Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Music and Buddhist Monastics

 Absence of sound is not the end of hearing,

And sound when present is not its beginning. 


- The Śūraṅgama Sūtra


The denial of the value of music in the vinaya


In the vinaya, the part of the Buddhist scriptural canon that regulates the conduct of monastics, the performance, enjoyment, and teaching of music is prohibited. The seventh precept of the dasa-sīla (ten precepts) forbids the monastic member to participate in or enjoy music. A term as vast as the contemporary English word music—a term that encompasses a very wide range of sonic practices—did not exist in ancient India. Many forms of musical practices that are available to us today were not present at the time of the Buddha. We can therefore only speculate about how Śākyamuni would judge many of the cultural practices that we today call music. We do not know how Śākyamuni would react upon hearing the subtle, poetic music of someone like John Cage. As the terms for musical activities in India were much more narrow than our English term music, we should not be too quick to assume that the vinaya bans everything we today refer to as music. As we will see in this text, a closer reading of the vinaya suggests that the main target of the mahāmuni's (the great silent one'sa telling epithet for the Buddha) ban on music seems to be music that we today specifically might call entertainment music. In Sanskrit, the term viśoka is found in conjunction with the ban on music, and this word has the literal meaning of being something happy and free from grief (Liu, 2018).


The prohibition on music in the vinaya does not ban the melodious chanting of Buddhist liturgywhich in today’s English would fall under the wide term music. As Paul D. Greene and Li Wei (2004) write in connection to Southeast Asian Buddhism: 


"In the settings of Theravāda Buddhism, it is common to deliver liturgical speech or chant in florid, music-like forms that are, for the purposes of following the seventh precept, not considered "music." " (Greene & Wei, 2004, 1)


In traditional Buddhist conceptualizations of sounding aesthetic expressions, music for entertainment was thus clearly separated from music for religious purposes–i.e. chanting. This, however, did not mean that religious chanting was unregulated. Even this form of music was relegated to its appropriate contexts. It was not automatically accepted just because it used a religious text; the recitation of the prātimokṣa rules was, for example, not permitted to be recited in a melodious intonation (歌音 geyin).


In the vinaya and its commentarial literature, the ban on music seems to be explained by primarily two types of arguments. The first type of argument has to do with regulating the outwardly observable behavior of monastics in order to win the support of the laity. Monks and nuns were supposed to uphold higher virtues and show supreme moral conduct. Seeing this conduct embodied by the clergy would convince the laity to support the monastics with food and material goods. The monastics had to make themselves be seen as valid recipients of such offerings so that donating to them would generate meritorious karma for the donors. Maintaining a supportive and mutually dependent social contract between monastics and the laity was thus one of the important functions of the vinaya. It was important for monastics to clearly, and visibly, separate themselves from the laity by their outwardly observable conduct. 


An important part of this separation of the monastics' conduct from that of the laity was that monastics were to refrain from sense pleasures. In the Pāli vinaya, one story describes a group of nuns that attended an arts festival. They were immediately criticized by a lay audience member who asked: "How can nuns come to see dancing (naccam), and singing (gītam), and music (vāditam), like women householders who enjoy pleasures of the senses?" (Liu, 2018) The mahāmuni heard of cases such as these and the direct result was a ban on instrumental music (伎樂 jiyue) and song ( ge) (Liu, 2018). Similar case stories are found in the Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivāda, Dharmaguptaka, and Mahāsāṃghika-vinayas. Followers of the Buddhist path are supposed to work towards becoming free from attachment to sense pleasures and entertainment; being seen playing or listening to music drew harsh criticism and disappointment from the laity that supported them.


The delivery of liturgy and sermons in melodious voice was, however, not a problem for the laity. Sources like the Sapoduo bu pini modelejia (薩婆多部毘尼摩得勒伽) and the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya Kṣudrakavastu even indicates that the laity actively requested a more melodious and aesthetically pleasing (i.e. less boring) recitation of Buddhist scriptures. This request is what resulted in the mahāmuni’s permission to recite the scriptural canon with a 'good voice' (好聲 hǎoshēng i.e. a melodious voice) rather than with a plain voice (凡聲 fánshēng) (Liu, 2018).


If the first reason for banning music can be found in the importance of drawing a clear demarcation between monastics and laypeople for the sake of maintaining a social contract, the second reason is found in the actual distraction that aesthetic practices can be to monastics in their pursuit of awakening. Later in the Tang dynasty, the monk and poet Qíjǐ (齊己, 863-937) would famously bear witness to this in his writings about how the 'poetry-demon' (詩魔 shīmó)—a term believed first to be used by a century earlier by Bai Juyi (白居易, 772-846) (Protass 2016, 97)—interfered and disturbed his attempts at practicing meditation (Mazanec 2017, 298). In the same way as the demon Māra tried to seduce the Buddha away from becoming awakened, the poetry demon seduces Qíjǐ away from the Buddhist path. Later in the Song, the Buddhist follower Sū Shì extolled the practitioners who had managed to "forget words" (忘言) and had transcended the need for language, while lamenting that he himself was still addicted to poetry. As Sū Shì writes in a verse dedicated to a Buddhist monk:


This Master has long forgotten words, has truly found the Way.

But if I give up writing verse, I'd have nothing left at all! (in Grant 1994, 68)


In the Mahīśāsaka-vinaya, it is this kind of phenomenon of being addicted to or distracted by art that is mentioned as a reason to ban music for monastics. This text tells the story of a group of nuns who went to a music performance (similar to the story mentioned above from the Pāli vinaya). They got so attached to what they heard that upon returning to the monastic community, the practice of Buddhism no longer had the same appeal to them as before. The reason for this is explained in more detail in later Sanskrit sources. The Indian master Kamalaśīla writes that song, dance, and instrumental music "will cause self-aggrandizement (rgyags [རྒྱགས]) and arrogance (dregs pa [དྲེགས་པ]), and secondarily, they will keep one in a cyclic existence" (Liu, 2017, 63). Vinītadeva, commenting on Śākyaprabha, writes that "since dance and so forth cause one to become extremely happy, but not become sad, for this reason, genuine happiness is the cause for cyclic existence" (Liu, 2017, 63). Again, just like the usage of the term viśoka reveals, it seems that the problem with music is its entertaining, joyous aspect. Music and art create an illusion of saṃsāra as a happy place. Cuilan Liu explains that according to Vinītadeva,


"the performance or consumption of song, dance and instrumental music can bring happiness and dispel sorrow. For this reason, one who watches such musical performances would be content with worldly life and fail to see the peril of attachment to cyclic existence" (Liu 2017, 63).


So far in our review, it might seem like music from a monastic perspective has few values on its own. The early Buddhist communities only recognized the mundane, practical effects that the chanting of liturgy in a melodious voice had; it could help the listener concentrate on the meaning of the text and could help her remember it more easily. Although not mentioned in any texts that I am aware of, the monastic community must also have recognized how the chanting serves to calm the listener and create a more serene setting that in turn helps in developing faith in the Buddhist teachings. As Wei Li notes, 


"music for sense-pleasure is against Buddhist moral tenet, thus, is not tolerated; monastic chanting, rather than being a conventional notion of musical performance, is a utilitarian vehicle for religious ritual and a means for individuals to regulate their behaviors." (Wei Li, 1992, 83). 


The value of music is thus only as a upāya. It is a skillful mean—a pedagogical teaching method. This idea relates to the classical notion of the arts as "the sugar-coating of bitter medicine". Such an attitude to the arts goes back to the view on literature expressed by the Indian Buddhist author Aśvaghoṣa (80-150) in his famous second-century poem Saudarananda. At the end of the poem, Aśvaghoṣa addresses the audience directly as an author: 


“This composition on the subject of liberation is for calming the reader, not for his pleasure. It is fashioned out of the medicine of poetry with the intention of capturing an audience whose minds are on other things. Thinking how it could be made pleasant, I have handled in it things other than liberation, things introduced due to the character of poetry, as bitter medicine is mixed with honey.” (in Reich 2016, 388)


This attitude toward art was again expressed by Mahimabhaṭṭa, the 12th-century Kashimrian aesthetician famous for his Vyaktiviveka. Reich (2016) summarizes that Mahima’s view was that 


"under ideal conditions, a poem would be written without any figures of speech or literary qualities at all, in the style of a śāstra, and that literary figures and beautiful language are at best a concession to the weakness of the reader, who would otherwise be distracted. Their purpose is not to enable an experience that couldn’t be obtained any other way, but to enable an experience that should have been obtained in other ways, had the readers been more intelligent and disciplined" (Reich, 2016, 389). 


The fruit—that is the effect—of śastra and poetry is exactly the same, and ideally only the former would be necessary. 


When reading the Buddhist vinaya, it seems like the attitude toward music is the same as Mahima’s and Aśvaghoṣa’s attitudes toward poetry; under ideal conditions, the monk would not have to chant the text in a beautiful, melodious manner—it would simply suffice to deliver it in a plain voice—but because people need help to concentrate and develop an appropriate atmosphere of devotion, they have to beautify their delivery.


The affirmation of the value of music in chant


As musicians, our deep experiences of sound might propel us to question the view expressed in the vinaya about whether chant merely is a 'necessary evil' used to draw our attention to the recited words. We might argue that being musically attuned is not simply indulging in carnal sense pleasures but something much more wholesome. In spiritual traditions all over the world, it has not been unusual for religious professionals to be suspicious of art. As Watsuji Tetsuro wrote: 


"This tendency appears in all countries in all eras where there is religious tension. Paul opposed the sculptors of Greece. Savonarola opposed the authority of the Medicis. If one assumes that artistic pleasure accompanies carnal pleasure, then it is natural that art is balanced against this kind of religious faith as a "one or the other" sort of decision." (2011, 83)


But the key issue here is that we do not have to assume that artistic pleasure is the same as indulging in carnal sense pleasures. As musicians, our deep experiences of sound rather suggest that music and musical practices have the possibility to give rise to experiences that transcend mere entertainment and give insights that intimate, or even supersede, those gained from meditation practices. The 'pleasure'–if we should use that word–of music is closer to the 'pleasures' gained from meditation rather than from any 'carnal pleasure'. This is the view put forth by Pi-yen Chen, who spent years studying chanting in Chinese Buddhist monasteries, in the interesting article "Sound and Emptiness: Music, Philosophy, and the Monastic Practice of Buddhist Doctrine". In what follows, I will briefly summarize and comment upon what I find to be the key points that we can learn from this article.


"Sound and Emptiness: Music, Philosophy, and the Monastic Practice of Buddhist Doctrine" offers a view of music's soteriological value that serves as a stark contrast to the view of Mahimabhaṭṭa. Unlike the literature reviewed above, Chen is not emphasizing chant as an upāya (a skillful teaching aid) for the listener but primarily something that for the practitioner serves as a valid instrument for cultivating insight into cardinal Buddhist truths such as egolessness (anātman) and emptiness/dependent origination (śūnyatā/pratītyasamutpāda). Chen argues that Chinese Buddhist musical practices, and in particular chanting, can "serve to advance an ideal of decentered, cognitively ununified subjectivity, the kind of subjectivity desired in enlightenment and approached in meditation" (2001, 27).  Chen answers the question of how chanting can impart wisdom by closely elucidating two aspects of the musical experience. The first aspect is the spontaneity found within what Chen calls free chanting, and the second one has to do with the act of hearing itself. 


Free chant, improvisation, and present moment experiene


As a first answer to the question of how chanting may be soteriologically beneficial, Chen mentions the spontaneity that monks perform in the moments of free chant in the communal liturgy: 


"During free chanting, in addition to improvised melody, chanters emphasize sound in and of itself, outside the melodic progression. They pursue sound, in other words, free from the conceptual confines of music. This spontaneity is the point at which form meets formlessness in Chinese Buddhist music." (Chen, 2001, 35)


According to Dharmakīrti, the immediate experience is said to be "free from conceptualization" (quoted in Thupten Jinpa, 2020, 65). Chen's point is that by way of emphasizing sound in and of itself, the chanter does not superimpose this immediate experience with the "unreal web of concepts" (Dunne, 1996, 535) that, according to Chen, a musical composition brings to the experience of sound. Instead of only being caught up in connecting sounds in order to create a musical composition, this non-conceptual engagement allows a heightened awareness of the momentariness of mental states (Chen, 2001, 36)–the chanter becomes aware of the moment-to-moment fluctuations of mental phenomena rising and falling. 


Chen describes this way of observing as "reflective" (Chen, 2001, 36), which I here interpret to metaphorically mean 'providing a reflection' in the same way as a mirror reflects light, rather than meaning 'deep in thought' (which is the other meanings of this word). In other words, it is not a kind of introspective observation where the chanters 'turn inward' and reflect on their momentary experiences as objects. Rather, this kind of reflective observation of the momentariness of phenomena is reflexive and non-dual. I will discuss this reflexivity closer in the second part of the next section as it is this reflexivity itself that in Chen's article constitutes the second answer to why chanting can impart wisdom.


It is the act of spontaneous, free, chanting that provides this heightened nondual 'access' to the underlying momentary rising and falling of mental phenomena that we usually, in everyday life, do not pay attention to. If the chanter were to every day repeat the same melody over and over again, the chanter would start doing it habitually and mindlessly instead of mindfully aware: "[r]epetitious chanting may draw chanters into an unreflective state of mind, depriving them of the ability to detect their inner situation" (Chen, 2001, 36). The act of creating musical variation when chanting is thus, according to Chen, something that directly tunes the monastic community in accord with "the underlying theme in Buddhism that the world (both internal and external) is constantly changing" (Chen, 2001, 35-36). 


I believe that most musicians who have been involved in improvisatory practices will feel a resonance with Chen's descriptions of how improvisation can serve as a skillful method through which we reflexively–without thinking and without making our experience an object of our perception–can become aware of the decentered flow of moment-to-moment rising and falling of impermanent mental phenomena. I am, however, suspicious of the statement that claims that chanters "emphasize sound in and of itself, outside the melodic progression". Such a formulation implies that the chanters are only focusing on the present moment, not considering past and future musical events. Not only is this an inadequate stylistic description–in this music, it does not sound as if sounds are completely unmelodic or unconnected–, but it also deprives the situation of its greater soteriological value. That improvisation is all about the 'present moment' is an effective description that conveys some of the aesthetic qualities associated with improvised music, but it is ultimately an incomplete description. It captures the essence of the moment-to-moment arising and ceasing of phenomena, but it does not describe the situation fully.


From my own experiences of improvising, what I find soteriologically valuable about improvising is not that it forces one to dwell solely in the present momentariness, but rather that it allows one to dwell in an experience where the radical interfusion of past, present, and future happens. Improvisation is more about recognizing the boundless interpenetration of the three times rather than just focusing on the 'present moment'. This interfusion is not about overlaying the experience of direct perception with conceptuality, as Chen implies, but rather the phenomenal content of emptiness. Accepting the view that there is an interfusion of the three times is in accord with the teaching of sūtras such as the Avataṃsaka where emptiness is equated with radical interpenetration and non-obstruction of the three times. While being able to be only in the present moment has soteriological value for the beginning meditator who needs to be able to put an end to relentless mental time-travel that happens in the form of daydreaming about the future and past, a more profound meditation happens when such a single-minded focus on the present moment alone is replaced by, as Fǎzàng describes it, seeing that past and present are without distinction and "penetrate each other without obstruction" (in Gregory, 1991, 155).


Another profound soteriological value from collective improvisation that Chen gesticulates toward is the fact that collective improvisation allows the chanters to experience Mind as fundamentally relational and communal. Improvising does not reveal Mind as some kind of personal, "innermost being" of an isolated self, but rather as something fundamentally non-dual, empty, and relational. As Chen emphasizes, it is not about "one's own" spontaneous decisions of musical variation, but about taking part in an intersubjective, ego-less musical practice—to achieve interpersonal harmony with the monastic community. This state is indeed radically different from our saṃsāric mode of operating as individual agents. 


The nature of hearing


Chen’s second argument for why chanting is soteriologically valuable focuses on the nature of hearing itself. This argument has two parts. The first part of the argument is that focusing on sounds can be a meditation in and of itself:


"While chanting, sangha members are supposed to concentrate wholeheartedly on one single intent, like water pouring down to a fixed point. The concentration is to be seamless. The monks can practice this concentration by listening to their voices, for each distinct sound and word. By concentrating on the sharpest faculty—the hearing—the sangha keeps other faculties from straying or becoming sluggish. In this way, sangha members attain the single concentration more steadily and therefore arrest deluded ideas and the straying mind." (Chen 2001, 36-37).


This part of the argument basically suggests that hearing is a suitable object for something like a śamatha-like concentration practice and is, therefore, an "expedient for samadhi" (Chen, 2001, 45). By giving the mind an object to focus on–in this case, sound–, the turbulence of the mind calms down and the chanter can enter a meditative absorption–a samādhi 


For this kind of śamatha with sound as its object to work successfully, it has to be performed in a particular way, and this particular way relates to the second part of the argument as to why chanting is soteriologically valuable. The concentration on sound has to be so "seamless" (Chen, 2001, 36) that the sounds are not heard as separated from the chanter; there can be no distance or seam between the chanter and the sound. That the concentration is performed "wholeheartedly" means that the chanter's very self becomes, as Wallrup (2012) notes in a discussion on the German author Wackenroder, "wholly a play of sound" (104). This is because it is "only in the total engagement with the music that irrelevant thoughts be purged from the mind" (2012, 104) and that the mind stops wandering. In other words, the concentration on sound has to be nondual–not imposing a subject-object structure onto the experience. 


According to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (首楞嚴經, Shǒuléngyán jīng), a nondual way of hearing is the very nature of hearing before artificial dualisms are imposed on it. According to this sūtra, the true nature of hearing is nothing other than the nondual nature of Mind. It is nothing other than Buddha Nature–the nondual ground from which all phenomenality and non-phenomenality arise. Hearing the faculty of hearing itself is the same as perceiving the nondual nature of Mind. Chanting in a musically nondually attuned way gives access to recognizing the mind in its natural stateChen writes:


"In this concentration [upon sound], monks also experience the nature of their hearing when they chant. That is, when the sound appears, there is sound; when the sound disappears, there is no sound. Our hearing, nevertheless, is neither produced nor destroyed by the appearance or disappearance of the sound. The nature of our hearing the sound is like a mirror that reflects the objects, but it is not transformed by them; the substance of the mirror is always the same, no matter what it reflects. One’s own nature is just the same; it is neither produced nor destroyed by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. […] It is thus important for chanters to keep in mind that they should turn back their hearing from pursuing external sonic objects to hear their own nature." (Chen 2001, 37)


The ground of Buddha Nature is, from the perspective of the Mahāyana, the only thing that is 'truly' permanent and unconditioned–beyond creation and annihilation and "neither produced nor destroyed by the appearance or disappearance of the sound". In the Śūraṅgama, Mañjuśrī expresses this point in the following way: 


"Absence of sound is not the end of hearing, And sound when present is not its beginning. The faculty of hearing, beyond creation And annihilation, truly is permanent." (in Chen, 2001, 47) 


The faculty of hearing is the luminous awareness that exists before false subject-object dualisms are imposed on it due to ignorance. Saying that "hearing" is "neither produced nor destroyed by the appearance or disappearance of the sound" and that it is like a mirror that "is always the same, no matter what it reflects" does not mean that it somehow exists behind sounds as some kind of substrate–some kind of 'Self' deep down. It is true that Mañjuśrī in the Śūraṅgama says: “To hear your very Self, why not turn backward That faculty employed to hear Buddha’s words?” (in Chen, 2001, 48). But 'Self' here is just a positive synonym for the no-self of Buddha Nature; it does not mean that Buddha nature exists behind phenomenality–that it is something we hear only when all sounds are gone. Rather than being something that covers over the nature of mind, sounds are mind; they are "wonderful functions" that occur "because of the revolving of the mind" (Mǎzǔ Dàoyī in Jia, 2006, 78). The Licchavi bodhisattva Vimalakīrti calls nondual perception 'nonperception' (anupalabdhi or anālambana), but this does not mean a lack of phenomenality but rather a lack of grasping and objectification: "The internal subject and the external object are not perceived dualistically. Therefore, it is called nonperception" (in Thurman, 1976, 46). The wakeful state of nonduality is not devoid of phenomenality. Experiencing this for oneself is what the Śūraṅgama points to by talking about hearing "hearing". Hóngzhì expressed this beautifully in a passage that clearly references the Śūraṅgama:


...genuine hearing is without sound. So it is said that perceiving without eye or ear is where the wonder is verified and fulfilled. Light streams forth from there and many thousands of images appear. (in Leighton, 2000, 42-43)


According to Chen, monastics are explicitly instructed to go beyond experiencing hearing as something direct toward objects–something that registers sounds as external–and instead hear 'hearing' itself. They approach chanting with a nondual awareness in which all sounds arise reflexively. By doing so, they will 'hear' their nature–the practice of śamatha leads to vipaśyanā.


This description reminds me of a beautiful scene from the Edward Burger documentary One Mind about monastic life at the Zhenru Chan Monastery. In this scene, a monastic describes how to drink tea with the following words:


"When you drink tea, be mindful of the place from where mind arises. If there are thoughts there, then when you drink tea, you won't taste Zen" (2016).


In other words, when engaging with the senses, the monastic puts into practice the instruction of the Śūraṅgama by, in this example, tasting 'tasting' in a nondual and non-conceptual manner. By doing so, the monk is mindful of the "place from where mind arises"–the unconditioned Tathāgata store free from conceptualizations. It would be consistent with this view that the same monastic approached chanting with a similar mindset.


Revealing or constructing Mind


At this point, by following Chen's second argument into the Śūraṅgamawe have arrived at a perspective of monastic chant that is far removed from that of the vinaya's consideration of it as sugar-coated medicine. Not only does the practice of chanting support the development of meditative absorption (samādhi) by cultivating a focused concentration on sound. By allowing a sustained dwelling in the nondual experience that is hearing itself, it also offers a gate into hearing the nature of Mind. 


If this is what is truly soteriological about monastic chant, we quickly realize that these qualities also can be achieved in music other than 'Buddhist' chant. Even Christian chant could be used to achieve these same qualities. Because of this, it might be interesting to ponder whether the Buddhist context provides something that makes the 'Buddhist' hearing different from the 'Christian'. A critical reader might indeed say that the institutional 'Buddhist' context is exactly what prepares or sets up the Buddhist chanter/listener for certain types of 'Buddhist' listening experiences and insights. The Buddhist chanter's familiarity with Buddhist epistemology and ontology will guide her to hear 'hearing itself' precisely through the (Buddhist) conviction that the mind is 'nondual, empty luminosity'. The Buddhist discourse shape and influence the experience in a very particular way; the practice of chanting coupled with an instruction to 'hear hearing' is not simply a neutral method of revealing the mind 'as it is' in itself. The critical reader might instead say that it is something that institutionally and socially constructs the mind. 


If this critical reader is correct, then this institutionally constructed mind would not be the same as the unconstructed Buddha Nature that the Śūraṅgama (and many other sūtras) describe as uncreated and that which is actualized by merely being 'exposed' or 'revealed', in this case by hearing hearing. Hearing hearing would then just be one particular (constructed) mode of listening instead of a revelation of that fundamental nondual awareness that makes modes of listening possible in the first place. Either the Buddhist ontology coupled with a practice of chanting constitutes a kind of 'transparent' tool that leads to a state where the Tathāgatagharba is exposed—a way of revealing Buddha Nature—or it is simply a culturally specific mode of listening, something that is constructed 


In his book why i am not a buddhist, Thompson addresses a paralell tension that exists between on the one hand the popular rhetoric found in contemporary meditation communities about meditation as something that is revealing the mind or aspects of it, and on the other hand the insight gesticulated to above that the contexts for meditation are something that actively shapes the mind. Given that meditators often are provided with rich conceptual systems through which to interpret the meditative experiences, Thompson questions how this possibly  could not construct and shape what we experience:


"On the one hand, mindfulness meditation is a practice that shapes the mind according to certain goals and norms, such as making the mind calmer and less impulsive. [...] How are these two ways of thinking about bare attention—as disinterested disclosure of how the mind truly is versus as shaping it according to a value standard—supposed to be related? They seem to be in tension. To disclose something requires not changing it as you disclose it. To shape the mind is to change it. How can bare attention reveal the mind if it also changes it?" (2020)


Thompson is critiquing the rhetoric surrounding many contemporary Buddhist modernist practices that tries to frame Buddhist meditation as being something that simply reveals the mind 'as it naturally is'. Thompson's argument is that "[a]ttention and mindfulness aren’t instruments that reveal the mind without affecting it". Rather, "[m]editation provides insight into the mind (and body) in the way that body practices like dance, yoga, and martial arts provide insight into the body (and mind)" (2020). This discussion has, as Thompson points out, clear parallels to the ancient debate within Chán whether awakening is gradual (i.e. 'constructed') or sudden (i.e. 'revealed' or 'exposed'). 


According to the Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra, the mind is without beginning and end; it is unconditioned, unconstructed (asaṃskṛta), spontaneous presence, and only realized through self-awareness (we can not know it as an object, only by a form a reflexive illumination). But as already sufficiently stressed above, it is important to not interpret this in a dualistic manner where the unconditioned Buddha nature is juxtaposed with 'ordinary' phenomena. In this regard, the teachings of a Chán teacher like Mǎzǔ Dàoyī—an influential proponent of the view of awakening as sudden—is important to bring  into the conversation. Mǎzǔ argued that the nature of Mind should not be sought by trying to see "the internal essence of the true mind"; the metaphor that this 'unconstructed' true mind somehow lies beneath our conditioned mind is totally false. Instead, Mǎzǔ argued, it is through the 'external functioning' of the mind that 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). 


In this way, Mǎzǔ undercuts any dualism between a pure, unconstructed 'nature of mind' and a saṃsārically 'constructed' everyday mode of perception. The functioning, ordinary mind is the same as the nature of mind. Not only are they ontologically the same from the viewpoint of absolute truth, but Mind's nature is revealed in ordinary modes of perception and even in failed efforts to reveal it. It does not matter to 'the nature of hearing' that sounds are intuited through modes of listening. Indeed, as his famous saying goes: "ordinary mind is the Way". 


The idea that nature manifests in forms and functions stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of the contemporary mindfulness communities that Thompson is critiquing; adapting the nondual perspective of Mǎzǔ makes the distinction between constructed and non-constructed modes of perceiving artificial. The nature of mind is to be revealed in its functioning. In other words, the question of whether hearing 'hearing' amounts to a revealing of Mind or if it is a constructed mode of listening loses its importance. It is mistaken to defend the view that the practice of chanting coupled with an instruction to 'hear hearing' is a completely neutral method that reveals Mind in an unconstructed state in a way not immersed in a world and not scaffolded by the web of ordinary dependently arising phenomena. No such unconstructed state standing opposite to ordinary functioning can be found.  


Bringing Mǎzǔ's perspective into the conversation will be important when gauging the soteriological value of music. What it means for our current discussion is that to disengage hearing from external sounds—and by so doing 'hear' hearing itself (i.e., hearing the nature of mind)—as explained in the Śūraṅgama, does not mean that the nature of Mind is somehow only revealed when there is no phenomenal content or no mode of listening operating. In this way, Mǎzǔ is in full agreement with Thompson in that "[m]editation provides insight into the mind (and body) in the way that body practices like dance, yoga, and martial arts provide insight into the body (and mind)" (2020). And because this is true, the reverse statement is also true: chanting provides the same access to the mind that meditation does. We do not need absolute silence to 'hear' hearing, and neither do we need the experience of a totally non-constructed, state-less presence of meaningless flow. We can hear 'hearing' even when there is sound, and, more importantly, even when we are intuiting sounds through a constructed, even conceptually scaffolded, musical mode of listening just as long as we hear it nondually–as long as we hear it as nothing other than mind. 


Grasping dharmas


We have now arrived at a position where it seems like all modes of listening are pure functions (jingyong 淨用) in accordance with the absolute nature (zheng zhengxing 證┌性). After such affirming statements, it is customary to add a "but". Dōgen, for example, after affirming that we even in our most delusional moments never are apart from Buddhahood, adds: "And yet if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth" (Waddell & Abe, 2002, 2). Mǎzǔ also, like all Buddhists, teaches that even though Buddha nature manifests in ordinary functions, there is a distinction between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Here, too, I would like to in the same vein say that music does not always work as perfectly so as to be a pure function.


Drawing upon the idea of the two aspects of the One Mind found in the Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn, Mǎzǔ argued that the difference between the 'Thusness' aspect of mind and the saṃsāric aspect of mind is a matter of engagement, or we might say praxis, rather than essence. Mǎzǔ explains that it is the 'grasping of dharmas' that leads to saṃsāra. Thusness is in turn actualized by refraining from grasping dharmas. This idea of 'grasping dharmas' can be used to explain what it is that can make musical attunements fall short of being pure functions. I interpret 'grasping dharmas' to mean two things: grasping them as external, and having an emotional reaction to them of either liking or disliking. In other words, the thusness aspect of mind is obscured by cognitive obscurations (jñeyāvaraṇa) and emotional obscurations (kleśā-varaṇa). The Uttaratantra explains cognitive obscuration as any thought of 'subject', 'object', and 'action’, while emotional obscuration involves the act of liking and disliking. Since musical listening, as already has been described, can be nondual, we can assume that the primary thing that causes a discrepancy is the act of liking or disliking.


The autobiography of Hānshān Déqīng (憨山德清), who wrote an important commentary to the Śūraṅgama, however, questions the separation of these two obscurations. For Hānshān before his awakening experience, emotional reactions to sound were a problem in meditation and he tells how he overcame these by no longer thinking of the experience as involving 'subject', 'object', and 'action' (i.e. targetting the 'cognitive' obscuration):


"At the start of this meditation, when I heard the howling of the storms and the sound of the ice grinding against the mountains, I felt very distrubed. The tumult seemed as great as that of thousands of soldiers and horses in battle." (C.C. Chang, 1971, 177)


Asking for guidence from Miàofēng Fúdēng (妙峰福登), Hānshān received a response in the form of a teaching on the doctrine of Mind-Only: 


“Objects (jing 境) are created by the mind rather than coming from outside. The ancient [master] says, ‘If you hear the sound of water for thirty years but do not let it move the faculty of thought (意根), you will realize the perfect understanding of the ear (耳根圓通) of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.” (境自心 生,非從外來。古人云:三十年聞水聲,不轉意根,當證觀音耳根圓通)" (Zhang Dewei, 2016, 336-337).


The ancient master (古人) in this response is a clear reference to the Śūraṅgama. The story suggests a strong link between perceiving things as nondual and not reacting to them emotionally. The 'diagnosis' for Hānshān's emotional reactions to sounds was that he did not perceive these as Mind-Only. The therapeutical effects of perceiving everything as Mind are easy to understand: when the cause of the sound is not separate from you, there is nothing 'external' to get upset with and no conceptualized 'other' that can be the focus of one's emotional reactions. Yet, that all emotional reactions would disappear because of perceiving everything as Mind-only is proven mistaken by the example of listening to music. Not perceiving sounds dualistically is already achieved by the nature of musical attunement, but not clinging to their prettiness is not necessarily achieved therein. There are, therefore, good reasons to speak about the two obscurations separately.


For the chanter to truly authenticate Mind's nature while chanting, the most urgent part must then be interpreted to be to not grasp sounds by clinging to their prettiness. In fact, not grasping musical sounds emotionally is, I want to argue, far more difficult than not hearing them dualistically. Hearing sounds nondually is a spontaneous and effortless feature of musical attunement, but not liking or rejecting the pretty sounds of music is more difficult, even though the theory of aesthetic distance shows us that some kind of 'indifference' to phenomenality is a prerequisite to experiencing anything as beautiful in the first place. As Fúdēng said, it requires thirty years of listening to the sound of water without having the mind stirred to realize Avalokiteśvara's 'perfect ear understanding' (耳根圓通).


The state of emotional non-grasping is achievable in zazen, but it can be difficult to achieve when listening to sounds. For this reason, Hānshān's autobiography continues by emphasizing the role that total annihilation of sound and silence plays in his spiritual development:


"I then went to sit on a solitary wooden bridge and meditated there every day. At first, I heard the stream flowing very clearly, but as time passed I could hear the sound only if I willed it. If I stirred my mind, I could hear it, but if I kept my mind still I heard nothing. One day, while sitting on the bridge, I suddenly felt that I had no body. It had vanished, together with the sound around me. Since then I have never been disturbed by any sound." (in CC Chang, 1971, 178)


Hānshān's method is to, through the control he gains over his mind, will the sound to stop. He manages to–through his will–completely ignore sounds so that a state of hearing nothing is achieved. If we read the above passage too literally, it seems that phenomenal content is per default delusion: it is only in silence that awakening insight occurs. But this would be to fall into a view of annihilationism. It would be to fall into a view of emptiness as nothingness–the view of Śāriputra in the Mahāhattipadopama Sutta in which the goal is a state where no sounds appear (Bhikkhu Ñaṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, [1995] 4th edition 2009, 284). From the perspective of Chán, this is unorthodox as this school emphasizes openness to phenomenality in meditation. It is about nondoing and accepting the coming and going of phenomena rather than actively 'willing' them to stop. And as we will see, Hānshān affirms such openness and the presence of phenomenality in his awakening experience. 


Hānshān's story, however, emphasizes that there can be a skillful use of silence: a more dualistic interpretation of the Śūraṅgama that interprets a disengagement from sound as the actual silencing of sound (rather than as just hearing these without duality or grasping) can be valuable, as an expedient mean, for beings who have not yet achieved the perfect ear-understanding. Instead of trying to hear the water without emotional reactions, we can instead be nondually attuned to nothing that causes emotional reactions to begin with. This is because, as Hānshān's commentary to the Śūraṅgama says, when hearing is still operating but meets nothing that can be the source of grasping, "all differentiation will cease and the Tathāgata store will be exposed" (in Śūraṅgama, 98).


The fact that silence is emphasized in Hānshān's autobiography illustrates on the one hand how difficult it is to hear sounds without like and dislike. On the other hand, it shows the soteriological benefits of being nondually attuned to nothing that can be the source of grasping. It is for this reason that I have elsewhere suggested that working with long silences and poetic qualities such as blandness and plainness can be a way forward for Buddhist musical poetics–these qualities are all about minimizing emotional reactions to sounds. Working with such qualities is a way of coming as close as possible to the experience of hearing without meeting sounds that will be the source of grasping while still using sounds. 


As mentioned above, the silence for Hānshān is only an expedient means and awakening itself is not silent. This is expressed by Hānshān immediately following the passage above. Awakening is now described not as the absence of sound but a nondual state in which "the myriad forms" freely come and go without causing any like or dislike:


"In a flash, the violent mind stood still;

Within, without are both transparent and clear. 

After the great somersault

The great Void is broken through. 

Oh, how freely come and go

The myriad forms of things!" (C.C. Chang 1971, 178)


Is the music Buddhist?


Musical attunement is the default way of listening to music, but maybe we have to be Buddhist to also imbue this attunement with soteriological values. Above, we said that there is nothing 'Buddhist' about either nonduality or the non-scattered focused mind (what the Buddhist would call a state of samādhi), which were two of the 'Buddhist' aspects of chant that Chen singled out in the text discussed above. These two qualities and values could be achieved with almost infinite types of music, but knowing that a certain piece of music will guide us to a 'Buddhist' experience might also be exactly what enables that (soteriologically beneficial) experience to happen in the first place.


This is very normal, and we see something like this operating in concerts all the time; knowing that the music is written by a certain composer before starting to listen to the piece, we prime ourselves for a certain listening experience to happen. Just before a piece by Morton Feldman is performed on a mixed program, we notice how a big part of the audience suddenly adjusts their posture as if getting ready to get into the 'Feldman experience'. This 'setting-up' is not, I would argue, necessarily bad in and of itself. Rather, it can be a helpful activity that facilitates more meaningful listening. How we conduct our bodies and energies is important in facilitating a meaningful listening experience. It highlights that music listening is not passive but enactive. Listening is, to borrow Thompson's description of mindfulness practices, a "skillful know-how for enacting certain situated mind-body states and behaviors" (Thompson et al, 1991/2016, xxv.). This point is also articulated by Tia DeNora when writing that "[l]isteners are by no means simply 'affected' by music but are, rather, active in constructing their 'passivity' to music - their ability to be 'moved'" (2003, 92). 


But on the other hand, to take a more skeptical stance, knowing that a piece is 'Feldman' or 'Buddhist' might lead us to a false mysticism that reifies and essentializes certain experiences as having to be in a certain way. The experience is profound before it even starts, and we are therefore closed off from actually engaging with the sound as it is. We saw perhaps something like this above when Chen was ascribing the simple practice of musical variation in Buddhist chant to an expression of the 'Buddhist truth' of anitya. Before the music began, the listener already knew that the music had to be Buddhist somehow, and the listener therefore 'heard' variation as anitya. The simple, mundane fact of musical variation was reified into a Buddhist teaching on impermanence. The problem with this is that it can create an overly symbolic (i.e. conceptual) experience of music. Variation was heard through the conceptual idea of anitya. Rather than hearing the music as what Mipam would call the "uncategorized emptiness" we hear instead the "categorized emptiness". These are, of course, not new concerns, and Buddhist practitioners have at all times addressed the problem that Buddhism itself can become just another filter or ideology through which we try to 'understand' and categorize the world (rather than a method through which such filters can be deconstructed).


This opens up complex questions, and I would like to conclude this text with some personal reflections on these. One question that might arise to a Buddhist composer is if art should guide the listener to Buddhism as a path, or if it should try to instill experiences in the listener that are in tune with Buddhist soteriology. If leaning towards affirming the latter, we might ask what the point is of doing so if there is no wider context to make sense of those experiences. The crucial question is: is it necessary to have the Buddhist context to, through musical listening, 'hear the mind itself', or is it something that can happen without it? Do we even need Buddhism as a context, or is it possible, like Stephen Batchelor suggests, to achieve something like the 'Buddha's insights' in a post-Buddhist and secular age?


Long before becoming engaged in Buddhist practice, I heard a piece by Yoko Ono called Stone Piece. In this piece, the listener is asked to simply listen to the sound of a stone aging. This experience of listening to literally nothing audible but as if it was music–listening to it with the kind of acoustic empathy that musical listening requires–was very epiphanic to me. It was a hearing that was disengaged from sound, and this objectless listening disclosed to me something meaningful about the mind and the world. It disclosed a world without edges and with limitless spaciousness; a world where any distinctions between idea and matter, and between externality and internality were completely dissolved. The listening that the Stone Piece invited seemed to go beyond musical modes of listening towards a completely unstructured experience where the myriad forms of things could freely come and go without leaving any traces–in other words, an experience of emptiness.  


I was early on drawn to art experiences similar to these that invited to experiences of emptiness. In the visual field, I found something of this quality in the works of Agnes Martin and Lee Ufan. Martin herself described her paintings to be "about merging, about formlessness […] A world without objects, without interruption" (in Princenthal, 2o15). The audience does not have to be committed to any particular institutionalized path of cultivation whatsoever to perceive this formlessness. This is one of the great qualities of art. There is no need to talk of ideas or concepts, but rather there is a possibility to directly inspire and benefit the mind-bodies of sentient beings through the attunement between them and the art.


When I later started to meditate, I recognized the sound of the aging stone in meditative experiences like an old friend. I realized that the listening afforded by the Stone Piece was comparable to the kind of listening that the Śūraṅgama instructs us to do. The question then becomes: had I been practicing the Śūraṅgama meditation without realizing it? If the answer is yes, what need is there for Buddhism if this meditation is accessible through such simple instruction as listening to an aging stone?  


Some people might even say that not being fully content with these early art experiences, and instead being spurred on by Ono's stone piece to get involved with something institutionalized as Buddhism, was a very big mistake indeed. Others would argue against such a statement and instead claim that such a point of view subscribes to a view of awakening that is too facile; it is not enough, they would argue, to once in a while have empty, nondual meditative experiences when encountering art. To reach further than these temporary experiences facilitated by listening to the aging stone, or encountering the infinite in the sculptural structures of Lee Ufan, we simply must ask for help and guidance from someone who can show the way to complete, atemporal awakening. They would say that we therefore must take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. 


This imaginary conversation relates to one found within the Buddhist context itself, where a tradition of reliance upon scriptures is combined with a philosophical skepticism towards the use of language. In the Zen tradition, in particular, this skepticism is written into the very origin story. The Buddha bestows upon Mahākāśyapa the shōbōgenzō (the "repository of the eye for the truth") in a wordless transmission from mind to mind, not relying on verbal utterances. The scene is of poetic beauty: the mahāmuni instigates the transmission by the simple act of holding up a flower. Stories such as these have in certain circles given rise to a negative view of language and given primacy to an overly idealized idea of 'pure' non-linguistic experiences. Such values were especially taken up by 20th-century lay artists influenced by Zen, such as Agnes Martin and John Cage. I believe these artists very well might have contended that the art experience is enough; there is no need for these 'pure' experiences to be colonized by 'institutional religion', they might have argued. (Although I suspect that these 'pure experiences' still provided a basis for ethical conduct for these artists.) I would associate such a way of thinking with 'Buddhist Modernism' rather than traditional Buddhism. It is a mixture of Buddhism and Romantic aesthetic values. Consider instead the words by 13th-century Zen master Dōgen. On the flower transmission to Mahākāśyapa, Dōgen comments: "If Shakyamuni dislikes the verbal and prefers to twirl the flower, he should have saved the twirling for after speaking" (2011, 160). Dōgen was emphasizing the absolute necessity for verbal instruction: "Those who have not heard a genuine master's instructions, though they may sit on a meditation seat like a buddha, have not even dreamed of the way things really are" (2011, 160). In other words, the stones in Ono's Stone Piece or the stones in Lee Ufan's sculptures are not enough to guide us to liberation, but they do intimate the state of liberation in profound ways.


With this last statement, we seem to have made it back to an instrumental view of art with which we began this essay—the view of art as an upāya and as a pedagogical teaching method. Aśvaghoṣa's view of art was that of bitter medicine mixed with honey. But at the same time, the art of Ono and Lee that we are discussing here is fundamentally different from Aśvaghoṣa's poem Saudarananda and the process of simply 'beautifying' Buddhist sermons by delivering these with a pleasant melody or 'good voice' (好聲 hǎoshēng). In his text “Beyond Being and Nothingness: On Sekine Nobuo”, Lee comments that Sekine, with his 1968 piece Phase—Mother Earth created a situation where "objects were transmogrified into dharmakāya" (2011, 112). In other words, the audience who encountered this work encountered phenomena as emptiness–as the body (kāya) of Dharma. They encountered how "[p]henomena, always unborn, are the Thus-gone-one" (Rangzom Chökyi Zanpo quoted in Köppl, 2008, 99). What we are talking about here is a process in which art directly attunes the audience to states of seeing things as they are and where it tastes the liberating insights into emptiness gained therefrom. 


When reading Lee's writings, we are struck by how much he emphasizes this as the purpose of his art. It is all about creating conditions in which the audience can see things as they are–to create "ruptures in the ordinary everydayness" (2018, 156) so that it can see things as empty. When we return from these art experiences, it is like we return to saṃsāra from a brief escape: “[t]ime becomes continuous again” and “[t]he gap is closed and turns into space where the surroundings remain unseen” (2018, 156). I believe Lee would not mind referring to his sculptures and paintings as the 'honey' which makes these rapturous moments possible. This art is not downgraded by being called upāya but rather it is a sign of its supreme accomplishments.


From a normative Buddhist point of view, however, these art experiences are not enough. We simply must take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha to go further. This insistence on institutional religion is as untimely as it is important. As the great Buddhist monk, poet, and painter Guànxiū wrote already in the late Tang dynasty:


得句先呈佛 Attaining lines, you first offer them to the Buddha; 

無人知此心 No one understands this mindset.  (translated in Mazanec, 2017, 337)