Yesterday a fife (penny whistle) and drum band gathered outside my hermitage, near the football supporters pub. I have no information about who they were. They looked like ‘Orange Men’. I have seen such bands in Glasgow and Norhern Ireland. They come from a kind of Protestant Christian culture which is associated with sectarianism, terrorism, violence. They turn up in my home town once a year. Why? I have no idea. It is probably something to do with nationalism and Far Right politics.
I happened to glance out the window and catch sight of a corpulent man in a sky-blue band uniform – he looked like Herman Georing (chubby, light blue uniform). The bandsman was hop-running down the street, the way out-of-condition people do when they have to break into more than a stroll, trying to catch up with his chums. A woman – I assumed it was his wife – a thin, frazzled-looking, primly-dressed lady, was running behind him trying to adjust his collar and band sash while they were running. It was a funny and touching scene.
They disappeared from my line of sight and a few minutes later the music began – a stirring sound. We don’t often get band music or street theatre where I live. I listened to the music marching off into the city centre. Then I settled on my cushion and went back to meditation.
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I try to sing for an hour or so each week because it is healthy exercise – good for body and soul. I say ‘try’ because I often forget. I forget then I rediscover music and think how good it is and tell myself I should have more music in my life but then the lure of meditation makes me neglect music until by chance I re-rediscover it again. And again I think, ‘Oh, this is good, I should do this more often…’ But meditation is more rewarding than music.
I thought I might try Buddhist chanting because I thought I might incorporate singing, chanting, vocalising into my daily religious routine and so keep in touch with music but I find vocalising too disruptive. I meditate and worship in silence or might make limited sounds such as very rarely clapping my hands, ringing a bell, saying the first words of a prayer aloud. Usually, I quickly return to silence or the state of ‘no sound’. It is odd. Some meditative states produce accute awareness. Other states have no sensory component at all – no sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and so on. When there is no self, there is no one to smell anything and nothing to smell. Music, incense, all the various sensory things, they are, on the one hand, beautiful and worthy to use in worship but, on the other hand, of no significance at all.
Today, I was trying to teach myself some Japanese Buddhist chants (Shōmyō). The only examples I have are for male voices. I find them a bit too low pitched although my voice is a low contralto in Western terms and quite deep for a woman. I like opera and when I sing an opera aria I usually sing the tenor part because it is easiest for me. I never even attempt the soprano. I tried a little chanting but stopped after an hour or so because I did not feel I was making much progress and my throat was tired. Outside there was a great crowd. They were football supporters and had arrived for a match. Every now and then a group would make deep hooting noises like a pack of howler monkeys or burst into a brief chant. I made a pot of tea, sat down to drink it, and listened. I found it poignant. All those voices joined in song: expressing love for their own team and hate for the other. I thought about yesterday’s pipe and drum band and its message of love and hate.
Later, after the kick-off, I listened to the crowd reacting in unison to the game. They sounded like the sea, sighing and roaring and clapping together, like the sea on a pebble beach. Every time I hear a football match it puts me in mind of Ancient Rome and the games: crowds must have made similar sounds watching gladiators fight to the death, watching Christians being fed to lions. It is a sound which fills me with dread, revulsion, and sorrow. It is strange to react that way. When I see birds in great flocks flying like one super-organism, wheeling, turning, swooping as if with one will, one being, I am charmed by the beauty. When I hear thousands of people melded into one super-organism, with one will, one emotional state, a spontaneous choir improvising a symphony of oohs and ahhs and ohhs, I find it very sad and very ugly. Why is it not beautiful to me? Because is seems so misdirected – all that devotion to something so unworthy of devotion, all that devotion which could be so easily turned to evil.
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Music, chanting is dualistic. It may intend to celebrate only love or to assert only a message of hate but it always expresses BOTH love and hate. Thus the football fans’ chants of love for their team express hate for others even without ever mentioning any others. And a Far Right marching band may have a political message of hate but the band members are human beings with families who love them and this ‘basic decency’ belies the politics. Can any music or chanting be non-dualistic? No, I don’t think so. The best we can hope for is a music or chanting which (1) exposes its own dualism (2) evokes dissatisfaction with dualism (3) points to unitary silence (4) having shown the door, supports and encourages the listener to step through the doorway into the other place.
Do I know of any music which does that? I have heard Gagaku (Imperial Court music of Japan) and Noh plays which had that effect for me. I have heard wind-chimes which had that effect for me. Something as simple as a deep note played on a stretched rubber-band or a coin thrown onto a hard surface, spinning, wobbling, falling down to a reverberating stillness or the sharp click on a ballpoint pen has had that effect for me. The sound of two hands clapping (chuckle) has that effect for me – clapping crisply, once, in an unfurnished room with good accustics has that effect for me.
Recommendations? Play a musical instrument but do not play music, play only individual notes. Gagaku sounds like that to Western ears – deconstructed, no melody, just a series of notes from different instruments, played sequentially, in the same room, but not in harmony or to produce a hummable tune. Pling! Pling! Bang! Tappity. Pling! Plong! Clop! Twang! Tappity. Bonk! To Western ears it sounds mad, ugly, crazy, not music at all. To my ears it sounds like dualistic music trying to open the door to unitary silence. I hear a note and its reverberations in a sea of other notes and their reverberations. I experience the cacophany, the dissatisfaction of duality. I sense a common quality, an underlying order to the reverberations, a ground which gives them being. I sense silence within the music. I enter the silence. I forget the music. You don’t have to go to Japan to listen to Gagaku. I find hitting a ceramic bowl with a wooden spoon produces a ringing tone which evokes the same effect for me. It might for you. But if hitting bowls with spoons feels silly and you get distracted by laughing at yourself, buy a real, serious, musical instrument and use it to produce a sequence of single reverberating tones. Listen intently, let the tones point beyond sound to silence. If you have a strong voice, sing single tones or chant single sounds and listen to the silence that is evoked. Don’t sing or play just the same note, vary the single notes, not to make a melody but to refresh your ability to hear beneath the surface to the silence (and to ease your body – singing or playing the same sound repetitively causes repetitive strain injury so vary note for your health’s sake).
Such music, such chanting, might support meditation. Such at least has been my experience. Other forms, such as melodic, pleasing music, is a distraction from deep meditation. Although I recognise the beauty and genius of such music, of e.g. Mozart or Gregorian chant or Shōmyō, I find it unhelpful and I forget to listen to it. Beautiful music or chanting can help hold a community together (e.g. a church, monastery, royal court, etc) but a hermit has no need for this ‘social glue’ so no need for such beautiful music or chanting. I prefer silence or the single tones which are the threshold to silence. Go to monasteries for impressive chanting. Go to hermits to learn to hit bowls with spoons (ha!)
P.S. I added a video about Gagaku – please see Music, Chanting, Silence #2
Blessing
I, Shi Pasang, bless my readers (and their music). May my readers bless me! Happy Vesak!
