MONDAY LYRICS | kd lang, a spiritual practice and a song

I haven't been able to get my hands on the latest issue of the Shambhala Sun. (They don't have it here in Dubai. Go figure.)

I miss my monthly diet of Shambhala Sun. I started reading the Buddhist magazine about 6 years ago, and I rarely miss an issue. The magazine is one of the little things that supported my spiritual practice. I miss it.

Some things are good to have, and some things are absolutely necessary. We become unhappy when we are unable to make the distinction; Shambhala Sun is good to have - but it is possible to maintain a spiritual practice without the magazine. I just have to adapt.

Instead, I have been going online, where they do make some Shambhala Sun articles available on their website. I have been re-reading some of the old articles, which is also good.

Recently I was re-reading this interview with k.d. lang, for the release of her "Watershed" album. She talks about her music, her spiritual practice and it helps explain why it took eight years for her to come up with an album of brand new songs. She is a pracitioner in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and that has been her priority these past many years. Music has simply become a means of paying the bills.

She has asked herself the question shared by many of us who first started a spiritual practice: does it means we have to give up our life as we know it? A big part of a spiritual practice is renunciation - but of what? A spiritual life often feels at odds with real life. For lang as a musician, she wondered if it meant she has to give up her music. She feels a part of herself changing as she practiced - does this mean she will never be the musician that she used to be? Song-writing became difficult. As she discovers later, with practice, things do start to fall into place: Ordinary mundane life and the practice "starts to integrate":

k.d. lang: Exactly. You can become pretty carried away, to the point where you feel you have to let go of your friends and your house and all sorts of things, and nothing can be integrated. It’s total chaos. Then all of a sudden everything starts to integrate. At a certain point, Buddhist practice is so inseparable from everything you do that you start to live and breathe it. I suppose that’s the gradual process of awakening—it’s naturally incorporated into your very being. You don’t even think that you’re processing things in a “Buddhist way,” particularly.

Our spiritual practice is not inconsistent with real life. In the beginning it will be difficult. Personally, in the beginning it feels like my life is being dismantled. I don't recognise what I am doing, and I wonder: will I still be the same person? Will I still be able to keep my existing friendships?

I believe what was happening to me at that time was - my practice was slowly breaking down my old mindset. This fear that arose. was my ego struggling against this change. What I came to realise much later, was that an established spiritual practice is not inconsistent with life. With practice, life do become more bearable. With mindfulness, your choices become more consistent with your greater intentions. My spiritual practice became the guide to my work and my relationships. Things become integrated. It doesn't matter if I call myself a Buddhist or a yogini or whatever. I am just a ordinary person, trying to make the right choices, the best that I can.

Most of all, I love what k.d. lang has to say about her magnificant voice. I have almost all her albums, even the odd collections where she contributes one or two songs. Lang herself remarked how she is amazed by the sound that comes out of her own body:

k.d. lang: On a purely mundane level, it is totally mind-blowing to have this sound come out of my body. It feels like a whole ocean of surfers are available to me at any given moment to open up my voice and play around with a melody. It does blow my mind.

But the deeper truth is that we all have world-level gifts. I’m not just saying that. I honestly believe it. Maybe sometimes we are not able to reach and bring out our gifts, but they are there. It can be quite ordinary—when you see a Bhutanese woman making cheese dumplings and you taste one and it’s the best cheese dumpling you’ve ever eaten in your life, it’s the same thing! It’s essence. Ultimately, I don’t really see myself as separate from anybody else in terms of having a gift.

I was undecided on which song to feature on this post. I finally decided to let the lyrics make the choice for me, since this is supposed to be about the lyrics. With k.d. lang though, it is her voice that carries the song - not the lyrics. She can sing the names off the phonebook, and it would still sound like the music of heaven.

I have chosen "Flame of the Uninspired" from Watershed. It's about looking back on life, relationships and desire.

"Flame of the Uninspired"

I spend a lifetime carving out my fate
Things I like, things I hate
My very nature is to criticize
And then cut myself down to size

On the cusp of compromise
To living hell, I slipped and fell

I´m in the corner licking off my wound
Loves come and go, all too soon
Looking back upon my life as such
And the remedies they cost too much

Such a frail and fragile place
This egg and shell upon my face

Fueled by desire
Wind adds to fire
Flame of the uninspired

On the cusp of compromise
To living hell, I slipped and fell
Such a frail and fragile place
This egg and shell upon my face

Fueled by desire
Wind adds to fire
Flame of the uninspired