A Day in the Life of Zen Monk Leonard Cohen: A 1996 Documentary

in Life, Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion | July 3rd, 2015

I don’t think any­body real­ly knows why they’re doing any­thing. If you stop some­one on the sub­way and say, “Where are you going — in the deep­est sense of the word?” you can’t real­ly expect an answer. I real­ly don’t know why I’m here. It’s a mat­ter of “What else would I be doing?” Do I want to be Frank Sina­tra, who’s real­ly great, and do I want to have great ret­ro­spec­tives of my work? I’m not real­ly inter­est­ed in being the old­est folksinger around. 

- Leonard Cohen, speak­ing to author Pico Iyer in April 1998

 

One need not have lived a rock n’ roll lifestyle to be famil­iar with its plea­sures and pit­falls. That heady mix of drugs, sex, and pub­lic adu­la­tion isn’t sus­tain­able. Some can’t sur­vive it. Some retire to a more staid domes­tic scene while oth­ers are left chas­ing a spot­light that’s unlike­ly to favor them twice. But rarely do you find one who choos­es to give it all up to become a Bud­dhist monk.

Well, not all.

As direc­tor Armelle Brusq’s 1996 doc­u­men­tary, above, shows, singer-songwriter—and yes—Zen monk Leonard Cohen’s rou­tine at the Mount Baldy Zen Cen­ter out­side Los Ange­les extend­ed beyond the usu­al mind­ful­ness prac­tice. His sim­ple quar­ters were out­fit­ted with a com­put­er, print­er, radio, and a Tech­nics KN 3000 syn­the­siz­er. He some­times doffed his robes to enter the record­ing stu­dio or enjoy a bowl of soup at Canter’s Deli. Com­par­a­tive­ly, his world­ly attach­ments were few, divvied between the pro­fes­sion­al­ly nec­es­sary and the fond. Still, call­ing his daugh­ter, Lor­ca, to pass along a veterinarian’s update, Cohen sounds every inch the dot­ing Jew­ish dad.

Celebri­ty devo­tion to Kab­bal­ah or var­i­ous East­ern spir­i­tu­al prac­tices often stinks of the super­fi­cial, a pass­ing fan­cy that won’t last more than a year or two. Cohen’s rela­tion to Zen Bud­dhism is endur­ing, a gift from his long­time friend and teacher, Mount Baldy’s Roshi, Kyozan Joshu Sasa­ki, who died last year at the age of 107.

One of Cohen’s respon­si­bil­i­ties was help­ing Roshi with the myr­i­ad small details the elder­ly abbot would have had dif­fi­cul­ty nav­i­gat­ing on his own. Cohen seems entire­ly at peace in the road­ie role, keep­ing track of lug­gage while on tour, and fetch­ing cones for the entire par­ty from a near­by ice cream truck.

The poem Cohen penned in hon­or of Roshi’s 89th birth­day is of a piece with his most endur­ing work. Think Suzanne’s oranges were the only fruit? Not so:

His stomach’s very hap­py

The prunes are work­ing well

There’s no one left in heav­en

And there’s no one going to hell

Film­mak­er Brusq is chiefly con­cerned with doc­u­ment­ing Cohen’s spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty, but she toss­es in a few treats for those hun­gry for pop iconog­ra­phy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the impromp­tu show-and-tell at the 25-minute mark, when the crew peeks into the leg­end’s mem­o­ra­bil­ia-filled LA office.

The sound­track, too, is music to a Cohen fan’s ears, and lyri­cal­ly inspired giv­en the sub­ject:

Wait­ing for The Mir­a­cle

Teach­ers

A Thou­sand Kiss­es Deep 

Democ­ra­cy

The Future

Suzanne

Dance Me to the End of Love

Clos­ing Time

Nev­er Any Good

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Bud­dhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlight­ened Life

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

200 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Hap­py 18th birth­day to her favorite for­mer­ly-17-year-old play­wright! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Buddhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlightened Life

in Graduation Speech, Philosophy, Religion | June 26th, 2015

There is a cer­tain kind of think­ing that the Bud­dha called “mon­key mind,” a state in which our ner­vous habits become com­pul­sions, haul­ing us around this way and that, forc­ing us to jump and shriek at every sound. It was exact­ly this neu­rot­ic state of mind that Leonard Cohen sought to quell when in 1994 he joined Mt. Baldy Zen Cen­ter in Los Ange­les and became a monk: “I was inter­est­ed in sur­ren­der­ing to that kind of rou­tine,” Cohen told The Guardian in 2001, “If you sur­ren­der to the sched­ule, and get used to its demands, it is a great lux­u­ry not to have to think about what you are doing next.”

There at Mt. Baldy the jour­nal­ist and cos­mopoli­tan racon­teur Pico Iyer met Cohen, unaware at first that it was even him. In his short Bac­calau­re­ate speech above to the 2015 grad­u­at­ing class of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Iyer describes the meet­ing: After show­ing him fond hos­pi­tal­i­ty and set­tling him into the com­mu­ni­ty, Iyer says, Cohen told him that “just sit­ting still, being unplugged, look­ing after his friends was… the real deep enter­tain­ment that the world had to offer.”

At the time, Iyer was dis­ap­point­ed. He had admired Cohen for exact­ly the oppo­site qualities—for trav­el­ing the world, being plugged into the cul­ture, and liv­ing a rock star life of self-indul­gence. It was this out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of Cohen that Iyer found allur­ing, but the poet and song­writer’s inward life, what Iyer calls the “invis­i­ble ledger on which we tab­u­late our lives,” was giv­en to some­thing else, some­thing that even­tu­al­ly brought Cohen out of a life­long depres­sion. Iyer’s the­sis, drawn from his encounter with Leonard Cohen, Zen monk, is that “it is real­ly on the mind that our hap­pi­ness depends.”

Iyer refers not to that per­pet­u­al­ly wheel­ing mon­key mind but what Zen teacher Suzu­ki Roshi called “begin­ner’s mind” or “big mind.” In such a med­i­ta­tive­ly absorbed state, we for­get our­selves, “which to me,” Iyer says, “is almost the def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness.” Cohen said as much of his own per­son­al enlight­en­ment: “When you stop think­ing about your­self all the time, a cer­tain sense of repose over­takes you.” After his time at Mt. Baldy, he says, “there was just a cer­tain sweet­ness to dai­ly life that began assert­ing itself.” Iyer’s short speech, filled with exam­ple after exam­ple, gives us and his new­ly grad­u­at­ing audi­ence sev­er­al ways to think about how we might find that sense of repose—in the midst of busy, demand­ing lives—through lit­tle more than “just sit­ting still, being unplugged” and look­ing after each oth­er.

Note: You can watch a Euro­pean doc­u­men­tary on Cohen’s stint as a bud­dhist monk here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adventure and Creative Act

in Philosophy, Religion | June 17th, 2015

Many of us in the West live in some of the most frag­ment­ed reli­gious land­scapes in the world, but in the midst of deep­en­ing lev­els of con­flict over poli­cies of birth and death, these two issues that divide us also join us togeth­er. More than at any time in his­to­ry, peo­ple live in expec­ta­tion of sim­i­lar spans of life; we all lament the loss of loved ones who die at any age; and most of us live with some fear of death, or at least vio­lent, untime­ly death like the kind Alan Watts describes above.

Watts, Eng­lish Zen guru of sorts (though he would not like the label) lec­tured more on death than per­haps any oth­er philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious teacher since the Bud­dha, but he did so in a way that illu­mi­nates our ideas about the inevitable end, even if it should come upon us all of the sud­den.

You heard a bomb com­ing at you, you could hear it whis­tle and you knew it was right above you and head­ing straight at you, and that you were fin­ished. 

This is no abstract thought exper­i­ment, of course, but the his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence of mil­lions of peo­ple, from Dres­den to Iraq. But despite the ter­ri­fy­ing exam­ple, Watts describes achiev­ing in that moment absolute clar­i­ty and uni­ver­sal­i­ty. The dread­ed bomb whis­tles toward you, “and you accept­ed it,” he says.

How exact­ly does one achieve that accep­tance? With­out dog­ma­tiz­ing or mys­ti­cism, Watts offers some wis­dom in anoth­er excerpt from a lec­ture above. This video’s use of melo­dra­mat­ic film clips and cin­e­mat­ic music may be a lit­tle schmaltzy, but his mat­ter of fact talk isn’t less­ened by it. Though not every­one pass­es on their genes to a next gen­er­a­tion, an exam­ple he dis­cuss­es in both excerpts, we do all leave the plan­et to make room for new peo­ple, wher­ev­er they come from, and this, he says, “is an hon­or­able thing…. It’s a far more amus­ing arrange­ment for nature to con­tin­ue the process of life through dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als than it is through the same indi­vid­ual.”

Watts was not at all doc­tri­naire about death, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his lat­er years. In a con­ver­sa­tion with Aldous Huxley’s wife Lau­ra in 1968, he called dying “an art,” though not quite like Sylvia Plath did: “It is also,” he said, “an adven­ture.” He con­sid­ered Aldous Hux­ley’s unortho­dox death—on an LSD trip while Lau­ra read to him from the Tibetan Bar­do Thodol—a “high­ly intel­li­gent form of dying.” Nonethe­less, Watts, an Epis­co­pal priest become an explain­er of Zen Bud­dhism in Amer­i­ca, also had a great deal to say about more for­mal reli­gious ideas of death.

In the lec­ture above, from a 1959 Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­gram, Watts explains a par­tic­u­lar Bud­dhist con­cept of rein­car­na­tion and rebirth through var­i­ous realms. It’s a pic­ture as fan­tas­tic and pic­turesque as Dante’s, and like his cre­ative act, one that can be read with some lit­er­al and much pro­found­ly philo­soph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. These con­cep­tions help demon­strate that far from fear­ful, our puz­zling over the inevitabil­i­ty and mys­tery of death can be, as it was for Watts, “one of the most cre­ative thoughts I ever thought in my life.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

 Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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3D Printed Zoetrope Animates Rubens’ Famous Painting, “The Massacre of the Innocents”

in Animation, Art, Religion | May 22nd, 2015

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Flem­ish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens paint­ed “The Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” (see below), an artis­tic depic­tion of a very brief Bib­li­cal pas­sage in The Gospel of Matthew. The pas­sage recounts the sto­ry of how Herod the Great, a Roman client king of Judea, ordered the exe­cu­tion of young male chil­dren in Beth­le­hem, hop­ing to avoid los­ing his throne to a new­ly-born King of the Jews. And it reads like this:

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceed­ing­ly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male chil­dren who were in Beth­le­hem and in all its dis­tricts, from two years old and under, accord­ing to the time which he had deter­mined from the wise men. Then was ful­filled what was spo­ken by Jere­mi­ah the prophet, say­ing:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamen­ta­tion, weep­ing, and great mourn­ing,
Rachel weep­ing for her chil­dren,
Refus­ing to be com­fort­ed,
Because they are no more.”

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, Sebas­t­ian Bur­don and Mat Coll­ishaw have now come along and cre­at­ed “All Things Fall,” a 3d zoetrope that brings the “Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” to life. Using a 19th cen­tu­ry opti­cal tech­nique that pro­duces the illu­sion of motion, the zoetrope vir­tu­al­ly ani­mates the grue­some Bib­li­cal scene. You can watch it play out, eeri­ly, above.

Accord­ing to Bur­don, it took “6 months to do all the 3d mod­el­ing and ani­ma­tions” and involved “cre­at­ing over 350 char­ac­ter fig­ures, envi­ron­ment ele­ments and archi­tec­ture. A pret­ty stun­ning effort.

Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Massacre_of_the_Innocents_-_WGA20259

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

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Enter the Church of the SubGenius, the Parody Religion Backed by R. Crumb, David Byrne & Other Alt-Icons

in Comedy, Religion | April 16th, 2015

You may not know much about the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius, but you’ve def­i­nite­ly seen its prophet. The inten­sive­ly groomed, Ward Cleaveresque J. R. “Bob” Dobbs (below) began as a hum­ble piece of 1950s clip art and went on to become “a way of life to mil­lions… yet half of them don’t even know it.” Or so claims the sweep­ing, absur­di­ty-laced, son­i­cal­ly (and per­haps intel­lec­tu­al­ly) twist­ed nar­ra­tion of Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius, an “instruc­tion­al bar­rage video” put out by the Church in 1992 as the most potent dis­til­la­tion of its reli­gion-sat­i­riz­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Arise-Church-SubGenius

The obses­sion with world­wide con­spir­a­cies, the impor­tance grant­ed to vora­cious con­sump­tion and “remix­ing” of pop cul­ture (vis­i­ble every­where in Arise!), the hard­line oppo­si­tion to work, the all-impor­tant and nev­er-defined qual­i­ty of “Slack,” the askew escha­tol­ogy: how much of the Church of the Sub­ge­nius’ doc­trine has remained mere par­o­dy reli­gion, and how much, since its found­ing in the late 1970s, have its “followers”—a group that includes such alt-icons as David Byrne, Robert Crumb, and Mark Mothersbaugh—come to con­sid­er as good as the real thing?

But what­ev­er legit­i­ma­cy this sur­pris­ing­ly long-run­ning post­mod­ern joke has attained, we can also view it, like all reli­gions, as a cul­tur­al move­ment. This approach rais­es its own ques­tions: how, exact­ly, did Dobbs’ pipe-clench­ing, father­ly yet sin­is­ter vis­age become one of the most rec­og­niz­able sub­cul­tur­al emblems of the 1980s and 1990s? You may nev­er learn the answer, just as you may nev­er get a han­dle on the entire­ty of the Church’s ever more labyrinthine and aggres­sive­ly pre­pos­ter­ous mythol­o­gy, but you’ll cer­tain­ly find it all strange­ly com­pelling in the attempt.

And even if Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius does­n’t recruit you into the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ ranks, you’ve got to respect what they’ve pre­dict­ed: not the end of the world, as much as they talk about it, but our cur­rent­ly thriv­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry cul­ture of media appro­pri­a­tion, recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, and absur­di­fi­ca­tion. If ever there were a reli­gion for the Youtube era, here it is. And if you find noth­ing nov­el in its char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence about what counts as seri­ous and what does­n’t, maybe the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ teach­ings have pen­e­trat­ed even deep­er into the zeit­geist than all those “Bob” stick­ers made us sus­pect.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 8 Clas­sic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Plan 9 from Out­er Space & More

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch The Hitch: An Indie-Documentary on The Life & Times of Christopher Hitchens

in Current Affairs, Film, Religion | April 14th, 2015

A quick note: Kristof­fer Seland Helles­mark was look­ing for a doc­u­men­tary on Christo­pher Hitchens to watch, but could nev­er find one. So, after wait­ing a while, he said to him­self, “Why don’t I just make one?” The result is the 80-minute doc­u­men­tary about Hitchens, lov­ing­ly enti­tled The Hitch, which fea­tures clips from his speech­es and inter­views. We’ve added it to our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

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Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

in Life, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Christo­pher Hitchens was there, rail­ing against reli­gion and war crim­i­nals one minute, and the next, it seems, he was gone, a vic­tim to esophageal can­cer in 2011. In the 2010 video above, Hitchens takes on one of the hoari­est pre­cepts of the Bible (and the Torah) and reimag­ines an updat­ed, sec­u­lar ver­sion. I mean, it’s not like the Ten Com­mand­ments are set in stone, right? (Rimshot!)

The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.

Now, Hitchens does like the 8th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Steal”) because, hey, what soci­ety isn’t against steal­ing, and he saves his true admi­ra­tion for the exam­ple of “rare nuance and sophis­ti­ca­tion” in the 9th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Wit­ness”) because it looks ahead to a truth-based judge­ment sys­tem (and the Magna Car­ta.)

But for the rest, Hitchens sug­gests rip­ping it up and start­ing again. With a few snarky asides, the list, orig­i­nal­ly print­ed in Van­i­ty Fair, presents rules for liv­ing as an empa­thet­ic, ratio­nal human being in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He wraps it up with an anti-fun­da­men­tal­ist bow at the end.

I: Do not con­demn peo­ple on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty or col­or.
II: Do not ever use peo­ple as pri­vate prop­er­ty.
III: Despise those who use vio­lence or the threat of it in sex­u­al rela­tions.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not con­demn peo­ple for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an ani­mal and depen­dent on the web of nature, and think and act accord­ing­ly.
VII: Do not imag­ine that you can escape judg­ment if you rob peo­ple with a false prospec­tus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fuck­ing cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and cru­saders for what they are: psy­cho­path­ic crim­i­nals with ugly delu­sions.
X: Be will­ing to renounce any god or any reli­gion if any holy com­mand­ments should con­tra­dict any of the above.

While we’re talk­ing about rethink­ing the Com­mand­ments, George Car­lin had some sim­i­lar thoughts on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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Students Tells the Passover Story with a Rube Goldberg Machine

in Random, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Passover starts this Fri­day. And you might ask: why is this Passover dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Passovers? Because this Passover is get­ting ush­ered in by a Rube Gold­berg Machine that tells high­lights of the Passover sto­ry. Designed by stu­dents from Tech­nion — Israel Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the device fea­tures falling matzah domi­noes, baby Moses get­ting blown across the water by a fan, and a text mes­sage telling the Pharaoh to “let my peo­ple go.” How it all came togeth­er? You can find out by watch­ing this “behind-the-scenes” video.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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