This Train Stays On The Track

I found Joe Bonamassa because I heard a few lines of a Beth Hart song on a now all but forgotten Google search. Though I've forgotten the object of the search, I'll not forget Joe and Beth.  If you look at this video you'll know why.

Yesterday I was poking around YouTube and found Joe and Eric Clapton on a video recorded at Prince Albert Hall.  I'm not including a link to that one (it's easy to find) because it will be at the heart of my next blog post, When You Matter.

So, how did I get from Beth to Joe to Eric to Buddha? That's easy.  I took This Train - another Joe Bonamassa song/video.  I'll put the link below.  As you listen to the song and watch the fantastic vintage train film clips, listen for the line, This train stays on the track.   That line was my link to Buddha, or to be more specific, The Dhammapada.

  If you aren't familiar with The Dhammapada, here's a note from the Dhammapada - The Sayings of the Buddha, rendered by Thomas Byrom, that describes the classic:

"The Dhammapada is a collection of the sayings of the Buddha (563 - 483 B.C.E.).  They were probably first gathered in northern India in the third century before Christ, and originally written down in Sri Lanka in the first century before Christ. Dhamma means law, justice, righteousness, discipline, truth; pada means path, step, foot, foundation.  The Dhammapada was transmitted and recorded in Pali, the canonical language of southern Buddhism, and it has become the principal scripture for Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

When Joe sang, This train stays on the track, my mind flashed to The Buddha's teaching:

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
           (Chapter 1 First passage)

Joe and Buddha are clearly on the same page.

Bert Carson