Dylan lyrics show religious themes

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 3, 2007 by Mike Wennergren

LOGAN -- Steven Heine stops short of calling Bob Dylan a master of Zen Buddhism.

Although many of the singer-songwriter's lyrics echo the Zen philosophy of seeking enlightenment through experiencing life, questioning assumptions and soul-searching, many of them also reverberate with Judeo-Christian precepts of believing in a higher power, obeying moral codes and submitting to judgment, Heine said.

Speaking recently at Utah State University, the history and religious studies professor from Florida International University said Dylan's Judeo-Christian lyrics evoke a "dualistic" world view. (Dualistic in the sense of two competing forces: good and evil.)

"The duality side is where he's looking for a higher power to offer solutions," Heine said. "The higher power provides a kind of justice, judgment, a sense of retribution for social ills for people that are not following the high moral standards. It's kind of a prophetic view going back to the Old Testament prophets that Dylan has embraced in some periods of his career."

Heine cited lyrics from "Shelter From the Storm" as an example: "In a little hilltop village they gambled for my clothes;/A bargain for salvation, and they gave me a lethal dose."

But in other songs, Heine said, Dylan leans more toward the "nondualistic" worldview of Zen Buddhism.

"The nonduality view is where he sees that instead of one, single truth that is making a judgment and offering retribution, he sees more of a relativistic truth, a relativistic worldview where the relation between reality and illusion breaks down," Heine said.

He quoted a line from "Tangled Up in Blue" as an example: "All the people I used to know are an illusion to me now."

Heine said Dylan's emphasis has swung like a pendulum between the two worldviews throughout his more than 45 years as a recording artist. During Dylan's folk-protest era, 1963 to 1964, his lyrics often invoked themes of morality and justice, Heine said.

But during his folk-rock period, 1965 to 1967, Dylan's work was more enigmatic and searching, Heine said. For example, Heine said, in "Tombstone Blues" Dylan sings, "I wish I could relieve you from your useless and pointless knowledge."

Heine said that echoes a passage from Zen literature that says, "True knowing, true understanding, is not something that's knowing or not knowing.

"They're using language in a special way to go beyond ordinary knowing to go into what a medieval Christian mystical text called 'the cloud of unknowing,' a kind of intuitive knowledge that is beyond ordinary logic and understanding."

Heine said Dylan, who was born into a Jewish family and became an evangelical Christian from 1979 to 1983, was exposed to Zen Buddhism when he became friends with Allen Ginsberg and other beat writers in New York City's Greenwich Village during the early 1960s.

That coincided with the folk-revival period, when purists sought "authentic" singers like bluesmen Charlie Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Although the blues is formulated, Heine said, it's also impulsive, introspective and minimalist -- like much Zen Buddhist art.

"What Zen and blues have in common is there's a sense of self- discipline, of expressing your personal truth, of not being boxed in and using few words," he said.

Heine said Dylan's lyrics went back and forth between the Judeo- Christian and the Zen worldviews until he found a middle path in the early '90s.

In "Man in the Long Black Coat," one verse refers to a preacher saying "every man's conscience is vile and depraved," which Heine said reflects the dualistic view. But another verse says, "There are no mistakes in life, some people say/It is true sometimes you can see it that way," which Heine said reflects the nondualistic view.

But he said Dylan's exploration of worldviews -- regardless of which view he takes -- is Zen-like.

"Zen Buddhism sheds light on that debate by saying that there isn't a firm and final answer," Heine said. "It's the exploring that's important; it's the pathway that's important, rather than a single conclusion."

Heine's lecture, "Bargainin' for Salvation: Bob Dylan, a Zen Master?" was the first in a series sponsored by USU's Religious Studies program.

So is Dylan a master of Zen Buddhism? Heine has a Zen-like answer.

"I would prefer to leave it with a question mark," he said. "I don't want to put him into another box."

E-mail: mikewennergren@yahoo.com