Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc

Subject: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Shalini
Date: 06 May 10 - 04:00 AM

Being strongly inclined to the teachings of the Buddha/Krishnamurti/Kabir/Eckhart Tolle/etc I am looking for songs that do not necessarily come directly from these traditions but do relate in some way with the ideas and insights of these spiritual traditions. Some examples that I can think of from the top of my head are 'Dust in the Wind' and 'Que Sera Sera'.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: pavane
Date: 06 May 10 - 04:04 AM

Don't know about Buddhism, but Nic Jones sang a Taoist tale

On
Unearthed - Nic Jones
Mollie Music : MMCD02/03
Released 2001

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 May 10 - 02:52 PM

If you sing one, does the audience clap with one hand?

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 06 May 10 - 03:13 PM

Well aside from Mark Graham's hilarious "Zen Gosepl" ("Om, Om, sweet Om") there's Ferron's "The Return," although it may be slightly more Taoist than Buddhist:

Gonna lay my head on your blessed arms
Take my cue from the willow tree
For it don't break with just one storm
But bends witha will that keeps it free.

My song, "Prayer," which will be on my new CD, relates very much to impermanence and non-attachment:

May life abide and change from day to day
Where growth inside is a never ending way
And if I want this here and now to stay
May I find wisdom to move on and memory that remains

You'll have to wait a couple months for that one, though, or send me a pm.

Dan

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 May 10 - 03:16 PM

Check out Donovan's 1996 CD "Sutras." If you do a google search on "Donovan sutras" there are full song samples that come up which you can listen to including "Universe Am I."

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Bettynh
Date: 06 May 10 - 04:36 PM

Dave van Ronk on his "Goin' Back to Brooklyn" album sings the "Tantric Mantra" and "Zen Koans Gonna Rise Again"

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 May 10 - 05:42 PM

My brother has an original song "Karmic Lover."

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: LadyJean
Date: 06 May 10 - 10:31 PM

There's a song that Clam Chowder used to sing, called Zen Gospel Singing. I'm not sure I remembe all of it.

"I once was a Baptist, and each Sunday morn.
I'd be in church praying, and praising the lord.

But now I'm a Buddhist, I chant my mantra each day. But I miss that hymn singing, in the old fashioned way."

I don't remember how it happens, but he gets together with like minded Buddhists, and "We dont', sing of salvation, or heavenly home. Just Zen gospel signing, just Om, sweet Om!"

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 06 May 10 - 10:44 PM

LadyJean, that's the Mark Graham song that Dan Schatz referred to a few posts above. I first heard it on a recording by Brian Bowers.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:03 PM

My son says the first album by Love and Rockets, called "Express" has some Buddhist themes in a couple of the songs.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:24 PM

Dave Carter's song "The Mountain" and a couple other ones would be right up your alley, I think.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 07 May 10 - 09:52 AM

"We're All Water"

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: fretless
Date: 07 May 10 - 12:41 PM

"Wheel of Karma" by the Wretched Refuse String Band. I think it is on YouTube (search Citizen Kafka).

And then there's that great, old Buddhist shape-note hymn:

My Christian friends all count me dead,
Now that I've gone and shaved my head.
I'll no more sing of home, sweet home,
Now that I'm chanting om, sweet om.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 May 10 - 01:00 PM

Lots of stuff sung by the Incredible String Band before they got into scientology. Try this for size (Cut and pasted so I can't vouch for accuracy):

Oh, who can see in the eyes of fate?
All life alone in its chronic patterns.
Oh, swan, let me fly you
To the land of no winds blowing.
I know nothing, and know that I know nothing;
All is in the eye, and in its blinks of seeing.

So just like the morning
The ghost of the following day.
Listen: Ori, ori, ori, ori.....
Rear the rollers wild and stormy
Echoes wholly only lonely long beforey, ory ory.

All rivalry and opinion still cast their wild spells.
Effort and contrariness change the directions of time.
The lion still growls in your hollowness.
Please let's be easy, please let's be friends.
Watching and learning like small children.
Till out of the morning is growing the strength of the day.

Listen: Ori, ori, ori, ori.....
Rear the rollers wild and stormy
Echoes wholly only lonely long beforey, ory, ory.

Servant of fame or fame for a servant,
You see what you see, you see seldom what is.
Servant of fate or fate for a servant,
You see what you see, you see seldom what is.

Servant of fate, ohhhhhh.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 10 - 02:52 PM

"Wizard of the Worldly Game" by Fairport Convention touches on some concepts that might fit. I question the lyrics posted on this website, but you get the gist of it.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 07 May 10 - 03:27 PM

"Cosmic Debris" Frank Zappa ?

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST,Gloria
Date: 07 May 10 - 03:43 PM

Someone quoted the Incredible String Band above. They also did a song called Douglas Traherne Harding - about Douglas Harding(believe it or not!) who wrote an influential zen-like book called "On Having No Head".I like the Incredibles - but this is not them at their best.
With this kind of thing, there's the ever-present danger of pretentiousness.At the opposite extreme are fairly dumb songs like "Bodhisattva" by Steely Dan.
I've always loved the traditional song " I Once Loved A Lass" for its verse:-

The men in yon forest theyre asking of me
How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?
I answer them with a tear in my eye
How many ships sail in the forest?

reminiscent of a certain kind of zen koan like :-

   "Empty handed,yet carrying a hoe
    Walking yet riding a buffalo
    the man crosses over the river
    The bridge flows, but the water does not"

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: Shalini
Date: 08 May 10 - 08:13 AM

Excellent suggestions! -- thank you, I am looking forward to following them all up slowly, and perhaps hearing more.

Subject: RE: Songs relating to Buddhism/Zen/etc
From: GUEST,van lingle
Date: 08 May 10 - 09:35 AM

In the penultimate verse of his epic dust bowl ballad, "Tom Joad", Woody Guthrie's character quotes Preacher Casey thus:

Everybody might be just a one big soul,
And it looks that way to me,
Wherever you go in the day or in the night,
That's where I'm gonna be, Ma,
That's where I'm going to be.

It's in the DT.