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 20
Meditation itself
comes in many forms, East and West. For us, in this
inquiry, a Buddhist term will be of great service,
describing as it does the fundamental premise of all
meditation in whatever form it is practiced. This
fundamental theoretical term, as the premise of all
actual meditative practice, is synonymous with what is
here being called direct perception. It is what the
Buddhists call “mindfulness.”
In this regard,
meditation must be viewed as the categorical opposite of
escapism, of retreat from reality, and narrow
self-absorption. It ought not to be viewed as a narcotic,
an erroneous, but common, western view that has only been
reinforced by medical research into the stress-relieving
effects associated with various kinds of meditative
technique. Buddhists tell of the Buddha’s very long
meditation, sitting in physical quietude beneath the
Bodhi Tree, where eventually he attained spiritual
enlightenment. This was, however, the product not of
passivity, but of a peculiarly intense frame of mind.
Then, when the Buddha returned to normal life - if one
could call his exemplary way of living “normal”
in any sense - he taught people to apply the essential
principle of meditation to every thought and act in the
world. The principle was mindfulness, and it defines a
way of existing and being in the world.
The cultures of
the East mix and mingle different strands of a core
attitude to life, just as in the West, the cultures of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship the same
God. Buddha was a native of the Indian sub-continent, and
his view of life was based at heart on the teachings of
the Hindu Vedanta. But, as it happened, Buddha’s
concept of mindfulness proved very congenial with native
Chinese thought, especially as elaborated by the
so-called Taoists. Both cultures had come to some of the
same conclusions with regard to the nature of reality,
and so it was not difficult for them to mingle their
ideas in a productive consortium of philosophical and
religious thought. As a direct result, Ch’an
Buddhism was engendered, a religion that is known in
Japan as Zen. And if Zen in particular is given some
special emphasis in this discussion it is only because
Zen represents in some respects a summing up of many
different strands of eastern thought.
Zen Buddhism is
both a method and a manner of being in the world. The
method is meditation, or mindfulness, by which one
observes one’s own living reality very closely. One
of the great Zen patriarchs who was called the
“Great Mirror,” said that Zen is the act of
“seeing into one’s own nature.” The method
of Zen is direct observation and perception.
According to the tradition, the founder of Zen
established its everlasting principles in four
statements. “A special transmission outside the
scriptures; no dependence upon words and letters; direct
pointing at the soul of man; seeing into one’s
nature and the attainment of Buddhahood.”[1]
In a larger
perspective, seeing into “one’s own
nature,” viewed as being a state of enlightenment
(called, in Zen, Satori), is itself premised on a
state of being in perfect accord with the cosmic
principle of the Tao. We will have much to say about the
Tao later, but here we may simply note that seeing into
“one’s own nature” is also the best way of
seeing into the nature of Tao. And the perception of the
Tao leads in turn to a vastly expanded subjective
position with regard to life. It is not that life itself
actually changes in any way. But, energized subjectively
by perception of the Tao, we experience life more
intensely, with greater meaning and significance. Where
once there were problems, only luminous beauty remains.
Isn’t this a lot like what the aspiring musician
seeks in the questions that were posed near the beginning
of this chapter? The difference between a merely good
performance and a truly great performance has to do with
a certain intensity of expression. We can live life as if
we were reading the notes of a great score, but the notes
in themselves do not render the experience vibrant and
sacred. A greater subjective feeling and will animates
the notes whenever real music is being made. Similarly, a
greater intensity of potential energy penetrates and
animates life when, in Zen, satori is attained.
[1] Translation by D. T. Suzuki.(Next Page)
|
