We all know the line. It may be his most famous line after all the various ones pulled from the lyrics of Imagine; John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” It has become so common it risks sliding into the pile of fortune-cookie wisdom. But if you stop and sit with it, the words point to something deeper, something the Zen masters have been saying for centuries.
In Zen, attachment to the future is just another way of being asleep. We construct plans, chase after imagined outcomes, and in doing so forget that the only thing that is ever real is this moment. The next breath. The bird outside the window. The hum of the refrigerator. Everything else — the schemes and schedules, even our long-term dreams — is just thought. And that ultimately is just static in our head — nothing more than chemically induced fever dreams of our monkey mind — and no more real than Superman or an ethical US president.
Now let’s be careful: Lennon’s line doesn’t denounce planning outright. After all, life needs a bit of order. Zen monks keep strict schedules; farmers have to plant in spring. University students who smoke too much weed and dabble in Zen ideas make the excuse that no future means there is no need for schedule. Plans are not bad and are in fact necessary, but the danger lies in being swallowed by plans, in thinking of life as something that will happen later, after we “get there.” There is no getting there. If we take that approach, we will be sorely disappointed.
Alan Watts covered that best in this talk:
Zen would say: there is no “there.” The only place is here. The only time is now.
The Zen Echo
Lennon, whether he knew it or not, struck the same chord as classic Zen teachings:
- The famous saying “chop wood, carry water” reminds us that enlightenment is not elsewhere: it is found in the ordinary.
- Dōgen wrote that to study the self is to forget the self. When you forget the self, you forget the planner and rediscover the immediacy of life.
- Bashō advised: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.” That is, don’t copy the plan — live the seeking, the now.
Plans as Illusions
Think of how plans tend to fall apart. You imagine the perfect vacation, but it rains. A little ironic, dontcha think? Yeah yeah — bear with me. You plan the ideal career, but life’s twists send you another way. In Zen terms, this is the universe gently laughing, reminding you that the map is not the territory. God is laughing at you, but not cruelly: it is a laugh that invites you to join in as soon as you realize how silly mistaking the blueprint for the house can be. The plan is not the living.
We suffer when we cling too tightly to the imagined. Yet when we allow the interruption, the detour, the so-called failure, we find that this too is life. The moment we didn’t schedule becomes the one that matters.
A Lennon Koan
So maybe Lennon gave us a koan disguised as pop lyric:
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
It’s a paradox you can sit with. Do we stop planning entirely? No. But do we remember that the plan is only a ghost, and life itself — the one thing we cannot plan — is here, always. (Or as Jeff Goldblum once put it: life, uh, finds a way.)
Closing Thought
The line may be over-quoted, but that’s only because it points to something true. Life is not waiting in the distance. It’s happening now, as you read these words, as I type them, as Lennon once sang them.
Everything else is just other plans.
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. |