The "Cheesy" Love Song Explained
Just before people think that what I posted previously was a cheesy love song, it's actually a song about Mystical Experiences. (This comes with me taking a class on ME this semester.)
The song/poem "Love Itself" was written by Leonard Cohen who is a Canadian Jewish poet/song writer who has been living in a Zen Buddhist monastry somewhere in Asia for the past 10 years. He is a contemporary of Bob Dylan and they are good friends.
Anyway, Leonard Cohen writes very interesting songs. If anyone is interested, I highly recommand checking out some of his songs/poems. The songs are very inspired and some of them have taken him years to write it. Every word counts.
I believe because of Cohen's Jewish background, he has equated the "essence of the Universe" with Love (with the captital "L"). There is a whole lot of Jewish undertones in the song/poem that I posted previously. He also alluded that such unions with the transcendent is ineffable. It is also very interesting to recognize that the sudden-ness of the union and the short duration of it is very typical of some forms of mystical experiences, and especially pertains to the Zen Buddhist tradition.
You know, I can truly appreciate the song because I have had such experiences before. Some knowledge of experiences, like mystical experiences, have to be acquired through knowledge-by-identity, a term that Forman (1999) coined; as opposed to a "knowledge about", which is the usual knowledge about things factual and observable in the world; and "knowledge-by- acquaintence", which is the knowledge of the taste of a mango or coffee, the colours of the world, etc. But knowledge-by-identity is different... it's only when one is in a particular space and going through that experience, in union with the transcendence for example, that one can have that knowledge. I think this is really cool.
Such experiences probably is what mystics refer to as being empty. Complete and pure emptiness.
The song/poem "Love Itself" was written by Leonard Cohen who is a Canadian Jewish poet/song writer who has been living in a Zen Buddhist monastry somewhere in Asia for the past 10 years. He is a contemporary of Bob Dylan and they are good friends.
Anyway, Leonard Cohen writes very interesting songs. If anyone is interested, I highly recommand checking out some of his songs/poems. The songs are very inspired and some of them have taken him years to write it. Every word counts.
I believe because of Cohen's Jewish background, he has equated the "essence of the Universe" with Love (with the captital "L"). There is a whole lot of Jewish undertones in the song/poem that I posted previously. He also alluded that such unions with the transcendent is ineffable. It is also very interesting to recognize that the sudden-ness of the union and the short duration of it is very typical of some forms of mystical experiences, and especially pertains to the Zen Buddhist tradition.
You know, I can truly appreciate the song because I have had such experiences before. Some knowledge of experiences, like mystical experiences, have to be acquired through knowledge-by-identity, a term that Forman (1999) coined; as opposed to a "knowledge about", which is the usual knowledge about things factual and observable in the world; and "knowledge-by- acquaintence", which is the knowledge of the taste of a mango or coffee, the colours of the world, etc. But knowledge-by-identity is different... it's only when one is in a particular space and going through that experience, in union with the transcendence for example, that one can have that knowledge. I think this is really cool.
Such experiences probably is what mystics refer to as being empty. Complete and pure emptiness.
posted by Charl | 12:04 PM
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