As Dylan turns 80, his an icon of honesty in a world hungry for success rather than truth resonates with the Buddha’s rejection of worldly values

Prompted by his eightieth birthday, which fell on Monday, I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan and pondering what keeps drawing me back to his music. For all the eloquence of the songs, it seems to me that I play Dylan when I want to hear an honest voice – the voice of someone struggling to be authentic. 

Through six decades as one of the world’s most famous people, Dylan has refused the roles other people wanted him to play – folk singer, prophet, rock star, and even, eventually, Nobel prize winner. I thought his failure to attend the prize-giving was disrespectful until I reflected that Dylan has rejected accolades all his life, and turned instead to the unpretentious, ‘real’ America he found in folk and country, blues and gospel. 

I’ll spare you a Buddhist interpretation of Bob Dylan, but his unworldliness resonates for me with the figure of the Buddha, who is also celebrated this week in the Buddhist festival marking his Enlightenment. I’m not thinking of golden images or elaborate legends. The human Gautama walked away from a life of privilege because he found it hollow. In one account he realises, as a young man, that the reason his companions keep themselves so furiously busy is that they’re in pain. Each one has a thorn stuck in their heart, but they can’t see it. He just wants to pull it out.

Gautama took up a wandering life, begging his food and dressing in rags. No money, no security, hungry for truth. Dylan is forever knocking on heaven’s door, but the Buddhist story tells us that Gautama passed through it and became buddha, the one who has woken up. 

In the following years, still living without money or possessions, he was determined to share his understanding of life, however baffling people might find it. The Buddhist teachings often come in concepts, but the Buddha himself was a poet and storyteller as much as a philosopher – a communicator seeking listeners who shared his hunger for the truth.

Inhabiting a culture that prizes ‘success’ above everything, my Buddhism asks me to live simply and honestly – to keep the path open, as Dylan says in a recent song, the path in my mind. I need inspiration and exemplars. That’s why I keep listening to Dylan and other truthful voices, secular and spiritual. I need their wisdom and their answers blowing in the wind.