Originally posted by Proper Knob
It's an interesting topic and one i am going to look into. Any good books you would recommend on meditation?!
Not really. Various techniques and practices are just “effective means”, and effective means for one person might not be so for others. If you are a musician and drummer, that might be an “in”: tuning and grooving with rhythms until the concept-chasing mind lets go. Probably hard rock is out, but maybe some African rhythms. I’m listening to a CD called “African Reggae” right now: it works because I can’t understand the lyrics (and the voice is just part of the music), so that there is no concept intrusion. I like the Reggae “riddims”. I also have a CD called “Inner Rhythms”by Randy Crafton, which is specifically designed to be a meditative, and weaves various percussion instruments.
In general, I do tend to prefer fairly long tracks if I’m using music for meditation: something like Ravi Shankar, perhaps (I have a wonderful CD of ragas with Shankar on the sitar and Yehudi Menuhin on the violin). Sometimes I create them by recording a particular piece over and over.
I started with Zen koans, and still use them (though I usually “translate” them out of any particular cultural context. Now I mostly just do an open meditation where I observe both my environment and my thoughts as the arise, just as if they were birds winging across the mind-ground. Eventually there are longer and longer periods of just being aware, without flitting thought-shadows. Nothing wrong with thinking: just as there is nothing wrong with wearing sunglasses when it’s bright outside—but one wants to be able to take them off or put them on as a choice; same with thinking.
Reality—the just-so-suchness (
tathata) in which and
of which we are—is prior to all conceptualization and thought (which activities, it also, of course, includes—but not more so than, say eating). If, when we think, we want to think about that reality, then we need to just observe/experience
It. That’s all.
EDIT: I didn't mean to imply that passive listening is not the only way to do music mediation: I often do my tai chi movements, or more often just do free dancing, that seems to incorporate some of the tai chi/chi gung spontaneously and expansively; I also drum on an African drum I have—I have no training, but my wife says I manage to keep the rhythms: I can do that for hours!