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 54
Love is the
principal means at our disposal for dissolution of the
other madness – the more insidiously harmful madness
- of the Ego. This is the madness of “displaced
concreteness,” as A. N. Whitehead termed it, wherein
the Ego pretends that it exists. We have seen how the Ego
can’t be found. We have looked for it everywhere.
Even if it could be found, it would be a mere
“thing,” and like every other “thing”
in the Universe, nothing more than a formal convention,
something like grammar, a mental construction without
concrete reality. The Ego is a fanciful convenience for
living in the world, like a name - but all grown over
with redundant self-importance, like a reputation.
In this respect,
we may take this opportunity to explode one of our most
prevalent misconceptions about the position taken in the
East with regard to the Ego. For the most part, in Vedic
religion, in Buddhism, and in Taoism, the Ego is not
something that must be overcome, vanquished, destroyed,
obliterated. In the eastern view, there is no reality in
the Ego that can be grasped and strangled. The path to
enlightenment is therefore more pacific in nature. It is
only a matter of transcending the notion of the
Ego that we harbor in our own consciousness.
The Ego is an illusion created out of our
habits of thought. It has no more reality as a thing in
itself - of, by, and for itself – then do the
whirlpools and eddies that form willy-nilly in a stream
as it courses over rocks. This is actually quite
literally true. We physically consist of approximately
ten gallons of water, an amount of fat that is roughly
equivalent to about seven or eight bars of soap, a
variety of minerals and metals, including enough
phosphorus for about some 200 or so matches, enough iron
to make a nail, and relatively small quantities of
various kinds of salts, some lime, and sulfur. But none
of this stuff actually is the body. It only flows
through the body in a suite of tempos perfectly suited to
their purpose. According to research, fully 98% of the
body’s real substance is replaced on a continuous
basis. The lining of the stomach is replaced every five
days or so, and even the substance of the bones is
replaced relatively quickly. Five years appears to be a
fairly reliable round figure for marking the point at
which the body will have completely refabricated itself,
down to the last atom.[1]
One is reminded of the way honored old
buildings are treated in Japan. Many of their greatest
architectural achievements are constructed of wood, and
require consequently more frequent restorations. The
Japanese have perfected a way of leaving the building
while getting rid of and replacing all of its parts. So,
then, what is the building? Is it the wood it is made of,
or the abstract vision that it embodies?
The Ego hangs on to the wood. Wood is a
“thing,” and things give an illusory sense of
reality to the Ego. We all of us need to have an Ego,
just as we need to make our houses of wood. But what will
your attitude be? Will you identify with your Ego,
hanging with it onto to deadwood of life, and then watch
it rot and crumble before your eyes until your house is
only a shambles? Or will you act as if your house is more
than the wood in it? Will you take a broader view of
things, in short?
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