One Hand
Clapping:
The Taoe of Music
WholeArts and
The Psychic Internet is proud to present the
"Preface" and "Part One" of this
remarkable book by Daniel d'Quincy. "One Hand
Clapping: The Tao of Music," originally published by
WholeArts in 1991, is a book-length essay on the
performance of music from the perspective of Eastern
philosophy and religion. Mr. d'Quincy is a noted
composer, musician, author, inventor, educator, speaker,
and photographer. Please visit his unique music sites at WholeArts: syNThony, and the WholeArts Online Music Conservatory.
Page 19
Such a
transcendent element used to be conceived in terms of the
so-called soul. Here might be something that we could pin
our identity to, like the tail of the donkey (winning a
prize!). The idea of the soul represents an attempt to
integrate the spiritual with the merely physical aspects
of our existence. Thus, the soul is commonly thought of
as something that mysteriously inhabits the body. But no
one proposes to find it with scalpel and probe, and short
of that, we’re not at all inclined to believe that
it exists.
Of course, it is
easy to talk about the soul, and people do it as easily
today as ever they did. As a musician, you are
practically bound to assume that there is something
unique about every individual artistic soul –
something that is expressed through music and art. But
there is a fundamental difference between having direct
contact with something, and believing in it in principle
and without reference only to its artistic or religious
manifestations and productions. Belief is the most
problematical word in the English language. As it
happens, and unfortunately, even though people still talk
about the immortal and indestructible human soul, very
few people can actually bring themselves to believe in
it. And if they believe in it, the belief constitutes
more a moral position than a lived reality.
Considering our
particular interest in a direct perception of living
reality, we choose to place belief alongside our
similarly pre-excluded category of pure philosophical
abstraction - at least, that is, with respect to this
inquiry. For this reason alone, we may look toward the
East, where a unified spiritual and physical conception
of existence still animates the cultural life of people,
and where, moreover, belief is not a greatly
valued quantity in any case. In Zen (just to take one
particular religion of China and Japan as a typical
example) practically the whole method, in so far as it
involves interaction between masters and aspirants, is
taken up with the sport of punching holes in belief. Zen
is not concerned in any way with belief, and perhaps we
shan’t need it either in the course of this inquiry.
The goal of Zen, which is a certain kind of
self-knowledge, or enlightenment, emanates sans mediation
out of an immediate sense of things, akin to the
experience of “water as wet.” A direct
apperception is described in the Zen idea of spiritual
enlightenment. If we are to put forward something like
the artistic soul as the answer to “Who is asking
the question?”, then let us see if we can base it on
something other than belief – in the spirit, as it
were, of Zen.
At this point,
more must be said with regard to the idea of spiritual
enlightenment as it is experienced specifically in the
East, and where it is closely related with the practice
of meditation (almost as in cause and effect, but not
quite). Of course, we have meditation in the West, also
connected in practice with the idea of spiritual
enlightenment. However, it is fair to say that only in
the cultures of the East has meditation become central
and primary to the religious experience of enlightenment.
In this role, it answers to a more generalized eastern
emphasis on direct perception of living reality. In the
West, meditation is, like music and poetry, an aid to
religious exaltation. At best, it is a key to the pearly
gates. In the East, it is not just the key, but the gate,
and the gardened realm beyond. But in this most inclusive
sense of it, we must understand that we are referring
specifically to a very particular kind of meditation. (Next Page)
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