Beastly Buddhism
Does Snowboarding Bring Out the Buddha in Us?
The Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch says "Yeah!"
Interview by Pierre Bourque
From bOING bOING Number 13
I'm sitting by the phone, seconds away from a call from Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who's playing at Lollapalooza. Like all the Beasties, Adam's a skilled buffoon onstage, but what is he like offstage? Will this be a chat with a merry prankster, a one way tongue wag with Marcel Marceau, or something all together different?
Phone rings. Wilf from the tour calling. He tells me that Erin Potts will also be on the line. She runs Adam's Milarepa Fund (see sidebar). A moment or two of dead air while I wait. After chit chat and howdy dos, I launch right into asking Adam about Buddhism. -- Pierre Bourque
bOING bOING: In a recent issue of your fanzine Grand Royal, you wrote a bit about the Tibetan situation. Are you following that closely?
Adam: Yeah. I'm trying to keep abreast of what's going on there.
bOING bOING: How did you fall into that?
Adam: Actually ... ironically enough ... I was in Nepal, hanging out with Erin. I was just visiting ... she was living there. She was a Tibetan studies major. We kinda ran into each other and went to visit some of the monasteries. We went to a Tibetan wedding, different stuff like that. I just got exposed to the Tibetan people ... and I started reading about them and learning about their plight when I came back to America. I picked up on it like that.
bOING bOING: Did you also get a chance to visit India?
Adam: Not this time. I went to India about three and a half years ago.
bOING bOING: It's a different way of life over there. Their perception of reality is so different from ours. Did your interest in Buddhism and so forth start there?
Adam: I don't know exactly what it was. There is something about the altitude, the people and the combination of the two. There's a kind of real magic. It's not the same heaviness that I've sometimes felt while being in India, the tension. In India, there was some serious battling going on, between the Muslims and the Hindus. They were really goin at it. There was a lot of negativity and I was in some of the hostile regions. I was in Jaipur and there was rioting and stuff. -- [roar of the Lollapalooza crowd drowns out the phone.] The Smashing Pumpkins are taking the stage. [The three of us chuckle.]
bOING bOING: Bob Thurman [Uma's dad! -Ed.], one of the founders of Tibet House in New York, has just come out with a new treatment of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Have you taken a look at that?
Adam: No, I haven't seen Bob's translation but I've been meaning to pick it up. [at this point, Adam yells out to someone in Spanish to close the door.]
bOING bOING: You speak Spanish...
Adam: Si.
bOING bOING: Erin, Can you speak Nepalese?
Erin: Just enough to get around in taxis. I speak a little bit more Tibetan.
bOING bOING: Adam, you've set up a fund to aid Tibetan causes. How did that come about?
Adam: Basically we decided to set aside some publishing money from the new album, Ill Communication. It came about 'cause we were sampling some Tibetan monks chanting and some aboriginal sounds and we decided that we wanted to give money back to those peoples to help out their cultures. So we formed an organization, Milarepa Fund, to handle the money. Erin knows a lot about what's goin on in Tibet and has worked with different non-profit organizations so she seemed like the ideal person to handle this. She's figuring out what to do with the money to best help out. She's also running a booth at Lollapalooza here to give out information about what's going on in Tibet. We feel like America has to be more aware of what's happening in Tibet. For a change to come about, there has to be more pressure put on the government from individuals. Once the American government takes a stand on it other countries will probably follow suit. That's what will bring about change. We're just trying to raise awareness and also use this money in some more specific way to help individuals in refugee camps and stuff like that. There's a group of Tibetan monks here that we're helping to support. They're doing some traditional sacred music and dance, so people can check out their culture and see how cool it is. And maybe once they see how interesting this culture is they can compare that to the demented things the Chinese are doing to these people. This is our thinking, you know?
bOING bOING: Are either of you actually Buddhists?
Adam: That's a tricky queston. I haven't met anyone who's given me a good definition of what a Buddhist is. Do you have a good definition for us? When I get that definition, then I'll be able to tell if I am one or not. I do follow the teachings a lot and read the Buddhist literature. But then, I read a lot of things. I'm trying to figure out what works for me.
bOING bOING: I've read Zen and I've studied Zazen. You know what Zen is? It's everything that it's not. [laughs all around]
Adam: Zen, that's even more tricky. There is the definition of Buddhism as: "One who follows the three jeweled path." [laughs]
bOING bOING: Tell me more about Milarepa.
Erin: He was a Tibetan who enlightened others through his music. He overcame a lot of obstacles. At first he learned sort of the negative side, black magic. Then he learned the Dharma and became a great practitioner. He sang a hundred thousand songs. There's a book called The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. There's even a cool comic book about him.
bOING bOING: Do you find, Adam, that he other members of the band are interested in the Tibet question, or your interest in it?
Adam: I'm probably the most focused on it but those guys are interested. They're just kinda checkin' it out.
bOING bOING: They don't kid you about it?
Adam: There are a few things that we don't kid each other about. But hey, there's nothing wrong with kidding. It keeps the world spinning.
bOING bOING: Adam, what about when you go off snowboarding? Is there something to being alone, the challenge of racing down that slope, of losing yourself... how does that affect you?
Adam: I like being at a high altitude and getting into a "flow." That's nice.
bOING bOING: Earlier this year, I skied out west and watched a couple of snowboarders cut the first tracks after an overnight storm had dropped a couple of dozen inches of fresh powder. It was almost poetic to watch. They were going so quickly yet in such a controlled manner. They made brush strokes in the snow.
Adam: Yes! Fresh snow is amazing. The board is real different... it floats on the powder and goes really fast. If you're riding a long board it's more like surfing than skiing. If you find some steeps, you really can't get hurt because the snow's so deep. You can get going insanely fast. It's fluid on fresh snow, that's about the most fun I've found.
bOING bOING: What about the meditative aspects? Like the point when the physical actions come about without conscious effort. You end up watching yourself go down... it's kind of just happening.
Adam: Yeah! It enters that realm of nothingness.
bOING bOING: Do you get that way when you're on stage.
Adam: Sometimes. I have to close my eyes sometimes and let the music touch me... sometimes I'm just gone...
