A note

Music is the molding of human emotions. Molding to what standard? According to the Confucian classics, it was to "serve the harmonious cooperation of the community" (Li 2010, 24). According to John Cage, it was "to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences" (in Kostelantz, 1991, 77). The divine influences that Cage speaks of refer to the dissipation of the texture of humanity into emptiness. The molding of human emotions can be seen as the śamatha aspect of music. It is what brings stillness, dispassion, and equanimity to the mind. The arising of emptiness is the vipaśyanā aspect. But since it is emptiness, it is always necessarily beyond the realm of music and can never be an aspect of it. It is not music, but also not non-music. Human music can therefore only be an intimation of emptiness and the start of processes that lead away from music.