VBT – Week’s Meditation 32
Music And Meditation
Silence is music of the inner world. So music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive. Without meditation, music is simply noise – harmonious, but noise.
In the East music has been always used as a support for meditation. It is difficult to fight with the mind, its constant rush of thoughts, but being absorbed in beautiful music all those thoughts disappear. Music is sound, but sound can be used in such a way that it creates silence; that is the whole art. Read on……
Music is a way towards meditation and the most beautiful way. Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence — what the Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind; there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart. Then you start, for the first time, hearing silence.
Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead, it is very much alive, it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence.
Music helps you from the outside to fall in tune with the inner. Music is a device; it was invented by the buddhas. All that is beautiful in the world, all that is valuable in the world has always been discovered by the buddhas. Only they can discover because they have traveled to the inner country, the inner, immeasurable universe. Whatsoever they have found in the inner world, whatsoever they have experienced in the inner world, they have tried to make something similar on the outside for those who can only understand that which is objective, who are not yet able to enter the interiority of their own being, who are not yet even aware that there is an inner world. Devices can be created on the outside, which can help.
Listening to great music you suddenly become silent – with no effort. Falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. You become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. You are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk.
And that is the whole secret of meditation. The paradox disappears – the paradox between drunkenness and awareness. And its first experience can happen in music more easily than in any other place, than in anything else. Music, dance… all these are devices, discovered by great awakened masters. They have fallen into the wrong hands.
To be a teacher of music is one thing – he can teach you the technique. Master can help you to listen to the inner music, and that is real music.
In China they have the saying: “When the musician becomes perfect he throws away his instruments” – because they are no more needed. He can close his eyes, he can turn himself inwards and he can listen to the music that is already there and always there. And when the archer becomes perfect he throws away his bow and his arrows; there is no need for them.
Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation – it HAS to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong.
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