The Monk and the Rocker

The Monk and the Rocker:
Lessons in mindfulness from Buddhism and Rock & Roll
By Jerry Casagrande

Last week saw two giants pass away. One was a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, who earned the nickname the “father of mindfulness.” A man whose insistence on living in peace led him to be exiled from his home country for 40 years; to be disdained by southern Vietnamese military leaders, northern Vietnamese communists, and the American government; and to be embraced by leaders like the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. 

The other was a rocker who shared his name with America’s seventh favorite dish.

I write of course about Thich Nhat Hanh and Meat Loaf.

​​Meat Loaf and Thich Nhat Hanh.

​One was a rock star whose greatest song was about a guy who needed to get laid so badly that he swore “on his mother’s grave” that he’d love his girl until the end of time. The other was a monk who dedicated his life to peace and to the worldwide spread of “engaged Buddhism,” a form of Buddhism dedicated to addressing injustice around the world.

We're talking about Meat Loaf in this blog...And though this is a photo of America's 7th most popular dish, we're talking about the other Meat Loaf.

Prior to their deaths, had their names ever appeared together in a single sentence? Or even a paragraph, essay, or book?

Challenge accepted! I write today about these two men. Can I put some words on the page that take these two extraordinarily different people and find their commonalities? That explores ways in which they or their ideas are in harmony with one another?

Ummm…maybe this is a chasm too deep to cross. 

A Pair of Successful Vegetarians
Let’s start simple:

• Thich Nhat Hanh was vegan. Meat Loaf, ironically, was vegetarian for a dozen years, refraining from all meats, including presumably his namesake meat.
• Both sold millions of copies of their work. Thich Nhat Hanh sold over 5 million copies of his 130 publications during his lifetime. Rock ‘n’ roll is a worthy competitor, however. Meat Loaf’s 14x platinum album Bat Out of Hell, alone, sold over 43 million copies.​

Meat Loaf was vegetarian for 12 years. Who knew?

Those are, however, relatively superficial similarities. After all, had they not each been phenomenally successful in their pursuits, we’d not even know their names and I never would have even contemplated this essay.

Contemplated it, I have…for a full week. While noodling on Meat and Thich Nhat Hanh, I raised the topic of their lives with the leader of my local Zen practice, Peter. Peter, in his 70s and raised on rock and roll, quickly noted that there may be problems inherent between rock and roll and Buddhism, that their underlying philosophies and lifestyles are just too different.

I countered that rock and roll is very much about living in the moment. "We gotta make the most of our one night together,” Meat Loaf sings in (the song) “Bat out of Hell.” Similarly, Buddhism (and mindfulness) tells us that there is nothing but the current moment. “There is only one moment for you to be alive, and that is the present moment,” wrote Thich Nhat Hanh. “Go back to the present moment and live this moment deeply, and you’ll be free.”
​

But, explained Peter, rock and roll is about taking that moment to excess. In that same song, Meat Loaf sings “I never see the sudden curve 'til it's way too late” and the song’s lead character crashes his motorcycle into a pit on the side of the road and dies. He lived the moment to its extreme, and it killed him. Thich Nhat Hanh, in contrast, leans into the present moment whether it is simply a moment of eating breakfast or cutting carrots. No need for extremes for him.

"There is only one moment for you to be alive...Live this moment deeply and you'll be free." - Thich Nhat Hanh

To Escape or Not to Escape - That is the Question
Furthermore, so much of rock is about escaping the present moment. If you know anything about me, you know I am a Bruce Springsteen fan (aka disciple) and of course the Boss’s definitive song is exactly about escape: "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!”

​“Bat Out of Hell” is remarkably similar:

Like a bat out of hell, I'll be gone when the morning comes.
When the night is over, like a bat out of hell
I'll be gone, gone, gone.

​Buddhism and mindfulness are about not escaping. They are about accepting the present moment in all its ugliness or beauty. Only from that acceptance, a Buddhist like Thich Nhat Hanh would argue, can one make change in the world as he himself sought to do throughout his life. If one is always escaping the present moment, one never faces reality.

To this, you may argue or simply plead, as I do, "But rock and roll is so good. Just so very good."

A great live rock show is in a category of its own on the “List of In-the-Moment Experiences.” Harken back to your best ever concert – was your whole body filled with the beating of the drums, your mind carved by the squealing of the guitar, your lungs screaming with the lyrics of your favorite song? If someone had told you the world were going to end, would you have said “Sure. Fine. But I am doing this, here, now.” Yes, you would have because you were so engaged with that present moment.
​

In Buddhism, and I believe the Buddha himself might agree with this, words ultimately fail. There is an experience that one can have, flickering and impermanent as it may be. An experience…

"So much of rock is about escaping the present moment....Buddhism and mindfulness are about not escaping."

​​

• Of the oneness of it all.
• Of a deep peace and stillness. 
• Of a lack of separateness between oneself and literally everything else.​

And that is where words fail. Three attempts by me to impart through words a transcendent experience that I’ve had, and yet none are adequate to the task. The experience is the experience and nothing else. The experience cannot be described by words, but can only be vaguely pointed to by them.

Let the Sound Take you Deeper
Here – maybe – is where music helps. Sound comes to us very early. In the womb, we begin to hear noises outside of our mother’s body, making hearing foundational to our experience of life. (For those who are hearing impaired, other senses come to play this significant role.)
​
And where the written word fails us, perhaps the experience of listening to music does not. At least it fails less epically. Different rockers – Steppenwolf –sang the following:

Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound
Take you away ​

A Buddhist like Thich Nhat Hanh might change just the last word in those lyrics–replace “away” to “deeper,” and by so doing transform rock’s penchant for escaping into Buddhism’s penchant for looking deep into our minds and the current moment. (He'd likely also change "girl" to acknowledge this experience is open to all humanity, but we'll leave it for now.)

Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound
Take you deeper.

Are we getting closer to bridging the chasm? A message we take from Thich Nhat Hanh is that the present moment is the only place we ever can be and that in this present moment we can find some transcendence. 

Perhaps the message from Meat Loaf – or really from our now 70 year love affair with rock and roll – is that while words lack the power to truly describe transcendence, music itself gets us closer. It takes us there not through the message of the music (which is encased in words) but through the music itself. Through our “cannot be named” experience of that music.

​Take Away? Not that a Rock Concert Equals Meditation.
This is meant to be a blog for men, and for those who count men among their loved ones. A blog that is meant to leave you with a takeaway. Maybe you’ve gotten one. If so, I hope it is not that meditation and a rock concert are the same thing. They most definitely are not.

"While words lack the power to truly describe transcendence, music itself gets us closer."

​Let me take a final stab at bridging Meat and Thich Nhat Hanh and finding that takeaway.

All we ever have is the present moment. So many of those moments can seem dull. We have to get work done, cook our food, drive the kids to and fro, wash dishes. 

And, other moments are one hundred percent full of life. You’ve had them and there’s a chance you’ve had one at the greatest rock concert you ever saw–a moment when you were so lost in the present moment experience of music that you found and experienced your true self.

Those transcendent rock concert moments are available all day, every day. This doesn’t mean you should be air-guitaring, belting out lyrics, or diving into mosh pits at work, while dropping the kids at school, or cleaning up after dinner. 

But, the aliveness you felt at that concert is always available to you if only you give each moment the same attention you gave to the singer, to the guitar player, to the drummer or bassist; to the swirling lights; to the driving beat or screaming guitar.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

We can see making breakfast as mundane work or as a privilege—it just depends on our way of looking. When we cook, when we clean, when we walk, each movement can be made with mindfulness, concentration, and insight.​

And while Meat Loaf and just about every other rock star will tell you that liberation is a fast car or a fast motorcycle headed straight out of town, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that, no, “Insight is our liberation.”