Leonard Cohen: From Rock Star to Zen Poet
Why must one forever wear a smile? Why should trembling occur at the altar of enlightenment? The elderly gentleman is compassionate, while the youth burns with anger. Affection may be blind, yet longing sees clearly. -- "The Sorrow of the Old Man" You follow your path, and I shall follow yours as well. -- "The Sweetest Short Song
Published in 2006, "Book of Longing" is a collection of poetry and art by Cohen, with poems written at the Mount Baldy Zen Center, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. Interspersed among the poems are nearly a hundred of his drawings, ranging in size from small to large. The drawings' playful and provocative qualities align with the meditative, open-ended, and faintly dark-humored verse, making for a collection that is balanced and cohesive.
Reflecting the transformation in Cohen's inner world, this brilliant and moving collection is also a remarkable book that can be softly sung or quietly recited, offering a visual feast as well. Cohen attributed the book to his encounters with Zen meditation, and it was in those years that his melancholy found full release. In the book's preface, translator Kong Yalei wrote: "All religions exist for the same purpose—to resolve the suffering of being human. Zen is no exception.
Essentially, human suffering has two primary origins: the spiritual and the material, or, to be more exact, the self and desire.
After reading *Book of Longing*, I believe it reveals that, if we truly confront ourselves and our desires and reach inner harmony and self-reconciliation, we can follow Cohen in starting a new chapter of life, guided strategically by Zen. Indeed, Zen's uniqueness compared to all other religions lies in its approach: confronting rather than fleeing, getting intoxicated rather than enduring, taking decisive action rather than pondering, living wholly in the present rather than hoping for the next life, and relying on oneself rather than making supplications to gods.
Cohen was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1934 to a Jewish middle-class family whose home language was Yiddish. Montreal sits in Quebec, a province that is predominantly Catholic and French-speaking—the reason his lyrics were often re-sung in French during his later years—and the nanny who brought him up was an Irish Catholic immigrant. His schooling took place in English, and he studied at McGill University, where courses were taught in English.
Cohen’s mother was a Russian refugee whose homeland had been destroyed by war, and he lost his father at the age of nine, watching him buried in the earth. These experiences, together with his diverse cultural heritage, left a deep mark on him. It is therefore unsurprising that his debut poetry collection, released in 1956, carried the unusual title *Let Us Compare Mythologies*. For decades he battled depression, which helped shape the distinctive character of his later work.
In my view, every rock music enthusiast knows Cohen's name, as he is most celebrated as a rock superstar, though he was also a highly accomplished poet and novelist. However, this article will focus exclusively on how he came to be interested in Zen Buddhism and how that tradition influenced his later artistic output. During the 1970s and 1980s, a Tibetan Studies school developed and expanded in the United States, driven by the "New Age" movement.
Robert Thurman (born 1941), the "Tsongkhapa Chair Professor" of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, and Jeffrey Hopkins (born 1940) of the University of Virginia established this Tibetan Studies school. Both were classic representatives of "The Beat Generation," a movement that turned away from conventional Western values and looked to Eastern religions for spiritual liberation.
This is closely aligned with the intellectual and experiential paths taken by Hopkins and Thurman. Whereas Hopkins and Thurman sought their own spiritual liberation through Buddhism, I believe Cohen adopted Zen practice from Eastern religions to relieve his depression. They also harshly criticized materialism, explored psychedelics, and embraced sexual freedom to personally encounter the outer edges of human existence.
The Silent One. Cohen was 39 in 1973, shortly after his singing career had started, when he met Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, a Japanese Rinzai Zen master who would become his lifelong spiritual mentor. This encounter set Cohen on a path of Zen Buddhism, which he practiced steadily for years; it is said he even meditated cross-legged on airplanes. Following nearly twenty years of instruction from Kyozan, at age 58 in 1992, Cohen chose to enter a Zen monastery.
A name like "Jikan"—"The Silent One"—was certainly apt for a vocalist. Sasaki conferred it on Cohen after he formally entered the monkhood in August 1996, four years following his initial involvement as a lay member at the Rinzai Zen "Mount Baldy Zen Center," situated in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles. During those early years, he took part in monastic life without taking full vows.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg, a fellow Jewish poet who had converted to Buddhism, once asked Cohen whether he had consequently turned his back on Judaism. Cohen answered, " I didn't come to the monastery to seek religious faith. I am quite content with my old beliefs. I simply felt that my life was disordered, chaotic, gloomy, and painful. I didn’t know where these feelings came from." Cohen's dedication to Zen is beyond question: he spent the greater part of his life in that practice and assumed monastic vows at sixty, with a sincerity evident alike in his conduct and in his character.
Since my Zen practice involves no worship or deities, it logically does not conflict with Judaism. Perhaps it was exactly the freeing doctrine of Rinzai Zen—"no Buddha to seek, no path to attain, no dharma to obtain"—that gave Cohen room to stay clear of religious dogma. He provided the voiceover for "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying." In 1999, after departing monastic life, Cohen went to Mumbai and met the philosophy master Ramesh S. Balsekar (1917–2009), a student of the Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Balsekar championed the doctrine of "non-dualism." After spending a year as his student, Cohen reflected on this teaching. He observed that conventional therapy asks patients to accept their emotions, implying there is an inner self—an authentic self—that people constantly chase. In fact, he said, no "fixed self" exists that demands allegiance or acts as a tyrant. There is no point in hunting for answers, since the questions dissolve on their own.
Cohen’s depression slowly lifted through this everyday cycle of learning and realization, though he was unaware of the change at the time. As one of Balsekar’s students expressed it: 'I believe in cause and effect, but I don’t know where cause and effect come from. Every effect generates a new cause.
He had a special appreciation for a line from playwright Tennessee Williams: "Life is a fairly well-written play… When the curtain falls, no one can predict what will happen, but I only know that life is worth living." In Williams' view, existence is theatrical, and at times destiny reveals itself in curiously inexplicable ways. On that note, Cohen's Zen practice also linked him indirectly to Tibet.
In the 1990s—I believe around the time Cohen entered the monastery—NHK and a Canadian company produced a two-part video series on *The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying*, for which Cohen provided the voiceover narration. This little episode truly surprised me. "Letter to Chinese Readers" Cohen published his novel *Beautiful Losers* in 1966.
For the Chinese translation that was being prepared in 2000, he wrote a special "Letter to Chinese Readers." The translation was published by Yilin Press in 2003, and in that letter he stated: "When I was young, my friends and I admired the ancient poets of China and loved reading their works. Our ideas about love and friendship, drinking and parting, and even poetry itself were deeply influenced by those ancient verses.
From this, I am inclined to think that Cohen’s bond with Eastern religions may well have been fated from his early years. Years after that time, I took up Buddhism, was accepted as a disciple under Master Kyozan, received Zen training in accordance with his direction, and immersed myself each day in the illuminating texts of the Rinzai tradition. Dear readers, you can therefore grasp the depth of my appreciation—limited as I am, I have been blessed to linger, however briefly, at the borders of your profound cultural roots and to draw something of worth from that encounter.
Featuring the defining traits of early postmodern writing, *Beautiful Losers* both mirrors the social and political climate of 1960s North America and foreshadows the ascendancy of postmodernist novels in the 1970s and 1980s. As a postmodern metafiction—meaning fiction about fiction—it offers a vivid depiction of that era's turbulent history and uninhibited lifestyles.
Cohen was the only Western rock superstar of his generation who genuinely combined literary craft with the spirit of Zen, producing something entirely his own. From 1992, when he entered the monastery, until he returned to everyday life in 1999, his years of Zen practice made him seem largely disconnected from the world, and he put out no new songs. That quiet period finally ended on February 2, 2000, with the release of "Waiting for the Miracle." As I see it, that piece is unquestionably a landmark in Cohen's career.
“Waiting for the Miracle” Cover. Among all of Cohen's creations, I favor this one the most, and it was also the work that initiated me into a more profound enjoyment of music, particularly rock. Illusory, ethereal, and dreamlike characteristics permeate both the words and the musical arrangement. With a deep, composed, and charming voice, Cohen renders this over-seven-minute masterpiece in a "Blues-style melancholic and sentimental" fashion.
No one else can match Cohen's ability to weave Zen-like language and a Zen outlook into his lyrics. In this song, he does so seamlessly, and the love-induced suffering it portrays carries an inherent beauty. The lyrics convey that though the beloved truly loved the speaker, circumstances left his hands bound. He understands that this wounded the beloved and stung their pride. When a person realizes they have been deceived, no course of action remains; even pleading for a crumb is futile. All that is left is to keep waiting for a miracle to come.
The most compelling feature of Cohen's lyrical art—and the greatest gift bestowed on him by Zen—is the paradoxical tension hidden beneath his ordinary speech, together with his pessimism and the contradictions of love. The plain language in Cohen's lyrics is the idiom most fitting for Zen, an expression more profound than elaborate or intricate verse. Yet everyday speech does not automatically count as poetic; its poetry arises from the paradoxical tension concealed within that simplicity.
Did Cohen adopt Zen because his writing style demanded it, or was it his adoption of Zen that shaped his appealing lyricism? A close look at the entire arc of his creative life suggests both possibilities are correct. Incidentally, simple and lucid everyday speech seems to be naturally suited to singing, perhaps by pure coincidence.
Breaking the Attachment to Songs. To Western observers, Buddhism is frequently perceived as a "faith of sorrow." Following his enlightenment, the Buddha expounded the "Four Noble Truths," with the first being the Truth of Suffering: existence is pervaded by anguish, and the "Eight Sufferings" form the bedrock of Buddhist thought. Once he adopted Buddhism, Cohen came to view sorrow as an inherent aspect of the human condition, a realization that ultimately afforded him a feeling of tranquility within.
In my opinion, the crucial issue is not whether Cohen was a devout Buddhist. He might have only been looking for inner calm through Zen; even so, Zen at the very minimum offered him an aesthetic that spoke to his soul—that of "everyday language," defined by "sweeping away literary obstacles and pointing directly to the mind." This gave him a singular style for poetry and songwriting, along with a distinctive way of perceiving the world, which set him apart from countless rock musicians.
Cohen, drawing from Zen influence, avoided clinging to a fixed lyrical style. His chief approach to releasing his attachment to his compositions was creating works that bore little resemblance to traditional songs.
Cohen approached his lyrics with extraordinary seriousness, devoting immense time to their creation; the renowned song *In My Secret Life*, for example, had its lyrics revised countless times over more than a decade. Such lyrics reflect the steep, uncompromising style of the Rinzai Zen school, which emphasizes "breaking all attachments" and "attaining freedom through radical liberation." Do you find them particularly special and literary?
Despite their seemingly ordinary appearance, these words might be translated more skillfully by a middle school student than by a graduate scholar like myself. Nevertheless, it is precisely this unadorned quality—refined through countless rounds of revision—that lends them an effortless, Zen-like warmth and accessibility. Such lyrics are inevitably built to endure.