Yoongi’s lyrics and their development – the cultural nuance of Burn It

every time I listen to Yoongi’s lyrics I find something new, but this interpretation of Burn It hit me out of the blue. I'm going to preface this with a huge disclaimer that this is simply my interpretation.

Burn It is the song that’s all about burning your past self, letting go of what no longer serves you and embracing life as it is by accepting what is left as the new ground to grow from, accepting yourself as a whole and the world around you as necessarily ephemeral.

we get the repetition of “burn it” and a progression of facing your shadows, the failures and burdens you carry with you, and the decision to burn them, giving them up decisively so you can blaze up like the sun.

but the practice of burning yourself, burning even parts of yourself, is actually one with immense historical and cultural nuance. which brings me, first, to the concept of self-immolation itself.

self-immolation, the practice of setting oneself on fire, is often talked about in the context of political protests, specifically the Vietnamese war, but there have since been cases of it all over the world. it is considered the final, most extreme form of protest.

however, there is a cultural and religious background to self-immolation which originates from Mahayana Buddhism, which Korean Buddhism is closely related to, and it also has an incredibly long history in Chinese Buddhism.

in the latter it became known under the terms of “losing the body” “forgetting the body” or “abandoning the body” and began to include gradual self-immolation of specific body parts as well. and within these it is a ritual performance.

ritualistically, it is meant to lead you to enlightenment – to abandon the aspects that tie you down to the world so that you can reach Buddhahood.

I am in no way meaning to insinuate that Yoongi meant his lyrics literally, but the relation seems obvious to me, especially in lyrics like “and everything was all wrong / so burn it till it’s all gone”

this isn’t just any form of burning, it’s burning completely under your control, decided and started by you, trusting that something will come out of it, be it revelation in a burning sun or ashes or both, “you of the past, you of the present /

whoever it is, bastard, light the fire / whether it would become a blazing sun / or the ashes left behind after being burnt – always, the choice and decision is yours to make ” the result of it is not simple burning up in flame, then vanishing.

it’s either blazing brightly, reaching a state in which the burning has removed your burdens and you are able to grow back into those hollow spaces, or it is burning up entirely into ash, risking everything in order to start everything anew.

a ritualistic practice, necessitating mental preparation and dedication to your decision, the endurance to guide it through entirely, to give up full-heartedly and bravely.

here is also the nuance I see between Strange with its “everything in dust” and Burn It with its “ashes left behind” – the dust which occurs from all human corruption and death is unable to bear fruit again, but the ashes are.

looking at the fertility of volcanic ash, at the concept of slash and burn agriculture wherein select areas of flora are burned down to create fertile farmland, ashes generate new life. Burn It in itself suggests perseverance, rebirth.

just as a phoenix rises from the ashes, after the brightest flame or the smallest one, so too we, in burning ourselves down, will come out having discovered a new self – whether it is completely or only partly ash.

the second concept I’d like to turn to is reflection – looking into a mirror or self-contemplation. Burn It gives us the line “there’s someone in the mirror that you don’t know” followed by countless instances of facing oneself, speaking to oneself.

even “the sound within me” is a reflection of the sound we are hearing, the voice speaking back, the shadow mocking and holding you hostage.

in the Madhyamika school of Buddhism, mirrors were used as a metaphor of the mind which becomes dirtied as a mirror collects dust, where the self cannot transfer to the mirror as the inner nature cannot transfer.

we are then looking always at a stranger, all its natures and our natures simply a mirage – “the weakness, hatred, loathing, and even rage - / them, too, are rather futile / perhaps, they are, yeah, just a mirage”

you develop, through the burdens you carry, into a stranger from the person you once were, into a state where the mirror is so distorted that your own image is unrecognisable.

reflection in Buddhism is also the beginning of purification, of letting go as seen in the instructions to Rahula and in the Zen sect, it is often encountered as a metaphor for the mind which requires polishing.

in those ways, a mirror is a teacher, there to show us weaknesses, negative qualities. to know what we want to burn away, to know that it is time to burn something away, a mirror is necessary, whether that means a literal mirror or prolonged self-reflection within yourself.

if we turn to Jungian psychology, a mirror makes one see themselves, the personas and shadows, all of the self. it is the main instrument that reflects the ego into the alter ego, dividing the human figure, and therefore the only way to achieve self-awareness.

there is a certain amount of power imbued in recognising that the person in the mirror is also not the self, to recognize the stranger. if we cannot, we end up losing ourselves like Narcissus.

something else I would like to draw attention to is the mirror in Korean mythology – the bronze mirror being one of the three objects composing the proof of descent in Dangun mythology.

the mirror therein is also symbolic of authority, as well as in religious ceremonies and was often worn around the neck to reflect the sunlight, literally illuminating the heart. illuminating the heart therein suggested going into the inner world.

integrating light and the darkness both, as well as advancing towards the gods by gaining enough courage to recognize and integrate the darkest aspects.

“I face you in the deepest place” and “there’s someone in the mirror that I don’t know” carry the same form of weight within this concept, but so does “let’s go back to the past days, to the times that destroyed me”

to reflect means to look at everything that no longer serves you and everything that does, to clean up the mirror and accept that you might not feel like the person in it, then choose (or not) to give up the parts of yourself which seem wrong.

lastly, I would like to turn to the concept of the beginner’s mind, also imbued with Buddhist significance. the beginner’s mind or shoshin refers to an attitude of openness, lack of preconceptions and originates from Zen Buddhism.

it is characterised well by the saying “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few”. but yoongi uses the phrase in a different context.

rather than a technique for success, the beginner’s mind is weaponized by his shadow self, using the emotions he had as a beginner “to pressure you to be passionate” therefore he warns “be careful of the word ‘beginner’s mindset’, don’t be afraid”

he takes the concept and expands it into something more dangerous because to him, as to many, to tell himself to become a beginner is to be vulnerable in that same way, sacrificing all of himself for success.

while burning everything up might be considered attempting to reach beginner’s mindset, it is rather letting go of it. the choice to burn is a result of experience, and there is an insinuation that your experience, your bank of ash, will stay with you.

even if you burn up fully, there will be something remaining, it will not be a completely new struggle of a beginning, rather a fresh start with existing foundation.

as always, these are solely my own interpretations! I’m open to any kind of feedback, discussion or criticism. the translations are from doolset bangtan. https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2020/05/22/burn-it-feat-max/

I used the following sources to inform my research:

Burning for the Buddha by James A Benn

Symbolism of Mirrors as the First Step of Individuation and Self-Awareness by Lee Yeo Reum

The Mirror as a Pan-Buddhist Metaphor-Simile by Alex Wayman

Relationship, The Great Mirror by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpochej