Leonard Cohen's Spiritual Wellspring

"You must leave everything that you cannot control. It begins with your family but soon it comes round to your soul."

                                                                 -- Leonard Cohen 

      I heard him singing this in my thoughts this morning, in his deep older voice which was my favorite. I wanted to write about how his complex spiritual nature most resonated in his music. He wanted to be a novelist, to write longer profound work, but his divine gift - who he was - and what most moves most of us - is his music. The deep gravitas of his Jewish upbringing resonates through. But the discipline, the self-denial of Zen (which I find to be the most difficult buddhism) is there as well. I found an abstract that sums up some of what I was thinking: 

     "When Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist, died...the cultural world mourned the loss of a great artist -- and religious communities mourned the loss of a unique spiritual voice. Cohen was a Canadian Jew who channeled Christian themes in his work and lived for years as a Buddhist monk." Leonard Cohen's Theological Legacy: Fordham edu.