Devendra Banhart — Musician, Artist, Buddhist

TRICYCLE MAGAZINE
By Benjamin Bogin, Portraits by Celeste Sloman

Photograph by Celeste Sloman

"I feel like I’m wearing a mask made out of dead meat,” Devendra said, gesturing toward his face with outstretched fingers pulling down as if tugging at the mask with invisible strings. “Aren’t we all?” I asked. We were talking about the photoshoot Tricycle had arranged in New York, the previous stop on his tour, and I wondered if Devendra Banhart—musician, artist, poet, and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner—was echoing the sentiment of Milarepa’s famous line: “This thing we call a corpse, so fearful to behold, is already right here—our own body.” For Devendra the desire to practice arose from a growing recognition of the link between fixation on the self and unhappiness. [More]