A couple of weeks ago, I found out that Duncan Sheik, an American singer-songwriter and composer who produced hits such as “Barely Breathing” and the Broadway musical Spring Awakening, died at 56 years old on September 17, 2026. When I first heard the news I was shocked and deeply saddened. He was a member of this grassroots Buddhist organization that I grew up practicing in called Soka Gakkai International (Soka Gakkai means “Value-Creating Society” in Japanese), and growing up, I remember a lot of the Generation X and Baby Boomers grew up listening to his music and knew that he was a Buddhist for many years and really loved practicing it.
When I was younger, the president of our organization, Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) published a book called The Way of Youth: Buddhist Common Sense for Handling Life’s Questions. The book includes a foreword by Duncan Sheik. I remember reading the book as a teenager and while I enjoyed reading the advice that Mr. Ikeda gave about navigating romantic relationships, school, work, family, friendships, finances and other areas of daily life, I did not know how much of an impact it would have on me as I got older. I did not date anyone when I was in middle or high school, and did not actually get into my first relationship until I was 22 years old. However, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are in high school and navigating a lot of anxiety around romantic relationships, college applications, schoolwork, and figuring out their purpose in life. To be honest, even though I am not in high school or my 20s anymore, I still love to read Daisaku Ikeda’s Discussions on Youth and The Victorious Teen. Even as young adults in our 30s, we can still feel anxious about our self-image, our bodies, dating or marriage, finances and, if you have aging parents, being a caregiver and navigating the process of grief if you have lost your parents. Even though these writings are geared towards teenagers, I think adults could benefit from reading these to navigate their own uncertainty or anxieties, because anxiety and uncertainty are universal human emotional experiences that anyone can experience at any age. The book was published in 2000 and in the foreword Duncan Sheik talks about how he started practicing Buddhism with the Soka Gakkai International at age 19 and how it helped him in his creative process as a singer and songwriter. Before practicing Buddhism, Duncan did not like singing in front of people because he was self-conscious and did not like hearing his own voice. But after chanting, he gained clarity around what goals he wanted to accomplish as an artist. He ended up being nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Vocal performance and going on tour all over the world.
He says in the foreword, too, that having a solid life philosophy is important because there are so many changes happening in society. In fact, the only constant is change, but as humans it can be hard to adapt to change. When he said that, I thought about Orlando Bloom, who is a famous British actor who starred in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. He is also a longtime ambassador to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and has done a lot of humanitarian work around the world. There is an interview where he talks about growing up Christian in England and how finding out about Buddhism helped change his life. Orlando Bloom started practicing Buddhism at age 16 when he heard his roommate chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He was studying for an art exam for school and heard the roommate chanting and asked him, out of curiosity, what he was doing because he had not heard the chant before. His roommate told him that he was chanting for Orlando to succeed on his art class exams and also have a successful life. He encouraged Orlando to try chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo himself, and as Orlando chanted, he noticed a deep inner change. He gained confidence in himself and ended up passing his art exams with flying colors (no pun intended) and getting the highest grade out of all his peers taking the art exams. He continued to chant and also participated in his local SGI meetings in the United Kingdom, and since then he has flourished in his career. He says though that beginning to practice Buddhism helped him transform his life on a much deeper level. Navigating success as a young actor can be challenging, especially when you deal with peer pressure and pressure from society and the film industry to fit into their often unrealistic standards. But Orlando says that even with all of the accolades in his career, and even with the setbacks and failures that are also part of that career, he does not let those things define him or sway his commitment to acting or even other aspects of his daily life.
There is a really excellent interview that Steven Sater, an American playwright, did with the USA branch of the Soka Gakkai International and he talks about how he encountered Buddhism and how it led him to creative opportunities beyond his imagination. He collaborated with Duncan Sheik on adapting a German play written in 1891 called The Awakening of the Spring by German writer Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) about young teenagers in a small town exploring their budding sexuality in an oppressive 19th century society that discourages them from doing so. Steven Sater adapted the play into a Broadway rock musical called Spring Awakening and Duncan Sheik composed the songs for the musical. The original production premiered on December 10, 2006 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City and won critical acclaim, including several Tony awards and a Grammy award for the original album. Had I been older back then, I would have totally seen it, because it is a musical that deals with very mature themes such as sex, consent, rape and abortion. I remember seeing the Parental Advisory: Explicit Content label on the CD cover and wondering why it was labeled as explicit. This past year I decided to listen to the original Broadway album of Spring Awakening and honestly, I cried. The music was so powerful and it spoke to a lot of anxieties that young people still experience today even with the advancement of technology and AI. When I first heard Lea Michele sing “Mama Who Bore Me” as well as the reprise by Lea, Lilli Cooper, Lauren Pritchard and the rest of the cast, I started crying because it was so raw and real and their voices conveyed the angst and frustration and sadness of living in a society where adolescents are discouraged and banned from asking questions about sex and where babies come from. By the end of the album, I was in tears, especially when Duncan Sheik performed the final song on the album called “There Once Was a Pirate.” I have been listening to it more now after Duncan’s passing and each time I listen to it, it hits me hard and continues to move me emotionally. I really hope that more high schools are giving their students a chance to re-enact Spring Awakening. I recently found a documentary (thanks to the Wikipedia page on Spring Awakening) about a group of theatre students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who navigate the aftermath of the 2018 mass shooting at their school, during which a 19-year old former student, Nikolas Cruz, went into the school and shot and killed seventeen students and staff and injured seventeen others. These students and their casting director stage a production of Spring Awakening in their local community while dealing with the traumatic aftermath of losing their classmates and faculty to gun violence. In the trailer for the documentary, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik are seen visiting the theatre students who are starring in the play and sharing encouraging words in the wake of the shooting. I did not know this, but Steven Sater wrote the musical for Spring Awakening in the wake of the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, and he wanted a way to speak to the young people who experienced this unthinkable painful trauma of living through a horrific massacre like Columbine and give voice to their feelings of hurt, pain, betrayal and anxiety. I was only five years old when my family heard of the shooting, but now as I get older, it feels like we still have a lot of work to do in addressing gun violence in schools because school shootings still keep taking the lives of students and staff even within the past few years, like the school shooting that happened on November 30, 2021 at Oxford High School in Michigan, when a 15 year old young man named Ethan Robert Crumbley shot and killed four students and injured several others. It was the day of my birthday and hearing about the shooting and the deaths of students and staff just broke my heart and also made me angry about how the U.S. still continues to not have stricter regulations on guns. While I got to live another year, the four youth who were murdered would never live again, and as a Buddhist who practices a philosophy that upholds respect for the dignity of life, it really saddened me that the parents of these students would never get to celebrate their children’s birthdays again or even just live normal lives. They would spend their lives remembering the horrific day they found out that a gunman took their teenagers’ lives.
I think showing a musical like Spring Awakening would help teens navigate a lot of complicated feelings and would provide them with a creative outlet so that they did not feel like they had to navigate a lot of angst and anxiety alone. With smartphones and social media, it can be hard for teens to communicate effectively and have opportunities to connect face-to-face with one another, but with the arts and theatre, teens have a healthy cathartic medium which lets them express these human emotional experiences that they struggle to navigate in a healthy constructive way. The human brain’s prefrontal cortex does not develop until one is 25, so young people struggle with making difficult decisions, and if the adults in their lives do not provide sex education that encourages kids to practice consent and respect for themselves and others, then young people feel silenced and like they have nowhere to turn to. While I have not seen the actual production of Spring Awakening, I read about it on Wikipedia so I could understand the story that Sheik and Sater were telling through the songs, and the young teens in the musical navigate heartbreak, love, sex, abortion, sexual orientation and a lack of purpose in life on their own because the adults in their lives prohibit them from exploring these issues or giving them a healthy way to handle these experiences that are typical human life experiences, not something to hide from children and teens. The musical (and 1891 play) show the consequences of not teaching children about sex and not answering the big questions about life and our existence on this planet. In this age of artificial intelligence and groups of parents advocating for the ban of books about LGBTQIA identity, race, sex and other topics considered controversial in society, it is important more than ever for young people to have access to accurate comprehensive education and information so that they can make decisions for themselves and learn how to advocate for themselves and speak out against propaganda or misinformation. I really hope that Steven Sater and his team get to turn Spring Awakening into a film adaptation. Even though the content of the musical would be considered taboo and controversial in society, many movies have navigated difficult topics such as abortion, teen pregnancy and sexual orientation before. Of course, many of those movies are Rated R, so unless someone is 17 or older, they would have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian to see it. But after seeing the movie Waves, for example, I was so moved and blown away. The film deals with difficult subject matter such as teen pregnancy and abortion, but the performances in it are powerful and I feel that older teens could benefit from seeing it.
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