Some Thoughts on Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker"
Somehow Leonard Cohen made peace with the Kali Yuga before his death on November 7, 2016. He did so by facing God in his/her/its third Hindu manifestation (many-fastness), as Kali--in Kali's time. You have probably seen Kali in her modern-day breakfast-of-champions representations as a sort of super-woman, a sometimes-black and sometimes dark-blue-bodied goddess who wears a lei made of skulls (Kali-flowers?), disco-dancing to welcome the dead (mostly heroes) she escorts to the afterlife. When she is not acting as escort to the newly, usually bravely dead, she keeps Shiva, supreme Hindu masculine god known as the Destroyer, tied to her apron strings (Shiva apparently has apocalyptic-magnitude anger-management problems). It is no coincidence (to me, at least) that Jews also call their period of mourning, Shiva, and play Kali to the Shiva in them by sitting for seven days until grief is tolerable. In Hindu mythology, Kali is pictured, or depicted, as keeping her foot on Shiva's chest to render him latent. "Be a dear, Shivvy, and fetch some more canadel."
The point I am making is this. If there is to be belief in God in this century when genocide is the leading international pastime, that God would have to be Kali-&-Shiva-like and, as Leonard Cohen says, wants things "darker." Are you ready for that? Cohen was, or tried to be. I am not.
You Want It Darker
Leonard Cohen
If you are the dealer,
I'm out of the game
If you are the healer,
it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory
then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning
for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
There's a lover in the story
But the story's still the same
There's a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it's written in the scriptures
And it's not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission
to murder and to maim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Ah! Such a post-Auschwitz song, one fitting to serve as the opening theme for Netflix's new miniseries, "Black Earth Rising," a searing drama about the Chinese box of interlocking evils known as Rwanda--a country synonymous with genocide. Note that Cohen feels asked to be a "willing executioner." In each verse of the song, he refuses. But finally he bows (like a Buddhist?) to pressure and repeats Abraham's surrender to Yahweh. Of course, God browbeats him into submission before he utters the word he uttered when he agreed to kill his son, Isaac: "Hineni.” In my street-wise translation from the Hebrew this means, "Whatever you say, Lord." Traditionalists translate the word as, "I'm ready." Ugh! For what? A day or night or lost weekend of slaughter? Just how far are you willing to go to prove your faith in the father (mothers rarely ask for things so drastic as killing).
And here is where and why the story of Abraham and Isaac is so befuddling and beguiling. God, in his profoundly petulant bi-polarity, shames the prophet for even considering sacrificing his son. "What are you doing?" he screams. "Your bidding," Abraham stammers. "My bidding!" God thunders. "What kind of God do you think I am?" Indeed!
Maybe Yahweh is Zen's First Patriarch. Maybe there is no right answer. Stop at the first beckoning to kill.
Maybe the son-sacrifice story is a koan which Abraham is prevented from answering wrong. We used to try to console ourselves about Abraham's aborted infanticide by rationalizing that it was a story about breaking all blood-ties in pursuit of the True Father. If so, the story is a kind of a low-lumens beacon for faith that is rewarded with last minute intervention. Not surprisingly, that intervention is rare. How rare? As Cohen sings, “A million candles burning / for the help that never came.” Yes, this God wants things "darker." But do his children? Do I or you need to pray away our atheism or homosexuality?
Pre- and PostLapsarian Life
According to Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition, we are postlapsarian beings. "Lapse" refers to the Primal Big Thud, or Fall. Through faith, we try to gain prelapsarian equanimity. That ain't easy at 77. So what's a poor old boy to do? Surely not to play in a rock and roll band. So what then?
So glad 'you' asked.
Cherry-pick the traditions; find the ones-in-a-million that got away and learn their escape tactics and exit strategies.
As you know, I'm not on the best of terms with my natal religion: Judaism. In my obstinate opinion, it has been corrupted and corroded beyond recognition by the same nationalism that almost destroyed the Jewish people between 1941 and 1945. Now, like the sons of alcoholic fathers, Jews have become the fathers they should denounce and quarantine. But like those abusive fathers, they have learned to demonize entire populations and dehumanize them to the extent where (in Israel's case) slow-drip extermination is possible, even preferable to the imaginary annihilation they fear.
“Tradition!” the "Fiddler on the Roof" song mockingly proclaims. No wonder. Ezra Pond defined tradition as "the inherited imbecilities of the past."
Yet I want to make peace with Judaism and see this as an increasing possibility, even a plausibility. How? In my case, it has meant coming to terns with this religion as a Reader's Digest condensation of Hinduism. As in Hinduism, the Jewish God is a compound deity, composed (for personification purposes) of multiple personalities--all of them able to manifest with impunity. Seen in this light, the Christ story is about a largely unsuccessful attempt (Jewish in origin; possibly early Freudian) to curb, if not cure, what we now call "dissociative identity disorder," to place him and us under some benevolent Prospero apotheosis of character. Ariel and Caliban living in one dominion (psyche).
Old age is giving me the gift of pluralism. So let us look at God's worst-hair days through a bifocal lens. In monotheism, Noah's ark is lifeboat for a few sanctified (sanctimonious) survivors. Evangelicals, you might say. In polytheism, however, it is Noh play for a rescue ship sent to tundra lands to feed caribou-loving arctic natives their favorite foods during the hardest winter of all time. In the polytheistic telling, Noah is bringing humanitarian aid--on the terms of the people who need it. He doesn't dictate those terms. Very Hindu. Very U.N. And maybe, after all is said and done, very Jewish.
Faith as a Flagellate's Black Hair-shirt or a Monk's Saffron Robe
Throughout his later life of melded Zen and Judaism, Leonard Cohen was intent on keeping faith intact. I admit it is a hard faith to keep--harder than the hardest Siberian permafrost. My faith is one suited to times of global warming where faltering on the gleaming ice is the straightest gait I can manage. But I deeply admire Cohen for his endeavor. It is, for me, the most courageous public spiritual quest of this century.
In my own attempt to meld Zen and Judaism, I have demoted the Fall of Man to a Pratfall, and wondered if it was God or a Goliath god-man (mentioned in Genesis) who placed the banana peel or roller skate on which Adam slipped. It's pretty shabby, but 'pun' takes the pain out of 'punishment'. Or does it? Leonard doesn't find it funny, just grim and ironic.
They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission
to murder and to maim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
This is where I draw the line: that genocide happens with "permission." Sorry, folks, but there is no way this could ever make sense or be excused. That's believing in a '”false god." Your God’s arm is that of a one-hand-clapping one, not made for boxing with his short-handed subjects.
Look, folks, maybe atheism is God's greatest parting gift to mankind--part of a metaphysical immune system. It’s message might be a simple, “Don’t look back.” The present, unflinchingly perceived, will tell you what to do next. Imagine one of Job's comforters who is also a standup comedian, telling the greatest Victim of all time, "What? You refuse to stop believing in a schmuck who floods the world because he's pissed at the tribe or rapes 16-year-old teenagers just because he has a sudden whim for fatherhood. Fool! Curse God and see what happens." If you've ever read "The Blue Cliff Record," you would know this is how equally endowed Zen masters regularly talk to each other. Otherwise, or should I say, other-than-wise, I would continue to practice conversion therapy to hold on to an ex-mavhina god despite my intrinsic, fully justified skepticism. Like any other cult member, Atheism was as much anathema as homosexuality to the elders. I don't want to spend the rest of my life fighting who I am, or asking anyone I love to fight who they are.
Fight the natural urge to give God the middle finger, I was warned for decades. On the other hand, my father taught me that that was the highest and best use of the middle finger. But I was at war with my Communist-turned-Zionist father. So I stubbornly maintained belief that every lapse in faith, every invitation to disbelief, was an arcane test ordained by God. I was to fail each test and keep faith. In what? In faith itself. Koan = Cohen.
My spiritual life was, shall I say, masochistic, although it was rewarded with insights that I still apply to daily life.
God knows, I always tried to keep the latest faith I studied. I was, to recapitulate a cartoon I saw recently, at the uppermost bow-tip of the sinking Titanic, believing I was closer to heaven than the sea. Today seeing any sketch of the last moments of the Titanic, the ship's almost-vertical profile obscenely reminds me of men bowing in prayer in a mosque. Ass-up to God, I think, and shudder, still sometimes asking the ghost-limb God for forgiveness at such a grotesque association between prostrate men and sinking ships. Once back on their feet, many of those "submitted" (i.e., devout) would feel duty-bound to kill their own brothers and sisters for bringing the disgrace of unwed pregnancy or homosexuality on their families. I watched as the mosque I once attended forbid professed gays and lesbians from attending prayers. I watched as friends who hated this violation of human rights continued to attend prayers and to make excuses for the community they had become. What was I doing in a mosque in First Amendment America?
If this is the price I must pay to keep faith, fuck faith. Or fuck faith with a denominational name.
Where Do I Go from Nowhere?
My spirituality is, I realize now, forever traumatized. So was Cohen's. To believe in God means to believe in ultimate, explicable 'containment' of all that exists or has ever happened. As spiritual aid, we call that sphere of containment "Le Mystery." Of course, we expect that mystery to be solvable--if not by us, by a few avatars; if not in or by Life than by Death. Every time I hear a man of the cloth swear that God has a presently unknown (or unknowable) reason for evil, I sicken. Everytime I hear the mother or father of a victim of a Gaza shooting say “All praise is to God,” I want to explode. Clinging isn't faith. Evolution needs rotten apples for ripe ones. But I don't need to live in a Manichean world for that to happen. I need a more collaborative kind of duality--one in which humans recognize and prevent the damage they do to one another. You can't do that in a segregated universe.
Nevertheless, I have come to hate religion. But so many people I know find it the best source of identity. No religion per se, but membership in a religion and, if needs be, obligatory attendance at high holiday services. You know, just in case. Jack Spicer wrote, "If you don't believe in God, don't quote him." But the non-believers quote words attributed to God or his messengers. Personally, I don't think God is needed to make Christ's injunction to turn the other cheek as many times as there are beads on your rosary or abacus any wiser. When Christ says, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," I realize that exhortation is the best antidote to evil ever prescribed. Just count to one and stop there. My guru taught me that most (not all) evil is projection of what we fear and hate in ourselves onto others. He knew the meaning of "plucking out one's own eye." But he also knew there were creatures beyond redemption and that they roamed this earth--to be avoided not rehabilitated. Creatures like our current president.
Look, I'm a Jew for Jesus, but Jesus as a reformer of Judaism the way Buddha was a reformer of Hinduism. I don't need Christ to be lynched or tried and convicted for the sin of proclaiming the only God is within as pre-existent Good. I like the idea that messiahood is only a satori flash away, attainable by any and everyone. Like Jesus, I'll talk to Gentile or Jew, man or woman, with equal amity. And I hope Jesus has a girlfriend who, if, as despicable rumor has it, is a whore, is like the 'escort' Julia Roberts played in "Pretty Girl." Richard Gere is a Buddhist and this movie makes perfect sense for him.
Polymorphs and Poor-In-Spirit Unite!
If you must find a religion, find one conducive to the hardcore, often grisly complexities of life. In hindsight, I think my guru was more of a Hindu than a Muslim. So I advocate a compromise religion based on polytheism (not just Indian but Greco-Roman). I lived in a Hindu ashram where God could be worshipped in the aspect of your guru's choosing. (Guruji always knew best, right?) My first live-in guru chose Hanuman, monkey-god who was a celestial Congressional Medal of Honor holder. Every morning I asked Monkey-Man for the strength, bravery and fortitude he symbolized. We bathed him every morning; offered him fresh fruit (no, not bananas)--but hoped that day he would be spared the need for heroism. I have muddled my deities. It might have been Ganesha, elephant-God of wise choices and good luck. All I remember for sure is that we bathed some animal deity.
Then, after that guru was exposed as a predator, I switched to the ultimate conversion therapy: Islam. I tried to be a mono morph and deny my polymorphous perverse nature. Freud was right about the reality of human beings and human nature. Some say he was a secular chassid. Could be. Certainly, my guru was a Zen-like mischief-maker. He deplored religion every day, then, in 1983, built a mosque where he naively hoped out loud and in print bar mitzvahs could be performed. I realize now he wanted his mosque to be more like a Hindu or Buddhist temple. I think he knew his chances of those hopes being realized were nil because after he inaugurated his mosque in May 1983, he never attended it again (he died in early December 1986). Indeed, he left his students free to choose to spend nightly prayer time with him or in the mosque. He personally told me to come and act out (silently, of course) my inner craziness in his presence and under his protection, which meant sitting quietly with him (usually in his bedroom). But I tried to be a Muslim, learning just enough surahs (chapters of the Quran) to satisfy ritual requirements. Four, to be exact. In Arabic. No one dared to recite them in English.
I haven't been back to my guru's ashram in several years. I get the shakes when I go. Honestly, I do. I sweat. Besides, my mosque is homophobic. I would be betraying too many friends and principles to return. But even if I could, I don't think I would do so.
No, I'm trying to live a life on what both my guru and Walt Whitman called "the open road." It isn't easy these days. Lots of storm-wind branches and other forms of debris litter it or long stretches of it spend weeks in submersion. The bars where I could take refuge are all showing sporting events or superhero movies. So I take refuge in my home, practicing a meager half hour of Zikr nightly, and trying to manage late-life penury.
Leonard Cohen has been very helpful in conducting this stay-at-home, shut-in life. It is he who helped me realize what Christ meant when he said “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.” He is talking about the spiritually battered like Cohen who continue to “serve” against all reason. “You want it darker,” he sings, Hineni, hineni / I'm ready, my lord.”
Service for me is to fight for reason and against religion to preserve a collective, expansive consciousness in which all are welcome (except the predators). I don’t need a one-size-fits-all spirituality. I realize I am “poor in spirit” and try to make do with my fevered thoughts. Reason is a seasoned bitch. Thank God! Occasionally, I peek in on my inner Isaac, who has forgiven me my wayward moment on the mountain and even tells my friends that the man with the dagger in the air pictured in my Yearbook doesn’t look a bit like me. “Don’t go so easy,” I always tell him later. “You were just following orders,” he answers, “like every other father I know.”
