This is based on something Tomas asked in another thread ...
In Shikantaza Zazen, we just experience the world, our thoughts, our feelings, all that is happening in life, as just what is.
It is much like hearing music without trying to force it, but rather, just relaxing and listening. When we do so, just hearing comes naturally,
If I may compare this to being at a classical music concert: One could sit there and repeat to oneself, "I really want to hear this music, I really want to hear this music." But if so, one will not really hear the music. Or one could focus on the breath in order to hear the music, but might instead only find silence and breath. Instead, when one truly relaxes, and just does not think or try much of anything, the music naturally washes through one ... and one might even become the sound, and the sound is just you. What is more, we learn to sit in radical equanimity and acceptance, not judging this performance by our desires, whether it suits our taste or not, pleasing or displeasing, and instead, simply let it be its own music that it is.
In fact, in this performance, one finds that the musicians, the theatre, the instruments and vibrations in the air, the audience and our very ears are not two ... all together is the real Buddha Symphony, and cannot be separated ... the world, life, me, you and everything else are this production ... a great Whole Work, Unbroken Creation ... fast and slow, happy and sad parts, both the lovely and harmonious as well as the unpleasant or cacophonous ... from the first note until the seeming finale ... even the silence before and after those, between and in the very heart of every note ...
Something like that.
My only quibble with some views of meditation is with the claim that "it is only real meditation, going well, when I am completely swept up in the music, forgetting myself." I don't think so. Such moments are precious, and not to be ignored ... they enrich us and are necessary to this Path. However, they are not the entire, wonderful "Concert Experience!" I include driving to the theatre, getting stuck in traffic on the way, buying popcorn in the lobby (Do that have that at classical concerts? If not, cheese :p ), sitting there sometimes lost in thought about other things yet the music and my thoughts blend together ... then remembering where I am, and coming back again and again to the performance. I even love when the show is over, the curtain comes down and it is time to head home.
ALL of this is "enlightenment" to the wise ear in Master Dogen's arrangement. It is not only the moments when we are swept up in, and become, the music.
What is more, on the way back into the world, when the orchestra has gone silent, the theatre is shut, and we are thrown again into the noise and clamor of the city or our messy lives, hopefully the beauty and harmony of the symphony is still in our bones. It is all LIFE'S SYMPHONY to the Buddha's Ear.
In truth, nothing is left out, from the universe's first sound billions of years ago, to the first beat of our own heart, to our final breath, to the world's last vibration someday ... and whatever more.
We are this Music, and this Music is who we and all things are.
Something like that.
Gassho, J
STLah
Sorry to run long ...
Quote:
Koichi Kishi (貴志 康一, Kishi Kōichi, March 31, 1909 – November 17, 1937) was a Japanese composer, conductor and violinst. He spent his childhood in Miyakojima, a district of Osaka. Following the example of his mother, he learned to play the violin. At the age of 18 he went to Europe to complete his training as a violinist at the Geneva Conservatory and the Berlin School of Music. He then studied composition with Paul Hindemith and conducting with Wilhelm Furtwängler. In 1934, at the age of 25, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic. As a composer, Kishi's composition includes orchestral works, stage works, chamber works, film scores and songs. In 1935, he went back to Japan. In 1937, the 28-year-old Koichi Kishi died of a heart condition in Japan.
