The distance between art and awakening - Part I

Modes of engagement

The goal of the Buddhist practitioner is nirvāṇa—the awakened, unconditioned state free from the suffering (duḥkha) of repeated rebirth in conditioned existence (saṃsāra). Even though traditional depictions sometimes suggest that these modes of existence appear as radically different landscapes–as in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa where buddhas and bodhisattvas perceive the world as a Pure Land whereas unawakened beings perceive a defiled, tainted world–saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not two different ontological realities. As Nāgārjuna explained, "nothing of saṃsāra is different from nirvāṇa". Rather than being different realities, they are explained to be two 'epistemic' orientations to the same ontologically indeterminate realm–a primordial ground about which nothing can be said, but that is sometimes simply called 'reality' (tattva). In other words, the difference between the delusion of saṃsāra and the awakening of nirvāṇa is found in praxis—in how tattva is actualized and enacted. Kasulis (2018) expresses this succinctly when writing that the "state of existence remains the same, but the mode of engagement changes when one moves from delusion to enlightenment" (84). 

Awakening consists in recognizing the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Because of this, these terms are at best seen as heuristic devices–they are useful from the initial perspective of unawakening, but cease to be so as one progresses on the path toward awakening. Lama Shabkar sings of how from the perspective of awakening, "all the concepts of samsara and nirvana are liberated into the primordial ground, Like clouds vanishing into the sky" (in Kunsang 1986, 80). Engaging tattva as nirvāṇa rather than as saṃsāra is the root of liberation (mokṣa), but because this has to be done while not reifying nirvāṇa as ontologically distinct from saṃsāra, nirvāṇa is actualized when not striving for it or conceptualizing it as the 'goal' of practice. Instead, it is about recognizing that awakening is already the nature of delusion and letting this insight transform the enaction of tattva. As the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn (大乘起信論) says: if beings "are freed from [the fixed notion of] enlightenment, then there will be no such thing as unenlightenment" (Hakeda 2006, 48).

That mokṣa is defined as a way of engaging and enacting tattva makes Buddhism an attractive framework for musicians. As musicians, our practices are all about altering listeners' perceptions by creating new ways of enacting phenomena and new modes of listening. Pieces of music are not just arrangements of sounds but ways of enacting worlds, and different worlds are not merely distinguished based upon how they 'sound' but rather by the ways of being and perceiving that they afford and that the listener embodies during the duration of the music. The idea that follows from this that I want to explore in this text is that just as there are ways of enacting tattva that are more in accordance with awakening than other ways, so are there modes of being musically attuned and modes of perceiving art that are more in accordance with awakening. 

Because I am primarily interested in how modes of perceiving art relate to awakening, I will in this text not engage in the fertile discussion of how modes of making art relate or lead to awakening. Especially during the late Heian period, Buddhist poets such as Saigyō, Kamo no Chōmei, and the two Fujiwaras, Teika and Shunzei, grappled extensively with the question of how poetic composition could function as a path, or mārga (Jp. dō or michi), to awakening. They found predecessors in this pursuit in the poet-monks from the Tang and early Song dynasties, and they drew upon doctrinal developments from the Tendai and Shingon sects of Buddhism to make the claim, as Saigyō famously did with his proclamation that "[i]t is through poetry that I have mastered the law [dharma]" (Rajyashree Pandey 1998, 48), that the composition of poetry is a valid path to awakening. In this text, however, I am primarily interested in how the audience of Saigyō's poetry might come to "master the law". I am more interested in discussing art experiences as upāya-s than art making as mārga-s. Yet, by saying that, I do not mean that it is possible to completely separate mārga and upāya either; the artist who creates art as upāya has that upāya work on herself and therefore makes it a mārga–the first listener to any piece of music is the composer–, and it seems likely that the art created as a mārga should have some qualities conducive to the path that will make it into an upāya for the audience.

Soteriological poetics

The idea that certain ways of perceiving, as facilitated by art experiences, are more conducive to or more in accord with awakening than other ways of perceiving was early on articulated in the work of Abhinavagupta. For him, relishing the aesthetic mood of śāntarasa, the rasa of peace, intimated a state of awakening because it too was a state liberated from gross emotionality. Abhinava, therefore, placed śāntarasa at the apex of aesthetic emotions and he described it as the "highest of human aims and results in spiritual liberation" (Dhvanyāloka, trans. Reich 2016). For Abhinava, it was soteriologically more valuable if a piece of art afforded relishing this particular rasa rather than any other, more mundane, rasa.

This basic idea of Abhinava finds a continuation later on in the work of Schopenhauer for whom certain aesthetic states were considered to be more awakening than others. Schopenhauer famously considered the mode of perceiving and outlook on life afforded by the theatrical genre of tragedy more conducive to awakening than modes of perceiving afforded by other genres of theater. This was because of tragedy's particular effectiveness in urging us "to turn our will away from life, to give up willing and loving life" (Young 2005, 142) and instead turn our minds toward renunciation and resignation (Odin 2001, 44). From Schopenhauer's soteriological perspective, it would be wiser of us to go and see a performance of a tragedy rather than a comedy, just as Abhinava would recommend art that afforded śāntarasa over art that afforded the rasa of veeram (heroism).

Another philosopher that articulated this basic idea was Theodor Adorno. He spoke of how certain modes of listening and certain acts of cognition enabled thereby could either keep listeners stuck in their old habits and volitional formations or lead them onward to 'enlightenment'. Even though Adorno's idea of what constitutes 'enlightenment' and how to reach it is at great odds with the Indian traditions, his classification of music in terms of their different transformational potentials resonates with Abhinava's discussion of the soteriological values of different rasa-s.

As these references above make clear, the idea that modes of perception can be related to soteriological models is by no means novel. Every Buddhist musician has probably needed to face the question of how listening to music fits on the path (mārga) to awakening–how the particular ways of perceiving and modes of listening that are afforded by aesthetic experiences relate to the goal of actualizing reality as nirvāṇa. As answering this question necessarily results in a highly normative form of poetics, it must at the outset of any text that tries to answer this question be remembered that the Buddha taught 84.000 different gates to the dharma because every person needs to hear dharma teachings that fit their own forms of afflictions. The same goes for art and music. What is soteriologically valuable for some might not be so for others. There is an enormous, indeed infinite, variety in the kind of musical enactments that can be soteriologically valuable. It is not at all unlikely, indeed we probably know such people already, who will, contrary to Schopenhauer's claim, be more susceptible to revelatory insights into the futility of saṃsāra from attending a comedy rather than a tragedy.

What makes some music more 'awakening' than others is highly dependent on individual karma–the experiences, contexts, and practices each unique listener has been involved with. Because of this, each listener will construct the musical experience differently. How one, as someone doing soteriological poetics, can relate to the subjective variations in musical listening is an important topic that I discuss more fully in the text "Like rain from the mountain". In this present text, the approach to this problem will be to place the discussion on a general level. By discussing general qualities in music, such as the enaction of non-conceptuality, discontinuity, impersonality, and non-symbolism, rather than studying any specific passages of music, I hope to be able to speak to something common between individual variations in enacting certain musical passages. In this text, it is the enaction of these general qualities of musical modes of listening, and not so much which specific kinds of musical passages that causally connect to the enaction of such qualities, that will be related to the 'state' of awakening.

Ultimate and conventional

In order to start this discussion, let us return to the basic idea that the difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra is not one of ontological separation but one of praxis; nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are different orientations to the same ontologically indeterminate realm. The Buddhist tradition expresses in many different ways this fundamental idea that 'reality' can be engaged from either an 'awakened' praxis or from a 'delusional' praxis. 

Nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are terms that point to this idea from an existential perspective. Saṃsāra is often described as something we 'exist' in, as when depicted as a 'wheel of life' (bhavacakra). Another common way of gesticulating to this dyad is to speak of two different 'epistemic orientations'. One of these orientations is based on conventional, or relative, truth (saṃvṛti-satya), and the other one on absolute truth (paramārtha-satya). The relationship between the two truths and the difference between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is explained by Mipam in the following way:

"It is suitable to posit that all phenomena of nirvāṇa, which are attained through the power of appearance in accord with reality, are ultimate; and that all phenomena of saṃsāra, which arise through the power of appearance that does not accord with reality, are relative." (quoted in Duckworth 2008, 12)

For Mipam, when the two truths are used in this way, they point to the difference between a praxis that is either in accordance or disaccordance with "reality"–how things truly are. Used like this, the ultimate truth is hierarchically above conventional truth. The conventional truth articulates the misguided 'reality-habit' of saṃsāric beings in which words and concepts signify signifiers that are taken to be truly existing while in reality they are empty of 'own-being' (svabhāva). The authors of Knowing Illusion, describes in a similar vein that saṃvṛti-satya refers to something that 

"exists as it appears within the framework of everyday experience, and so is conventionally non-deceptive. Nonetheless, conventional phenomena appear to exist independently; hence, their mode of existence and mode of appearance are discordant" (Yakherds 2021, 22). 

For Mipam, the conventional truth denotes, in this context, "inauthentic experience" because of a discordant relationship between the mode of appearance and the mode of existence. In contrast, the ultimate truth is "authentic experience" that sees an "undistorted reality" (Duckworth 2008, 12).

While the context in which conventional and ultimate truth refers to non-accordance or accordance with reality derives from texts such as Uttaratantra that focus on the correct experience of reality–i.e., experiencing its emptiness–, there is a second important context for the two truths that primarily derives from Madhyamaka philosophies. In this context, the idea of the two truths is used to describe the arising phenomena–the 'objects' of perception. In this context, there is no hierarchy between ultimate and conventional, or what Mipam also calls emptiness and appearance. Speaking from this context, Mipam writes that "both appearance and emptiness are such that one is impossible without the other; if there is one, there is the other" (quoted in Duckworth 2008, 8). Everything that appears is empty, and there is not any non-appearing emptiness:

"There is no ultimate apart from the relative,

There is no relative at all other than the ultimate.

Whatever appears is necessarily empty,

Whatever is empty necessarily appears

Because appearance that is not empty is impossible

And emptiness as well is not established without appearance." (in Duckworth 2008, 10)

This point is also stressed by the translators of Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra, who summarize well the Prāsaṅgika position when describing how the conventional and ultimate are not separate but 'merge and coincide' in phenomena:

"The ultimate is what the conventional really is; the conventional is the way the ultimate appears. The two truths are never separate; they merge and coincide in phenomena. The difference is not ontological but epistemic" (PTG 2002, 19). 

This context stresses the abovementioned point: the difference between ultimate and relative is merely one of epistemic praxis, not ontology. When saying things about the objects of perception ontologically, there can be no two truths. In this second context, treating the 'two truths' as distinct is only a heuristic device employed when speaking from a conventional perspective. Treating emptiness and phenomena–the ultimate and the relative–as different is a conceptual construction that the Svātantrikas employ because their approach is, as Mipam describes, 'gradual'. They speak from the perspective of post-meditation from within the realm of language and thought–they teach the ultime from within the relative. This is unlike the approach of Prāsaṅgikas, who attempt to enact the ultimate directly (Duckworth 2008, 48). Their approach is 'sudden' because it points directly to the "uncategorized" ultimate from the perspective of meditative equipoise and here there cannot be two truths (Duckworth 2008). While the Svātantrikas often speak of the two truths as distinct, the Prāsaṅgikas consistently deny the two truths as distinct (Duckworth 2008, 36).  

The Svātantrikas' and Prāsaṅgikas' relationships to language are therefore very different. While the Prāsaṅgikas' approach is to directly deconstruct conventional language in order to reveal the view of meditative equipoise, the Svātantrikas instead operate firmly within the relative. The difference between Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika is one of pedagogical methods: to engage or not engage with relative truth. The goal of both perspectives is a state where the two truths are not taken to be ultimately separated, and both schools would agree with Candrakīrti when quoting a scripture in his Madhyamakāvatārabhasya: "On the ultimate level, O monks, there are no two truths. This ultimate truth is one." (In PTG 2002, 41)

Both Prāsaṅgikas and Svātantrikas agree that our entire human 'intellect' is completely grounded in the epistemic practices that accord with relative truth. All concepts articulated within this deceptive 'realism' only point back to aspects of conventional truth and are therefore incapable of denoting absolute reality, or suchness (tathatā). From the ultimate perspective, words are only provisional and without validity, as the ultimate truth is impossible to articulate with the dichotomies inherent in language. The ultimate can only "be revealed beyond the borders of language" and "between existence and non-existence" (Harris 1991, 1). For this reason, words and concepts need to be abandoned to actualize the ultimate truth. Even a characterization of ultimate truth as emptiness is false because it is based on a framework of conceptual construction. Because of this, even the conventional epistemology of emptiness will "naturally dissolve as the liberating effects of the Buddhist path manifest" (Yakherds 2021, 25).

The origin of delusion

The idea that the two truths are just one would later be expressed more cosmogonically as Buddhism developed outside of India. Zōngmì's Huáyán tradition would speak of the 'one mind' (一心)–the true dharmadhātu and 'wondrous mind of perfect awakening' (圓覺妙心)–as being the ultimate source (本源) of all pure as well as impure dharmas. It is the "nature" (性) and "ontological ground" (Gregory 1991, 181) of both nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. Zōngmì writes that "there is no other dharma outside of the nature" because all the "myriad dharmas" are just the inherent functioning of the nature and therefore identical with it. The nature is the same as it's functioning. Since "all mundane and supermundane dharmas originate wholly from the nature" (in Gregory 1991, 190), this model is usually referred to as 'nature-origination' (性起)–an idea encapsulated in the four-character phrase lǐ shì wú ài ( 理事無礙). There is a total non-obstruction (wú ài,無礙) between phenomena (shì, 事) and 'principle' (lǐ, 理)–a synonym to emptiness/ultimate truth/nature.

In this vein, the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn, one of the most important texts in this tradition, speaks of the one mind as having two 'aspects' that correspond to ultimate truth/suchness/awakening on the one hand and unawakening/ignorance on the other. The unawakened mind continues because beings, through deluded thoughts (妄念), reify the unawakened aspect and do not realize "oneness with Suchness" (Hakeda 2006, 48). They do not recognize that the unawakened mind is not something "independent of the original enlightenment" (Hakeda 2006, 48) but merely an aspect, or expression of it. 

One of the scripture's most celebrated metaphors likens ignorance to the waves of the ocean. Ignorance arises out of original awakening as waves arise out of the still ocean. Waves have no real substance by themselves but are of the very same nature as the ocean. When the waves are stilled–which the practice of Buddhism ultimately is said to lead to–, it is like the waves were never there. They are gone, and yet one cannot say that they have been taken out of the ocean. One cannot, therefore, localize a definite point of their disappearance. The arising of waves happens within a basic state of non-arising; ignorance appears from a basic state of original awakening. The Yuánjuéjīng (圓覺經), another important scripture in Zōngmì's Huáyán tradition, similarly explains the lack of substance of ignorance through the metaphors of dreams and illusions:

"Good sons, this "ignorance" actually lacks substance. It is like a man who is dreaming. At the time of the dream, there is non-existence, until he awakens and finds that there is nothing for him to hold on to. Similarly, when the sky-flowers disappear from the sky, you cannot say that there is a definite point of their disappearance. Why? Because there is no point at which they arise. All sentient beings falsely perceive arising and ceasing within this condition of non-arising. Therefore, they say that there is "transmigration through life-and-death"." (Muller 1999, 80)

Zōngmì singles out nature origination as that which sets the Huáyán tradition apart from the tradition of Fǎxiàng. In the tradition of Fǎxiàng, suchness is "totally inert" and "unchanging" as impure dharmas arise from the ālayavijñāna (the storehouse consciousness) which in that tradition is taken to be "unconnected with suchness" (Gregory 1991, 189). Hamar (2007) explains that on such a model of dependent origination, "that which is originated appears as the [impure] conditions" (242). On this model, impure dharmas do not arise from suchness itself but rather have external causes. The model of 'nature-origination' is different from this in that "that which is originated is a pure function (jingyong 淨用), and is in accordance with the realization of absolute nature (zheng zhengxing 證┌性)" (Hamar 2007, 242). 

That all phenomena are ultimately pure and in accordance with nirvāṇa does not mean that there is not a meaningful distinction between purity and impurity–between awakening and delusion. It is because of this that the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn describes the ālayavijñāna as the unification of the mind of suchness with the arising-and-ceasing mind of saṃsāra (Lee 2019) in a 'neither the same nor different'-relationship. Unlike the school of Fǎxiàng where the ālayavijñāna is taken to be divorced from suchness–i.e., something solely of the nature of saṃsāra–, it is here described as the site in which saṃsāra and nirvāṇa "diffuses harmoniously" with each other:

"The Mind as phenomena (saṃsāra) is grounded in the Tathāgatagarbha. What is called the Storehouse Consciousness is that in which "neither birth nor death (nirvāṇa)" diffuses harmoniously with "birth and death (saṃsāra)," and yet in which both are neither identical nor different. This Consciousness has two aspects which embrace all states of existence and create all states of existence. They are: (1) the aspect of enlightenment, and (2) the aspect of nonenlightenment." (Hakeda 2006, 43)

On the one hand, there is one mind and one nature from which everything arises; nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are 'the same'. On the other hand, the states of existence of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are not the same. Therefore, their way of being is neither exactly identical nor exactly different, and this must be accounted for somehow.

Empty and cognizant

While there is an implicit soteriological hierarchy between the two 'aspects' of the one mind in the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn, other Buddhist traditions have proposed similar dyadic metaphors to explain the dynamic workings and evolution of the mind, but in which neither side is inherently more virtuous than the other. Yongjia Xuanjue and Zhiyi described the mind respectively as quiescent yet wakeful and quiescent and luminous (in Guo Gu 2021, 10). The 11th-century Tendai monk Chūjin very similarily described the nature of mind, which is also the nature of all things (dharmatā), as having the two inseparable aspects of being quiescent and illuminating. Likewise, in the contemporary teacher Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche's wording, mind is explained to be empty cognizance; it has the two inseparable aspects of being empty and cognizant. 

Calling the nature of the mind empty or quiescent, on the one hand, points to its formlessness. The mind does not "come into being as any concrete thing" and "does not assume any particular form" (Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche 2002, 44). This aspect is sometimes referred to as the dharmakāya–what the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra refers to as thusness when completely undefiled (Wayman & Wayman 1974, 98). Calling it cognizant or luminous, on the other hand, points to how it is aware and knows unobstructedly. These two aspects of emptiness/quiescent and cognizance/luminous are in these models inseparable, non-dual, aspects of the primordial purity itself.

Similar to what is accomplished with the non-dual dyadic model in the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn, these metaphors point to how Buddha nature is on the one hand free from afflictions (quiescent/empty) and on the other hand aware and able to move and engage in the conventional world (wakeful/cognizant/illuminating). Without using the language of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, these metaphors point to how the nature of mind is free from any duality between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. Yet, just as in the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn model, one of these aspects has been more causally connected to saṃsāra than the other. Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche explains that it is this cognizant quality of mind that is the cause of saṃsāra:

“[s]amsara evolves from this empty cognizance that is mind when the cognizant quality fixates and gets involved in clinging...It is because of mind’s cognizant quality that we experience. And it is in the act of experiencing that we become confused. It is not through the empty quality that confusion arises—only through cognizing." (Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche 2002, 64 & 46) 

That it is the cognizant aspect that is the source for saṃsāra is logical because it is this side that is involved with illuminating phenomena. A one-sided focus on phenomena leads to saṃsāra, while a one-sided focus on the quiescent aspect rather would lead to annihilationism and non-existence. 

The intersubjective dharmatā

It is important to not interpret the above statement as meaning that it is merely my luminosity–or my 'cognizance' to use Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche's choice of word–that is the cause for clinging and the construction of saṃsāra. The mind that becomes the subject of clinging is not my mind as in some kind of solipsistic idealism. Chūjin's perspective can therefore be said to complement Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche's model in an important way because Chūjin explicitly uses this dyadic type of metaphor to explain the arising of the relational, intersubjective world.

When describing the two aspects, Chūjin writes that "[i]ts quiescent aspect is the one mind and its illuminating aspect is the 3,000 realms of being" (quoted in LaFleur 1973, 105). For Chūjin, the 3,000 realms of being that arise from the illuminating aspect is not merely the phenomenal world as it appears to a single consciousness. It rather constitutes the shared world. This intersubjectivity is further explained by Chūjin by saying that the 3,000 worlds are contained in every single "thought-instant" (一念): in each phenomenon are simultaneously all other phenomena (the '3,000 realms') present (ichinen-sanzen, 一念三千). There is a total interfusion of microcosm and macrocosm:

"[t]he principle that the 3,000 realms (i.e., all phenomena) are contained in one thought means that the mind (kokoro) is all things and all things are the mind. Trees-and-plants as well as sentient beings both possess all things. This is why sentient beings can conceive of trees and plants. If this were not so, there could be no cognition." (Chūjin trans. in LaFleur 1973, 105).

The final two sentences are especially noteworthy because they provide a kind of argument for why the total interpenetration must be so: we would have no cognition of things otherwise. This relates to both the problem of substance dualism–of how the mental nature can meet the material nature if these are explained to be of fundamentally different natures–as well as the problem of how knowledge of other minds is possible. By saying that everything contain everything because everything is of the same principle and arises interdependently, these problems are overcome and the perception of an intersubjective world becomes possible.

The mind that is involved in clinging is thus not merely one's own private mind but the point where all distinctions and dualisms such as 'interior' and 'exterior', subject and object, self and other, and idealism and materialism dissolve. This point is emphasized by Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, who writes that the mind-essence that is the basis of all phenomena is "not something that exists within the mind-stream of just one individual or just one buddha. It is the actual basis of all that appears and exists, the whole of samsara and nirvana" (1989, 5). Rather than a private mind, the basis for the world is the fact of relationality or intersubjectivity.

From duality to unity

The perspectives of Chūjin, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, and the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn represent three different, yet similar, dyadic metaphors for how saṃsāra arises from primordial purity. Their basic idea is that mind has two indistinguishable aspects and saṃsāra evolves when their unity is forgotten. It is because beings do not realize oneness with suchness that the aspect of saṃsāra comes into being. Beings come to have ignorance and delusion (avidyā) with regard to how things are and they do not experience that all things, pure and impure, are only of the one mind–the ground for both awakening and delusion known as suchness (Hakeda 2006, 39). 

From the perspective of saṃsāra, it makes sense to speak of two truths because the primordial unity has already been divided. Emptiness and phenomena are reified into two distinct orientations. Liberation then becomes a project of 'reintegrating' the two truths, to arrive at a place where it no longer makes sense two speak of two, which is the perspective of Prāsaṅgika. This involves clearly experiencing that delusion about how things are arises out of original awakening and is not something separate from the one mind that is the ground for both awakening and delusion.

The content of awakening

In order to explain the concept of nature origination, we saw above how the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn uses the image of waves of water. Just as waves arise from the ocean, ignorance arises from the pure mind. Waves are still wet like water, and ignorance has the same nature as the pure mind. In the Huáyán school, an additional water metaphor that builds upon the previous one is used to explain the interfusion of microcosm and macrocosm–the total interpenetration of phenomena–that Chūjin's Tendai school indicated with the idea of ichinen-sanzen (一念三千): the idea that all phenomena are present in every moment. This additional metaphor of Huáyán describes phenomena not as waves arising out of the sea, but as the myriad reflections that appear on the surface of calm water. A text traditionally attributed to Fǎzàng says:

"When delusion is brought to an end, the mind is clear and the myriad forms are simultaneously reflected. It is like the vast ocean: waves arise because of the wind; once the wind stops, the surface of the ocean becomes clear and still and there is no form that is no reflected upon it."  (in Gregory 1991, 160)

Fǎzàng explains in the Reflections of the dharmadhātu (Huāyán yóuxīn făjiè jì) that the myriad images that are reflected on the surface interact harmoniously in such a way that in any reflection are all the other reflections present–in any phenomena are all 3,000 worlds present. On the still water, 

"various reflections multiply endlessly and their limit is impossible to fathom. To investigate one of them thoroughly is to pursue the infinite, for, in any one of them, all the rest vividly appear at the same time. [...] all the images appear simulaneously within it without distinction of past and present. The myriad diverse kinds [of images] penetrate each other without obstruction. The one and the many are reflected in one another without opposing each other" (in Gregory 1991, 155)

The interpenetration of phenomena is explained by Gregory to be "the content of enlightenment" (1991, 158)–what a Buddha 'sees' in awakening when the water is no longer turbulent with waves. The total interpenetration that is perceived in awakening can also be referred to as shì shì wú ài  (事事無礙)–as a non-obstruction between phenomena. The ontological basis that makes this "content" of awakening possible is according to Zōngmì's Huáyán school the fact of 'nature origination'. The interpenetration of phenomena is only possible because all phenomena share the same nature.  

The origin of awakening

If the origin of delusion is a mistaken grasping of the one mind’s cognizant quality, the question then becomes what the origin of awakening is. How does an adept go about transforming delusion into the wisdom of a Buddha? This is where the entirety of the Buddhist path comes in: through practicing the six perfections, gathering merit, and purifying negative karma, the adept moves closer and closer to awakening. But Buddhist scriptures have attempted to answer what motivates a sentient being to strive for awakening in the first place. Where does the initial move to turn away from saṃsāra come from? The Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn explains that it is suchness itself that leads beings to awakening:

“[Suchness] causes the deluded mind to loathe the suffering of saṃsāra and to aspire to nirvāṇa…Thus a man comes to believe in his essential nature, to know that what exists is the erroneous activity of the mind and that the world of objects in front of him is nonexistent, and to practice teachings to free himself [from the erroneously conceived world of objects]” (Hakeda 2006, 60-61).

Hakeda comments on this passage:

"Suchness within, i.e., original enlightenment, is constantly asserting itself in order to be actualized by breaking through the wall of ignorance. This intrinsic inner dynamics of Suchness is suggested by the term "internal permeation." " (Hakeda 2006, 61). 

This idea of suchness "asserting itself in order to be actualized" is closely related to the theory of Buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha). The 'seed' and cause for awakening is already present within sentient beings. Buddha nature is what only needs to be cleared from obscurations rather than manufactured. The Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra explains Buddha Nature to be how suchness expresses itself when still defiled–when still "not free from the store of defilement" (Wayman & Wayman 1974, 98). When purified and undefiled, suchness expresses itself as dharmakāya–what above was equated with the formless aspect of the mind's nature when describing the nature of mind, or suchness, as empty cognizance.

If delusion on Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche's model is described to be caused by the cognizant quality of mind's nature, then we can say that the move towards awakening is made by the empty quality of this nature, the dharmakāya. This is following Kūkai’s doctrine of hosshin seppō (法身説法): the dharmakāya expounds the dharma. Just like emptiness, this aspect is not merely what is behind phenomena in a kind of dualistic relationship, but everything that appears is necessarily like space. It is written in the Middle-Length Prajñāpāramitā that "[i]n themselves, phenomena are like space. One can find in them no center and no boundary." This passage is quoted by Longchenpa in his autocommentary to Finding Rest in Illusion to support the text's important passage: 

"Sure it is that all things in phenomenal existence,

In saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,

Are in their nature equal and they all resemble space.

Understand that all are unborn,

Pure from the beginning." (Longchenpa 2019)

Since dharmakāya is an aspect of all phenomena, then all forms and perceptions can be understood as the dharmakāya’s manifestation of the Dharma. Appearances and phenomenality are not something that needs to be eliminated or overcome but rather the opposite: without them, there could be no recognition of emptiness since there is no emptiness that does not appear. Phenomena therefore teach the dharma. This is why Kojijū (小侍従)–a contemporary of Saigyō–in a beautiful verse in the Shinkokinshū no longer needs to feel any regret for enjoying the colors of the world. She has realized the heart of the Heart Sūtra (心経の心をよめる); that form is emptiness and emptiness is form:

The heart dyed only

in the colors of the world: its regret is turned

to joy as the Buddha's Law resolves it all as emptiness (Barnhill 2011)

The purity of phenomena

In his Establishing Appearances as Divine According to the Secret Mantra, the Vajra Vehicle,

Rongzom Chökyi Zanpo argues for the purity and awakened nature of phenomena. He grounds his reasoning in sūtras such as the Viṣayāvatārajñānālokālaṁkāra in which it is written that "[p]henomena, always unborn, are the Thus-gone-one" and are "like the Bliss-gone one" (in Köppl 2008, 99). The opening of Rongzom's text begins with extolling that  

"all mundande and supramundane phenomena, without any distinction, are primordially enlightened as the maṇdala of vajralike body, speech, and mind. Thus [the maṇḍala] is not accomplished through a path" (in Köppl 2008, 95).

In the Nyingma context, 'emptiness' is often given these kinds of positive descriptions. According to Longchen Rabjam, a word such as "primordial purity" (ka dag) is just a Dzogchen synonym for emptiness (Köppl 2008, 54). Mipam could therefore write that the view that all phenomena are pure came naturally out of the Prāsaṅgika reasonings. In the following two quotes, Mipam draws a link between purity and Prāsaṅgika, and Rongzom Chökyi Zanpo and Candrakīrti:

"To conclusively settle upon primordial purity

One needs to perfect the view of Prāsaṅgika;

From only the aspect of being free from constructs

The two are said to not be distinct." (in Duckworth 2008, 39)

"The glorious Candrakīrti in India

And Rongzom Chözang in Tibet

With one voice and one intent

Established the great emptiness of primordial purity.

Because these phenomena are primordially pure,

Or because they are primordially without intrinsic nature,

They are not born in either of the two truths." (Köppl 2008, 53)

Purity is emptiness when correctly understood. Calling things 'pure' or 'divine' blocks the interpretation of emptiness as being a negation of phenomena–a nothingness. It is easy to interpret Madhyamaka this way while in reality, they posit phenomena as being equally empty and apparent because the two truths are not separate but merge and coincide in phenomena. What appears is empty and what is empty appears. In Köppl's commentary on Rongzom's work, she explains that because the Madhyamaka view is one of "unity, or inseparability, of the two truths qua appearance and emptiness", this involves a "sense of purity, for appearances are primordially pure in being equally empty and apparent" (2008, 53).

According to Kūkai and the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn, this purity has a way of asserting itself through the illusion of saṃsāra. Phenomena themselves expound the dharma that leads sentient beings toward awakening. But phenomena are also what led sentient beings wrong in the first place. In a circular form, thusness gives rise to both its mistaken delusion and its awakening. The entire unfolding of the triple world–everything we experience now, and everything we have experienced in our past lives–is just that nondual movement of the Mind:

"The Buddha realms, the demon realms, Buddhist temples or polluted ground, sentient beings or nonsentient ones, grass and trees growing in thick profusion—all of this is a single Buddha Mind" (Hakuin, in Rouzer 2016, 12). 

As Hakeda (2006) writes, "the process of actualization of enlightenment is none other than [the process of integrating] the identity with the original enlightenment" (43). The movement from delusion to awakening is just a matter of re-acquainting ourselves with original awakening. The cognizant quality mistakes itself and leads the mind astray and its own empty quality brings it back. Sthiramati therefore said how from the ultimate perspective, there has in awakening been no transformation of consciousness at all (Williams 2009, 100).

Nature manifests in function

If masters like Rongzom Chökyi Zanpo emphasized the purity of phenomena, the Tang-dynasty Chan master Mǎzǔ Dàoyī emphasized that among these phenomena are also functions and activities. Mǎzǔ built upon the idea mentioned above: in the nature-origination model, that which arises is a pure function (jingyong 淨用) in accordance with the absolute nature (Hamar 2007, 242). It might initially seem like one thing to say that the nature of a certain phenomenal form, say a vase, is by nature empty and the Thus-gone-one and another to say that activities and actions also take part in the same purity. This is especially so if we think of forms as referring to ākāra-s and action as referring to karma. But accepting the former means accepting the latter. Perception of form is not an action-less state but itself a form of doing. As I explore more closely in "Like Rain from the Mountain", perception is not merely passive but an active construction. Accepting that the purity and emptiness of 'percepts' means accepting the same for activities. Mǎzǔ insisted that it was precisely through this 'external functioning' of the mind that the mind's essence is seen:

"seeing, listening, sensing, and knowing are inherently your original nature, which is also called original mind. There is no Buddha other than the mind" (Jia 2006, 77).

Just like ordinary phenomena are pure, so are ordinary functions. And just as emptiness is revealed in phenomena, so is emptiness revealed in ordinary actions. Jia Jinhua explains how for Mǎzǔ, "instead of contemplating and seeing the internal essence of the true mind, Mazu stressed that it is through the external functioning of the mind that its essence is seen" (2006, 78). Mǎzǔ, therefore, said, in a phrase that strongly echoes the quote from the Viṣayāvatārajñānālokālaṁkārasūtra above, that "all living beings have since beginningless kalpas been abiding in the samādhi of the Dharma-nature" (Poceski 1992, 22). Searching for the nature of mind behind functions will lead to a dualism between the relative and the absolute, as if the absolute is separate and lying 'behind' relative phenomena and activities.

Zōngmì wrote that for the members of Mǎzǔ's Hongzhou school, "[t]he total essences of greed, hatred, and delusion, of performance of good and evil actions, and the corresponding retribution of happiness or suffering of bitterness are all Buddha-nature" (in Jia 2006, 69). While being an accurate description of the Hongzhou school's position, Zōngmì regarded this radical way of equating saṃsāra with nirvāṇa to be a distortion of the Buddha's teachings: if saṃsāra already is nirvāṇa, what is the purpose of the Buddhist path? The difference between Zōngmì's position and the position of the Hongzhou school is, however, not necessarily so big if we read their statements to pertain to different contexts of speech. The Hongzhou school's collapse of saṃsāra with nirvāṇa happens on an ontological level and from the perspective of ultimate reality as perceived in meditation; Zōngmì's differentiation happens from the perspective of conventional reality and post-meditation. Zōngmì's perspective is that of praxis rather than ontology. This is exemplified by Zōngmì countering the view of the Hongzhou school by giving an example from praxis that builds upon the water metaphor from the Dàshéngqǐxìnlùn:

"[saying that there is no difference between greed and compassion] is like someone who only observes the wet nature [of water] as never changing, but fails to comprehend that, since water can carry both a boat or sink it, its merits and faults are remarkably different" (Jia 2006, 69).

The difference between Mǎzǔ and Zōngmì is similar to what Mipam above considered to be  the difference between Prāsaṅgikas and Svātantrikas. Zōngmì's perspective, just like that of the Svātantrikas, is gradual while Mǎzǔ's, just like that of the Prāsaṅgikas, is sudden. The difference is one of emphasis. On an ontological level, both perspectives agree that delusions are of the same nature (i.e., Buddha nature, one mind) as awakening, and from the perspective of praxis, both Zōngmì and Mǎzǔ acknowledge a difference. Dōgen articulates this difference between ontology and praxis by writing that the Dharma-vehicle is 

"utterly free and untrammeled. [...] It is never apart from you right where you are. [...] And yet if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth" (Waddell & Abe 2002, 2). 

The first sentence is ontological: awakening is never apart from you right where you are. The second statement refers to how praxis can hinder the actualization of awakening: "If there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth." Mǎzǔ makes this claim explicitly when he says that the nature itself is without differentiation but that there is a difference in function:

"In ignorance it functions as [the storehouse] consciousness; in awakening it functions are [Buddhist] wisdom. [...] When ignorant, it is the ignorance of one's own original mind, when awakened, it is the awakening of one's own original nature" (in Jia 2006, 71). 

There is not any Buddhist perspective that holds the view that we already engage phenomena in an awakened manner just because the ordinary mind is ultimately the same as the awakened mind. Critics of Mǎzǔ conflate his ontological statements pertaining to how things are 'ultimately' (paramārtha-satya) with statements regarding praxis and how things are 'conventionally' (saṃvṛti-satya). 

The entire discussion in this section has just been to arrive at what was stated at the opening of this text: it is ontologically impossible to separate the delusion of saṃsāra from the awakening of nirvāṇa. The difference between them is instead found in praxis—in how a world is actualized. This relates to a common idea found in many Mahāyāna philosophies: something 'remains' between awakening and delusion, but this does not mean that everything stays the same. A transformation at the basis (āśrayaparāvṛtti) takes place and what remains is perceived in a new way.

Trisvabhāva

If nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are existential categories, and saṃvṛti-satya and paramārtha-satya are epistemological categories, then we would still want an account for how experiencing these differences is perceived from a first-person point of view. We can be more detailed than just saying, as we have above, that the experience of saṃvṛti-satya is one that disaccords (or, as Dōgen said, causes a "discrepancy") with how things truly are and that the experience of paramārtha-satya is one that accords. It is for this reason that we now turn to the Yogācārins, who in the doctrine of the 'three natures' (trisvabhāva) can be said to have articulated this basic dyadic idea from an experiantial, or even phenomenological, point of view. By closely investigating "different ways in which mind can function" and  "different modes under which experience can appear to the experiencer" (Griffiths 1986, 85), the framework of the three natures allows the Yogācārins to analyze the experiential differences between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. 

The Yogācāra framework of the three natures will, therefore, be especially relevant to our discussion in this text since the careful descriptions enabled by this framework of how beings experience delusion and awakening will be the referents against which we can gauge the value of aesthetic modes of perceiving.

In the doctrine of trisvabhāva, the basis for that which is given one of the two aforementioned praxical articulations (saṃsāra/nirvāṇa, saṃvṛti/paramārtha) is called by the Yogācārins the dependent or relative nature (paratantrasvabhāva). The Trisvabhāvanirdeśa explains this paratantrasvabhāva as "that which appears, in opposition to the way in which it appears" (Williams 2009, 90). The paratantra is, according to the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, "the dependent origination of dharmas, that is, the causal flow" (Williams 2009, 90) It is called dependent because it is, as Asaṅga says in the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, dependent upon causes and conditions: 

"[It is 'relative'] because it issues from the seeds which are its own tendencies, and is thus dependent upon conditions other [than itself]. It is called 'relative' because as soon as it has arisen it is incapable of enduring by itself for even a moment." (in Griffiths 1986, 85)

What 'remains' between awakening and delusion is, in one way of putting it, the paratantra. For this reason, it is spoken of as either defiled (sa_kleśabhāgapatita-paratantrasvabhāva) or pure (vyavadānabhagapatita-paratantra) (Hubbard 2008). This is so because the perfected nature (pariniṣpanna), as we will see below, is described as the paratantra when empty of the conceptualized nature. Of course, at this point, it is no longer paratantra in its original sense. When Mipam in his commentary to the Madhyāntavibhāga talks about a "basic field" that "cannot be one-sidedly explained as either pure or impure" (in DTC 2006, 45), I interpret him to have the paratantra in mind. Asaṇga writes that "[i]n one mode of being of being (parayana) paratantra is itself dependant on others. In another mode of being, it is parikalpita, and in another mode of being, it is pariniṣpanna." (quoted in Hubbard 2008). Paratantra is in other words the basis for both awakening and delusion. Harris writes that paratantra is both the "bedrock" for the saṃsāric condition (since it is from here that distorted images coheres into saṃsāric views of 'reality') but at the same time "signifies those moments of pure sensation at the base of everyday experience which may be met with more powerfully in meditation" (1991, 108-109). 

Unawakened beings take the "mere flow of perceptions" (vijñaptimātra) of the paratantra and divide it up according to deluded concepts and categories represented by dualistic notions such as experiencer/experienced or grasper/grasped (grāhaka/grāhya). The result of this is an "erroneous partition into supposedly intrinsically existing subjects and objects" (Williams 2009, 90). The Yogācarins call this deluded mode the conceptualized or imagined nature (parikalpitasvabhāva). While the dependent nature is "beyond language", the conceptualized nature can be characterized as the realm of language. As the realm of language, this nature conjures up a world that, in a sense, is unreal: a world in which objects and subjects are thought to truly exist. Language is partly the reason for this imaginary world because "[l]anguage necessarily falsifies. It constructs supposedly intrinsically existing entities" (Williams 2009, 90), but language is not the whole reason because even animals that lack language still construct a conceptual, imaginary world. Griffiths explains that to Vasubandhu, the conceptualized nature is

"the way in which things appear [to un-awakened being], the way in which experience constructs a world for itself, in contrast to the fact of its functioning which he identified with the relative aspect of experience. [...] The imagined aspect of experience consists essentially in dualism, a subject-object structure which does not reflect the way things (according to this theory) actually are" (Griffiths 1986, 86). 

These appearances are merely imagination and does not reflect things as they are–they are therefore in a sense 'unreal' (abhūta). Yet, they nevertheless appear to awareness and are phenomenologically present. They exist (asti). As the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra says:

Entities neither exist as they are seen, 

Nor are they nonexistent. (In Yakherds 2021, 238)

The opening of Madhyāntavibhāga clearly summarizes this point when it says: 

The false imagination [abhūtaparikalpa] exists.

In it, the two do not exist. 

Emptiness exists here, 

And within it, that exists as well. (2006, 25)

The abhūtaparikalpa in the Madhyāntavibhāga is commonly glossed as another way of describing the paratantra (Keenan 1982, 13). It is the dualism of the parikalpitasvabhāva that is removed in awakening, not the paratantra/abhūtaparikalpa. Instead of being completely removed, the abhūtaparikalpa "remains" in emptiness. This is also the conclusion that Gadjin M. Nagao draws in his influential study of the Madhyāntavibhāga. According to him, abhūtaparikalpita 

"is the subject of both "is not" and "is," of both nonexistence and existence. The duality of subject and object, which is essential to abhūtaparikalpa, is negated; hence, śūnyāta is. And that very emptiness of what is empty is never negated, is never nonexistent. It is in this sphere of śūnyāta that abhūtaparikalpa takes its shape anew; hence, "existence of nonexistence." In such a case, one and the same thing possesses a kind of "double structure" of being and non-being. This double structure will be seen both in abhūtaparikalpa and in śūnyāta;  in its aspect of 'non-being,' the abhūtaparikalpa necessarily turns out to be śūnyāta,  while in that of 'being,' śūnyāta itself naturally becomes abhūtaparikalpa." (Nagao 1991, 58)

Saying that the false imagination exists without the imagined nature (parikalpitasvabhāva), sounds indeed like talking about the "existence of nonexistence": the imagined exists without its imagined nature, but what has been rejected are the imaginary constructs, not the pure paratantra.  Sthiramati explains:

"The term 'imagination of the unreal' [abhūtaparikalpa] means either that in which the duality [of subject-object] is imagined, or, alternatively, that by which such a duality is imagined. The use of the word 'unreal' indicates that one imaginatively constructs this [world] through the categories of subject and object, when [in fact] it does not exist [according to those categories]. The use of the word 'imagination' indicates that external objects do not exist in the way that they are imagined. In this way it had been made clear that the defining characteristic of this [imagination of the unreal] is completely free from [the duality of] subject and object." (in Griffiths 1986, 87)

According to Mipam, both "the conventional imagination, as well as the thoroughly established emptiness that exists as its instrinsic nature" remain present in the final analysis. If one refutes any one of these, one ends up no longer a follower of the Middle Way in which what appears is empty and what is empty appears: 

"These two must be asserted and accepted to be existent. If one asserts the non-existence of the imagination, cyclic existence will become absolutely non-existent and one will incur the fault of denigrating conventions. If one refutes emptiness, failing to comprehend that it exists in terms of its being established in relation to that subject, the imagination, then the apprehended and apprehender will end up being existent and one will incur the fault of exaggerating their status as ultimate" (DTC 2006, 27).

Because the paratantra, in a sense, remains, the accomplished nature is usually described as 'the complete absence in paratantrasvabhāva of the parikalpitasvabhāva'. Actualizing paratantra but without the conceptualized/imagined parikalpita is what it means to actualize the pariniṣpannasvabhāva, the accomplished nature.  In the state of pariniṣpannasvabhāvam, things are 'seen as they are' (yathābhūtam). According to the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, it is the ‘Suchness’ or ‘Thusness’ (tathatā)—an ontologically indeterminate realm. It "represents a level of knowledge in which independent existence of self and other are precluded and there is perfect union of knower and known, epistemology and ontology" (Harris 1991, 147). It is the fact of nonduality—"there is neither subject nor object but only a single flow" (Williams 2009, 91). It is impossible to describe this state with words, and a word such as Suchness (tathatā) is merely a sign-post that we have reached "the limit of verbalization wherein a word is used to put an end to words" (Hakeda 2006, 40). This is because pariniṣpanna "corresponds to the end of the path in which nothing but pure sensation exists and there is no knower and nothing known. This is nirvāna" (Harris 1991, 108-109). 

These different ways of engaging the basic field—either with or without the veil of the conceptualized nature (parikalpitasvabhāva)—give rise to the two different orientations mentioned above. To not actualize the perfected nature (pariniṣpannasvabhāvam)/suchness (tathatā) is to dwell in saṃsāra. It is thus in relation to the goal of authenticating pariniṣpannasvabhāvam that we should analyze aesthetic experiences. By correlating musical modes of listening with pariniṣpannasvabhāvam, we can answer our question of how close to this 'state' musical attunement is. Although the scriptures are clear about not being able to describe this perfected state in words, in order to compare it to art experiences, we need to try to be more precise as to what exactly it means to engage reality in this way. From the brief explanation above, we can in fact already extract the two essential ideas of non-conceptuality and nonduality. The state of suchness seems to be characterized by these two non-characterizations. The question for us then becomes: to what degree can musical attunement be considered non-conceptual and nondual?

Schopenhauer's analysis of music listening

In identifying these two key ideas, we see an immediate link to Schopenhauer's musical aesthetics. In Schopenhauer's works, music listening is precisely described as nondual and non-conceptual. This common focus of Schopenhauer and Yogācāra Buddhism on the themes of conceptuality and dualism will provide a fertile ground for our discussions; Buddhist thinkers have generally said very little about music and what they have said has mostly been negative (see the text "Music and Buddhist Monastics" for a brief overview of Buddhist attitudes to music). Schopenhauer was not only a musically sensitive thinker but also shared a vision with the Buddhists that the purpose of life is some kind of liberation from the suffering (duḥkha) of our normal way of existing. To Schopenhauer, listening to music was in fact a way of intimating such liberation.  

Schopenhauer saw music as something 'direct' and 'immediate' and considered music to be a copy of the impersonal and abstract 'Will' itself. According to Schopenhauer, what makes music uniquely different from the other art forms is that it is not a 'copy of Ideas'. While ideas are the 'objectivity' of the Will–i.e. they are conceptual–music actualizes the pure non-conceptual movement of this Will. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, the Will is taken to be the thing-in-itself, "the reality underlying and bringing into being the appearances of the world" (Cross 2013, 183). Schopenhauer's music listening—by being the direct experience of Will-as-noumenon without the slightest discrepancy—becomes the source of liberating insight into the nature of reality.  

The postulation of the Will has fascinating correspondences with Buddhist thought even though no Buddhist concept maps onto 'Will' exactly. On the one hand, Schopenhauer's soteriological goal, the extinction of the Will, is similar to the early Buddhist description of karma and its final 'blowing out' that results in nirvāṇa. Considering Shopenhauer's Will to be analogous to karma makes sense when we consider such formulations of karma as the following one by Chang (1971): "Karma is the creator, maintainer, and destroyer of both history and the universe" (Chang 1971, xxiii). In this quote, we can easily replace the word karma with Will without distorting Schopenhauer's intent.  

On the other hand, we can also consider Schopenhauer's Will to be analogous to something like the paratantrasvabhāva as it is used by Yogācarins. This makes sense because it is the paratantrasvabhāva when perceived directly without thought construction–without the conceptualized parikalpita–that authenticates the pariniṣpannasvabhāva, and this corresponds to Schopenhauer's idea of the liberating insights into reality gained from perceiving the Will non-conceptually and directly, which according to Schopenhauer happens in musical attunement.

While this account considers Schopenhauer's goal to be similar to nirvāṇa, other commentators have made a more pessimistic reading. The German philosopher Martin Seel, for example, considers Schopenhauer's aesthetics to be nihilistic. He writes that for Schopenhauer, 

"the aim of aesthetic perception is not a transformed encounter with, but an epistemic overcoming of, the empirical world. This is the world in which the principle of causality drafted by human understanding [Verstand] prevails; it is also the world in which we are herded about without any prospect of fulfilling our desires." (Seel 2005, 7)

According to Seel, art has value for Schopenhauer only insofar as it facilitates "the acquisition of theoretical and ethical insight" (2005, 7). For Seel, Schopenhauer's aesthetics turn away from 'celebrating' the appearance of sensuous phenomena towards an obsession with their cessation. 

On Seel's account, Schopenhauer's aesthetics is perhaps best harmonized with early Indian Buddhist thought rather than later Mahāyāna. The early Buddhists, we must remember, more readily considered as defiled all sensuous appearances and did not worry about describing awakening too much as a cessative state–a state of extinction. For the later Mahāyāna, this kind of language became problematic, and we have seen above that Mahāyanists like Rongzom Chökyi Zanpo describe phenomena not as defiled but rather as divine. On the Yogacārins view, an epistemic overcoming of the empirical world merely means overcoming the need to reify the 'reality' of that world through conceptual projections and dualistic perceptions. Overcoming this need leads to a transformed encounter with what was the nature of that world all along, not its extinction. Sensuous appearances do not need to be abandoned for liberation to occur. While Seel interprets Schopenhauer as arguing for cessation of existence, one can equally well argue (just as the later Buddhists reinterpreted the words of the Buddha) that Schopenhauer's goal is not nihility but a transformation at the basis (āśrayaparāvṛtti) that leads to a direct encounter with phenomena. In this text, this is how I am reading Schopenhauer.

Before we can relate Schopenhauer's non-conceptual musical listening to experiencing the pariniṣpannasvabhāvam, we need a clearer understanding of what Buddhists mean by 'conceptuality'. We need to understand what they refer to when they speak of the obscuration of Suchness by concepts. In the following, I will try to provide a brief overview of contrasting views on conceptuality in the different Buddhist traditions. Once we have a grasp of these contrasting views, we can relate them to the act of listening to music and consider the validity of Schopenhauer's claim that music listening is non-conceptual. As we will see below, not all Buddhist philosophical views are harmonizable with Schopenhauer's. 

Views on conceptuality in Candrakirti's Madhyamaka 

In the Madhyamaka school of thought, conceptuality is at the very root of delusion. Harris summarizes how for Nāgārjuna,

"the unenlightened mind, through thought construction (vikalpa), creates false dichotomies (prapañca) leading to the belief in a world constructed of building blocks (dharma) possessing own-being (svabhāva)." (Harris 1991, 124) 

Whether or not it was the intent of Nāgārjuna, it is not uncommon in the later Madhyamaka to find an all-encompassing definition of conceptuality that holds that perception simply is conceptual. Perceiving with our senses is by default conceptual as there is no perception that is not saturated with conceptuality. Candrakīrti denied any existence of mind (citta) and mental states (caitta) in awakening (Yakherds 2021, 28) that would see 'things' unconstructedly. Thompson (2020) describes the Madhyamikas in this vein as

"relentlessly critical of both the positivist idea that sense experience is immediately given to us, uncontaminated by concepts, and the realist idea that there is a way that the world essentially is in itself independent of any conceptual framework and that the mind can know this world." (Thompson 2020)

In this all-encompassing view, conceptualization includes not only what in developmental psychology is spoken of as 'primary metaphors'—the pre-linguistic mental constructs like 'up', 'down', 'in', and 'out' that language then gets constructed on top of–but also prapañca—the structure needed to form concepts to begin with, such as space and time—as well as inescapable features of our cognitive systems such as object-selection and edge-detection–the process through which perceptions are integrated and bound together (Dunne 2020, 582).  

Since sound, at least according to a realist information-processing view of perception, is the mental act of binding together milliseconds of auditory data (data that is heterogeneous in spectral information) into continuous strands or layers that continue over time, this would mean that nonconceptual perception of sound is impossible. Think of the processes explained by "auditory stream analysis" (Bregman 1990); we can 'pick out' the sound of a white wagtail on the beach, despite each millisecond of sound having a completely different spectral composition. Hearing it and thinking it is the sound of a white wagtail, or even just a 'bird', is a form of gross conceptualization. On some levels of analysis, Buddhist authors speak of this gross form of conceptualization as the main form of conceptualization needed to overcome in order to actualize nirvāṇa. In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, it is said that 

"conceptual thought is that what finds expression in words such as 'This is an elephant, a horse, a chariot, a pedestrian, a living being, a woman,' and so on. Thus a conceptualization is that which illuminates the warrant for applying a term to an object, as when one thinks 'It is this kind and not another'" (in Thupten Jinpa 2020, 66).

This type of gross conceptuality is sometimes referred to as vicāra, it is seeing something and knowing what it is. It is a cognition that involves a universal. But the conceptuality that applies labels is not the only type of conceptuality we need to become free of according to the philosophers who see all perception as conceptual. On the most radical level, even just 'merging' each 'soundbite' into a segregated sound (i.e. distinguishing the white wagtail from all other sounds around us as its own 'stream of sound'), or hearing a sequence of tones as forming a musical movement or an auditory Gestalt would be a conceptualization. Just performing that simple 'edge detection' around the phenomena before even applying a universal is, on this view, a conceptual activity. Even animals that do not have language perceive through concepts in this way. Considering this kind of pre-categorical grouping and edge-detection to be conceptual means that more or less all perception is conceptual. 

If all perception is conceptual, the person who experiences freedom from concepts would not be able to pick out her name from the 'flow of pure perception' were I to call it. It would not make sense to say that this person 'hears' at all. From this perspective, the awakened Buddha, free from conceptuality, would not perceive the common world nor the beings that inhabit it. Candrakīrti writes in his Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya that for the Buddha, "the fluctuation of mind and mental functions has completely ceased" (trans. Dunne 1996, 544). Dunne explains that "at the highest state of understanding where one’s knowledge is completely non-conceptual, nothing appears at all" (1996, 544). It is only in the eyes of others that the Buddha seemily perceives. As Taktsang Lotsawa wrote:

"The path of seeing does not contain multiple instants. 

Because, from one's perspective, all appearances of cognitive objects have faded, 

The inconceivable activities are a play in the perception of others. 

These are the foremost among the uncommon, special assertions . . . 

For proofs, see the scriptures of the Great Madhyamaka." (In Yakherds 2021, 272)

For a Buddha, there are no "multiple instants"; there is no perception because all "cognitive objects have faded". The activities of the Budda only continue "in the perception of others". After a Buddha's awakening, the Buddha is no longer "really present with us" (Tashi Tsering in Yakherds 2021, 290) but rather functions, as Śantideva wrote, as a wish-fulfilling jewel and a wish-fulfilling tree. These inanimate wish-fulfilling objects "fulfill the expectation of sentient beings, in the same manner sentient beings can see the bodies of the Buddha in the virtue of his own previous prayers" (Tashi Tsering in Yakherds 2021, 290). In the Introduction to the Middle Way, Candrakīrti writes:

"Just as a powerful potter makes his wheel turn for a long time, so also one can see that things like pots are produced without futher effort. Similarly, in the present, one who attained the embodiment of truth is impelled by the excellent virtues and aspirations of beings without any further effort, but is no longer motivated by any intention" (in Yakherds 2021, 291).

This view of Candrakīrti seems to me to be at odds with Mipam's way of ascribing a shared intent between Candrakīrti and Rongzom Chökyi Zanpo that was introduced above. Emptiness when correctly understood is not annihilationism, and this above account of Candrakīrti leans very clearly into an annihilationist view whereas Rongzom and Mipam, the way I understand them, consider the Middle Way to be precisely a state where phenomena are experienced as "primordially pure" because they are "equally empty and apparent", not "born in either of the two truths" (Köppl 2008, 53). I will come back to this point below, and now simply treat Candrakīrti as someone representing an all-encompassing view of conceptuality.

Views on conceptuality in the Abidharma and Pramāṇa-vāda

The move towards Candrakīrti's all-encompassing definition of conceptuality was already found in some Abidharma schools that argued against the more mainstream Abidharma belief that "prior to the conceptual recognition of a sense object by mind-cognition, the object is grasped non-conceptually by sensory cognition" (Sharf 2018, 835). This postulated non-conceptual 'raw' 'quale' amounted to 'knowing blue' but not knowing that "this is blue". Such a 'raw' quale was pre-linguistic and pre-categorical–it was said to not involve applying any "general characteristic" (sāmānyalakṣaṇa). But the Vaibhāṣika school claimed that even just grasping the transient particular (what was sometimes referred to as the svalakṣaṇa) had to involve "some minimal discriminative capacity" (Sharf 2018, 837). As Sharf explains, 

"eye-cognition can differentiate blue from yellow or red or white, and [..] this occurs in the perceptual stream prior to the application of concepts such as "blue" and "yellow" and "red" and "white"." (2018, 837-838) 

What could this 'edge-detection' between colors be if not a form of conceptual activity? There was thus a movement already among at least some Abidharma schools to establish all appearances as conceptual. Sharf continues to explain that 

"[t]he Vaibhāṣikas went on to devise a specific discriminate mechanism, namely "inherent discrimination" (svabhāvavikalpa) to account for this capacity, and they explained it with reference to two mental factors, vitarka (jue 覺, xun 尋) and vicāra (guan 觀, si 伺), which might be rendered "coarse discernment" and "fine discernment." " (2018, 837-838). 

The reason why not all Abidharma schools considered all perception to be conceptual might be difficult to understand given the discrepancy they postulate between how things really are (imperceptibly brief dharma-s) and how things appear (as singular objects). Abidharma theories were based on the causal chains between momentary instants, kṣaṇa-s, in which arising and ceasing happen instantaneously. We construct false continuities out of these momentary unique events. How could this formation not be conceptual? Dharmakīrti, at least when speaking on the penultimate level of analysis that Dunne calls 'External Realism', gives us insight into how one might come to such a conclusion. Dharmakīrti, on the penultimate level, does not want to see this construction as a conceptual activity. Dunne writes:  

"It is true that the External Realist might defer singularity to conceptuality, but since all cognitive images appear to have spatial extension (sthūlatā), this would be in effect an admission that all perceptions are conceptual; such an admission would render Dharmakīrti's system unworkable." (2004/2022, 112) 

This argument is similar to that of Śubhagupta, who points out that the individual oscillations that make up the stimulus of a 'sound' are too brief to be registered and that the actual, non-conceptual, stimulus of a sound rather consists "in a series of instantaneous events that together bring it about that one hears the sound" (Siderits 2022, 137). The resultant 'stimulus' need not be a conceptual construction because what one hears is not individual oscillations that can be the subject of conceptual superimposition. To Dharmakīrti (at least when speaking on the penultimate level of analysis), the "actual objects of a single perception are multiple infinitesimal particles" but these work together to create a 'singular effect' that is 'non-conceptual'. In Dunne's words, "the singularity of appearance at the mental level corresponds to singularity of effect at the physical level" (2004, 112). In this way, one can avoid having all appearances be conceptual, and 'shapes' and 'forms' can thus be said to appear nonconceptually.  

This argument, however, seems to me to be similar to the third argument refuted by Dignāga in the Ālambanaparīkṣā. This is the argument that it is the 'combined features' (saṃcitākāra) of aggregated individual dharma-s that cause the percept (ālambana). In his commentary, Mingyu writes how "the particles help each other" as the "particles constitute the collective and are able to serve as a percept condition for the five sensory organs" (quoted in Duckworth et al. 2016, 18). This is similar to five people being able to move a tree only when they push together rather than sequentially, or to the production of sesame oil by bringing together many sesame seeds in a bundle. While such a theory would be able to differentiate between effect and volume, as more dharma-s combined would lead to greater effect or mass, it cannot explain differences in configuration. As Vinītadeva says, "you could have awareness of pots of different sizes but no awareness of a cup" (quoted in Duckworth et al. 2016, 115), meaning that you could have differently sized pots on such a theory but no way to account for the difference between pots and cups, which are explained as different configurations, different shapes, of the same dharma-s. The reason for this is that these differences in configuration would somehow have to be found on the level of dharma-s since they are the ultimately real existents that on this model have causal power. As Vinītadeva says, "these characteristics would also have to be shared by fundamental particles" (quoted in Duckworth et al. 2016, 114). But dharma-s are explained to be partless "spheres" and do not come in different configurations. Since dharma-s are said to be partless, they cannot explain how different macro-objects come to have different configurations. As Vinītadeva concludes: "Whatever has parts can be configured in various ways, but things that are partless cannot" (quoted in Duckworth et al. 2016, 19).

The conclusion of Dignāga's analysis is that since on a dharmic, External Realist view, one cannot give an account for the ālambana without explaining percepts by imperceptible dharmas, and since these dharmas do not actually appear, the dharmic, External Realist view cannot satisfy the ancient, philosophical criteria that the ālambana must both the cause of the perception and be what appears (Duckworth et al. 2016, 14). Because of this, the External Realist view must be abandoned and one must recognize that appearances are merely appearances–not the appearances of anything external; "it contains no information regarding externality or material constitution" (Duckworth et al. 2016, 22). If considered as such, the perceptual appearance can be both the cause of the percept as well as what appears. Since perceptions now are not explained as the aggregation of ultimately real existents, it is also natural not to consider the arising of ālambana as conceptual. Rather than being comprised of particles, intentional objects have "a unity and integrity that defy that kind of decomposition" (Duckworth et al. 2016, 30).

The epistemological tradition of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti is indeed famous for the statement that "direct perception is free from conceptualization that attaches a name, a type, and so on" (from the Compendium of Valid Cognition, quoted by Thupten Jinpa 2020, 65). In other words, they hold the view that sense consciousness is nonconceptual. Harris explains that according to Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, 

"perception (pratyakṣa) consists of one pure moment of sensation immediately followed by subsequent moments of thought activity in the minds of the unenlightened. While the first moment is uncontaminated and in the enlightened provides true knowledge, further moments will distort the image in a direction determined by the past actions and predilections of the perceiver" (Harris 1991, 108). 

Harris thus draws a clear parallel between this theory and the theory of the trisvabhāva. The pure initial moment of perception corresponds to the paratantrasvabhāva. Having all moments be like this corresponds to the pariniṣpanna. Dunne explains that, unlike the buddhas as envisioned by Candrakīrti, "Dharmakīrti's buddhas still participate in our world; they still see what we see–we just have the misfortune of superimposing our immediate experience with an unreal web of concepts" (1996, 535).

Such a view finds an account in Gihwa's (기화, 己和) commentary on the Yuánjuéjīng. In the sūtra, the "fully perfected" awakening is likened to vision without conceptuality and duality: 

"It is like vision seeing an object. The vision completely pervades without experiencing attraction or aversion. Why? Vision, in essence, has no duality, therefore it has neither attraction nor aversion." (Muller 1999, 114)

Gihwa explicitly relates this to the Buddhist epistemological account of perception where there is non-conceptual content for only a moment, only to be interpreted by the conceptualized mind. Gihwa takes the sūtra to mean that for fully awakened beings, all moments are like that:

"The clause "It is like vision seeing an object" refers to the time when vision meets its objects but sentiments regarding the object have not yet arisen. This is the meaning of the saying "aware of only the single step in front of one." In the vision of a great worldling it is only at the first instant of his perception of form that there is no discrimination. Immediately after that, he manifests affected views and produces like and dislike. Therefore it is said: "When first abiding in perfect direct perception, floating dust has not yet arisen; subsequently you fall into the perception of the stage of the mano­consciousness, and the concealment and disclosure of the external world takes place." At the time of no­discrimination, even though you meet beautiful and ugly, you do not know them as beautiful and ugly; therefore there are no views of attraction and aversion or grasping and releasing. The participation in the world of differences by the practitioner of enlightenment, without having the view of difference, is like this." (Muller 1999, 115)

To both Dharmakīrti as well as to the non-Vaibhāṣika Abidharma schools, perception was thus not by default conceptual even though it did not 'see' imperceptibly brief dharma-s but rather a singularity of appearance. 

Views on conceptuality in the Yogācāra

As mentioned above, the Vaibhāṣikas–who moved toward regarding all perception as inherently conceptual and discriminatory–explained the 'inherent discrimination' (svabhāvavikalpa) by drawing upon the two mental factors vitarka and vicāra. In the Vaibhāṣikas' Mahāvibhāṣā, these two mental factors were explained to be arising with all sense cognitions: "The five sense cognitions such as the eye and so on arise always in association with vitarka and vicāra" (in Sharf 2018, 840). Ever since the Pāli, canon, however, it has been recognized that vitakka (vitarka) and vicāra subside (vūpasamā) when, in meditation, reaching the second dhyāna (Lusthaus 2002, 89). This point was found both in the Suttas as well as in the Abhidamma. Vasubandhu, in the Sanskrit Abidharmakośa, keeps the claim that these mental factors drop off when reaching the dhyāna-s. We also find this point repeated in the Yogācāra text the Yogācārabhūmi. In commenting on this text, Kragh (2013) writes that vitarka and vicāra "play a crucial role in saṃsāric bondage, and what characterizes a successful Buddhist meditation (samādhi, dìng 定, ting nge 'dzin) is said to be the pacification and absence of these particular mental factors" (72). Kragh glosses vitarka as "discernment" and vicāra as "discursiveness": 

"Discernment [vitarka] is said to be the cognitive operation that is responsible for ascertaining what is perceived by the senses by initially labeling it with a name, while discursiveness [vicāra] is explained as being the subsequent conceptual operation of deciding whether the perceived sense-object is desirable and what course of action one might want to take in relation to it" (2013, 72)

To Vasubandhu, these factors are a feauture of ordinary everyday life perception, but they fall away already in meditative absorptions, and are thus certainly not operating in a Buddha:

"The five sensory cognitions of the eye etc. have both vitarka and vicāra. They always arise in association with vitarka and vicāra because their mode of activity (ākāra) is coarse and directed toward external objects. To clarify this, the verse [kārika 1.32 from the Abidharmakośa] uses the term “limited to.” The “latter three” are the mind-faculty, dharmas, and mind-cognition, because among the faculties, spheres, and cognitions, those [associated with manas] come last. These last three elements can be of three kinds. [1] The mind faculty and mind cognition and its associated dharma element, with the exception of vitarka and vicāra, when in the realm of desire or in the first dhyāna, are with both vitarka and vicāra. [2] In the intermediate dhyāna they lack vitarka and have only vicāra. [3] The second dhyāna and above—all the stages up to and including the highest stage (bhavāgra)—lack both vitarka and vicāra." ([T.1558: 29.8a11-18] in Sharf 2018, 840)

Of note in the above passage is the point expressed in the very first two sentences: "sensory cognitions [...] arise in association with vitarka and vicāra because their mode of activity (ākāra) is [...] toward external objects." As I interpret this, conceptuality brings about a subject-object orientation to experience, or, to put it another way, a mode of activity directed toward externality itself implies conceptual activity. Conceptuality creates an illusion of externality. This is a different view than that of Dharmakīrti in which duality was a non-conceptual error. In an article, Thompson (2021) argues that since according to the early Yogācārins, "conceptual experience necessarily has a subject-object structure", "any experience lacking the subject-object structure must be nonconceptual" (2021, 4). According to Thompson, early Yogācāra, therefore, provides an original perspective regarding the "scope of the conceptual", one in which nonduality and conceptuality cannot co-exist. Sthiramati, commenting upon Vasubandhu's Triṃśikā from the Vijñapti Matratā Siddhi, writes:

" 'Because there is no grasping in the absence of what is to be grasped'. There is a grasper if there is something to be grasped, but not in the absence of what is to be grasped. Where there is no thing to be grasped, the absence of a grasper also follows, there is not just the absence of the thing to be grasped. Thus there arises the extra-mundane non-conceptual cognition that is alike without object and without cognizer." (in Siderits 2007, 176)

I take this extra-mundane non-conceptual cognition to not mean that for Vasubandhu, when vitarka and vicāra drop away, all phenomenality drop away. This is in line with a general feature of Yogācāra thought, that awakening does not mean the lack of phenomenality. In Maitreya’s Madhyāntavibhāga, śūnyatā is said to have a number of synonyms, one of which is "the basic field of phenomena" (trans. DTC 2006, 38). Above, we already saw through Mipam's commentary that 'unreal imagination' remains in emptiness. G.M. Nagao even argues that because this unreal imagination in some sense "represents the world of delusion" and is a kind of disturbance (daratha), "enlightenment is deepened only to reveal that disturbance cannot be banished even at the final stage" (1991, 58). Awakening does not mean a banishing of phenomenality.

By reading Vasubandhu and Sthiramati's commentaries to the Madhyāntavibhāga, Urban and Griffits (1994) further conclude that unconstructed nimittāni, vijñaptayaḥ, and pratibhāsaḥ 'remain in śūnyatā'. The consciousness possessed by a Buddha "would not simply rest in an imageless void, but would continue to experience a flow of mental images (nimitta), appearances (pratibhāsa), and representations with phenomenal properties (vijñapti)." The Buddha would "still perceive the pure flow of phenomena which constitutes the paratantrasvabhāva, but without the dualities and distinctions which constitute the parikalpitasvabhāva". In other words, the Buddha would perceive without experiencing 

"any sort of conceptual construction (vikalpa), since this necessarily involves the reification of these illusory appearances, the separation of their phenomenal properties, the formation of names and categories, and their bifurcation into subject and object" (Urban and Griffits 1994, 19-20). 

We have here stumbled upon the fascinating debate between the Sākāravāda-Yogācārins such as Jñānaśrimitra and Ratnakīrti and the Nirākāravāda-Yogācārins such as Ratnākāraśānti. The latter considered consciousness to be ultimately devoid of content, while the former held that consciousness has content. A good summary of the debate between these two schools is given by Kazuo Kano: 

"The Sākāravādin [...] asserts that when a person is emancipated his knowledge is accompanied by ākāras (blue, etc.), though these do not enter into conceptual construction [..] To the Sākāravādin, thus, the image (ākāra) is ultimately existent (Jñānaśrīmitra equates the ākāra with Buddhas’ saṃbhogakāya [...]). To the Nirākāravādin, on the other hand, the image is merely a product of the false imagination, and only the innate illuminating function of cognition (prakāśa) is of the ultimate (Ratnākaraśānti equates the prakāśa with Buddhas’ dharmakāya)."  (2016, 9) 

The view of the Nirākāravādins (the thinkers holding the 'without-form' perspective) is therefore almost as extreme as that of Candrakīrti, with the major difference that what still appears is  mere nondual self-reflexive luminosity (Skt. prabhāsvaratā; Tib. འོད་གསལ་བ།; Ch./Jpn. 光明). For the Nirākāravādins, "[t]he Buddha’s omniscience would be aware of no more than its own nature" (Williams 2009, 102). Or as Śākyabuddhi said: 

"The bodhisattvas who have realized that dharmas are selfless only know (mkhyen = √jñā) mere reflexive awareness (rang rig pa tsam = svasaṃvedanamātra) which is devoid of duality." (in Dunne 2004, 406)

According to such an interpretation, perception lacking conceptuality would entail nothing more than perceiving the mere self-reflexive 'knowing-ness of mind' without any phenomenal content whatsoever. The Nirākāravādins' and Candrakīrti's accounts are both extreme versions of non-conceptuality. Maitreya, on the other hand, operates with a 'softer' definition of conceptuality–a view of conceptuality that allows for non-conceptual phenomenality. 

Views on conceptuality in later Madhyamaka

It was not only among some of the Yogācārins that some kind of phenomenality was considered to exist in awakening. Parallel to the debate between the Sākāravādins and Nirākāravādins, there are related discussions within Mādhyamaka. Not everyone makes the same interpretation as the one of Candrakirti that we encountered above, and some Mādhyamaka positions argue that phenomenality is present in awakening. One of these discussions is between the Tibetan shentong and rantong interpretations of emptiness, where the former argues that emptiness should be correctly interpreted as an 'other-emptiness' where some kind of awakening experience that sees the emptiness of 'other' relative phenomena persists.

Another point of discussion within later Mādhyamaka concerns whether Buddhas perceive conventional truth. Tsongkhapa's Mādhyamaka, for example, famously claimed that Buddhas could perceive conventional truth. It is here not a question of whether phenomena can be non-conceptual, but whether conventional (i.e., conceptual) phenomena can exist in awakening. Tashi Tsering summarizes this debate within Madhyamaka as follows:

"All the Prāsangika-Madhyamaka scholars agree that the extraordinary excellent quality of the Buddha is the fact that he never abandons the equipoise of meditation on emptiness. But there is dispute regarding whether he sees conventional phenomena. Some scholars say that from the perspective of the Buddha himself there is no conventional appearance; he only appears to be aware of conventional appearances from the viewpoint of other sentient beings. Other scholars disagree and argue that if there is no conventional appearance for the Buddha, then the Buddha cannot be omniscient; thus, omniscience would be impossible." (in Yakherds 2021, 271-272)

The debates over the issue of whether conventional phenomena were present to the Buddha can be found in all the major Buddhist philosophical traditions points to how unintuitive the idea of awakening as a cessation of the world of sense experiences has been to practitioners throughout the ages.

Views on conceptuality among contemporary commentators

Among contemporary Western academic commentators, there have also been new readings of the classical literature that provide interesting perspectives on this topic that are worth noting. Harris (1991) has for example argued that the cessation of vijñāna that characterizes nirvāṇa for Nāgārjuna does not mean a state devoid of phenomenality but rather a state where tattva is seen as it is. The Buddhist tradition constantly talks about 'seeing things as they are' (yathābhūtadarśana) and it would be to fall into the extreme of annihilationism to argue that this seeing is a non-conscious state where nothing appears at all. Harris quotes in particular two key passages from the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā to make his case. The first passage defines tattva:

"Not conditionally related to anything in a conditional way, at peace, not elaborated by dichotomous thought, free of thought construction, undifferentiated. Such are the (true) characteristics of reality (tattva)." (in Harris, 1991, 115)

The second passage shows that tattva is something that can be seen:

"Thus the ignorant create the mental predispositions which are the root of saṃsāra. One who creates (such predispositions) is ignorant. The wise person is not (one who creates) because he sees reality (tattva). When ignorance ceases mental predispositions do not come into existence. The cessation of ignorance comes about through the cultivation of jñāna." (in Harris, 1991, 54)

For Harris, seeing tattva amounts to more than just a state where "nothing appears at all". He writes that "[n]owhere are we told that nirvāṇa is a non-conscious state. Rather it is always defined as a state free from those mental factors which are associate with vijñāna." (1991, 56) It is about transcending 

"the commonsense (vyavahāra) world view which sees things (dharmas) with respect to their characteristics (lakṣaṇa) and own-being (svabhāva). He or she opens a field of cognition in which, ultimately, these things do not exist in the way they were formerly imputed but rather, are empty (śūnya) of such defining marks as lakṣaṇa and svabhāva" (1991, 15).

Lastly, I want to mention how the perspectives that argue that tattva can be engaged by some kind of non-conceptual seeing are in tune with Nishida Kitarō’s early-period work Zen no kenkyū (An Inquiry into the Good). I mention this here not because Nishida is traditionally considered a Buddhist authority but because his writings on muga (no-self) will play a central part in this essay. It is, therefore, important to know where he stands regarding the status of phenomenality.

Zen no kenkyū revolves around the elucidation of "pure experience" (junsui keiken). Pure experience, according to early Nishida, means to "know reality exactly as it is…without the admixture of any thinking or discrimination…[P]ure experience is identical with immediate experience." In this "purest form of experience", there is “neither subject nor object; knowledge and its object are entirely one" (Sharf 1995, 248). Nishida was inspired by William James, who earlier had posited a "primal stuff", a "big blooming buzzing confusion," and an "aboriginal sensible muchness" out of which the faculty of attention "carves out objects, which conception then names and identifies forever—in the sky 'constellations,' on the earth 'beach,' 'sea,' 'cliff,' 'bushes,' 'grass'” (Carter 2013, 18). This "stuff" is still completely meaningless, but the way I read it, at least we can find some kind of phenomenal content in this stuff rather than just mere self-reflexive luminosity. Attention carves out the object from this "stuff", and conception identifies it and names it. It might be tempting to equate James’ "big blooming buzzing confusion" or early Nishida’s junsui keiken with the paratantrasvabhāva (the dependent nature), and if so, Nishida argues that perceiving this phenomenal flow nonconceptually and nondually is possible. 

Conceptuality in musical attunement

The purpose of the brief overview is to explain how our definition of conceptuality affects how closely we can relate musical attunement to awakening. According to Candrakīrti's view of awakening, even if we believe ourselves to experience 'auditory emptiness' profoundly in musical attunement, we can never truly taste awakening as long as we still hear sounds. From this perspective, hearing sounds can never be completely non-conceptual.

However, if we follow the views of Yogācārins like Maitreya, the state of musical attunement is closer to the awakened state. When Scruton (2009) considers grouping musical notes into an auditory Gestalt to be 'pre-conceptual' and 'nonconceptual', his definition of 'pre-conceptual' perception is more in tune with such Yogācārins that does not consider all perception to be conceptual. Scruton writes how the grouping together of a musical gestalt is a perception that "does not require us to conceptualize the sequence as a scale, as musical movement, or indeed as anything else. It requires only that we group together the sounds" (2009, 57).

If we follow Schopenhauer and the continental aesthetic tradition at large as well as contemporary music philosophers like Scruton in considering musical attunements to be nondual and non-conceptual, and then relate that idea to Buddhist perspectives that consider non-conceptual phenomena without subject-object duality to be precisely what is present when ignorance is eliminated, we can describe musical attunement as a pure activity. Being attuned to musical forms is not, on this view, significantly different from being attuned to the empty movements of the paratantrasvabhāva, which means to actualize the pariniṣpannasvabhāva.

My suspicion, however, is that it would be an idealization of music to call it by default non-conceptual–that all music is always non-conceptual. The reason I do not want to make such an idealized claim is that this simply goes against listening experiences I have had where concept formation and symbolic interpretations seem to have been important parts of the musical experience. In some pieces of music, it seems as if some form of "mental doing", as Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche calls it, is called for to make the pieces meaningful. We can recall musical experiences that seem not just to be a pure flow of audible emptiness but rather require some form of mental activity or conceptualization. In the following quote, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche describes that mental doing can be subtle but something that ultimately must be abandoned:

"In order to engage in the real practice, we must leave behind mental doing. In the very moment of being totally free of mental doing, the real state of Mahamudra is seen. We can check and see by ourselves whether or not we are recognizing the natural state. It all depends on whether or not we are still involved in mental doing, conceptual fabrication, to even a subtle degree. When all mental doing has been released, dissolved, there is nothing further to do." (2002, 111)

If we want to be able to answer the question of to what extent musical experiences can intimate liberation, we must first thoroughly investigate the question of whether music listening truly is free from subtle mental doing. In what follows, I will therefore explore various ways in which conceptual mental activity may play a significant role in music-listening experiences. Five aspects of music listening will be examined in terms of their conceptual nature, and the first two of these pick directly up the discussion from the overview above:

1. Is the perception of sounds as musical shapes a conceptual activity? 

2. Is the perception of form–the construction of relationship between musical events in time–a conceptual activity? 

3. Are thoughts that arise when listening to music a form of mental doing? 

4. Does the conceptual 'framing' of musical experiences necessarily mean that the experiences themselves are conceptual?

5. Is hearing sounds occurring within a musical world–the construction of a mode of listening in which sounds relate in certain ways–a conceptual activity? 

1. Expressive shapes

One initial way to look at conceptuality is to investigate the perception of musical events themselves. For some theorists, music is completely non-representational and comprised merely of immediate, pure sensations. On Greenberg's (1940) modernist account of music listening, music is "incapable, objectively, of communicating anything else than a sensation". In other words, music is just about sounds 'in themselves' and  immediacy:

"Because of its 'absolute' nature, its remoteness from imitation, its almost complete absorption in the very physical quality of its medium, as well as because its resources of suggestion, music had come to replace poetry as the paragon of art. It was the art which the other avant-garde arts envied most, and whose effects they tried hardest to imitate. [...] [Music] was an 'abstract' art, an art of 'pure form.' It was such because it was incapable, objectively, of communicating anything else than a sensation, and because this sensation could not be conceived in any other terms than those of the sense through which it entered the consciousness." (Greenberg, 1940)

Such a notion of music as 'pure sensation' has in more recent times been critiqued, on the one hand, from socio-cultural perspectives. According to Kim-Cohen (2009), it is impossible to hear musical sounds 'in themselves' without any signification, historical contingency, and social import (2009, 13). Indeed, Kim-Cohen would be highly skeptical of the softer definition of conceptuality of the Sākāravāda Yogācārins as he, close perhaps to Candrakīrti, does not believe in the possibility of having listening experiences without semantic and semiotic activities (i.e. conceptualization). On the other hand, Greenberg's notion has been critiqued by cognitivistic perspectives such as that of Swanwick (1999). Greenberg's view that music is pure sensation does not explain the experience of how musical sounds in some way connect to form movements, phrases, and gestures. According to Greenberg's account, these 'shapes' are completely pure, despite being composite objects. In Swanwick's account, however, these shapes necessarily involve a cognitive and symbolic interpretation. Even just merely transforming 'tones' (paradigmatically represented by single sounds) into 'tunes' (1999, 13)–hearing sounds as connecting at all–is according to Swanwick a kind of transformation of the sense data. It is a composition of sounds into composite events that happen in the mind of the listener. The raw data of sensuous phenomenality is transformed by an interpreting subject into music through complex symbolic and metaphorical systems that create a level of meaning beyond the merely perceivable–beyond the 'pure sensation'. For this reason, Swanwick does not agree with Greenberg's modernist account of music as only involving sensation. 

Swanwick's model is dualistic: 'pure', external sounds are conceptualized into internal gestures, expressive shapes, and tunes. This is an information-processing account of music listening in which transforming sounds into shapes is a learned activity. Listening to music comes across as conceptual and artificial. If this were to be true, music listening would according to the Buddhist perspective be inherently saṃsāric. In their research on children's acquisition of the ability to hear music, theorists like Serafine (1988) and Swanwick supply empirical proof that supports their view that very young children have not developed the 'cognitive skills' to transform sounds into music yet, but as Cox (1989) suggests in her review of Serafine's book, this is actually no proof that music is a form of learned intellectual activity. Cox draws attention to the importance of questioning what the underlying ontological and epistemological commitments are that make Serafine and Swanwick's models possible and what hinders them from instead turning the process around and saying that it is transforming tunes into tones that constitute the conceptual construction. Cox suggests that from the empirical results of these studies, one could equally well posit that "[t]here could be something that prevents the very young or untrained from seeing something real that others can see" (1989, 89, emphasis added). Hearing music might equally be posited as something that is acquired through unlearning rather than learning–through non-doing and effortlessness rather thanthrough effort. What makes this conclusion impossible for Serafine and Swanwick is the commitment to scientific materialism. On a realist model, the shapes and forms of music do not exist in the auditory data (the sound waves that reach our ears). On a realist information-processing model, these 'shapes' and 'forms' can only arise as a transformation of data 'inside' the human. Therefore, they involve cognition and internal 'structures' that 'map' auditory data. For Swanwick, music is a "symbolic form" and "an integral part of our cognitive processes." (1999, 7) It is an art form in which ideas are communicated:

"[M]usic persists in all cultures ... because because it is a symbolic form. It is a mode of discourse as old as the human race, a medium in which ideas about ourselves and others are articulated in sonorous shapes" (Swanwick 1999, 2, my emphasis).

It is interesting to note that contrary to the idea of music as conceptual, Swanwick often seems to suggest that hearing tunes is effortless and intuitive. He, for example, writes that "[h]earing sounds as expressive shapes occur when analytical filtering gives way to intuitive scanning" (1999, 47). It is when the learned 'analytical' listening–the act of for example naming notes and intervals–stops that we can hear shapes: 

"If we always or even mostly insist on naming notes and intervals, identifying chords, reading rhythm patterns, and so on, we may get stuck at the level of materials" (1999, 47).

It is when we are being 'analytical' and perceive music as a series of phenomenal objects that the intuitive, detached tunefulness of perception is lost. Swanwick can be interpreted as expounding a view of listening as being nonconceptual when he argues that musical understanding is a form of "acquaintance knowledge", a tacit non-verbal knowledge, that stands in opposition to conceptual "knowledge how" and "knowledge that" (Swanwick, 1994). If it really was ideas that were articulated, we should be able to have a conceptual grasp of them, a "knowing that". The way I interpret Swanwick is that he is on the one hand a sensitive listener that recognizes that being musically attuned means hearing 'shapes' and 'forms' in an intuitive, non-analytical way. Swanwick seems to agree to some extent with the idea that aesthetic perception is characterized by disinterestedness–a state in which conceptual fixation is abandoned (Seel 2005) because we do not want anything from the world; we have no interest in it and therefore no need to conceptually determine it. But Swanwick's ontological commitments prevent him from making this non-conceptual mode of being a true possibility.

In the Buddhist epistemological tradition, concept formation comes from having interests and wishes to make determinate judgments. Concepts are used when we want something from the world. When this interest is not there, phenomena arise vividly. In his Exposition of Valid Cognition, Dharmakīrti states that "[a] cognition connected to concepts does not have a clear appearance of the object", and, therefore, "[a]ny cognition that has a clear appearance [of the object] is nonconceptual" (quoted by Thupten Jinpa 2020, 66). Dunne explains that Dharmakīrti's "main criterion for distinguishing the conceptual from the nonconceptual" (2006, 511) is whether phenomena are vivid or not. Conceptual appearances are vague while nonconceptual phenomena are vivid and clear. 

This resonates well with experiences of listening to music. I believe that most people would agree that listening to music is not about being uninterested in phenomena. Rather, lacking the kind of determining interest in phenomena that limits their function is what allows phenomena to shine forth with clarity. Musical attunements are moments in which we become acutely aware of the vividness of phenomena precisely because we do not seek to conceptually determine them. I take this to be the root of Greenberg's description of music as being purely about sensation–the unique presencing of phenomena is indeed what the experience is 'about'.  

According to Dharamkīrti, one way in which conceptualy obscures the vividness of phenomena is by imposing causality on phenomena. Concept formation commonly expresses itself  as the act of picking up causal capacities of things. In music, however, we do not 'pick up' any causal capacities or telic efficacies in phenomena–the perception of expressive shapes in music does not involve the perception of telic efficacies. In everyday language, we might speak as if telic efficacies are involved: In Figure 1, we might conventionally say that the fortissimo on the long accented A sounds like it causes the stacatto fortissimo B. Likewise, in tonal music, we might conventionally say that it sounds like a Dominant chord causes the Tonic. If true telic efficacy was involved, we would have fulfilled a requirement for conceptuality on Dharmakīrti's account, but this is merely a way of speaking. Scruton (2009), in calling musical sounds 'virtual', points to this important aspect of musical attunement: musical sounds arise without telic efficacy. These shapes do not have any impact on each other; they are like illusory rainbows that exist in a virtual world. 

Figure 1

Telic efficacy, externality, and vagueness are three traits of conceptuality according to Dharmakīrti (Dunne 2004, 141; 2006, 511), and these traits are lacking in musical attunement. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the 'expressive shapes' of music do not appear as anything other than that of standing in a nondual and nonconceptual relationship to the mind as mind–as emptiness. They are not the sound of anything that has a function or activity in the 'external world.' As Nāgārjuna said in Chapter 4 of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, "aside from so-called form, No cause of form can be observed" [IV.1c-d]. When forms arise, the causes are not there to be observed. Musical shapes arise nondually as the mind's free play. At the sme time, this free play is not completely random. As Nāgārjuna continues: "there are no objects at all That do not have causes" [IV.2c-d] (in Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü 2011, 14). Forms arise as parts of the never-ending web of dependent origination. In other words, they appear as emptiness. Being empty, they do not arise with the vagueness that characterizes conceptual phenomena but with vividness and clarity. 

From a view that acknowledges the nondual character of musical attunement, it can be said that we transform tunes into tones only when we lose our detached, nondual mode of being, not the other way around. The hearing of 'tunes' is more non-conceptual listening than what the hearing of 'tones' is. At the same time, we can meet Swanwick and Kim-Cohen halfway by acknowledging that on top of these expressive shapes, a lot of music constructs symbolic systems that the listener has to de-code when listening to the music. While we might not want to agree with Swanwick and Kim-Cohen that shapes themselves are conceptual by default, we can recognize that there are musical compositions that call for the comparison, categorization, and classification of such shapes in order to make some kind of symbolic point. In those pieces, we might say that conceptuality is involved in cognizing shapes. We can recognize a continuum between symbolism and non-symbolism within the repertoire of music, and it is because of this that Cage's remarks about sounds being like buckets make sense. Some pieces indeed seem to afford a more 'symbol-coding' and narrative-like listening than others. In these pieces, sounds are perceived as symbol-like because they seem to have a narrative push and meaning-ness to them. Other pieces invite a listening practice that is more forgetful, completely 'meaningless', more content to merely be in the present moment, and where sounds, due to the lack of narrative form, instead are perceived as 'just sounds', or rather 'just tunes'.  

2. Formal awareness

A second way to look at conceptuality is to investigate the phenomena of musical memory and the experience of musical form. When we perceive sounds in music, we can become aware of sounds' relationships linearly to the overall form of the piece and the other sounds previously heard. We recognize shapes as similar to what we have heard before and order these into some kind of relationship. In musical compositions, musical events typically relate to other musical events. Speaking of this feature of listening, Serafine describes music listening as an "active organizing and constructing of the temporal events heard in a composition" (1988, 71). According to Serafine, music is about recognizing similarities and differences between musical moments and sorting these on a temporal grid. Serafine considers this to be a kind of conceptual cognition and a kind of thinking with the sounds–a "development of thought in sound"–that is active rather than passive (1988, 71).

Serafine's perspective is challenged by Wallrup (2012) who in his phenomenology of musical attunement demonstrates that we do not necessarily have to think about formal awareness as an active, conceptual organizing. In his careful descriptions of music listening, Wallrup emphasizes that there is a difference between something like 'active recollection' and 'non-reflective retention' and that music listening is most often characterized by the latter. Wallrup argues that even in something as 'narrative' as a Romantic symphony, "there is no need to take reflection and recollection into account" in order to explain the perception of meaningful events in this music. As an example, Wallrup uses the "ecstatic moment of tragic affirmation" in the first movement of Brucker's eighth symphony's final climax. According to Wallrup, the experience of this moment as such arises precisely because the music in the recapitulation of the third theme takes a different turn from the same thematic material when presented in the exposition: the meaningfulness arises precisely due to the difference between two formally separated events, "the climactic resolution in the exposition and the climax in the last measures of the recapitulation" (2012, 325). Despite being separated by time, Wallrup argues we perceive this meaningfulness not through what Husserl called secondary memory–actively recollecting the past or anticipating the future as a form of "awaiting disengaged from the present". Instead, it is the primary memory that makes this happen. The primary memory is the "living memory of retention"–the non-reflective retention that does not engage in conceptual formation.

Likewise, when this living retention engages in some kind of anticipation, it is not an "awaiting disengaged from the present" but rather a kind of "living anticipation". It is not a mental time travel that takes us away from the present moment and makes phenomena appear with less clarity and vagueness. Wallrup argues that the difference between the musical events that make this particular meaningful moment in Bruckner's eight symphony happen "lies within the reach of retention, which bridges even greater temporal distance than that which just has passed" (2012, 325). Since it lies "within the reach of retention", Wallrup suggests that it is not an actively organizing and constructing of temporal events–it is a non-reflective activity.

Music, Wallrup argues, can be non-reflective despite experiencing the ramifications of the past in the present. Experiencing the "living memory of retention" is to be non-conceptually attuned. When Copland, in a famous statement, said that "[a] composition must have a beginning, middle, and an end; and it is up to the composer to see to it that the listener always has some sense of where he is in relation to beginning, middle, and end" (1939, 26), he was therefore not necessarily arguing for an analytic and conceptual 'structural listening', but might have simply been referring to how this 'sense' of 'where one is' is non-reflective.  

3. Thoughts that arise

A third way to look at conceptuality is to investigate the phenomena of thoughts arising when listening to music. Seel (2005) has given insightful accounts for how aesthetic modes of being often are starting points for 'aesthetic imaginations' and representations, and these can have a conceptual element. When listening to music, we do not, pace Greenberg, only hear the 'pure sensation' of sound but images, thoughts, associations, and other imaginations often arise. Whether we from a Buddhist perspective should interpret these as a kind of unnecessary 'mental doing' is an important question to answer.

My personal observation of these in musical attunement makes me want to make the claim that these creative imaginations need not stand in a malign or dualistic relationship to sound–it is not the case that they arise as thoughts about the music as in analytical listening. Rather, they arise precisely because of the non-conceptual basis of musical attunements. Resting in the non-conceptual state of musical attunement leads to the mind's innate capacity for free play to operate, and this play can express itself through conceptual formation (see Svensson 2023 for a closer discussion of this). Yet, these concepts are not of the same kind of conceptual activity that makes sounds sound vague or less vivid. These imaginations and thoughts should rather be thought of, as paradoxical as it may sound, as non-conceptual ideations.

It is true that Buddhist traditions often speak of liberation as a state of 'freedom from thoughts'. Above, we saw how vikalpa needs to be eliminated to reach awakening. Despite this,  the mental sense is recognized as one of the six-sense basis (āyatana) of human perception, and just as one can come to directly perceive the five non-mental senses (indriya-pratyaksh) (i.e., the visual [rupa], auditory [shabda], olfactory [gandha], gustatory [rasa], and tactile senses [sprashtavya]), so is it possible to directly perceive the phenomena of the mental sense (manasa-pratyaksh). When Williams (2009) described the pariniṣpannasvabhāvam as a nondual state where "there is neither subject nor object but only a single flow" (91), it would be a mistake to think that this 'single flow' only consists of sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and images. Part of this single flow of perceptions are also phenomena from the mental sense basis–phenomena that in an unawakened state are associated with consciousness and discursiveness but are here purified. The Yuánjuéjīng clearly speaks of how in awakening, the mental consciousness that produces concepts and symbols is completely pure together with the other five senses:

"all perception is pure, and so it is true for smell, taste, touch and conceptualization as well" (Muller 1999, 108).

In awakening, the activity of the mental consciousness is perceived as the empty movement of the mind. This way of thinking finds a resonance in the work of Dharmakīrti, who realized that conceptual formation, caused by the mental faculty, too must be able to appear nonconceptually for his analytical system to work. Dharmakīrti even based his soteriologically important idea of yogic perception on this crucial point (Dunne 2006).

These references give us reasons to validate our experiences of thoughts and ideations in musical attunement; some kind of nondual 'thinking'  seems to be able to accompany musical experiences without making these thoughts conceptual in the 'saṃsāric' way.  

4. The conceptual scaffolding of modes of listening

A fourth issue to consider is whether musical attunements are conceptual because they are scaffolded by conceptuality. We must acknowledge that our experiences of listening to music often are influenced by conceptual factors, such as reading program notes or the title of a piece of music or gaining an understanding of the music through reviews, biographies, and other accounts. In his aesthetic theory, Seel (2005) suggests that what we perceive as non-conceptual experiences in aesthetic encounters are, in this way, actually enabled by concepts. The question then is to what extent such prior conceptualization hinders the possibility for non-conceptual experiences during the listening experience. 

Seel (2005) argues that even though aesthetic perception is constructed based on conceptual frameworks, it doesn't necessarily mean that aesthetic perception is always conceptual. According to Seel, "a sense of the particular is a conceptually developed sense that abandons a fixation on conceptual fixation" (2005, 53). Artworks, despite being surrounded by conceptuality, "make present in and on things what evades conceptually determining fixation" (2005, 115). Simply put, it is possible for aesthetic modes of being to take us beyond conceptuality despite being constructed activities.

This basic idea, that conceptuality can lead to non-conceptuality, is a fundamental Buddhist truth. Khedrup Jé  (2022) argues that it would be absurd if that just by "having relation with a contaminated cause things become contaminated" (117) because without the possibility to transform concepts into non-concepts, the Buddhist path would be impossible. Liberation can only be 'reached', conventionally speaking, by relying on words, teachings, rituals, and concepts. Yet, it is a 'state' that is free from conceptuality. 

On the Buddhist path, the adept must initially constantly remember her teacher's conceptual descriptions of how things are. When the adept reaches a certain point, these instructions are no longer necessary and the conceptual understanding is replaced or transformed into the seeing of the mere thing without concepts. This point was expressed by Dignāga:  

"On the part of the adepts, there is the seeing of the mere thing (arthamātra) unmixed with the guru's instructions" (in Dunne 2006, 505).

Dharmakīrti built upon this statement and sketched a sequence of how an adept goes from having a conceptual understanding of, for example, a Buddhist concept such as the Noble Truths to a nonconceptual realization of them. Dunne (2006) explains how the progression of a practitioner "requires a movement from a linguistic expression of a teaching to some other form of understanding that no longer relies on linguistic expression" (509)–i.e., a nonconceptual understanding. The adept goes from relying on concepts to actualizing nonconceptual perception, what Dharmakīrti called yogic perception.

But we do not have to bring in such refined states as yogic perception to make the argument from a Buddhist standpoint, as even an analysis of mundane, everyday perception reveals the necessity for non-conceptual moments to follow concept ones. According to the Buddhist analysis of perception that comes from the work of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, for a moment of consciousness to arise, there must have been a previous moment of consciousness, what is referred to as the "immediately preceding condition" (samanantara-pratyaya). Perception  (pratyakṣa), as we saw above, "consists of one pure moment of sensation immediately followed by subsequent moments of thought activity" (Harris 1991, 108). Since all first moments of perception are pure, the sequence in which pure moments follow thought moments occurs all the time. 

From a Buddhist perspective, there is thus nothing unusual at all about the idea that the freedom from "conceptually determining fixation" that is won in aesthetic perception is made possible by conceptual scaffolding. The conceptual framework does not have to make the aesthetic perception conceptual. This is because moments of non-conceptual consciousness can arise from moments of conceptual consciousness (for a further discussion on this topic, which closely mirrors the Buddhist internal debate over gradual and sudden awakening, see "Music and Buddhist Monastics").

5. Modes of listening as selective awareness

In texts such as "Pointillism", "Like Rain from the Mountain", "Varieties of Just Intonation",  and in Svensson (2023), the idea that different pieces of music are heard through different modes of listening is introduced in some detail. There, modes of listening are described as modes of perceiving in which certain aspects are distinguished and emphasized in hearing, while others are downplayed or not even discernible. In "Pointillism", an excerpt from Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie is contrasted with an excerpt from the gǔqín composition Shuǐxiān to illustrate the difference between, on the one hand, a mode of listening in which attention is on the level of 'sweeping gestures'–individual sounds within these sweeping gestures are downplayed or even interchangeable–and, on the other hand, a mode of listening in which each sound is heard in great detail. In "Like Rain from the Mountain", Western common-practice period symphonic music is contrasted with the Number Pieces by John Cage  (the mode of listening of which is further analyzed in Notes after Listening to John Cage's Number Pieces and Cage's Ordinariness) in order to illustrate the difference between, on the one hand, a mode of listening in which the sounds of music are transformed into a separate, virtual reality in which the 'smooth tonality' of sounds is attended to while the contemporaneous ambient sounds are not, and, on the other hand, a mode of listening in which the simultaneous ambient sounds take equal precedence with the sounds of the music. In "Varieties of Just Intonation", I describe how in modal music, different pitch classes are not perceived in the same way but take on different importance depending on their relationship to all other scale degrees. The usage of just intonation can bring about modes of listening in which pitches come to be ordered in hierarchies of relative importance. In these hierarchies, some pitches are more salient and, therefore, remembered for longer durations–they are more "stable in the memory trace" (Krumhansl 1990, 148). 

If these differences between modes of listening illuminate that musical modes of listening are moments of selective awareness–discriminating activities that arrange sounds into hierarchies of relative importance, then, the way I understand Dharmakīrtian epistemology, it means that listening to music is a kind of conceptual activity. It would also mean that they are not instances of what in the Zen tradition is referred to as non-obstruction (muge, 無碍)–the important meditative quality of being free from "the sort of discriminating mind that would seek to arrange phenomena into hierarchies of relative importance" (LaFleur 1983, 88). A mode of listening is then something that conceptually guides what we listen for and what we 'choose' to emphasize in hearing. What guides this activity could then be explained as the goal to perceive certain aspects over others, or as the goal to have some kind of experience instead of another. If so, music listening is not truly lacking in the kind of interest that results in conceptualization.

There is, however, another way to think about 'modes of listening'. Wallrup (2012) has suggested that listening to music entails attunements to musical worlds in primordial, pre-reflective ways. On this view, sounds of music are heard as part of the non-dual and non-conceptual musical world that any given piece of music attunes the listener to. That a musical world is brought forth means that the listener enacts phenomena from a certain perspective and praxis. The world is in a certain way, and events of that world act in specific ways. However, the world is not a schema that actively orders the importance of things. Worlds are not structures that organize things according to hierarchical and cognitivistic grids. Instead, the world is the fundamental attunement from which events, such as sounds, can arise and be intelligible in the first place. Worlds are the pre-reflective, non-conceptual 'backgrounds' that determine the way in which phenomena appear. Different pieces of music attune listeners to different worlds in which different aspects come to appear more emphasized.

By explaining the difference between pieces of music as relating to fundamental attunements rather than cognitive filtering, the difference between pieces of music and modes of listening is not a matter of different conceptual operations. This perspective has commonalities with Dōgen's view of zazen and awakening. Instead of thinking of zazen as some kind of perspectiveless 'view from nowhere', Davis (2011) describes Dōgen's view of zazen as a "nondual perspectivism" (6). The perspective taken in zazen is egoless rather than self-centered, but nonetheless a way of experiencing rooted in praxis. Dōgen explains this by using the example of being on a boat on the open sea. When situated as such, "what reaches my own eyes as an individual is, for the moment, nothing but the visible circle" (in Kasulis 2018, 228), referring to how the horizon, from this perspective, looks like a circle. Kasulis comments on this passage:

"Dōgen's point is that what appears in any moment depends on one's standpoint. And that standpoint–positioned as it is in the experiential flux of phenomena–could change. This is what we might call Dōgen's form of contextualism or perspectivism. [...] Things do not appear (to an undeluded person) as something other than what they really are. Yet, as-they-appear is not all that things are: in any appearance there is "something more left out." The circular ocean is simply "what reaches my own eyes as an individual ... for the moment" " (Kasulis 2018, 229)

Even in awakening, we can not see something other than what appears as a circle. What is perceived is not nothingness, and neither a triangle nor a rectangle but a circle. Engagement is, as Davis (2011) summarizes the view of Dōgen, only possible from a "perspectival opening within the dynamically interweaving web of the world" (6). What changes in zazen and awakening is not that we start seeing things without a perspective, but rather that the attitude with which we "participate in perspectival delimitation" (Davis 2019, 333) changes.

Accepting this view of perspectivism means that Maitreya's flow of appearances (pratibhāsa) is not completely meaningless–a flow in which nothing stands out as more important than anything else. Instead, it is a flow perceived from a perspective but without a self. This kind of perspective does not arise because of 'ego-centric' motivations, and this is another way in which this kind of perspective is different from the perspectives we sometimes take in our ordinary lives as saṃsāric beings. Those perspectives are often created by self-fabricating egos that go out "and posits a horizon that delimits, filters, and schematizes how things can reveal themselves" (Davis 2011, 6) in order to fulfill their desires. Modes of listening are not like this. They do not arise out of the act of conceptually transforming auditory data by a subject who wants to 'use' objects to achieve some goal. Rather than being an act of data interpretation and manipulation, these modes of listening become the worlds that non-conceptually attune the mind to a state of giving itself up to the world. From this relinquished state, sounds are perceived as something like the non-conceptual movement of the mind, an aspect of the mind's free play that can only be perceived when a basic state of purposeless attunement to a world is in place.

Phenomena come forth as emptiness when we do not want anything from the world. It would, however, be wrong to call this passive listening: we do not simply sit down and passively observe phenomenality–that would be a dualistic way of hearing. At the same time, it is not something that we do. Because being musically attuned is an action that is "not forced by you or others" (Dōgen 1999, 114), this activity transcends any division into 'passive' or 'active' listening: it is an action unstained or pure. Within this attunement, phenomena come forth just as they are as seen from within the world: "Things are allowed to reveal themselves through nondual events in which the self has 'forgotten itself' in its pure activity or egoless engagement" (Davis 2011). It is just like being on a boat on the open sea and looking at the horizon: what reaches the eyes is nothing but the visible circle.  

Summary

In the preceding parts, music has been questioned on five main points concerning conceptuality. First, we asked if the perception of sounds as musical shapes constitutes a conceptual activity. Secondly, we investigated if the perception of musical form is a conceptual activity. Thirdly, we considered if thoughts occurring while listening to music reveal the presence of conceptuality. Fourthly, we asked if the conceptual framing of music necessarily entails conceptual experiences. Finally, we questioned whether constructing modes of listening in which sounds relate in certain, hierarchical ways is conceptual. In relation to these points, I have given arguments for the non-conceptual experience of music. Regarding musical shapes, these were suggested to stand in a non-conceptual and non-dual relationship to awareness. Concerning formal awareness, it was suggested that 'non-reflective retention' rather than 'reflective recollection' is at play when listening to music. With regards to 'thoughts', these were proposed to be a pure product of the mind's free play when in a state of non-conceptuality–a result of non-conceptuality rather than a cause for conceptuality. Regarding modes of listening, these were suggested to be non-dual perspectival openings of worlds, not cognitive or conceptual filters.  

The implication is that we can agree with Schopenhauer that the essence of music can justly be described as the non-conceptual empty movement of Mind. What we directly have to emphasize, however, is that even if this is the ideal nature of musical attunements, music does not always, nor by default, work that perfectly. We have all surely felt how some pieces of music seem to call for more formal awareness, and more symbolic interpretation than other pieces of music, and that this feels like a form of mental doing.

In some pieces, we listeners seem to be called out to 'figure out the inner logic of the work' by employing 'structural listening'–the desirable mode of listening championed by Adorno (Wallrup 2012, 290) and derided by Cage. In such pieces, we are actively involved in 'interpreting'; we are doing mental doing. In other pieces, we are allowed to merely dwell without mental time travel in a state of 'forgetfulness'. In such musical experiences, where are embodying a state of non-doing. Rather than simply saying that music is either conceptual or non-reflective, we can acknowledge that there is a spectrum; listening to some pieces feels more conceptual because we have to internally relate the different parts of the composition more symbolically, while other pieces do not call for any such symbolic interpretation.

If we accept that there often is conceptuality involved in musical attunements, the task for the Buddhist musician becomes not to find intellectual arguments as to why all music is non-conceptual, but rather to try to decrease conceptuality in their own music. The next part of this essay, Part II, will, therefore, see a turn from aesthetics to poetics with regard to conceptuality. Given that conceptuality is possible in musical attunement, I will investigate how composers and musicians can decrease conceptuality in order to create musical attunements that intimate the state of awakening. Since conceptuality is traditionally held to be one of the two obscurations (āvaraṇa) to awakening, figuring out how to decrease the conceptual obscurations (jñeyāvaraṇa) is of great importance. 

After having explored conceptuality from the perspective of poetics, the second section of Part II will turn to a similar exploration of the second of the two obscurations that block awakening: emotionality (kleśā-varaṇa). Equally important as conceptuality regarding music from the perspective of awakening is the fact that music often induces emotional responses and often feelings of like and dislike. In Part II, emotionality will thus be given a similar treatment as conceptuality.

After having thoroughly explored both conceptuality and emotionality, Part II will conclude with a summarizing discussion about the distance between art and awakening and try to answer the question of to what extent art experiences can intimate awakening.