Since the 19th century, Romanticism has been a compelling substitute Dharma gate for Buddhism into the West. Strands of Buddhism that are compatible with the Romantics’ trinity of art, spontaneity, and nature have long been emphasized in Buddhist and comparative literature, and there is some justification for this. However, there is also the opposite case to be made. While the Islamic tradition is reputed to oppose many forms of art—to my knowledge, only some of its stricter spokespeoplen do—Buddhism avoiding music for its own sake seems to have been the norm, at least in its early history. Monks, nuns, and lay virtuosi are generally encouraged to keep away from the performing arts (dancing, music and entertainment shows), and shift toward the quietness of meditation.
Such concepts as music are problematic from an intercultural perspective. And one would argue that, rather than redefine the old Buddhist precepts, we still need to define them, cross-culturally speaking, as our music today has very different associations and emotional overtones from, say, the Pali gita and vadita (there’s not even a single, commonly used word). Regional Buddhist cultures found their own ways around the early prohibitions: orchestral pujas in Tibet, rogue mendicants playing the shakuhachi flute in the fields of Japan, and albums by contemporary monastics such as the Sinhalese Bibiladeniye Mahanama and the Nepalese singing nun Ani Chöying Drolma in your local music store’s section of relaxation and meditation music.
Like every major religious tradition, Buddhism has inspired popular and festive devotional music, now skillfully woven into modern genres.
We will not cover this vast world at this point. Rather, this series of articles will focus on Western popular music, wherein Buddhism has long stirred interest for an extremely diverse crowd, from jazz to hip-hop, from seasoned practitioners with vows to take to long-haired teenagers whose lifestyle was all about Nirvana with marijuana. They, like so many others, felt the universal appeal and poetic inspiration of a spiritual tradition where all technical terms seemed to end in a Pali or Sanskrit “-a.”
While the hippies tended to favor Hinduism as representative of Asian wisdom, pop culture started to embrace Buddhism more fully in the 1970s, with a preference for the Vajrayana expression, as shown by progressive rock bands from Germany to Japan. They sometimes had names like Tibet, Mandalaband, or Kalacakra. As for the elusive term nirvana, the most mysterious of words, it eventually found its way into at least two band names (although Kurt Cobain was more of a Jain).
The opposite of liberation, samsara, would inspire such concoctions as the Samsara Blues Experiment. Trivialization, of course, was commonplace long before Robert Plant’s monstrous album Manic Nirvana (1990) (“Holy Moses, mi amigo. / Mystic biscuit, mind your lingo”). In the counterculture of the early 1970s, Buddhism was all the rage, and the young David Bowie wasn’t the only buddha of London suburbia. The ironists of Steely Dan put this fascination into words in 1973:
Bodhisattva, would you take me by the hand?
Can you show me the shine of your Japan, the sparkle of your China?
Can you show me, Bodhisattva?
Bodhisattva, I’m gonna sell my house in town.
And I’ll be there, to shine in your Japan, to sparkle in your China.
Yes, I’ll be there, Bodhisattva.
At least they understood the prerequisite of renunciation: sell your house!
Three Dog Night mirrored the zeitgeist with a song about the hidden Buddhist paradise of Shambhala, written by Daniel Moore and covered almost simultaneously by B. W. Stevenson.
Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
With the rain in Shambala [sic].
Nothing less was expected from those Japanese Zen masters and Himalayan lamas shrouded in robes of sanctity, who carried with them, in the words of the Spanish band Mecano, “the mystery of the great monastery.”
The musical establishment warmly welcomed the monastics who were part of the Tibetan diaspora after Mao Zedong’s invasion, but this embrace was not entirely altruistic. Buddhism was seen as having the potential to bring some order to the axiological maelstrom of the counterculture, a tiny ray of light in the existential dread of the post-Christian West. The reggae band Ozo sang, in a single that certainly had little lyrical potential to become a mainstream hit: “Listen to the Buddha, / change your ways, / change your style, / you will soon die.” (the 1979 reissue’s cover makes one wonder if they ever listened to themselves)
Disappointment with traditional Western religion was no doubt a factor. As Gong’s cosmic potheads cried in “Sold to the Highest Buddha” (1973): “I’m so sick of God and these bishops that talk of divinity.”
All these expectations, however, did not materialize into anything of substance. In Western pop music, Buddhism is mainly found in passing references, exoticizing paraphernalia, and social commentary, nearly always seen from outside. An adjective plus the word “buddha” was an easy way to sort out a band or album name—even for punk rockers, who gave us “Rude Buddha” or “Pissed Off Buddha.” And we won’t go here into electronic music, which replaced jazz as the most cosmetically Eastern-friendly genre. Sometimes a mere juxtaposition of characters was enough to elicit a seemingly clever name: “Buddha for Mary,” “Becket and Buddha,” “God Meets Buddha,” and so on.
These were the times when Buddha images began mushrooming in Western gardens, and it was perhaps fitting that this character who entered a dialogue with Western aesthetics two centuries ago was first embraced by the public at large for strictly homely and ornamental reasons.
Although not everything was decorative, most of it was, and to find genuine Buddhist practice we must dig deeper into the discographies and biographies.
See more
Kurt Cobain as a Jain
That time David Bowie almost became a Buddhist monk — and what he said (and sang) about that time
Related features from BDG
Buddhistdoor View: Taking Himalayan Wisdom Traditions Global with Pop Culture
Related blog posts from BDG Tea House
Shambhala Studio’s “Wangdü Soldep” prayer
Lotus-Born Master goes through the Buddhistdoor
