"Life on Mars?" is a song by the Vajrayana Buddhist British musician David Bowie, first released on his 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Conceived as a parody of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" [which was more directly mocked by Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols], "Life on Mars?" was recorded on 6 August 1971 at Trident Studios in London, and was co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott.
The track features piano by the keyboardist Rick Wakeman and a string arrangement by the guitarist Mick Ronson. "Life on Mars?" is primarily a glam rock ballad, with elements of cabaret and art rock. The lyrics are about a girl who goes to a cinema to escape reality and include surreal images that reflect optimism and the effects of Hollywood.
In June 1973, at the height of Bowie's fame as Ziggy Stardust, RCA Records issued "Life on Mars?" as a single in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at number three. To promote the single, Mick Rock filmed a video that shows Bowie in make-up and a turquoise suit singing the song against a white backdrop.
Bowie frequently performed "Life on Mars?" during his concerts, and the track has appeared on numerous compilation albums. Commentators generally consider "Life on Mars?" to be one of Bowie's finest songs and one of the greatest songs of all time. More: Life on Mars? (Wiki feature)
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.
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
The rolling hills of Scotland’s southern lowlands are an unlikely venue for a flourishing Buddhist culture, and yet rows of multicolored Tibetan prayer flags – red, white, yellow, blue, and green – flutter in Eskdalemuir’s breeze, their prayers slowly fading as they become entwined with the elements.
Indeed, the popularity of Tibetan culture in the West is a surprising phenomenon, especially considering that Tibet had little contact with the outside world until the twilight years of the 18th century. Its spread, much like the prayers on Tibetan flags, is an extraordinary story of cultural export.
Scotland’s engagement with Buddhism emerged through its imperial networks across Asia, particularly the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. This engagement culminated in the founding of the Pāli Text Society in 1881, which undertook the ambitious task of translating the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhist texts into English.
Pāli is the [exclusively Buddhist] language in which the oldest scriptures of Theravada Buddhism were written.
Engagement with Tibetan [Vajrayana] Buddhism occurred much later, following an ambitious espionage campaign by Captain Montgomerie to infiltrate the secretive Lhasa at the peak (literally) of the Great Game [British spying campaign]. His spies hid secretive materials inside Tibetan prayer wheels.
The Mani Korlo or “Prayer Wheel House” has 45 wheels containing millions of prayers. The wheels are run by electric motors and “transmit prayers day and night” (Bradley Jardine).
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Following this, the growth of Scotland’s Buddhist community was slow but steady, culminating in the foundation of the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Center (samyeling.org) in 1967.
The monastery practices the Karma Kagyu school of thought – an offshoot of the Kagyu tradition, one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism – is believed to have been founded in the 10th century by Tilopo, a Buddhist yogi. Its main distinctions are its emphasis on orally imparting knowledge, and respect for lineage.
The Settlement Experiment
The Himalayan stupa (burial mound reliquary) at Samye Ling, Scotland (Bradley Jardine).
Ven. Bowie: What are you looking at? I've worn much stranger outfits (pinterest.com)
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It was cool to be Buddhist back then. Ask Leo.
Samye Ling, meaning “the place beyond conception,” was the first monastery to be founded in the West. Its co-founder, Choje Akong Rinpoche, was recognized as an incarnate lama as a young child (tulku) and became the abbot of the Dolma Lhakhang Monastery.
It was the 1960s and cool (Leonard Cohen).
Following a [CIA-sponsored] failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, Choje Akong fled to India by foot in a perilous journey of horrendous suffering, in which thousands of refugees starved to death or simply died of exhaustion. Four years later, he was working as a hospital orderly in Oxford. His immense monastic prestige had rapidly unraveled, leaving him scrubbing toilets in a foreign land.
The hardship he experienced during these years had a profound impact on his world outlook. Importantly, Choje arrived in the UK during the emergence of the swinging 1960s, with its radical politics and counterculture movements, sparking widespread enthusiasm for Tibetan Buddhism.
It’s within this context that Choje Akong Rinpoche and Trungpa Rinpoche took over a retreat center in the south of Scotland, which became Samye Ling in 1967.
David Bowie, Buddhist monk
I was young (19) and earnestly reading Buddhist translations thinking I want to be a monk.
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I studied their exams. I was about to shave.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Choje Akong Rinpoche invited many prominent lamas to teach at the monastery. Students studied the Kagyu system of meditation there, with famous faces among their ranks such as Leonard Cohen and David Bowie (religion and spirituality).
"I was a terribly earnest Buddhist at the time…I had stayed in their monastery and was going through their exams, and yet I had this feeling that it is not right for me. I suddenly realized how close it all was: another month and my head would have been shaved."
It would have been good to do.
Local legend has it that monks at Samye Ling recognized something special in Bowie as an artist and encouraged him to leave the monastery and focus on his music.
The Samye Ling Community
Anyone visiting Samye Ling can’t help but admire the sheer scale of the ambition it embodies. The volunteer grassroots community building by a refugee community are hard to match, and it gives a sense of hope...More
The original music for "Space Oddity" from Bowie's film promotional film "Love You Till Tuesday," which was originally released in 1969 and re-released on DVD. It is a rare and odd version of the song with a quirky video to accompany it with vintage anti-special effects.
(David BowieVEVO) "Black Star" released last Friday on Bowie's 69th and final birthday. Now he's returned to "heaven" (sagga, which is no kind of permanent place as we are taught in the monotheistic conception) -- the celestial world from which he descended with most of his space DNA apparently still intact. He was, after all, the Man Who Fell to Earth.
(David [Jones] Bowie) "Space Oddity" is Bowie's second best song ever, though not his most popular. That distinction goes to the dud "Let's Dance." The best song has to be "Ashes to Ashes," but "The Man Who Sold The World" is pretty good, even after Nirvana borrowed it. Of course, the morbid and somewhat morose "Dark Star" may be recognized as his best work (along with "Fame") in the time to come.
Ashes to Ashes
(EMI Music) "Ashes to Ashes" during Bowie's more trendy cross dressing phase, which lasted most of the British rocker's career.
We put the question on everyone's mind to our Dharma editors:
"Why do people have to die?"
Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly
Oh to be like Ven. Sivali, foremost in good karma (Mike Leske, Wat Saket/flickr.com).
Of course it's going to die. They're all dying! They're bodies. That's how it is with materiality -- the interplay of the four characteristics of matter. See the book Four Elements Meditation for a direct experience of this reality.
But those elements did not combine out of chance, not at all. They came into being due to the power of karma. No "being" came into being, which is impossible for people to understand. (See anattaor the Doctrine of Egolessness).
But some thing, some impermanent, disappointing, impersonal aggregate came into being at some point and passed out the very next moment. And something else almost, but not quite, exactly like it replaced it -- and so on, and so on, in countless succession of phases. This is what we cling to, call a person or personality, mourn the loss of. It is not at all what it seems to be.
But think of the stream -- that succession of parts both physical (Four Elements or Characteristics) and psychological (four aggregates of "mind" or nonphysical "software," as it were.
The Buddha discussed them in detail as the khandha (Sanskrit skandhas) or "Five Aggregates of Clinging." We cling to them in ourselves and others. Let go. They do not belong to us. Let go and see the liberating truth. The truth will set us free.
(EMI Music) David Bowie's ode to another inhabited world in space: "Life on Mars?"
Anyway, this conglomerate we called "David Jones or David Bowie or Ziggy Stardust" is still a going concern. Sure this version is out of time, but what is still going on is the impetus for it. What comes a moment after death? Rebirth. The last moment of consciousness is the rebirth linking consciousness.
It does not take 49 days as one often hears because one is instantaneously in another body, a deva or naraka subtle body, what we might call a ghost (gandharva or preta). One may stay there or go on to yet another rebirth in 49 days after the "intermediate state" of the Bardo. (See the Bardo Thodol for an altogether Himalayan Vajrayana Buddhist conception of the first two months of the afterlife).
But what if I don't "believe" in rebirth or reincarnation? It doesn't matter; you'll see it just the same. If you want to believe but just can't, look into the scientific research of this common phenomenon and the work of numerous American researchers like Dr. Ian Stevenson. Anne Frank is alive again and not Jewish this time, as is Edgar Cayce, who is very much New Age not Christian like he was.
Just because ULTIMATELY there is no self (ego, atta, indestructible essence) does not mean there is no rebirth. There is rebirth -- rebirths without end, countless, unimaginable rebirths. Rebirth is the problem. This whole samsara is a succession of rebirths of all kinds. It is based on ignorance, craving, and aversion, which give rise to suffering because of delusion, greed, and hatred/fear.
If, the Buddha explained, greed and hatred and delusion are at the root of suffering (unsatisfactoriness, disappointment, woe, and misery), what is the antidote? Nongreed, nonaversion, and nondelusion are. They are otherwise known as unselfishness (generosity of spirit), altruistic love (boundless compassion), and wisdom (liberating insight).
I am not a deva. Diva, yes, but not a deva. Or maybe I am as I was in space (BBC).
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Now, this "David Bowie" person seems to be more akasha deva than indigenous earthling. We all came from space, and some of us not that long ago. If ashes go to ashes, oftentimes devas return to the many deva-worlds. Did Bowie keep the Five Precepts? That would win him rebirth in the human plane again, which is not at all limited to this planet. "Humans" (manussa) inhabit large parts of the galaxy and, goodness knows, probably other galaxies as well. Time has lasted for a long time, aeons (kalpas) and aeons.
Rebirth has gone on for a long time, so long that one cannot find a time when it was not going on. And though one cannot look back and locate a time when ignorance wasn't giving rise to everything else that leads up to yet another rebirth, the end of that painful process can be discerned, can be realized. But people and devas tend to fear this good news.
We want rebirth and more of it, "eternal life" if we could get it. We cannot because even a lifespan of a great aeon, a maha kalpa, is broken up into many tiny "deaths," the discrete moments of becoming.
There is no being, no just-existing. Rather, there is only becoming. And it will go on endlessly until we wake up. Those who refuse to wake up, who insist on being and more being and eternal-being, clinging to the impossible, will go right on dreaming with all its attendant suffering. Thanks to the teachings of fully enlightened beings -- samma sam buddhas -- there is an end of suffering. That awakening is called bodhi, "enlightenment," and that ultimate peace is called nirvana, "complete liberation."
So for a long time there will be a David Bowie. We guess he is currently back on Mars, safe underground there, reborn as some kind of humanoid or spirit being, angelic in his way, likely a gandharva with penchant for music and entertaining the other akashicdevas. So cheer up! Few are the living, many are the dead. Be concerned with the living. (You yourself, after all, are still among the living. Accrue some good karma, cultivate merit. It will follow you for a long time much to your happiness). "Karma: It's Everywhere You're Going To Be."
President Joe once had a dream: The world held his hand, gave their pledge. So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine. They called it the Prayer; its answer was law. Its logic stopped war, gave them food. How they adored till it cried in its boredom: Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me! Life is too easy; a plague seems quite feasible now Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all. Don't let me stay, don't let me stay. My logic says burn, so send me away// Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen/ You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine.// I need you flying, and I'll show that dying Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time. I perceive every sign; I can steal every mind.
Returning like "Lazarus"
Lazarus (left) dressed in gauzy linen like Bowie is roused out of sleep, raised from the dead, in a miracle Jesus is said to have performed in ancient North Africa (The Raising of Lazarus, 1857, by Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat).
David Bowie was probably not a believer in rebirth, reanimation, reincarnation, the relinking consciousness the Buddha and Jesus taught. After all, all mention of it has been removed from modern Christianity, and the necessity of being "born again" to get to heaven has been given another meaning. (See the writings of Edgar Cayce for a discussion of this and biblical evidence of lingering clues in the Bible). No, Bowie was an unbeliever...or was he? Why did he release a song called "Lazarus" just before dying? (Lazarus of Bethany in Christianity was dead but was famously reanimated, brought back to life if only to show that "death" is not what we think it is. Life goes on and on and on).
Nirvana is the ultimate goal in Buddhism, the peak, the summum bonum. It's also a band.
Punk was fresh and rebellious and underground.
Long, long ago, in the early days of LA's hardcore punk scene, the Germs (one of the first hardcore bands with a female musician) used to play in Redondo Beach. They were banned from most places in Hollywood. I remember sitting on stage in front of Pat Smear's amp as he struggled to play even rudimentary guitar.
Darby Crash could not be convinced to use a microphone. He would yell and cut himself as he contorted on the stage, giving the crowd a show. Then years later Seattle vomited up Nirvana. And they would play around LA in small clubs. I resented Kurt's choice of a band name, a cheap shot, a low blow, exploitation, thinking that sacred attainment out of bounds for such a worldly purpose as a band name. Like Darby and I, Kurt at least understood the Buddhist significance of the word.
The Germ's punk tribute to Buddhism "The Slave"
Bam! Where did the shotgun blast come from?
Nirvana literally means "the end of all suffering." So on that basis it was a good name for a depressive grunge band from the mighty banks of the muddy river that runs through rainy Seattle. The Germs had a great album, "G.I.," a punk classic. Reading the liner notes, I was shocked to see that Joan Jett of all people had anything to do with it. She put it together. Joan Jett always just seemed like some rough gal who made out with child actor Dakota Fanning in a film about The Runaways, amazing she could extend her 15 minutes of fame to a lifetime of playing in front of an audience. (Of course, she didn't play herself in the biopic, but that's how I remember the female rocker).
The Germs live, "Lexicon Devil," with Darby Crash intoxicated as usual
Then, when Dave Grohl wasn't going to let Cobain's suicide (or murder by drug addled Courtney Love as the private investigator hired to investigate the death concluded and got in a lot of trouble for coming on the Kevin & Bean Show on KROQ and talking about it, now that Love was a rich heir that could sue anyone who dared to imply she was guilty of anything, as she went on to try her hand at acting in a movie about Larry Flynt) stand in the way of his musical career and went on to form Foo Fighters, bassist Krist Novoselic put together a band. I won tickets to see the group at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. I should have stayed home. They were horrible and boring and an insult to any expectations. Who, other than his mom, knew that Great Hair Dave was the secret power source of the group?
Whatever Cobain was channeling, it sure didn't seem Krist was contributing much. Though, of course, every member of a band contributes something ineffable even if people can't see it, maybe just energy and past life connections. So for all that time to pass, and all those Nirvana tee-shirts to be sold and worn by people who may never have heard the band, it's an inspiration to see the reformation go down like this. Pat Smear was a legend, and Dave Grohl knew it, so inducting him into the Foo Fighters was no accident. And it's almost as if he finally learned to play the guitar.
When people said the greatest grunge drummer in history would be playing the benefit, it seemed like a natural assumption that it would just be him on guitar with his very young daughter on drums like before. But this is Violet Grohl, not the little drummer girl (Harper). So what a treat to see all the effort that went into putting this together with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and St. Vincent with a defective earpiece still pulling out a fabulous performance. All hail, Dave (a kind of Don Bolles), a cheating cheater who cheats but that seems part and parcel to rock 'n roll. They all loved British Buddhist and almost-Scottish Buddhist monk David Bowie.
Vajrayana Buddhist David Bowie on spirituality
Dave Grohl, extreme metal fan of Sepultura
*Millions have heard Nirvana’s cover of the David Bowie classic “The Man Who Sold the World” from their Unplugged album. Drummer Dave Grohl and guitarist Pat Smear (like Kurt Cobain and Darby Crash before them) are devout Bowie fans. But who knew that Smear and his bandmates in the Germs used to stalk Bowie all over 1970s' Los Angeles? Join Smear and Grohl as they drive around L.A. (in a custom and, as Grohl says, “totally ‘90s” Ford Bronco) visiting Bowie’s L.A. homes, both personal and creative. Along the way the two bandmates reminisce, nerd out on Bowie trivia, and even pick up a legendary passenger. (They also call Joan Jett at home.)
Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Germs; Dave Grohl, Nirvana (reunion), Joan Jett, FireAid LA Fire benefit
David Bowie talks the internet, Buddhism, and space aliens | MTV
(MTV News) In this full MTV News 1997 interview, superstar David Bowie (davidbowie.com) discusses how the internet and Buddhism guides his work.
On second thought, I shoulda become a monk
As a teen, he intended to become a Buddhist monk, a lama in a Vajrayana temple in Europe, but his rinpoche saw that he was more interested in music and was better off pursuing his art rather than cloistering himself in a temple, which would have certainly helped him more in life while depriving the world of his songs. But he pursued an interest in Zen until a Zen master in Kyoto told him that [organized] religion is over and that it [the future] lies in the [visual and musical] arts. Are there aliens [other beings such as devas] in space? Bowie's interest is not in the hardware of UFOs, the corporeal reality of such beings, but rather their existence only ever represented spiritual search, more a metaphor for the otherness, isolation, and alienation. "But the idea, 'Is there life on Mars?' I could care less."
0:04 David Bowie on music via the internet
0:21 Aging and his album sales
1:22 The potential of the internet
3:17 Spirituality and Buddhism
5:25 Bowie on the Dalai Lama
6:15 Organized religion and the arts
9:04 Bowie's opinion on ETs, space aliens
"Religion is over and it lies in the arts" - David Bowie on life’s purpose
I was once a shy conservative boy
(T&H - Inspiration & Motivation) This is a collection of profound and powerful messages on life's purpose by David Bowie (1947-2016) in honor of his genius. “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring,” Bowie stated. Gnosticism is a better approach to spirituality and religion than our Judeo-Christian background. Celebrities by T&H Motivation and Inspiration
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