Leonard Cohen: Another Jew-Bhu

On the Road, for Reasons Practical and Spiritual

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From the New York Time

Leonard Cohen: Pop Music’s Perpetual Old Man, Now 74, Is Back on the Road (February 21, 2009)

 

“I’ve had choices since the day that I was born,/There were voices that told me right from wrong,” Mr. Cohen crooned in his stern baritone. “If I had listened, no, I wouldn’t be here today,/Living and dying with the choices I’ve made.”

Religious devotion weighs heavily in both music and life for Mr. Cohen, and it takes many forms. After a five-year stint in a Zen Buddhist monastery and various legal distractions, he is back on the road: an undertaking that seems to combine his quest for spiritual fulfillment with an effort to regain his financial footing, lost when his former business manager made off with his money while Mr. Cohen was living as a monk on a mountaintop above Los Angeles......

Jennifer Warnes, the singer whose 1986 recording of “Famous Blue Raincoat” helped revive interest in Mr. Cohen at a time when he was out of critical favor, said: “He has investigated a lot of deities and read all the sacred books, trying to understand in some way who wrote them as much as the subject matter itself. It’s for his own healing that he reaches for those places. If he has one great love, it is his search for God.”

Mr. Cohen is an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath even while on tour and performed for Israeli troops during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. So how does he square that faith with his continued practice of Zen?

“Allen Ginsberg asked me the same question many years ago,” he said. “Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I’ve practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. So theologically there is no challenge to any Jewish belief.”

Zen has also helped him to learn to “stop whining,” Mr. Cohen said, and to worry less about the choices he has made. “All these things have their own destiny; one has one’s own destiny. The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

Comment: Some time ago I heard a song by Leonard Cohen and wondered: "How does a Jew become an American folk singer (Bob Dylan aside)?".  Well, here is the answer. One who can combine Jdaism and Buddhism can do anything.

" Leonard Cohen, dubbed by his critics as "the poet laureate of pessimism," "the grocer of despair," and "the godfather of gloom,"was born in Montreal in 1934. His maternal grandfather, Solomon Klinitsky-Klein, was a rabbi and a scholar. His paternal grandfather, Lyon Cohen, was a central figure in Montreal Jewish life who strongly believed that knowledge of Jewish history and letters and the performance of mitzvot were essential for all Jews. Cohen's childhood home was steeped in Jewish tradition: Sabbath prayers, regular attendance at the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue (presided over by his grandfather Lyon), and observance of Jewish holidays and ceremonies.

Given Cohen's biography, his preoccupation with Jewish themes is not surprising, nor are the Judaic allusions often present in his poetry, prose, and songs. Cohen has always identified himself as a Jew, even when he became a Buddhist monk ("I'm not looking for a new religion. I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism," he said). He has, however, expressed concern regarding the current state of Judaism. In The Favorite Game  (1963), his first (semi-autobiographical) novel, Cohen expressed disillusionment with the superficial form of religiosity he observed through his protagonist, Lawrence Breavman:

"He had thought that his tall uncles in their dark clothes were princes of an elite brotherhood. He had thought the synagogue was their house of purification...But he had grown to understand that none of them even pretended to these things. They were proud of their financial and communal success. They liked to be first, to be respected, to sit close to the alter, to be called up to lift the scrolls. They weren't pledged to any other idea. They did not believe their blood was consecrated...They did not seem to realize how fragile the ceremony was. They participated in it blindly, as if it would last forever (pp. 123-4)."

It is curious how observance and theology is conflated by this otherwise elegant and sharp thinker. Some years ago I read an essay in some book from the sixties that attemtped to contrast and compare Hassidism and Buddhism - in terms of their teachings, story telling methods and mentor-student relationship. A perceptive writer, but I can't remember who he was, pointed out that the essence of Zen is that all of reality is illusory and a self-deception. Properly understood, this also means that religious faith is a delusion; there is only a mirage and nothing but a mirage. Judaism, on the other hand, is defined by a passionate affirmation of some kind of the reality of God. One can, perhaps, avoid actual idol worship, but to believe, like so many of our errant brothers and sisters now do, that an observant  Jew can also at the same time be a Buddhist, is a grevious misunderstanding of both religions and... a self-delusion.

Comments

[Micha]

Take Buddhism, strip out the pre-Buddhist deities.

One now has a religion that claims to have no god, but rather talks about everything being illusion and instead there is a single unifying Buddha nature.

Open the Tanya, and compare to the Alter Rebbe's take on yeish meiAyin (capital "a" intentional). -- I originally threw a lehavdil in there, but how do I say "compare" and "lehavdil" in the same sentence?

For that matter, is a memutzah hamechubar all that different than a buddha?

I'm not saying that L since "Atzmus" actually is Buddhism. However, it's hard to see how one can be Torah and the other altogether avodah zarah.

-micha

[steve mcqueen]

I heard his concert in London in November. At the interval the friend I went with (who is also interested in the matters discussed on this blog) and I were commenting on how it felt like tefila. We met many other like-minded friends (it felt like a kiddush!) who all said the same thing. In the second half he moved the spirituality even further to the forefront - it was clear he sees himslef as a spiritual leader who was dispensing advice and blessings to his faithful. The fact that he was wearing a smart suit and grey Homburg added to the effect, from a Jewish POV!

Some spiritually focussed people believe that all religions are vessels which can be used to access and remain on a certain level/ mindset. Once this level has been achieved there is little need for the vessel. This is obviously not a Jewish view but it looked like he had used Judaism/ Buddhism and whatever else to get to where he had achieved. Or perhaps he is a great showman and it was a great act!

[jewish books]

I like his point of views, and maybe I can get some of it and applied to my own self.

[carpet cleaner raleigh]

He really practice judaism and look at him now, a very successful person on his own right.

[Presentation skills workshop]

This man truly deserves what he wants him to be.

[Minnesota Attorney]

Jew can also at the same time be a Buddhist, is a grievious misunderstanding of both religions and... a self-delusion.