The Alabama Sutta

Buddhist deep cuts & country songs

Wide open vistas of rust-red rock, sage brush and juniper flitted by my backseat window as the expedition of SUVs cruise along the interstate convoy-style, reminiscent of a motorcade of dignitaries. We were en route to Dark Canyon.

Photo by Rick Sanchez on Unsplash

The man riding shotgun served double duty as DJ and while I typically enjoy the novelty of savoring someone else's taste, I found it mostly unremarkable to my sonic palette with gently pleasing notes of nostalgia. However, these lyrics captured and retained my attention:

"I'm in a hurry to get things done

Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun

All I really gotta do is live and die

But I'm in a hurry and don't know why."

These lines are the chorus of Alabama’s 1992 country rock hit, "I'm In A Hurry (And Don't Know Why)".

As is the nature of earworms, these lines silently burrowed themselves into my echoic memory long after the song had ended like some unbidden mantra. It was not altogether unpleasant.

I was struck by an epiphany connecting the lyrics with the 9th and 10th fetters of Buddhism: restless and ignorance.

While I have mentioned the fetters in passing here and there (both contain additional resources for the curious), I will summarize for those unfamiliar.

The ten fetters are a model describing the psychological obstacles that we must overcome on our way to end suffering through spiritual awakening and liberation. These obstacles are illusions akin to psychology’s cognitive biases -- systematic ways in misperceiving ourselves, others and the world. Here is a list.

1. Self- view​

2. Doubt

3. Attachment to rites and rituals

4. Desire

5. Ill will

6. Lust for form

7. Lust for formlessness

8. The conceit of “I am” or “I exist”

9. Restlessness

10. Ignorance

How do we break free from them?

There are numerous methods: whether it's inquiry via dialogue with one free of the fetters, or self-inquiry through writing or meditative contemplation, it is looking for something until we confidently conclude that it isn't there. After breaking free of a given fetter, there is no possibility of going back. Examples like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus effectively illustrate this transition from belief to disbelief — as adults, we couldn’t believe again in either even if we wanted to.

It’s in the title and last line of the chorus -- "But I'm in a hurry and don't know why" -- that speaks to the deepest and final two fetters: restlessness and ignorance.

Ignorance of what, you may ask? I cannot say with any firsthand authority, though I suspect it is related to directly realizing the Three Marks of existence: dukkha, anicca, and anatta, alongside the Four Noble Truths (suffering, its origin, ending, and path). Not in some mere intellectual understanding as I write to you now, but in an undeniably existential way.

And not to give the song too much credit, while it succinctly relates at least two symptoms, it has nothing to say on the matter of solving it — it is merely descriptive rather than prescriptive.

While it is not an earth-shattering insight, I found it both remarkable and humorous that this mundane example of a 90's country song was salient enough to draw the connection with observations on the nature of mind at least 25 centuries old.

If nothing else, it speaks to the universal and perennial nature of beings and our fallibility.