Yes.
I don't try to hear it or force it, and just relax and listen.
If I may compare this to being at a classical music concert, saying to oneself "I really want to hear this music, I really want to hear this music." One will not really hear the music. But, when one truly relaxes, and just does not think or try much of anything, the music just washes through one ... and one might even become the sound, and the sound is just you.
Something like that.
My only quibble with some views of meditation is with the view 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 like 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 and wine
), 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 come home.
ALL of this is "enlightenment" to the wise ear in 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.
Something like that. I hope it makes sense.
Sorry to run long.
Gassho, Jundo
STLah