Macy Gray “Nothing else matters” and changes in context with the transplantation of Zen

I listened to a song called Nothing else matters. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/track/5iomQcE5x3rdfe0hhdiOOx

And I found it very interesting for a number of reasons. I think the main reason is that the original song was about male white brotherhood, and without changing any of the lyrics, even without changing any of the composition I think. Just by changing the singer, the interpreter I think something fundamental changed. This reading no longer works. A female black singer changed the meaning of the song by singing it, just by virtue of being different. I’d say in her version it is perhaps about a fight against racism, maybe a sisterhood…

If you’ll allow the analogy then Zen from hundreds of years ago, in it’s transference to here and now. What happens in this translation, in this change of interpretation, in this change of context? I see a lot of talk of dharma battle here in r/zen for example. But I think it is fundamentally different for example to say “slap” than to actually land a slap on someone’s face. Speaking in english is of course already different, but the mere existence of the internet I think is very drastic. What does it mean to interface with texts from a totally different reality? Not just without printing presses, not just without cars, not just without firearms, but really a totally different world?

In a previous post I shared about Suzuki being hopeful about “American Zen” from an article in the magazine “killing the buddha”

Suzuki was impressed by Americans’ dedication to zazen, and dreamed that his students would one day reform what he saw as the corrupt Buddhism of Japan.

This question, What form will American Buddhism take? has been present since Buddhism’s arrival in America.

I really enjoyed a link to a samurai-play acting westerner, linked to by in a ewk thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/3dkfgu/my_name_is_ken_ama/ -

But my main passion is my Blade. I train with my Katana every day, this superior weapon can cut clean through steel because it is folded over a thousand times, and is vastly superior to any other weapon on earth. I earned my sword license two years ago, and I have been getting better every day. I follow Bushido (Samurai) ethics to a T.

this kind of thing is ridiculous, right? This deterritorialization coming off as fake, in a way that is absurd play acting. I’d say Macy Gray singing the Nothing Else Matter song while taking the song out of it’s original territory is somehow not play acting, is somehow to me even more authentic than the original. But in my opinion it is very much far far from the original.

Submitted June 08, 2020 at 09:10PM by 2bitmoment https://ift.tt/30mWBCq