Imagine

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 35 years since John Lennon died at the age of 40. Every year throngs of people gather in New York City’s Central Park on October 8 to remember him on his birthday.

“Life,” John wrote in a song for his son Sean, “is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Life is what happened to John on that fateful night in 1980 in front of the Dakota Hotel in New York City where he lived. All these years later, I wonder what plans he was making the day he died. The music he might have written, the millions more people he might have touched…

Today’s headlines about young people who are virtually bullied to death scream out in stark contrast to John Lennon’s music. What an incredibly peaceful and tolerant world it would be, if children learned from an early age that, “All you need is love.”

But when some of our most public figures make a mockery of this vision of authentic humanity, it’s discouraging to say the least. We see people like Donald Trump, running for the highest office in the United States, bullying his opponents and spewing venomous words that incite. Or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who tells people who disagree with him to sit down and shut up. John must be turning in his grave.

Imagine, instead, a world in which a person’s manner of dress or learning disability doesn’t subject him or her to constant taunts. Imagine a world where a person’s sexual preference doesn’t signal open season to those whose own sense of inadequacy drives them to commit thoughtless acts.  Imagine a world where all parents teach their kids to live and let live, and to respect other people’s right to be different.

John wrote a song in 1968 that received both positive and negative reaction from music critics. He referred to the song as the best lyrics he’d ever written. The words have always struck a chord in me, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps that is part of the magic of “Across the Universe.”

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind

Possessing and caressing me 

I imagine a world in which we all have an opened mind, a world where we don’t feel the need to humiliate and demean others for who they are, and where we celebrate the things that join us together rather than waste precious time and energy fixating on the things that make us different.

Sounds of laughter, shades of earth are ringing

Through my open my open views inciting and inviting me

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns

It calls me on and on across the universe. 

We are all called across the universe. We are all blessed with the Buddha nature. And we need only open our minds and our hearts in order to make the journey. Imagine…

Jai Guru Deva Om