Generally, Leonard Cohen fans don’t associate the musician with palm trees and swim trunks. Cohen’s songs, including “Suzanne” and “Hallelujah,” are riddled with spiritual torment, passion and political cynicism. So when I recently picked up “The Flame,” a posthumous collection of Cohen’s late-life poems, lyrics and musings, I was struck by how grounded the work was in the landscape of Southern California.
I was especially surprised to see mentions of Mount Baldy. I learned that in 1994, after suffering burnout and mental health issues on tour, Cohen retreated to the Mount Baldy Zen Center in search of spiritual education. He stayed for the next five years and left as a fully ordained Rinzai Buddhist Monk.
My favorite piece about this period is the 2006 “Leaving Mt. Baldy.” In this work, Cohen sets aside his bohemian persona and adopts the role of the student. The poem is both a coda to his time at the Zen Center and a reflection on his disillusionment with seeking knowledge in esteemed institutions:
LEAVING MT. BALDY
I come down from the mountain
after many years of study
and rigorous practice.
I left my robes hanging on a peg
in the old cabin
where I had sat so long
and slept so little.
I finally understood
I had no gift
for Spiritual Matters.
“Thank you Beloved,”
I heard a heart cry out
as I entered the stream of cars
on the Santa Monica Freeway,
westbound for L.A.
A number of people
(some of them practitioners)
have begun to ask me angry questions
about the Ultimate Reality.
I suppose they don’t like to see
old Jikan smoking.
For reference, “Jikan” refers to Cohen’s Dharma name in the last line.
I was startled by how much I identified with Cohen’s poem. I saw parallels between my first semester at Pomona College and Cohen’s pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. Platitudes abound about college that often take on quasi-spiritual tones. These years are “the best time of our lives,” when we can “learn to think” and “discover ourselves.”
Entering college in August, I felt that I was ascending the mountain. When searching for schools, I knew I wanted to study English at a West Coast liberal arts college. I committed to Pomona early decision, in part because it promised the best environment for meeting these metrics. It was disappointing to discover that relocating 400 miles down the coast did not fundamentally alter me or my surroundings. I did not transform into a genius, discover new talents or solve the unanswerable riddle, “Just what do you plan to do with a degree in English?”
Cohen attempts to live an idealized monastic lifestyle. Relocating his life, dressing oddly, studying and not getting enough sleep seem incredibly similar to the college experience. Eventually, he realizes that his fantasy of a transformative learning experience untouched by everyday life is not achievable — at least not for him. He declares, “I finally understood / I had no gift / for spiritual matters.” Yet even after his return to the outside world, Cohen feels judged by real or imagined practitioners of his abandoned lifestyle. These people “begin to ask [] angry questions / about the Ultimate Reality.” They believe there is one correct way for Cohen to live his life and that he is abandoning it.
My “practitioners” take the form of inner critics, who assure me that the ideal education is life-altering and unmistakable. Am I wrong to study English, a messy discipline deeply rooted in human experiences and the limits of articulating them? What is a better pursuit? Is it something practical, like Economics or Engineering? Something pure and ineffable, like Philosophy or Mathematics?
Partly, these doubts arise from the naivete of buying into college hype, and certainly, they are premature. Cohen studied on Mount Baldy for five years before returning to Los Angeles; I’ve lived in Claremont for seven months.
Colleges manufacture part of this unattainable ideal of higher education before students even set foot on campus. The college admissions market teaches us to view institutions as shining utopias. Each college will introduce you to the best opportunities, the best people, the best you. This is, of course, a marketing scheme, and it is highly successful. Yet often, colleges are like overeager authors, who describe their scenes with painstaking detail and stifle readers’ imaginations. This is especially true of the Claremont Consortium, which prides itself on its elitism and ability to offer unique academic experiences. The Pomona College website, for example, promises “a close-knit and diverse community” with “an unparalleled environment for intellectual development and personal growth” and “an educational experience second to none.”
These promises may be true, but like any sales pitch, they’re overhyped. College is great. It is also often boring and sometimes stressful and — prepare to gasp — after a single semester, it has not given me a clear direction in life. What my first months have taught me is the value of unburdening myself of expectations for how learning should be and instead embracing what it is.
When Cohen leaves the Zen Center, his heart cries out to thank him. His description of “the stream of cars / on the Santa Monica Freeway” follows the same pastoral tone as the opening scene upon the mountain. After years of scouring meaning from mountaintops and hallowed institutions, he at last finds contentment in the everyday.
“Leaving Mt. Baldy” is liberating, yet staid; joyful, yet familiar. It does not overwrite itself, yet with sparse phrasing, tells readers that education does not have to be transcendent to be worthwhile, and that often, the best learning is mundane.
Jessy Wallach PO ‘29 would like to live in the Chelsea Hotel.