David Bowie was a Buddhist (video)

Telegraph; Sivanaspirit.com; Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The former Tibetan Empire's "Vatican" (Potala Palace) at Lhasa in David Bowie's dream.

David Bowie, who was 19 at the time, had first developed an interest in Buddhism after reading the Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer’s book Seven Years in Tibet, describing his encounter with the young Dalai Lama.

Inspired by the legends of Tibet as a Shangri-La of mystical wonders, Bowie wrote a song, "Silly Boy Blue," with lyrics about "Mountains of Lhasa… feeling the rain" and "Yak butter statues that melt in sun."

"I want to go to Tibet," he told Melody Maker in an interview in 1966. "It’s a fascinating place, y’know? I’d like to take a holiday and have a look inside the [Buddhist] monasteries. The Tibetan monks, lamas, bury themselves inside mountains for weeks and only eat every three days. They’re ridiculous – and it’s said they live for centuries."

Confronting death

Rock 'n roll icon David Bowie Tibet benefit

Chime Rinpoche has not lived for centuries. Nor does he expect to. Sitting in the library of the Buddhist Society in London, sunlight streaming in through the windows, he is a frail-looking man, skin drawn tight over his skeletal face, wreathed in a beaming smile.

He is 76, and having suffered a stroke and heart problems, he has been told by his doctors that he may not have long to live.

Matt Caron looks into David Bowie's dream.

He laughs. "It doesn’t matter." He was born into an aristocratic family in the remote region of Kham, in what was then Eastern Tibet, and at the age of two was recognized as a high tulku, or [special] reincarnation, and taken from his family to be raised and educated at the Benchen Monastery. (Rinpoche is an honorific title literally meaning "precious one").

"I’m something like the 10th or 11th consecutively reincarnated lama." He shrugs. "But I never pay much interest in that." He was subject to an intensive regimen of Buddhist philosophy and logic.

Leaving Tibet

DL: I want to free Tibet. - MAO: I already did.

In 1956 he was among the party of lamas that accompanied the young Dalai Lama to China to meet Mao Tse-tung, when Mao smothered the Dalai Lama in blandishments [flattery] and then issued the ominous pronouncement that "religion is poison." More

• David Bowie almost became a Buddhist monk (sivanaspirit.com)
• Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery of Scotland and David Bowie