A guest post by James Ishmael Ford
I have a friend who says she wants her funeral to feature a New Orleans-style band dirge on its way to her gravesite and then to leave loudly playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Me, I think I’d like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” played at my memorial service.
Here’s why.
I think of “Hallelujah” as one of the great Western Buddhist hymns, even if the words are all about David, king of sinners. For me the way shines through within our brokenness, or perhaps it would be better to say exactly as our brokenness. And Cohen touches this as few others ever have. As such I’ve touched upon it a number of times in my blog. For instance here, where I also link to several other times I felt compelled to share a version…
Apparently lots of other people love it too. There have been so many covers it has become ubiquitous in some circles. And now it appears even Mr. Cohen thinks it could use a rest.
I have to agree. I liked when it appeared on West Wing. I was less enthusiastic when I heard it was featured in one of the Shrek flicks. And I was downright annoyed to learn it used as the background to a sex scene in Watchmen.
But the melody continues in the back of my mind. So, who knows when, if, it will play out…
In the meantime: can you think of another song by Cohen — or anyone else — that might take “Hallelujah”’s place as a “great Western Buddhist hymn”?
James Ishmael Ford is senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, Rhode Island, and a longtime Zen practitioner ordained as a Soto Zen priest. He is one of the guiding teachers for the Boundless Way Zen project, currently serving as school abbot. Follow him online at his blog, Monkey Mind.
For more on Leonard Cohen from the pages of the Shambhala Sun — we’ve covered him throughout his career — just follow these links:
6 Comments
Satisfaction? Or maybe You Can't Always Get What You Want?
I always thought the dharmic resonance of "Aerials" by the hard-rock band System of a Down was indisputable (it seems to be derived quite literally from an anecdote about Shunryu Suzuki, as recounted in the book "To Shine One Corner of the World") and inspiring:
Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river
And one again after the fall
Swimming through the void
We hear the word
We lose ourselves
But we find it all….
Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go
But you never want to stay
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play
But you never want to lose
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Life is a waterfall
We drink from the river
Then we turn around and put up our walls
Swimming through the void
We hear the word
We lose ourselves
But we find it all…
Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go
But you never want to stay
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play
But you never want to lose
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes eternal prize
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes eternal prize
Great post, and great comments (is there a more pithy musical statement of the First Noble Truth than "I can't get no! no, no, no!" I submit that there is not) . My vote = "The Ballad of the Absent Mare" by L. Cohen, rendered as "The Ballad of the Runaway Horse" by Jennifer Warnes, on her great CD, "Famous Blue Raincoat: 20th Anniversary edition" issued in 2007: especially the very last line …
"And they're gone like smoke
and they're gone like this song"
Every piece of beautiful music is eventually ruined for us by its inappropriate use by some crud.
I always thought Heart of Gold by Neil Young was about Bdhichitta. Lots of other songs from his album Harvest have such a sense of renunciation, illusion, and impermanence, like There's a World:
There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.
Look around it, have you found it
Walking down the avenue?
See what it brings,
could be good things
In the air for you.
We are leaving. We are gone.
Come with us to all alone.
Never worry. Never moan.
We will leave you all alone.
In the mountains, in the cities,
You can see the dream.
Look around you. Has it found you?
Is it what it seems?
There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.
You have to actually listen to it, the music makes it what it is, not just the lyrics.
I love Cohen's Hallelujah. Great post!
The song is definitely over-exposed, as is often the case when the public opens its collective ears and wakens to something actually possessing line, aesthetic, and great harmonic progressions. Luckily we have a few versions that will outlive the others, k.d. lang's at the forefront.