Jundo
02-03-2022, 02:47 AM
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Following on my last post, Shikantaza Symphony ...
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?19420-Shikantaza-Symphony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shikantaza as Symphony reveals another truth to embody: We are the musicians, composers, the instruments, the music and sound, the spectators too, the entire grand theatre, the Whole Great Work!
We are spectators to this performance, among its audience, because we are witnessing this life with all our senses. Suddenly, mysteriously, we find ourselves born into this life, and now we are experiencing the live performance.
But we are also the musicians being witnessed, the performers, both sound maker and sound hearer, an active musician among an ensemble of countless musicians. All together, we are creating this sound by our will and actions, whether harmonious or disharmonious, beautiful or ugly, happy or sad, light or dark, by what we play. Individually, we are not the only musician in this world orchestra, for all the other musicians are playing too and, sadly, can each add ugly and violent tones, unskillful notes, to the total composition despite our peaceful and lovely little bits.
Still, our roll is to play as skillfully as we can, making as peaceful and lovely music as we can. Perhaps we cannot control the others, but we can bring some beauty and calm to those who hear our small sound ...
For we are composers too, interpreters and inventors. The part we are handed is half written, half unwritten, and while we are not totally free to play all as we might choose, yet we are free to play and improvise much as we choose. Oh, we are born on this stage with some set circumstances and restrictions, and are handed a stage setting of how life is, the bodily instrument that we are given even if with broken strings and hard to keep in tune. With this inheritance, we must somehow blend in with all the other composer-musicians all around.
Yet, within those confines, we are free to create the lively music we wish, choosing the notes and beats we wish, the directions we will musically head. A gifted master musican can even bring harmony and wholeness out of a bent horn or a tangle of broken strings.
If only all of us, each horn and violin, cello and drum, would play with goodness and peace, this work, this world we live in, would be so much more lovely and peaceful than it sometimes is.
We are also the instruments, the lights, the stage and theatre, the seats ... all of it. One cannot have a musician without a musical instrument and music to play. In turn, a musical instrument and notes on paper are meaningless without a musician to bring them to life. And without someone to hear the music, to spectate the spectacle, the sound is never heard ... just empty vibrations fading away. Furthermore, all need a place to sit, to be, to move, and light and air, and space ... the theatre, both indoors and out. Even the stars and sky, ocean and mountains allow this theatre to be, and -are- the Theatre in widest meaning.
In fact, what we Zen folks discover is that theatre and seats, lights and violins, horns and hearers, musicians and music, the stars and ocean, you and me ... are all the Great Symphony. This "Symphony" is not a "thing," mind you ... it cannot be nailed down, even as notes on paper ... for it is a changing process, no pin to stick in it, no jar to keep it in, no shelf wide enough to hold it, not even a recording can fully contain but a fraction of it ...
... and yet, although empty of solid form, it is alive, amazing to behold, this wondrous performance ongoing ...
With training, we can learn to hear the sweeping Harmony and Beauty which somehow vibrates through even the ugly and bent notes of this world.
And when the time comes, and we are to leave the stage and our personal seat at death, as mysteriously as we first appeared, we truly go no where ...
... for the music is us, and we have been the music all along.
So long as the symphony has been playing and continues playing, we have been this music, never enter the stage nor depart ...
Gassho, J
STLah
Sorry to run long
https://youtu.be/JDGBygPU8Hk
Akira Ifukube (伊福部 昭, Ifukube Akira, 31 May 1914 – 8 February 2006) was a Japanese classical and film music composer, best known for his works on the Godzilla franchise. ... [He used] his 1953 music for the ballet Shaka, about how the young Siddhartha Gautama eventually became the Buddha, for Kenji Misumi's 1961 film Buddha. Then in 1988 he reworked the film music to create his three-movement symphonic ode Gotama the Buddha.
Following on my last post, Shikantaza Symphony ...
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?19420-Shikantaza-Symphony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shikantaza as Symphony reveals another truth to embody: We are the musicians, composers, the instruments, the music and sound, the spectators too, the entire grand theatre, the Whole Great Work!
We are spectators to this performance, among its audience, because we are witnessing this life with all our senses. Suddenly, mysteriously, we find ourselves born into this life, and now we are experiencing the live performance.
But we are also the musicians being witnessed, the performers, both sound maker and sound hearer, an active musician among an ensemble of countless musicians. All together, we are creating this sound by our will and actions, whether harmonious or disharmonious, beautiful or ugly, happy or sad, light or dark, by what we play. Individually, we are not the only musician in this world orchestra, for all the other musicians are playing too and, sadly, can each add ugly and violent tones, unskillful notes, to the total composition despite our peaceful and lovely little bits.
Still, our roll is to play as skillfully as we can, making as peaceful and lovely music as we can. Perhaps we cannot control the others, but we can bring some beauty and calm to those who hear our small sound ...
For we are composers too, interpreters and inventors. The part we are handed is half written, half unwritten, and while we are not totally free to play all as we might choose, yet we are free to play and improvise much as we choose. Oh, we are born on this stage with some set circumstances and restrictions, and are handed a stage setting of how life is, the bodily instrument that we are given even if with broken strings and hard to keep in tune. With this inheritance, we must somehow blend in with all the other composer-musicians all around.
Yet, within those confines, we are free to create the lively music we wish, choosing the notes and beats we wish, the directions we will musically head. A gifted master musican can even bring harmony and wholeness out of a bent horn or a tangle of broken strings.
If only all of us, each horn and violin, cello and drum, would play with goodness and peace, this work, this world we live in, would be so much more lovely and peaceful than it sometimes is.
We are also the instruments, the lights, the stage and theatre, the seats ... all of it. One cannot have a musician without a musical instrument and music to play. In turn, a musical instrument and notes on paper are meaningless without a musician to bring them to life. And without someone to hear the music, to spectate the spectacle, the sound is never heard ... just empty vibrations fading away. Furthermore, all need a place to sit, to be, to move, and light and air, and space ... the theatre, both indoors and out. Even the stars and sky, ocean and mountains allow this theatre to be, and -are- the Theatre in widest meaning.
In fact, what we Zen folks discover is that theatre and seats, lights and violins, horns and hearers, musicians and music, the stars and ocean, you and me ... are all the Great Symphony. This "Symphony" is not a "thing," mind you ... it cannot be nailed down, even as notes on paper ... for it is a changing process, no pin to stick in it, no jar to keep it in, no shelf wide enough to hold it, not even a recording can fully contain but a fraction of it ...
... and yet, although empty of solid form, it is alive, amazing to behold, this wondrous performance ongoing ...
With training, we can learn to hear the sweeping Harmony and Beauty which somehow vibrates through even the ugly and bent notes of this world.
And when the time comes, and we are to leave the stage and our personal seat at death, as mysteriously as we first appeared, we truly go no where ...
... for the music is us, and we have been the music all along.
So long as the symphony has been playing and continues playing, we have been this music, never enter the stage nor depart ...
Gassho, J
STLah
Sorry to run long
https://youtu.be/JDGBygPU8Hk
Akira Ifukube (伊福部 昭, Ifukube Akira, 31 May 1914 – 8 February 2006) was a Japanese classical and film music composer, best known for his works on the Godzilla franchise. ... [He used] his 1953 music for the ballet Shaka, about how the young Siddhartha Gautama eventually became the Buddha, for Kenji Misumi's 1961 film Buddha. Then in 1988 he reworked the film music to create his three-movement symphonic ode Gotama the Buddha.