Meditation and music

[threethirty]

I do qigong to music, but i take my zazen raw

[YuimaSLC]

Meditation and music

My spouse often interfuses her daily activities with "motivational" music....of all sorts.
She is surprised that I just get along with it being quiet (i.e. just what it "is-ness") and she asks, "Don't you like music when you're working on something?"
And I have to honestly convey an answer something like "Well, I do have a kind of music going on....f.x. when I am cleaning up the kitchen it is the sound of water, and wiping, and dishes clinking and 'frig doors swooshing open and closed." And her reply is, "Uh huh....yeh...that sounds really motivating."

[Kyonin]

You know, it's funny that you mention it.

From about four or five years to these days, I have noticed that the more I practice and sit, the less I need external stimuli. Like music, TV and such.

My dad was a musician, so I grew up listening to old rock and roll (specially Elvis). So as an adult I used to listen to music from dawn till dusk.

Now I am really comfortable with just the sounds of my surroundings, even if its traffic or machinery. When I go out to run every morning, I avoid using headphones. I love the noise of this city waking up.

I'm not saying I don't like music. Quite the contrary, but I feel I just need it less than I used to.

Gassho,

Kyonin

My spouse often interfuses her daily activities with "motivational" music....of all sorts.
She is surprised that I just get along with it being quiet (i.e. just what it "is-ness") and she asks, "Don't you like music when you're working on something?"
And I have to honestly convey an answer something like "Well, I do have a kind of music going on....f.x. when I am cleaning up the kitchen it is the sound of water, and wiping, and dishes clinking and 'frig doors swooshing open and closed." And her reply is, "Uh huh....yeh...that sounds really motivating."

[Myoku]

...And I have to honestly convey an answer something like "Well, I do have a kind of music going on....f.x. when I am cleaning up the kitchen it is the sound of water, and wiping, and dishes clinking and 'frig doors swooshing open and closed."

Thats exactly how it is. Why would one want music, other than to take us out of this wonderful symphony.
_()_
Myoku (is not kidding)

[Eika]

Music and Zen
Not one, not two
Burn oneself completely
Straight, no chaser
Zafu, wall, non-thinking
Riffing on nothing
The music of the open hand
Jazz of no thought
Cycles and loops
A quiet room

_/\_

Eika


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[pinoybuddhist]

I sometimes sit with a song stuck in my mind so I don't really need to listen to external music

[肯。爱立心。]

Where I sit, we have screechy bluejays, tittering sparrows, wood-pecking flickers, acorns pinging the roof, wind shuffling past pines and manzanita, complaining cieling fan, creaking floors, occasional yammering guests downstairs in the dining hall, the odd sneeze, forbidden sniffles, creaking bones, wheezy breathing. Trying to erase that music is like trying to silence a yammering monkey brain's yack yackity yacking. Brains think. Life sings. Who needs other music when you just sit?


Right now, "A Stranger On The Shore" is stuck in my head. Sadly, the only cure, "The Girl from Ipanema", is worse than my present song-stuck illness. Maybe time for a piano break, time to riff on Eika's jazz of no thought, mixing it up with Taigu's not-mixing.


Gassho,


Ken (肯）

[JustBen]

I'm with Hans. I like my zazen like good bourbon: no ice, no mixers. I get enough distraction as it is.

[Nenka]

Ah, somebody once posted a video around here of a guy trying to sit but Lady Gaga kept popping up his mind. Anyone remember that one?

[pinoybuddhist]

Yup that was me.

[Jundo]

If music is playing heard down the hall, we sit with that. If a car engine is back firing, or bird is chirping, or a baby is crying, or a helicopter is noiselessly flying overhead, we sit with that (actually, in the case of the crying baby, we made need to briefly get up to change a diaper ... but that is Zazen too). If no music is playing, we sit with that.

But no need or benefit at all in putting on nice music or bird songs to facilitate Zazen. In fact, quite bad if we feel it ultimately necessary to hide the car engines and babies and helicopters in order to sit Zazen.

Time for a repost of Suzuki Roshi on noise ...

Gassho, J