album
