TIBET

Hubert von Goisern and Peter Riedl in conversation

Hubert von Goisern, as the musician and composer Hubert Achleitner calls himself after his hometown, is frequently called the "founder of alpine rock". Since the big success that the song Hiatamadl from Aufgeigen stått niederschießen found in 1992 in the whole German-speaking area, his combination of traditional folk music with modern means of expression has been widely known. As film composer he created the music for Schlafes Bruder. Inspired by conversations with the gorilla research scientist Jane Goodall in 1994, he travelled to Africa and won impressions, which precipitated into the titles of the CD Gombe. The production Inexil bears witness to the interest in the culture of the Tibetans, for whom Hubert von Goisern engaged himself in humanitarian matters. The musician from the mountains and U&W editor Peter Riedl recently met for a conversation about music, spirituality, religion, Tibet and the way of the search.

Peter Riedl: You come from the mountains. Does that play a role in your love for Tibet?

Hubert von Goisern: Certainly. The origin of the interest was the fact that I'm always interested in where there are mountains. On the map, it draws someone who has grown up in the mountains to these these dark brown spots. I was then in Asia for the first time in winter 82/83 and hiked for two months in the Himalaya.

Do people from the mountains have something in common?

I think so. But perhaps I only imagine that because I recognise things that I know from my environment. I don't want to assert that it is so, but I feel it is that way. The hardness that life in the mountains demands from someone, this bleakness, shapes the people. There, where things simply fall from the tree and one lives without great effort, the people are just different, perhaps less careful with their resources, not just with the food resources, but any resources, the people in the mountains are less laid back about that.

You really come from the mountains?

I come from Goisern, from the Salzkammergut, but not from an agricultural milieu, but from a working family. My father built a house himself, in which I grew up: ten metres beneath the forest and after 100 metres, it goes into the mountains.

Many people ask themselves, how somebody from a rural area in Austria comes to concern himself with Buddhism or Tibet? On the one hand it's modern, but despite everything there is often more than fashion behind it.

At some point, what the homeland offered was no longer enough for me. For example, what was played musically at home was not enough. Then over the radio comes rock or pop music, which corresponded more to my attitude towards life than folk music. It was like that with religion too. I grew up in the Catholic church, I didn't feel at home there with my spiritual requirements any more.

Did you consciously take yourself on the spiritual search at a specific point?

The question as to the meaning of life came up when I was 16 or 17 years old. I looked everywhere, tried to classify things, learn to understand, whether it was work or school. Why should I learn, why should I work? Just to fulfil a planned target set by somebody? Then the artistic careers and religion interested me. My parents only went to weddings and didn't give me the idea that one has to go to church. I was just interested in it. What are they like, what happens inside? Is there something there that you can feel? Or does everyone go out of pure tradition? Then I simply learned to go into a church when there was no mass, to feel this atmosphere, this silence. Then I started to question the prayers. Something in me bristled against praying an Our Father, praying to a masculine God. Because I just think that God can't have a gender and then I cannot pray to the Father in Heaven.

Is there a God? And if he isn't masculine, can he be neutral or feminine?

That is this unanswerable question, because it is a feeling that I know that from exactly what I have heard and read. Perhaps it is simply just a concept that makes things more bearable. But I feel taken care of and secure in this concept or in God.

Is there a spiritual homeland to which you feel you belong today?

No, I deeply regret that, I miss that. I blame the Catholic church, that was my homeland, for the fact that they don't offer me that any more.

What can the church do about it?

Well. I can deal with it, but I see it in our society, that the church is not fulfilling its function. I think that society needs a moral authority and that used to be the church, but most people, quite rightly, don't accept it any more. The last religious service I enjoyed was a Latin service in the Augustinerkirche with Father Gottfried in the eighties. I have no problem at all with the Latin prayers, because the immediate meaning isn't so clear. I know that Pater Noster also means Our Father. But it's simply mystified through the Latin.

Mysticism is missing for you in the church?

Yes, the ritual is missing. There's no more spiritual ritual for me. I can't get on with Buddhism that way either. I just liked that, so you go into the Augustinerkirche and there's a ritual taking place, with the help of which I enter this transcendence. It's much more difficult alone, it happens, but it is much, much more difficult!

What do you mean by transcendence?

Simply transcending these superficial thoughts and worries, these worldly things, to come into this feeling of being connected to everything.

Have you ever practised in a specific spiritual method?

A long time ago Ken Wilber was very important and constructive for me. I put together my own programme according to his Wege zum Selbst and other books. I recorded cassettes with music and texts, so that the practice wouldn't develop a momentum of its own. Otherwise it could be that I sit and think about something else for ten minutes without noticing. I have now left everything behind me, I don't have a programme any more. I simply sit down now and again and try to draw my attention to breathing. And then I just try to keep this feeling of disengagement as long as possible and to let it come into my handling and treatment of other people.

Do you have visions?

Yes (very decidedly). Personal visions about what I want to achieve, where I want to go, people, whom I would like to meet, situations I'd like to experience. It is often the case, when I experience something, that I remember inside that there was a vision.

Is music a means to deeper concentration or consciousness?

For me, music is a means of being happy. Music has a very cleansing effect, singing above all. Music simply provides an access to levels for me, where I otherwise only manage with great difficulty.

Have you ever made spiritual music?

My approaching to making music is a strongly spiritual one. Music is something holy for me. I can't bring myself to say that I do that now because I earn money with it or can win fame with it.

That doesn't have to exclude holiness.

I don't know how to explain it. Music is so important to me, that I can't stand it when I go into a shop and hear incidental music. Because I think you're just giving something away. You dull your ears by using them any old way. I can't imagine making something that I'm not 100% convinced by.

Is music holier than other things for you?

No, for me it is something that I inherited. I have an approach via music, which I don't really have via skiing, for example, although I like doing that too. Walking along across the mountains in deep snow and then swinging through the powder snow. Or making a dollhouse for my daughter in the workshop, that's fun too. But I don't come so easily into this all embracing feeling that music gives me.

You've now expressed music almost like a sexual union.

Yes, but sexuality generally takes place between two partners, while at a concert there are 2000, 10000 or more people, who are all concentrating on the music. The eye may wander, but the ears are all tuned in. That's what fascinated me at the masses in the Augustinerkirche: 2500 people doing the same thing every Sunday. Something quite fantastical develops. I don't like mass things, but nevertheless they fascinate me. I went specially when the Pope was in Salzburg. Although I had left the church, I wanted to experience it. 15,000 people in the Domplatz, but really it was nothing. One time a feeling arose, when they sang Heilig, heilig by Schubert. Then everyone was really together. But the figure of the Pope was not strong enough to focus things so that it could have tuned in on the one point.

In the old cultures, the village communities could still experience that at the communal celebrations. Today people perhaps only come into this feeling of unity at rock concerts, but unconsciously, they have no idea how they do it, in drug experiences and with sexuality. All other things have largely been lost in the western societies.

Did you have an experience of unity in Tibet or at Buddhist rituals?

No, I didn't attend any great festivities. The Chinese don't allow them any more. My engagement for Tibet is primarily a social one. As far as the spiritual dimension is concerned, I must honestly say that it hasn't done Tibetan Buddhism any harm going into the diaspora. It has enriched the western world, while hurting the people, the culture. I have had a big problem with these exiled Tibetan oscillations for some time.

In what way?

I have to strike out more. Since the people emigrated in 1958/1959, two generations have already been born, who have never seen Tibet. But for a few old people, folk here must safeguard a tradition that they never experienced themselves. I deliberately say "must" . The pressure of their own community is great. They were born and grew up in India, already have children in India, who are essentially closer to European and American culture than Tibetan. A big problem is that they were professional paupers. They have never learned to have to provide for their own lives.

Do you mean the monks?

Not just the monks, the whole commune! They are still given a lot of money. They need not to live, work and think that it is necessary because they will be maintained. They are bluntened that way. They are dependent and they see it as natural that they will be helped, that a different rule applies to them because they were driven out. And I have difficulties with that. In addition - and these are things that one almost cannot talk about - there's the fact that they are still at home in very feudal structures, although they've been gone a long time and have never seen their country. You are therefore not allowed to talk about it at all, because you are immediately considered to be pro-Chinese and anti-Tibetan. That's the problem.

Are you pro-Chinese?

Not at all.

Then you can talk about it!

But it is a problem. I was pleased when I heard that this critical book from the Trimondis had come out (editor's note: The Shadow of the Dalai Lama by Victor and Victoria Trimondi). I was invited to a television debate about it and thought, finally there will be a critical discussion. Then I saw the book and thought, I don't believe it! They're crazy! It's the same with Haider (editor's note: head of the Austrian Freedom Party). But then that leads to criticism being suppressed too, where it would be appropriate. Just out of the concern of having demands made by such people.

That's the difficult thing in differentiated approaches: they are very often misunderstood and have demands placed upon them.

I see that too. As far as I can judge, the Dalai Lama is one of the few people who also lives this differentiation. He is full of integrity. He is not someone who is above criticism. I have experienced him in that you can talk to him about everything. And he considers these things critically. But many in the next squad down don't play along any more. I've met him three times, have had a private audience with him and went around with him the whole day in Bad Ischl. But I couldn't say that I really know him. The man has an unbelievable charisma and energy. It's almost unbearable. It goes in like a drug. It's something that he has realised through his years of practising. Something happened. He is not like the others.

You have spoken previously of your spiritual search. You were interested in the church, you looked at Buddhism, but nevertheless you don't feel at home anywhere. Where does that come from?

I fear, or perhaps hope, that the time of religions is over for me. There will be no new religion that catches people like me and allows something newly collaborative to develop. Tibetan Buddhism is also a very folkloristic affair, just like our Catholic processions. I think it's nice and go with my children to the blessing of the palms or Corpus Christi Procession on the lake, because it is simply beautiful, like an inspired procession. So Tibetan Buddhism has its eligibility as folklore, simply as a culture.

Do people accompany you, are there spiritual friends?

Yes, in the broadest sense, people who live a similar spirituality to mine, without an affiliation. It's difficult. For example in music you can't just say, we'll make music, but rather you take a structure, inside which you build things. I can take any, but even in free jazz, there are things you hold to. The pure principle of chance is too little for me, too absentminded and too out there. I'm too human still, I have a body and my boundaries with that.

Do you aspire to something like enlightenment?

I strived for that for years, I now find it to be totally presumptuous that I once imagined that I could actually achieve it. That I would not have despaired. I always thought that there is this moment and from there on you are enlightened. Now I think that I had a few moments and instances where I was enlightened. But they are not to be kept. And in this state, life isn't suddenly understood, it has little, perhaps nothing at all to do with it. Living actually requires non-enlightenment. So it seems to me. I don't need to drink a good red wine in the enlightened state, and I don't need any more music.

So you don't want to be enlightened because red wine and music are so important to you?

And sexuality!

Could it be that these enlightenment experiences are ultimately not the enlightenment, but rather the next super illusion, which leads to the next super disappointment? That is the trap: now I am enlightened.

I made music my career quite late. (In the background the Goiserer church bells ring). I began as a musician when I was 30, I had my success when I was 40. I meditated a lot before the seven years, alone every day, occupying myself with lots of spiritual things. At some point I thought to myself, "Hubert, stop it, don't think about these things." Because for me it was somehow a form of thinking, even though you try to transcend thought. "Never sit down, do, move yourself, because it's not sitting." And the moment I stopped meditating, it suddenly went "whoosh". When I left many and moral principles - all gone -, then I suddenly had success, it just happened. And that's one of the central problems for me, that this success was closely connected to that fact I was holding no more moral principles. And didn't meditate any more either!

That's really logical as far as I can see.

Why?

Previously everything was still in old limitations. Then something substantial fell away, this obligation: "I must go this way too, learn to meditate and be enlightened." Thus you reach the next platform. The problem is just: through this solution of throwing everything away, I am on a peaceful platform again. The next trap is to believe that it's over there. But it goes further. At some point, you have to continue on your way. It's then not so much about meditation. This goal is then reached. You can test it well in everyday life: am I suffering, am I angry, are there negative emotions? Am I really living 24 hours without showing myself something in an awareness - calmly, peaceably, compassionately? So if that is not the case, then things are already continuing.

I don't doubt that things will continue. So I'm not under the illusion of having reached the end. But I'm curious to see how things progress.

I am too.

The Tibet question and Chinese politics

The rock musician Hubert von Goisern undertook a journey of a very special kind on his CD Tibet INEXIL. In 1996 he packed up his rucksack and made his way to Lhasa, because the "strangeness, indeed inaccessibility" of Tibetan culture attracted him like the "unbelievable stories about the Chinese occupying force". "What I found exceeded anything I'd heard or read. The arbitrariness of the terror was unfortunately just as pervasive as the deep spirituality and the peaceableness that comes from that of the Tibetan people." His subsequent CD, "urgent need for solidarity with the oppressed", is a musical contest between different cultures.

Hubert von Goisern's heart has beaten for Tibet for a long time. Since he was there, he knows about the cruelty of the occupiers and the ignorance of the Westerners. "I come myself from mountain country, but Tibet already fascinated me since I was a child," says Hubert von Goisern in an interview with Lutz Maurer, that you can see this evening. The megastar of the Austrian travelled through the land in May with only one escort.

Tseten Zöchbauer travelled with him, a native Tibetan and organiser of many remarkable tours, that were to be seen in Austria a few months ago. Goisern had supported the Tibetans at that time through his presence. And his longing after the country became overwhelming.

The situation was awful: "Delight, ecstasy and tears lie so close together," says the musician. There was a occupying regime that "lied, cheated, tortured and murdered, and the Westerners do, as if nothing at all would be there."

The extensive nonviolent battle of the Tibetans against the Chinese gained "enormous respect" from Hubert von Goisern. But without the assistance from outside he was hopeless: "It is awful to see how they must suffer there." He may not want to generalise what happened in Tibet for all Chinese, but they are brutal there.

Also the Austrian delegation, that briefly travelled around China, failed miserably: they asked after the fate of the Panchen Lama, a six year old child that the Chinese arrested to question: "They said: 'It is better not to speak about that subject at all, we just want a dialogue.' Just what kind of dialogue is it, when we let all subjects be forced upon us?!"

"'Rain brings luck' says the Dalai Lama," said Hubert von Goisern as he was blown by the wind. Hallmania with with water, lights and a laser show were announced to the cultural heritage celebrations. But first the technical parts broke down, then the tarpaulins for the picture projection were carried away. Rain brings luck. Pitiful comfort for those thousands of admirers who wanted to celebrate the Goiserer's return to the stage with splendour and glory. How the time flies, Hubert then greeted you. Otherwise everything is new. The Tibetan dress and almost shoulder length hair. And instead of Alpine Sabine, Tibetan singer, Pasang Lhamo, from the Roof of the World is at the microphone. One of four artists from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in the north Indian Dharamsala, where many Tibetans fled before the Chinese sought to retain their culture.

Last autumn he sent to the sound studio in Salzburg: Opera singer, Sonam and his colleagues Jamjang and the two girls, Sherab and Pasang. Twelve songs took six weeks to record. From songs for "the youngest Tibetan prisoner" - Gedhun Chökyi Nyima and his family who have been detained at an unknown location in since 1995 - to cloud-pearls and eagles, the jewels of the sky. Or a song written by the 6th Dalai Lama in the 17th century. The songs are sung with gentle, bright voices that do not try to sing in a western style.

The Goiserer processed the raw material in order to manufacture "singular and unmistakable world music". Under the title Inexil he brought the first CD onto the market with BMG. It was finely co-ordinated with the attendance of the Dalai Lama in Ischl. With the start of the exhibition Fascination Tibet, Hubert von Goisern was saving cultural heritage like Francesca Habsburg. Jet strength of the subtler PR type for a music production, which should now "come among the people".

At the same time, Goisern was concerned with his African album Gombe. This culminated with the meeting with African research scientist, Jane Goodall, two journeys to Africa and the Land der Berge film with Lutz Maurer. "Sounds, which can perhaps pass the charm and the gameness of the paradises at Lake Tanganyika", hopes Hubert. Double result of his retreat four years before as a sensitive, intelligent unsettled spirit who no longer wanted to play the profit-orientated music industry. Nevertheless, everything is a little different. Hubert Achleitner experienced the arbitrariness of the terror in the meantime on his journeys to the Tibetans and the calm happiness of the Dalai Lama and the mutual gentleness of the musicians from the Roof of the World. They call themselves "white crows - because white crows are different from the flock". And Hubert von Goisern never flew with the flock.

Yodelling is the coolest language of music

Songs an einem Sommerabend, 1998

The Goiserer and Four White Crows