Sitting

[lucasdip]

Hi all
I have noticed there hasn't been a thread about the song Sitting and i thought as it is such a great song i might share a few things i think about the song.

I recently watched an interview in which Yusuf was asked which song he felt was his favorite or most meaningful and his answer was Sitting. Considering he wrote so many songs i wondered why he chose this one.
Then i thought about the song, the album and at which stage of his life he wrote it. I found the album title interesting and even a little bit confusing but then i looked into it and found that he linked the name of the album with Zen Buddhism. The 10 stages to enlightenment, number 4: Catch the bull. Number 5: Ride the bull. And the album title was made! I also believe the song name Sitting refers to just sitting and having a good think (much like Buddhists meditating)
Then i thought this was really the first sign that Cat Stevens was beginning to look for something more but he had not yet found what. "oh I'm on my way i know i am, somewhere not so far from here, all i know is all i feel right now i feel the power growing in my hair" Here you can see what Cat is saying, he is on his way but not sure where. He then sings (one of my favorite parts) "I keep on wondering if I sleep too long, will I always wake up the same (or so)? And keep on wondering if I sleep too long, will I even wake up again or something" Possibly Cat is referring to his musical career, if he keeps doing the same thing over and over (making music, touring, taking drugs etc) will he ever be happy and feel accomplished?
It also seems that Cat feels he must move away from the current demographic which surrounds him "bleeding half my soul in bad" company"
The last verse i find has quite a lot of meaning.
Oh life is like a maze of doors
And they all open from the side you're on
Just keep on pushing hard boy, try as you may
You're going to wind up where you started from
I managed to find out what Cat was talking about.
"life is like a maze of doors and they all open from the side you are on", meaning you have to pull to get through to the other side. Just "just keep on pushing hard boy try as you may, your gonna wind up where you started from", so, you can push as hard as you can on the door that you must pull, and you will get no where, take a moment to stop and think, then pull the door and you are well on your way.
When thinking about this song it is not hard to see why it is Yusuf's favorite song, however when he had reached his final destination he chose Islam, but hey 'you can do what you want, the opportunity's on' ;)

I'm sure there is someone who knows more than me on this song so let me know what you guys think :)

[richina]

Nov 9, 2012 3:20:07 GMT -5 lucasdip said:

Hi all
I have noticed there hasn't been a thread about the song Sitting and i thought as it is such a great song i might share a few things i think about the song.

I recently watched an interview in which Yusuf was asked which song he felt was his favorite or most meaningful and his answer was Sitting. Considering he wrote so many songs i wondered why he chose this one.
Then i thought about the song, the album and at which stage of his life he wrote it. I found the album title interesting and even a little bit confusing but then i looked into it and found that he linked the name of the album with Zen Buddhism. The 10 stages to enlightenment, number 4: Catch the bull. Number 5: Ride the bull. And the album title was made! I also believe the song name Sitting refers to just sitting and having a good think (much like Buddhists meditating)
Then i thought this was really the first sign that Cat Stevens was beginning to look for something more but he had not yet found what. "oh I'm on my way i know i am, somewhere not so far from here, all i know is all i feel right now i feel the power growing in my hair" Here you can see what Cat is saying, he is on his way but not sure where. He then sings (one of my favorite parts) "I keep on wondering if I sleep too long, will I always wake up the same (or so)? And keep on wondering if I sleep too long, will I even wake up again or something" Possibly Cat is referring to his musical career, if he keeps doing the same thing over and over (making music, touring, taking drugs etc) will he ever be happy and feel accomplished?
It also seems that Cat feels he must move away from the current demographic which surrounds him "bleeding half my soul in bad" company"
The last verse i find has quite a lot of meaning.
Oh life is like a maze of doors
And they all open from the side you're on
Just keep on pushing hard boy, try as you may
You're going to wind up where you started from
I managed to find out what Cat was talking about.
"life is like a maze of doors and they all open from the side you are on", meaning you have to pull to get through to the other side. Just "just keep on pushing hard boy try as you may, your gonna wind up where you started from", so, you can push as hard as you can on the door that you must pull, and you will get no where, take a moment to stop and think, then pull the door and you are well on your way.
When thinking about this song it is not hard to see why it is Yusuf's favorite song, however when he had reached his final destination he chose Islam, but hey 'you can do what you want, the opportunity's on' ;)

I'm sure there is someone who knows more than me on this song so let me know what you guys think :)

I totally agree with you that this is a very powerful song, and I love your thoughts about the "push/pull" lyrics. What a great analogy, I never realized it! ::) Great job, and glad to have you on board!! Welcome! :)

[Kevin Duignan]

OK here goes, hope you all enjoy this and learn from it. There is background to the song and the album it is from that one has to be aware of to truly understand it. Sitting is the first song from the Cat Steven’s Buddhist concept album “Catch Bull at Four.” Catching the bull is the fourth stage of the ten Bull stages of Zen. If you “google” 10 Bulls of Zen you will see that there was an art work allegory about an ox herder losing his bull made in the 11th century by a Zen monk. The allegory shows the ten Zen stages of personal growth and discovery one experiences on their journey towards self-awareness. The Bull represents the truth and the ox herder represents the self. There are ten stages (10 songs on the album), each stage represented by one image. Steven’s loosely based one song on each stage. The song “Sitting” is about the first stage or image: the ox herder who has lost his bull. This is shown by the ox herder with his eyes looking in one direction and his feet going in the other direction. (The self has lost his sense of truth in the world.) This is the sign of being a fractured, divided being who is looking for the truth but unsuccessful because he is journeying in one direction while looking in the other. If you ever listen to the interviews with Stevens, he makes this clear: that his life was so splintered and spiritually unfulfilled. In “Sitting”, Stevens identifies with the ox herder starting off on his spiritual journey. The song is filled with Buddhist concepts and images.
First he recognizes, like all Zen aspirants, that he is on a journey, an inward journey meditating. So this type of journey is “ not so far away.” It is not a literal journey. He feels some sense of empowerment (perhaps Samson like) while he is temporarily meditating. If you ever seriously participate and engage in meditation you will experience this sense of empowerment; this sense that you are regaining control of your thoughts and subsequently your life. Now to understand the rest you must understand that the single most important aspect of Buddhism is to live in the here and now. Buddhism is not a religion; it is a mental state of existence where the mind attempts to reside in the here and now. To reach that understanding one has to jettison thoughts of the past and of the future which often cause you anxiety and stress, leading to a splintered, fractured sense of existence. Meditation can give you that anxiety and stress free world for a while. “Sitting on my own not by myself, Everybody’s here with me” is a meditation sitting. He may be in a Buddhist temple where you sit individually but are at one with everyone else in attendance. Now if you ever go into a Buddhist temple you will see some people meditating, others looking at the Buddha statue and still others walking by in a hurry and touching the face of the Buddha. Meditation is difficult and hard and requires much discipline, so some aspirants look for the fast track. Thus, using your eyes to see or touching the face of the Buddha is considered by some as a false, self-deluding path to obtaining self-realization. You can’t see or touch self-realization; you must feel this experience and meditating is the direct path to this feeling. “All I know is all I feel right now…” . Also, touching the faces or looking at them could be viewed as a form of God or idol worship. Buddha was not a God.
The next paragraph is about sleeping. The word “Buddha” means “awakened”; so Buddha is actually the opposite of sleeping. Buddhism teaches that we have a tendency of living our daily lives without thinking, being unaware or almost asleep. That is how we get absorbed by the physical world; we lose our true purpose of life and move into frustrating, fractured, troubled and unfulfilled lives. “Will I wake up the same or something” is about the fear one has of changing, or understanding or being “awakened” in the world. The fear of reaching Buddhahood is real because one has to change their life radically. So essentially the ox herder starts out well, believing he is on his way to some sort of change, but apprehension and self-doubt have set in. This is emphasized by the lyrics "or so...or something... These are used to show this feeling of confusion and doubt. The next two paragraphs in the song are about how his mind starts to wonder from the here and now. First he wonders into his past and he thinks about his corrupt life and living among bad company. Then he wonders into the future and commits what is considered a real mistake in Buddhism: he thinks about his death and life after death. Buddhism teaches that it doesn’t make sense to worry in this life about how you live in the next life. First, you don’t even know if there is going to be an afterlife. Secondly, worrying about the afterlife only leads to unnecessary fear and anxiety, preventing you from existing happily in the here and now. By the way, thanking the moon is a Buddhist concept; here Steven’s jumps ahead to the seventh bull stage, The Bull Transcended. If you view this image you will see the herder resting by his shed, with the full moon in the sky representing full illumination. This leads us to the sixth paragraph about the boat and the waterside.
Buddha taught that life was a journey and sometimes in this journey you come to water and you will require a boat to cross the water. He compared his teachings to being a boat. That they were designed in helping you cross the water in your life. Now when you get to dry land, and you don’t require the boat, you leave it behind. You don’t get up out of the water and strap the boat on yourself as you resume your dry land journey. That would be too cumbersome. Essentially the boat is dogma. It is useful for certain times in your life but you don’t carry it around with you all the time because it can weigh you down in life and prevent you from being in the here and now. In “Sitting” the ox herder is worried about the future again and wondering whether he will find and understand the teachings he requires if he ever gets to a water stage in his life.
And this takes us to the final paragraph: Samsara. Life being a maze of doors all opening from the side you are on and pushing doors meant to be pulled. This is the cycle of birth, life and death. Stuck in neutral because you are on a journey but not going anywhere because you are pushing when you should be pulling. Samsara is different in the various Eastern religions. The Sikhs, Jainists and Hindus all believe in the soul and the re-incarnation of the soul. Buddhist don’t believe in either. ( This may explain why Stevens left his Buddhist journeying and returned to an Abrahamic religion.)Samsara for them is the various cycles of birth, life, and death that one experiences in their life. That one’s thought pattern can take them through unfulfilled cycles of life resulting in frustration and nonfulfillment. That Nirvana, reaching the here and now, breaks this pattern of samsara. The song ends with the ox herder crying out as though he is tormented from the frustration of trying so hard but not journeying anywhere. This is an important lesson, because just realizing the fact that one is in samsara, stuck in neutral, is a start of a journey towards realization. The rest of the album, the next nine songs are the bull stages that represent the steps to this realization. The fifth bull stage is when you can tame the bull. The song that corresponds with this stage is “Can’t keep it in.” Song six corresponds with the stage when the ox herder rides the bull, “well I rode awhile for a mile or so…” And making it just in time is enjoying the time riding the bull before it transcends itself. Song seven is the bull transcending itself and this is compared to being abducted by an alien. Song eight “O Caritas” is both the bull and self transcending.
The last aspect of this song I like to comment on is the use of vocal tone by Stevens to present the image of frustration. The chorus “Oh I’m on my way I know I am” is used three times in this song. At first it has an uplifting, almost pleasant tone. The second time the tone gets more serious and by the third time he is almost shouting it out in anger. This is because the chorus is being used as a power mantra. A power mantra is used by meditators to keep themselves focused on the here and now. As I have described above, the ox herder is having difficulty maintaining the here and now because his mind wonders from the past to the future. The changes in vocal tone convey this frustration and reveal just how difficult meditating can be.
KevinDuignanon January 25, 2017