Like all Bowie Songs there's plenty of room for interpretation, however mine is this :)
A young Tibetan Monk, being told to be a reincarnation of a deceased great teacher , revoltas against his teachers, thinking this makes him already wiser and smarter than they are.
So he runs away from his Monastery thinking he doesn't need to learn anything from them...
Yet that he turned his back to his teachers and to the spiritual being it will take him a long time till he will be able to be reincarnated in such a beautiful and peaceful place again, cause he decided to be a part of the materialistic world of pain and suffering again... This might take him a million years in a million different lives and this brings me literally to tears everytime I hear this song :(
This is also some sort of critic of that reincarantion-thing that the tibetan buddhism is teaching, cause this is a thing that can happen to anyone who is told that.Very very sad song and probably my all time favorite
Like all Bowie Songs there's plenty of room for interpretation, however mine is this :) A young Tibetan Monk, being told to be a reincarnation of a deceased great teacher , revoltas against his teachers, thinking this makes him already wiser and smarter than they are. So he runs away from his Monastery thinking he doesn't need to learn anything from them... Yet that he turned his back to his teachers and to the spiritual being it will take him a long time till he will be able to be reincarnated in such a beautiful and peaceful place again, cause he decided to be a part of the materialistic world of pain and suffering again... This might take him a million years in a million different lives and this brings me literally to tears everytime I hear this song :( This is also some sort of critic of that reincarantion-thing that the tibetan buddhism is teaching, cause this is a thing that can happen to anyone who is told that.Very very sad song and probably my all time favorite