by Jeff Burger
SLD: What a pity.
LC: Well, nobody’s perfect. So of course the association with that community continues.
SLD: But why did you leave? You say you’d come to a conclusion but what was it?
LC: Well, it’s difficult to speak of the reasons why you do anything. I’m never sure exactly why I’m doing anything. But one of the wonderful things that happened to me up on Mount Baldy is that I discovered I had no religious aptitude, that I wasn’t really a religious man. That I didn’t have that gift, that I didn’t have the gift for that kind of life, although I love it in many ways. I love the structure and I love the sense of solidarity with the students and the monks.
SLD: But was it something that you lacked or something that you couldn’t live without?
LC: Well, I’d always been associated with Roshi. When I finished my last tour it was in ’93, I was in my late fifties, Roshi was close to ninety. So I thought that if I’m ever going to intensify my studies with him, that this was the moment to do it, that there wasn’t an endless amount of time. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move closer to him. The other was just a sense of chaos in my life, a sense of disorder. I’d been drinking a lot—on tour I tend to drink and sing, which is a nice part of the whole process. But I’d gone overboard a bit and I was at loose ends and I needed some kind of form. And [at Mount Baldy] they’ve got that in spades. [Laughs.] But I’d always spent a week or two and then as the years unfolded a month or two, then sometimes half a year or so. I was very familiar with the schedule.
SLD: But finally you found that you’re not the religious type, so to speak.
LC: I have no real gift for it.
SLD: What is the gift you need?
LC: I don’t know. I feel I have a small gift: with a lot of work I can rhyme words. I feel I have some gift there. With the comprehension of religious concepts, I was barely able to get them intellectually. It’s very hard for me to follow a philosophical model. I don’t have that kind of mind. I just felt that at that moment it had ended. And it was a great revelation, and a great sense of relaxation accompanied this revelation.
SLD: Were you afraid to tell Roshi that you were going to leave the monastery?
LC: I wasn’t afraid but I was concerned.
SLD: Did you think that he was going to get disappointed?
LC: Well, he granted me permission very reluctantly. I went to India for four or five months and when I came back he invited me up to the mountain and we had a formal dinner. All the senior monks were there. And after they left, he said to me, “Jikan, when you left, half of me died.” I just winked at him and he winked at me back. Because these are just words. [Laughs.] Nothing really changes between us.
SLD: But you have a very, very deep and close relation[ship].
LC: I love him.
SLD: Is there anyone that you love more than him?
LC: It’s easier to love, having had that relationship with Roshi because that’s what he’s all about. It’s not a sentimental love. It’s a kind of impersonal love.
SLD: Without attachment?
LC: Of course there’s a human element of attachment and friendship and loneliness but it has a fundamental quality of the impersonal. What Roshi loves in you is not necessarily who you think you are but what you really are. He loves that and allows you through that love to locate it. I think that’s the most selfless kind of love. He loves what you really are.
SLD: Can you love somebody for who she or he really is?
LC: Well, it’s not really in your hands. That understanding deepens slowly as you get older …
SLD: You’re still young in these matters?
LC: Yeah, and I think love is all overlooking. I think to love you have to overlook everything. You have to forget about most things.
SLD: And forgive.
LC: And forgive, yeah.
SLD: You’ve written some poems in the monastery. One of my favorites is very short. I don’t know if you would like to read it. [Dabrowski hands him a paper with the poem “The Sweetest Little Song.” Cohen puts on a pair of prescription sunglasses and reads.]
LC: “The Sweetest Little Song.” But I like the drawing. [Cohen’s own illustration of a naked woman in a bathtub.] It’s nice in the way it’s [presented] … where’d you get this from, the Internet?
SLD: Yeah, from the Internet. You can get everything from the Internet.
LC: I know, I know.
SLD: I almost looked into your pockets in the Internet. [Laughs.] So what’s your comment on that one? It’s funny, I made a test. I said this first line to at least twenty people. I said, “You go your way” and everybody [said], “And I’ll go mine.”
LC: [Laughs.] Yeah.
SLD: And you changed it.
LC: Yeah, I think that is the kernel of a love poem. That is the sweetest thing you can hear from someone. Roshi told me … I don’t know if it’s a Japanese thing, but he has a saying: “Husband and wife drinking tea. Your smile, my smile. Your tears, my tears.” I guess it’s the description of a real union.
SLD: You said before [in their prior interview] that you received so much love but you weren’t able to give back.
LC: I think that’s true. I wouldn’t put it that way now but it’s true. I remember Roshi saying—I think I said it to you last time—the older we get, the lonelier we become and the deeper the love we need.
SLD: But are you a better lover today?
LC: I’m a very intermittent lover. I’m very grateful because some kind of relaxation overtook me when I realized I was no longer a religious seeker. It’s not so much that I got what I was looking for but the search itself dissolved and with that came the sense of relaxation. I don’t mean I don’t get bummed out and frustrated but the background is somehow relaxed now. So in that condition you can sense other people. That certainly must be the beginning of a deep relationship. It’s just to sense the predicament of someone else.
SLD: So in a way you can say that you failed as a monk?
LC: Yeah. Thank God. Well, I think one of the qualities of that kind of life is to recognize that you fail. Young monks, young students, come with very sublime religious aspirations and those are quickly overthrown. I tried to put that idea in that song “A Thousand Kisses Deep.” It says, “Summon now to deal with your invincible defeat, you live your life as if it’s real but a thousand kisses deep.” I think everybody has that experience, both young and old, of an uncomfortable quality to one’s life, a sense of defeat that can either embitter you as it does to some or it can open your heart as it does to other, more fortunate people, and I’m lucky to be one of those people. To be able to at least from time to time live a thousand kisses deep. You can’t do it all the time.
SLD: But you lived this kind of life before. You were a singer, a public person, you went on tours, you made promotion, and you did a lot of other things, too. And then you went to this very different kind of life in the monastery. And now you’re back again, and you write a lot about “I’m on Boogie Street.”
LC: “Back on Boogie Street.”
SLD: And “Babylon.” [A reference to “By the Rivers Dark.” —Ed.] Is that how you see this world?
LC: Yeah, but … this is the place where we are. Of course, the Zen monasteries are not apart from the world. There’s a Zen saying, “The lotus that blooms in the garden is swept away at the first fire. The lotus that blooms in the fire endures forever.” There’s always a feeling in Roshi’s school that you’ve got to be in the world, you’ve got to be in the midst of the world, and you’ve got to be able to make a living. All his monks are getting married now. We’ve had three births, three children born.
SLD: In the monastery?
LC: Yeah. So he’s marrying off his monks now.
SLD: That’s pretty unusual.
LC: It’s pretty interesting.
SLD: I was amazed when I visited you and you were drinking whiskey and you said if I fall in love with a young nun you never know what happens.
SLD: But is this Roshi’s kind of monastery?
LC: The regime is very severe and the distractions are also intense. I remember many mornings when I’d be giving Roshi breakfast … and he’d pull down the bottle of cognac and say, “You need a drink, Jikan.” And he’d say, “Who’s that outside?” There’d be some monk shoveling the snow. He’d say, “Get him in here.” And we’d all start drinking at four in the morning. And then Roshi would say, “Now it’s over,” and the bell would ring and you’d go to the next work period. So there was drinking and at the appropriate moment. Roshi’s hospitality has always been impeccable.
SLD: But it seems to be a very special kind of Zen that you have been taught that includes these things. Very nice kind, it seems to me, but different …
LC: Yeah, probably. I’ve visited other monasteries. Roshi established a system here that resembles a Japanese monastery but is not actually a duplication. I don’t know what goes on over there and he’s adapted his Zen.
SLD: Is the American a more liberal way?
LC: Well, it has this very interesting amalgamation of a very severe schedule with, as I say, very intense distractions. It seems to work. Although it’s hard when you’re drunk to go back to shoveling the snow.
SLD: At five in the morning.
LC: Yeah.
SLD: Why were you called Jikan? The silent one it means.
LC: Well, it doesn’t really mean that. I never really figured out what it means because Roshi never wanted his students to get proud of the names that he gave them. People would say, “Roshi’s given me the name Solitary Cliff or Penetrating Pine Tree” or something and they’d get very proud of the whole thing. [Laughs.] I’m not sure what Jikan means. It has something to do with silence. As Roshi explained, he said it’s normal silence, ordinary silence.
SLD: So nothing to boast about.
LC: No nothing to … no.
SLD: But this life that you lived before and this life that you are living now again after the stay in the monastery … how do you experience it now compared to before—being here, promoting your record, being surrounded by journalists who are at you all the time?
LC: This has the same taste as life up on Mount Baldy, to tell you the truth, because this is very intense and you’ve got to show up for every interview, just like you have to show up every time the bell rings or the clapper sounds.
SLD: No matter how you feel.
LC: No matter how you feel, so it’s not terribly different.
SLD: I was amazed that you didn’t even give yourself one day to adjust to the time [zone change to Paris].
LC: Well, I like to throw myself into it.
SLD: Yeah? And you can keep yourself awake during the day with the jetlag?
LC: I haven’t been sleeping much. You must experience that yourself all the time, the places you go. It’s all so easy to overlook.
SLD: So being back on Boogie Street …
LC: It’s very nice here on Boogie Street. But up there [on Mount Baldy] is Boogie Street, too. A monastery, of the kind Roshi runs in any case, it’s more like a hospital.
SLD: And he’s the doctor.
LC: And he’s the doctor.
SLD: What does he cure?
LC: He cures the illusion that you’re sick. [Pause.] And he was successful in my case. He cured the illusion that I needed his teachings.
SLD: So what were the sicknesses that you thought you had?
LC: I guess the same sicknesses everybody has—that you don’t get what you want, and if you do get it, it isn’t what you wanted. The objects of your desire continually escape you. There’s some wisdom, some path that if you could only embrace it, you could extract yourself from distress and suffering. All these aspirations that all of us nourish. That there’s another life that would be better, that another way would be better, another lover would be better, another métier would be better … this idea that there’s something to grasp.
SLD: And you were a victim of that illusion before?
LC: I was a specialist.
SLD: You were a specialist! Even better than most of us. [Cohen laughs.] Because you had more of it. You had more of the fame, of the money, of the women.
LC: Maybe that’s so. I think that everybody experiences the same kind of longing and dissatisfaction.
SLD: No matter how much you have?
LC: No matter how much you have. I don’t know if it’s any more bitter when you have a lot than when you have little. I don’t think we have a standard to be able to judge who’s suffering more. But I think we can take it for granted that everybody suffers a sense of something left undone, unfelt, unexperienced, and mostly it’s in the West where we don’t experience famine and other kinds of natural disasters as often. It usually is on the level of the heart. We don’t feel we love enough or have enough love.
SLD: I know myself that the heaviest burden to carry is that of fame and riches.
LC: Yes, Jesus said that too. He said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But he also said a little later on in that passage that all things are possible with God.
SLD: Do you agree?
LC: [Laughs.] I wouldn’t dare disagree. It’s not my place to disagree with Jesus Christ.
SLD: You’re feeling happy with being back in business?
LC: Yeah, I feel grateful that I was able to bring this record to completion. I feel grateful that I bumped into Sharon again and renewed our association, both our friendship and our collaboration, and to be working with Leanne. I always think that the greatest distress is unemployment both on the level of society and the individual and to be fully employed is a privilege and I’m very happy about that.
SLD: But making a record is one thing and people appreciating it but all the things that come with it …
LC: Well, that’s part of the deal.
SLD: It’s part of the deal but you can enjoy it more or less.
LC: I’d be a fool to resent it. It doesn’t happen to me very often because it’s generally a number of years between records or books. So I don’t get out that often. It isn’t a life I lead regularly. So I choose to think of it as an aspect of my social life. I meet people and I talk. You come to a city like Paris and we don’t have much time to get around but speaking to journalists, for instance, from Paris, journalists who really know what’s going on, you can kind of get the sense of the city and of what’s going on just talking to people. So I choose to see it as a social opportunity rather than as an onerous task.
SLD: So you can really experience a big difference in how you tackle things now compared to earlier?
LC: Well, I read somewhere that, as you get older, the brain cells associated with anxiety begin to die.
SLD: Oh, so that’s why I feel so much better. [Laughs.]
LC: In my case, it seems to be true. You can just take it all a little more lightly.
SLD: It’s also very common that when you grow a little older you start thinking more about your childhood and a lot of people want to get back to their roots. And you were born a Jew. Did you at all experience this?
LC: Well, when I began to study with Roshi, it wasn’t because I wanted a new religion. I was always happy with the religion I was born into and it satisfied all the religious questions. I was more interested in the technical questions and the questions of a structure of a life. So there was never any point that I abandoned Judaism.
SLD: No, I know, but did you experience this need to go back to …
LC: I don’t have those feelings. I think you get very interested in your children as you get older, and very touched by their lives.
SLD: Are you a grandfather?
LC: No, my children are very lazy. They won’t produce any children, any grandchildren for me. Maybe one day. [Cohen’s son, Adam, had a child in 2007 with a woman he’s no longer with. His daughter, Lorca, had a child in 2011; the father is gay sin
ger Rufus Wainwright. —Ed.]
SLD: But you’re very close to them.
LC: Yes, I live in a duplex in Los Angeles and my daughter lives in the flat underneath mine and my son lives a very short distance away also. So that’s been a very agreeable feature of coming back to the city.
SLD: I just heard that he [son Adam] went to Hydra and there he met a young woman that he became very fond of and it happened to be the daughter of Marianne.
LC: I don’t think it’s so. I think he did meet a Scandinavian woman but I don’t think they were connected. He spoke to me of it. I forget what the explanation was but it wasn’t so.
SLD: OK, it was just a rumor.
LC: Yeah.
SLD: It’s dangerous, the Internet, because a little rumor can become news for the world in a couple of seconds.
LC: He’s going back to Hydra in August. We were having lunch the other day and he said, “You know, Dad, I dream of Hydra three or four times a week. My dream takes place in Hydra.” He spent a lot of his childhood there. I love the place but he really knows every little corner and byway as a child knows.
SLD: It is a beautiful island.
LC: Yeah, it is. It is a nice place.
SLD: But you’re not going back?
LC: I went for the first time in many years two summers ago on my way back from India. And it is marvelous and my house is wonderful. Yeah, it’s a good place.
SLD: And next year they’re gonna celebrate your birthday there. People gather from all over the world the twenty-first of September, 2002.
LC: Yes, that’s another outcome of the Internet.
SLD: What do you think about that?
LC: I don’t know what to think about it. I don’t think I’m going to be there.
SLD: No?
LC: I don’t think so but I’m very gratified that there are people for whom my songs and poems are important enough to gather around.
SLD: Are you afraid or worried about how this new record is going to be received?
LC: No, I’m not.
SLD: Are you not sensitive for criticism?
LC: No, I’m not.
SLD: Were you earlier?
LC: Maybe at the beginning but after thirty or forty years in this racket, you get a pretty thick skin.