‘Who Is It?’ is one of Michael Jackson’s lesser known hits. With news of his tragic early demise, the song suddenly came to mind. It’s the song I would remember MJ by, because I often wondered who the shapeshifting and occasionally physically veiled MJ really was, just as he wonders who the girl he’s with really is in the song’s video. Perhaps as an unintended and thus ironic parallel, the girl continually changes her appearance in secret, just as MJ is believed by many to have done.
MJ in the video has quiet despair over realising he doesn’t really know who his lover is. Maybe this mirrors his existential crisis over how he’s supposed to look like outside and be inside? The girl in the video changes her name many times too. In Buddhism, we speak of name and form, which represents mind and matter – that mentally conceived and that materially existing – both of which are in constant change. Perhaps MJ needed to make peace with change, without being fixated too much on anything, be it his body or his experiences. There is no fixed self anyway; just free and open Buddha-nature that’s always there.
In the video of his more famous songs, ‘Black or White’, which was launched shortly after his complexion ‘suddenly’ became fair, we see many ‘colourful’ shapeshifting faces, which morph into one after another. (See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXzy1b7Rhc) Perhaps this reflected MJ’s open acceptance of people of all appearances (or races and cultures) while he found it hard to accept any one of his own faces for good? Sadly, I think MJ was too attached to ‘perfecting’ his form, while his worldwide fans never really found his looks unacceptable in the first place. And it was he who sang thus…
I said if you’re thinkin’ of being my baby
it don’t matter if you’re black or white
I said if you’re thinkin’ of being my brother
it don’t matter if you’re black or white
I tweeted this the other day – ‘Leaving his illusory Never Never Land, may the King of Pop reach Pure Land (or at least get closer). Amituofo!’ May he discover his Buddha-nature soon, that beyond name and form, that beyond change.
Thanks, this post reminds me that he is also one of the beings in the samsara. May he reached Pureland and become Buddha eventually…
Maybe if he had read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, he would be more prepare to deal with the issue of death and into Buddhadharma, many other problems in life would be solved…
Sometimes, sufferings and pains in life make a person grow compassion and wisdom. But it can also send someone to the wrong direction and being totally destroyed by it. Without proper ‘Guidance or Support’ or compassionate to fall back on, it is a bit difficult to get the benefit from it.
Impermanence – how many can really put the Buddha Teachings into action and benefit from it? What does it required? Determination? Faith? Or ???
Knowing is one thing, to be able to put that in use in a Crisis is TEST, how does one ensure we can pass such tests in life? It is only in test, that we know how much we … So, what can be done?
Other than studying the Dharma to learn how to apply it in everyday life. Mindfulness is the key, and it can be systematically trained via meditative practices, including chanting. Classes with good teachers are crucial in showing us by example and instruction how to internalise the Dharma, because mere book knowledge is not enough.
It’s strange that God doesn’t mind expressing Himself/Herself in all the religions of the world, while people still cling to the notion that their way is the only right way. Whatever you try to say about God, someone will take offense, even if you say everyone’s love of God is right for them.
For me the form God takes is not the most important thing. What’s most important is the essence. My songs and dances are outlines for Him to come in and fill. I hold out the form. She puts in the sweetness.
I’ve looked up at the night sky and beheld the stars so intimately close,
it was as if my grandmother had made them for me.
“How rich, how sumptuous,” I thought. In that moment I saw God
in His creation. I could as easily have seen Her in the beauty of a rainbow, the grace of a deer bounding through a meadow, the truth of a father’s kiss. But for me the sweetest contact with God has no form.
I close my eyes, look within, and enter a deep soft silence.
The infinity of God’s creation embraces me. We are one.
© Michael Jackson
I found this poem written by MJ in his “Dancing the Dream” book.
It all depends on how God is defined. If he’s an angry old man who will send most to eternal hell, then he’s definitely not expressed in all religions – at least not in Buddhism. Actually, some of the ones clinging to their notions of goodness are those who staunchly believe the God idea the most strongly, that their beliefs form the only right way to truth and salvation.
Some call Goodness ‘God’, but some believe true Goodness cannot be merciless, as above. MJ’s well meaning songs were perhaps expressions of his personal goodness – which are often about mercy (e.g. We are the World, Heal the World). Not sure if any ‘divine being’ filled in his songs – other than his Buddha-nature, even though some songs sing of God.
‘How rich, how sumptuous’ the stars? But what about the ‘God-forsaken’ (un)holy lands raining with unceasing gunfire over his name? Beyond a beautiful rainbow, what about the ‘ugliness’ of a disastrous hurricane? Beyond the grace of a deer, what about the gore of a lion tearing it apart? Are they God’s creation too? Or mere destruction?
Perhaps the deep soft silence within MJ was just his Buddha-nature; nothing to do what any god. Perhaps the infinite embrace he felt was that of the truth of the interdependence of all things, nothing to do with any god.
(U) > (L) ‘Heal the world. Make it a better place.’