Jukebox Karma

Music is profoundly human. Making music and listening to music are two of the most uniquely human activities. There are species of birds whose songs approach the level of what we would define as music, and there are even exotic birds who hold twigs in their feet and use them to tap out a drumbeat on a tree branch as part of an elaborate mating display. But no other species invests quite as much emotional content in music, and takes music as far, as humans do. It is one of our most essential ways of articulating and expressing meaning in our lives. It can also be one of our most neurotic forms of self-indulgence. Music has the power to stir up and perpetuate emotional states of mind, both positive and negative.

I find myself thinking a lot about music right now because of its sudden, noticeable absence from my life. I have just begun a year-long (or more) stay at a Buddhist monastery where music is regarded as a form of entertainment and escape that is unnecessary and distracting (though, truth be told, it is occasionally indulged in private....one of the senior nuns here recently succumbed to a swooning infatuation with Jacques Brel love songs, which she confessed to us with a guilty, self-deprecating giggle). Except for liturgical purposes, listening to music, singing, dancing, whistling, and other musical expressions are not permitted in public here.

Music has a way of getting inside your mind and planting seeds there, leaving behind a kind of echo of itself, a psychic residue that can linger even for years, in some cases for a lifetime. Musical memories are stored in a different part of the brain than other memories. Studies of Alzheimer's patients show that even when most other memory and cogitive functions are compromised, songs and lyrics from decades ago can often be easily recalled.

A Buddhist teacher I once studied with, Bill McKeever, called this phenomenon "jukebox karma" -- the accumulated karmic seeds planted in our minds by the thousands and thousands of songs we have listened to, over and over and over, throughout the course of our lives. Many contemporary meditation practitioners, myself included, often find jukebox karma to be one of the most irritating obstacles we encounter within our own minds. There we are on the cushion, trying diligently to meditate and keep our minds centered on some object of meditation, and instead we find that our mind stubbornly wants to keep replaying the chorus from some godforsaken Billy Joel or Rod Stewart song we heard on the radio. Gack! We try to let it go and come back to our meditation, but a moment later we are back at it. The jukebox karma is just too strong.

For the past week, I've had several songs from Marvin Gaye's album "What's Going On" recycling themselves through my mind every time I start to become quiet. On the scale of musical choices to be stuck on, it's not a bad one. It's a great album, full of meaning and power but not laden with the emotional baggage and mental associations that make many other albums treacherous territory. It was the last album I listened to before leaving New York, as I packed up my last belongings and prepared to leave my life (including my CD collection!) behind to come here. But no album, however good it might be, is much appreciated when you can't get it out of your head for a week.

I trust, or perhaps I should say I hope, that as I spend more time here and move further into practice, further away from the CD collection I left in safekeeping with a friend in New York, my jukebox karma will begin to soften and my mind will make room for other experiences to emerge besides old Marvin Gaye albums. But the Buddhist teachings on karma say that karmic seeds, once planted, are always there in the mindstream. Even if it takes lifetimes, they remain there until they meet with the proper conditions to sprout, and then they bloom into fruition.

Here's hoping that many of the jukebox karmic seeds I planted during my teenage heavy metal years do not soon meet with the proper conditions to come back and haunt me.

I Love You

As I begin to write this I am in a plane en route to Halifax, a brief stopover on my way to Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery at the far end of Nova Scotia, where I plan to live for a year or more. Following a call from inside me that has made itself heard these past months, I am taking a leap into the unknown, into full-time spiritual practice and discipline, into a new environment and a new way of life. For the moment, for the year, for I don't know how long, I have left behind two decades of history in New York City and said goodbye to job, apartment, friends, and most of my worldly possessions. Quite literally, as the old John Denver song goes: "I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again."

Although I cannot know what kinds of teachings lie ahead of me on this leg of the journey, I do know now, beyond a doubt, that the process of getting ready to embark on it has been profound and transformational.

For the past several days, a beautiful old Marvin Gaye song, "God Is Love," has been running the loop inside my head. Those who know me personally may find it hilarious to know that I'm identifying so strongly at this pivotal moment in my life, as I'm entering a Buddhist monastery, with a Christian gospel song, but to me the song's theological perspective is beside the point. The underlying message is universal. In it, Gaye urges the skeptical listener not to disparage his friend God, who "made this world for us to live in, and gave us everything." Then Gaye makes his main point: "All He asks of us [in return] is we give each other love."

Love your mother (she bore you)
Love your father (he works for you)
Love your sister (she's good to you)
Love your brother (your brother!)

I am taking Gaye's advice to heart. In a way, that is the reason I am embarking on this journey inwards and launching myself, physically and otherwise, into the open arms of a new family of full-time spiritual practitioners: to deconstruct some of the walls around my heart and learn, I mean really learn, what it is to love. What other journey is there?

Never in my life have I felt the love and support of my friends and family as strongly as I have felt it this week, as they have said farewell to me and wished me happiness on my path (even from those who do not understand the choice I have made). My eyes have been blasted open to see, with a new clarity, how much our paths are intertwined. I feel a deep respect and affection for every human being who has touched my life, at this transitional moment when, paradoxically, I have left so many of those very people behind me as I travel north to a country I have never seen before.

A close disciple once said to the Buddha, in a reflective moment, that good companions accounted for half of the spiritual path. The Buddha replied: "Do not say it is so. Good companions are the *whole* of the spiritual path."

For the first time, I feel that I can appreciate what the Buddha meant by that.

To every person who has shown me kindness and supported me on my life's path, my gratitude overwhelms me at this moment and I have no words to express it. Tears well up and I'm trying, right now, not to cry into my keyboard for fear of short-circuiting my laptop.

It is in this way that we must train ourselves: by liberation of the self through love. We will develop love, we will practice it, we will make it both a way and a basis, take our stand upon it, store it up, and thoroughly set it going.

- Shakyamuni Buddha