But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk.
When I present the Charlie Parker book, I do a call and response that works quite well. With the Thelonious Monk book, I play the music and work with kids in a group to create a color wheel and show how the wheel can be mapped on a 12-tone chromatic scale.
My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.
So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.
Monk's music is often defined as enigmatic, eccentric and humorous - as if it had little to do with the pain he may have endured to create his art. But I believe Monk routinely shared his history with his audience, no matter how unpalatable that history was, and it is for that very reason that his music connects with people around the globe.
A habit does not a monk make.
I'm like the Shaolin monk, the counselor in the clubhouse.
I left Chicago many years ago to move to California. You can't help but live a healthy lifestyle here if you want to fit in. I find myself eating chicken and salad and chicken and salad and salad and chicken, like a monk.
My capacity as a monk was to passionately believe utter nonsense, and when you're an actor you have to do the same thing. Also, Christianity used to have a lot to do with self-loathing and an acceptance of criticism and things like that which is terribly important for actors.
Compared to what comics say today, I'm a monk, but in those days, it was unheard of to make fun of people like I did. Of course, they exaggerated how outrageous I really was.
To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.
Jazz is very much a part of my life. I work with the Thelonious Monk Institute and do the artwork for their program every year.
I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.
In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity.
I should have been a Trappist monk.
I describe myself as a simple Buddhist monk. No more, no less.
