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 48
The capacity of
the human Ego to make itself more conscious of things
that directly impinge on it is finite, whilst the full
spectrum of these contingencies is infinite. No matter
how broadly you conceive of yourself, eventually you come
up against the limits and boundaries that define you as a
person with a name, and a sex, and an age, and a history,
and a fate. But these limits are exactly what we are
trying to overcome. Rather than trying to expand the
comprehensiveness of these categories and our conscious
awareness of the myriad things contained in them - as
useful as this may be it itself - the path we seek must
lie instead in a complete transcendence of the Ego’s
limited view and consciousness. We need to come up with
an entirely new sense of our surroundings, and ourselves,
because in reality our experience in life is not as
limited as the constraints of the Ego might suggest.
As we may learn
through the martial arts (or by playing a musical
instrument) we cannot and need not focus our
conscious attention on everything at once. In fact, the
more we struggle to do so, the more tense and stressed we
become, which makes us even less able to meet the
challenge before us. Somewhere along the line, overworked
and distracted with detail, the Ego overlooks a crucial
element, or misses the decisive moment for action. In the
studio for martial arts, the Ego is put to the proof.
Inevitably, it fails - and if all goes well for the
student, the Ego eventually gives up. For, low and
behold, enlightenment comes precisely at that point of
complete discouragement and hopelessness, just when the
Ego abandons the field of battle. Without the Ego to make
its distinctions, the line between foreground and
background disappears. At the same time, in the
dissolution of the Ego, the knowing subject and the
distance between it and everything else in the Universe
instantly vanishes. Suddenly, we know without knowing
that we know. We feel without feeling, so that no
interval intercedes between action and reaction. As the
proverb has it, he who hesitates is lost. The Zen
Swordsman never hesitates in the crucial instant when
destiny is decided.
Describing the
experience of Buddhist enlightenment, one great master
said, “The bottom of a pail is broken through.”
In the vacuum left by the deflation of the Ego, something
else assumes the position of being identified with our
most intimate and personal sense of being someone –
of existing in the world – call it the primal,
integrated, conscious and unconscious, knowing and
willing “Self.”
The Self has a
way of knowing that opens up distinctly new possibilities
for our view of the interaction between the person and
his environment. This knowing makes possible a distinctly
different way of being in the world, and it far surpasses
in its effectiveness the pathetically limited horizons of
the conscious Ego. In the East, the power of the knowing
Self has always been appreciated. Eastern arts of
enlightenment reveal nothing other than the light that
radiates from the Self. In its infallible beam, the Zen
archer hits the bull's eye without even looking.
But it is not
merely these extraordinary cultivated skills that we
associate with the Self. The heart beats, the lungs
breathe, and the hair grows, through the knowing of the
Self. It takes a great musician to play the several
manuals of an organ, her feet playing the pedals at the
same time. But every single healthy person plays the
organ of the body flawlessly without training. Westerners
are often puzzled by the many-armed depictions of Shiva
in Hindu art. But these images are actually nothing more
than representations of our own multivalent dexterities.
We each of us have a countless multitude of figurative
“arms” that monitor states and maintain
consistencies, that regulate lines of tension and
relaxation, and draw down responses from every cell on a
practically instantaneous basis, all without the
slightest sense of exertion. Our only difficulty arises
when the Ego tries to take conscious responsibility for
these things, thinking about them one by one, isolating
them and manipulating them with conscious intent.
The caterpillar was
happy quite
Until the frog did say in fun,
“Which leg runs after which?”
This took his mind to such a pitch,
He lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run. (Next Page)
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