Part 1: Listening
Musical listening is non-dual. This becomes evident through the phenomenology of attunement—what the German tradition calls Stimmung. The term captures how, under ordinary circumstances, we do not experience music 'as an object'. Music is neither heard as something 'out there' in the material world nor as something 'in here', confined to the mind. Rather, it arises through an effortless, spontaneously non-dual, and egoless process in which our mind and body attune to the music. Because this form of musical attunement rests the mind in non-dual awareness, listening offers meaningful reference points and lived experiences that can support the practice of zazen—the actualization of that primordial non-duality Buddhist scriptures call the nature of mind. There is, therefore, a genuine soteriological value even in the most ordinary moments of listening, since they are already non-dual forms of musical attunement.
In both zazen and musical attunement, the mind is free from dualistic reference points. In such moments, we are not listening or attending to 'something' to be grasped; rather, we experience how phenomenality arises non-dually. Kasulis (2018) describes zazen as a state in which the "specifics of the situation dissolve back into the meaningless flow, the as-ness or presencing" (230). In Buddhism, we often find ideas such as these that seem to suggest that the goal is not to perceive any content, but rather be tuned to a content-less awareness, such as in Kūkai's idea of achieving liberation through non-dual attunement to 'empty space'—the dharmakāya. At first glance, this might suggest a stark difference between zazen and music: music is not merely a meaningless flow or 'empty space'. Rather, when we listen, a musical world is brought forth and its phenomena are engaged from a perspective of being attuned to that world.
Yet, according to Dōgen, zazen does not require the meditator to adopt a perspectivelessness that reduces phenomenality to undistinguished white noise or the mere perception of empty space—a 'view of nothing from nowhere'. It is not that kind of meaninglessness that is realized in meditation. As Davis (2011) explains, Dōgen advocates a form of perspectivism in which a 'perspective' is a necessary feature of all phenomenality, even for the awakened. Unlike the perspectives of saṃsāric existence, which, under the "winds of externality" (The Lankavatara Sutra 2012, 75), construct a false dualism between self and world, the perspective Dōgen describes is non-dual. This understanding also applies to Kūkai, who with the dharmakāya did not mean a vacuum or nothingness. Rather, 'empty space' points to the way all phenomenality, in all its forms, is like empty space when apprehended correctly—not by removing phenomenality (i.e., making space empty by deleting content), but by perceiving it as it truly is. For Dōgen, this happens when phenomenality is engaged from a non-dual perspectival opening: what emerges is a world, a world arising dependently from phenomena, but one in which subject-object duality and the objects imposed by false imagination (abhūtaparikalpa) have no objective existence (Davis 2011). In this sense, zazen is similar to musical attunement: it is not a state where we apprehend objects, but one in which the world nevertheless appears through a certain attunement and from a particular perspective.
Resting the mind in its natural non-duality means being attuned to all myriad forms. These forms are the empty revolving of a mind that is neither internal nor external, neither private nor communal. When apprehended as empty, these forms appear as focal points that gather a world; they are perspectival openings within events of interconnection (Davis 2019, 334). Through musical attunement, these openings become experientially accessible, allowing ordinary listening to participate in the non-dual realization described by Dōgen and Kūkai.
Davis (2019) argues that, for Dōgen, awakening is not a matter of attaining omniscience or seeing things without a perspective. Rather, it "entails a radical change in the "attitude" or "fundamental attunement" with which one participates in perspectival delimitation" (2019, 333). Musical attunements are moments in which such a radical change in fundamental attunement can be realized. These moments are not about abandoning perspectives; they are about how we give ourselves over to the world of the musical attunement—to the perspective of the music itself. Attuning ourselves to this musical world is a "pure action" that is "not forced by you or others" (Dōgen 1999, 114).
That music can, in this way, serve as a verification of non-duality does not mean that all musical attunements are inherently the pure perception of the dharmakāya. Kasulis’ use of the term "meaningless" is crucial because it highlights the distinction between music that intimates zazen and music that does not. Here, 'meaningless' does not refer to the absence of a world or perspectivelessness, but to the interpretation of 'objects' within a world. Music that does not ask the listener to hear sounds through concepts or symbols is the music that brings aesthetic experience closer to the attentiveness of zazen. Such music does not require the listener to 'make sense' of it either narratively or conceptually; instead, it invites a form of forgetfulness—an active, acutely perceptive forgetfulness rather than a dull or hazy one. Freed from the burden of understanding or conceptualizing the phenomena, the listener is drawn toward the bare attention of zazen, where things are seen as they truly are.
Relieving the listener of any burden to 'understand' the music does not transform her into a withered tree or a pile of dried ashes (koboku shikai 枯木死灰) in a nihilistic sense. On the contrary, such modes of listening encourage the mind’s spontaneous free play (Skt. līlā) to come to the foreground of experience, giving rise to insight into the creative workings of the nature of mind. Similarly, in musical attunement, letting go of the need to conceptually grasp the music allows the mind to roam freely, revealing its spontaneous activity. As Kasulis (2018, 230) writes: “zazen will always take us back to the point where the specifics of the situation dissolve back into the meaningless flow, the as-ness or presencing. That flux is a boundless, infinite resource out of which new situations and new meanings can arise" (2018, 230).
Buddhists speak of meditators being like withered trees not because the free play of their minds is suppressed, but because it is enabled. The metaphor of withered branches "depicts the total stillness of non-thinking that fosters rather than suppresses the inevitable and unstoppable budding of blossoms" (Heine 2020, 31). To describe this free play, Hóngzhì borrows a metaphor from Zhuāngzi: "roaming at will" (逍遙遊, xiāoyáo yóu). He writes:
"Roam and play in samādhi. Every detail clearly appears before you. Sound and form, echo and shadow, happen instantly without leaving traces. [...] The valley is empty, but echoes. From the beginning unbound by seeing or hearing, the genuine self romps and plays in samādhi without obstruction" (in Leghton 2000, 34 & 37).
In this way, both meditation and musical listening can allow the mind to enact a liberated, non-dual engagement with phenomena: attentive yet free, playful yet precise, perceiving without conceptual grasping. When musical attunement is completely pure like this, sounds appear but leave no traces. Phenomenality is playfully engaged with, yet leads to no clinging. All sounds appear like echoes–illusory and insubstantial moments of mind's "wonderful function" (Mǎzǔ Dàoyī in Jia 2006, 78)
Usually, we do not relish music’s beauty without subtly affirming or rejecting the phenomenal experience. This is so despite the 'disinterest' that philosophers like Schopenhauer have argued are a necessary feature of any aesthetic perception. For Schopenhauer, to perceive anything as beautiful requires that we do not really have a worldly interest in it. Yet, despite this ideal of disinterested perception, when listening to music, we are rarely as inert as wood, stone, or heaps of dried ashes. Beneath the ashes, there is often a glowing ember of like or dislike that we bring to the musical attunement. This holds even when we expand our idea of agreeable sounds to include traditionally 'plain' or even 'ugly' tones. It also applies when we broaden our poetic moods beyond highly charged rasa-s to encompass those that are most ordinary and insipid—moments that intimate the mundane, unspectacular rhythms of everyday life.
Drawing upon moods that seem most ordinary and insipid is precisely what aesthetic qualities like blandness (Ch. 淡 dàn) and moods of peace (Skrt. śāntarasa) accomplish. These qualities invite the listener to extend the non-dual awareness of hearing, even in the absence of garlands of pleasurable sounds or strong affective states (rasa-s), which usually compel the spontaneous continuation of musical attention. As François Jullien writes of the bland paintings of Ní Zàn (倪瓚): "Nothing here strives to incite or seduce; nothing aims to fix the gaze or compel the attention" (2004, 37).
Poetic moods such as dàn and śāntarasa can move the musically attuned non-dual awareness beyond the pleasure of agreeable sound into an equanimous relationship to phenomenality—a mode of experience in which phenomena "leave no traces". These qualities intimate a way of being that corresponds with Buddhist goals. Yet, there is a subtle way in which we usually relish these moods; this insipidity can still be agreeable. From a conventional standpoint, it is because of this subtle relishing that non-dual musical attunement does not always equate to the primordial, non-dual wakefulness of zazen; yet even when traces of liking, disliking, or conceptual engagement remain, non-dual musical attunement can persist—these minor ‘impurities’ do not collapse the listener’s awareness back into a dualistic mode.
Part 2: Tuning
The wish to intimate emptiness through artistic practices is the spontaneous function of the dharmakāya, naturally manifesting through the expressive capacities of human mind-bodies. When we find ourselves spontaneously attuned to the emptiness of the dharmakāya—the non-duality of nothing and something—we may feel an impulse to express this attunement in phenomenal form. For instance, upon encountering a vast blue sky, Táo Yuānmíng felt the dharmakāya beckoning him, remarking: "Today’s skies are perfect for a clear flute and singing qín" (Hinton 1993, 61). Open skies were considered "perfect" for the performance of music because they invited an attunement to emptiness that made the musical sounds performed in such a state resound as audible emptiness.
In the history of Chinese poetry, contemplatives often turned to chanting and musical instruments to express such attunement. Verses depicting scenes of seclusion and open landscapes—conditions conducive to this awareness—frequently culminated in musical performance. This dynamic is beautifully illustrated in a verse by Xíngchè (行徹):
The late autumn moon lights up the forest,
And mountain mists fill the secluded woods.
I love to look at this crystal clear landscape,
It helps me sustain an empty and clear mind.
On the flat moss, I can sit in stable meditation,
As the wind whips its way deep into the woods.
An old nun comes to see how I am getting along,
We light some incense, play a bit on the zither [qin]. (trans. Grant 2003, 97)
In this verse, the autumn moon and crystal-clear landscape attune Xíngchè to emptiness. Her mind is calm, luminous, and settled in meditation—empty like the moon that lights up the world. From this attunement arises the musical activity depicted at the end of the poem. This music is not a diversion from meditation but the spontaneous manifestation of the mind’s stillness—its natural resonance.
That music and meditation are two sides of the same coin—two ways of expressing the same non-dual attunement—is beautifully conveyed in Bái Jūyì’s Idly Chanting upon Getting up Early on a Winter Day. In this verse, he shows how the alternation between chanting and meditation gives rhythm to his nightly practice—a pacing not born of discipline or design, but of effortless attunement:
The scene mirrors that of Xíngchè’s verse: it is late autumn, and the poet is engaged in meditation. Finding himself "affected by the autumn atmosphere"—that is, attuned by empty space—Bái naturally begins to chant. The practices of zazen and chanting are not to be understood as representing meditation versus non-meditation. As in Xíngchè’s verse, chanting is neither a frivolous interlude nor an act of self-imposed discipline. Both meditation and chanting unfold as completely leisurely activities—the spontaneous expression of attunement itself.
If Xíngchè’s and Bái Jūyì’s verses reveal music as the flowering of contemplative stillness, a verse by Wáng Wéi deepens this insight. Here, the musician’s non-dual attunement allows the natural world itself to become the musician, so that sound arises not from the human hand but from the agency of moon and breeze:
Late, I love but quietness:
Things of this world are no more my concern.
Looking back, I’ve known no better plan
Than this: returning to the grove.
Pine breezes: loosen my robe.
Mountain moon beams: play my lute [qin]
What, you ask, if Final Truth?
The fisherman’s song, strikes deep into the bank. (Cheng 2016, 215, trans. Riggs & Seaton).
For Wáng, the pine breeze, the quietness, and—just as for Xíngchè—the moon attune him to the empty space through which the dharmakāya expounds the dharma via his instrument. Yet the moonbeams do not merely inspire the musician; they are what play the qín. The terse Chinese—山月照彈琴—casts the moon as the agent of performance. The sounds of the qín are the medium through which the moon expresses itself.
In answering what is Final Truth, Wáng offers the echo of a fisherman’s song. In doing so, he moves beyond Xíngchè and Bái Jūyì, emphasizing not only the non-duality of stillness and activity—meditation and non-meditation—but also the non-duality of the religious and the non-religious. Unlike the previous two poems, Wáng's verse does not mention sitting in meditation. In a sense, he is asking what the need is for religious contexts when the ultimate truth of reality can be expressed by the humble song of a fisherman and found through quietly attuning oneself to the natural world.
This theme is made more explicit by Hánshān, who concludes his own poem on the subject by asserting that "there is no Zen", indicating that whatever transpired between him, the night sky, the moon and its reflection in the stream, and his act of singing cannot adequately be captured by a religious framework:
High up, on the top of the peak:
Infinite in all directions.
Alone I sit: no one knows I'm here;
A lonely moon shines on the cold stream.
But there is no moon in the stream;
The moon's right there, in the night sky.
And as I chant this single song:
At the song's end, there is no Zen. (HS 287, trans. Rouzer 2016, 137)
If Hóngzhì described meditative equipoise as a state of roaming and playing in samādhi, Hánshān can be seen as having integrated this insight into the very fabric of his being. He is not merely playing in samādhi while seated in meditation. Hánshān’s verse evokes how the duality between chanter and landscape dissolves as voice and surroundings merge in a direct, unselfconscious act of expression. As Iriya notes in an oft-quoted passage, Hánshān’s attunement to the dharmakāya produces an ‘outward’ function—an artistic expression that is simultaneously free and playful, yet fully grounded in the equanimity of zazen and vipaśyanā: a sportive samādhi spontaneously manifesting in creative action:
"His best work, those examples successful as genuine poetry, are not those which attempt religious statement, but those in which the poet disports himself in a free, effortless revelling in the Way—the joyful outpouring of a 'sportive samadhi'." (in LaFleur 1983, 24)
Because there is no Zen in this attunement, one need not be a sage, monk, or nun to attune to the dharmakāya and feel the spontaneous desire to play music or chant verses. Kawabata Yasunari captures this vividly in Snow Country, portraying the geisha Komako as someone attuned to the vast sky, prompting her urge to play music. When she experiences the attunemental effects of the crystal-clear sky, she regrets not being home to practice the shamisen. In the first passage, strongly echoing Táo Yuānmíng, Komako says:
"I should have gone home early to practice the samisen. The sound is different on a day like this."
The ‘difference in sound’ does not simply describe the drier air of a clear day; it reflects how the sky attunes Komako to emptiness, enabling the shamisen’s sound to arise as inseparable from that clear sky. Later, Kawabata depicts her attunement as complete, describing her as becoming "a part of nature":
"Komako looked up at the clear sky over the snow. “The tone is different on a day like this.” The tone had been as rich and vibrant as her remark suggested. The air was different. There were no theater walls, there was no audience, there was none of the city dust. The notes went out crystalline into the clean winter morning, to sound on the far snowy peaks. Practicing alone, not aware herself of what has happening, perhaps, but with all the wideness of nature in this mountain valley for her companion, she had come quite as a part of nature to take on this special power." (trans. Seidensticker 1956)
Komako’s experience demonstrates the same principle seen in Xíngchè, Wáng Wéi, and Hánshān: when one is attuned to emptiness, music arises as a spontaneous, non-dual expression of the dharmakāya. Her experience shows that this sensitivity to emptiness transcends time, place, and vocation—it manifests wherever clarity and solitude converge. The performer and the environment are no longer distinct; the musical sounds are inseparable from the vastness and openness that attune the mind, revealing a seamless interplay between phenomenality and emptiness.
A common thread in these examples is the prominence of solo performers, suggesting that the solitary musician is particularly receptive to a relationship with emptiness, a phenomenon noted by the contemporary composer and musician Antoine Beuger. He observes that "[t]his focus on emptiness and silence, I feel, is absolutely connected to the idea of solo music. Today I would, axiomatically, say that the content of a solo is the void" (Saunders & Beuger 2009). Still, attunement to the dharmakāya is not confined to solo performance; it can manifest equally within ensemble music.
While many of the examples above emphasize forms of phenomenal openness—a clear sky, an autumn atmosphere, or a mountaintop—as conducive to attunement, the ultimate aim for meditators and musicians alike is to cultivate a state in which no specific stimulus is required. Kūkai described awakening as the recognition that all phenomena are like empty space. Although literal empty spaces can inspire such attunement, the goal is not to withdraw from the world or deny its forms, but to perceive phenomena differently. Thus, attunement to empty space may arise anywhere and at any time, through the recognition that all phenomenality is, in its truest apprehension, like empty space. At this point, the excerpts above show that listening and composing are no longer distinct activities: both arise from the same attunement to emptiness, differing only in whether sound is received or given forth.
Part 3: Composing
As musicians and composers, the way we create pieces that evoke emptiness is an intuitive process that cannot be put into words. It cannot be reduced to a set of playing techniques or stylistic strategies. It begins with the simple act of sitting in zazen, a state of attunement to dharmakāya that is neither meditating nor not meditating. In this state, ambient sounds are like ripples on the ocean of emptiness. The musician is inspired to contribute a sound, and by creating sounds, they facilitate the hearing of sounds as audible emptiness. If successful, this produces music that embodies the message of the Heart Sūtra: that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. But what kind of sound could we imagine arising from Xíngchè’s qín or Bái Jūyì’s voice in the poems above—sound that resonates with such attunement and allows music itself to arise as emptiness?
It would be naive to assume that merely being attuned to emptiness is enough to produce music that maintains this realization of the union of appearance and emptiness. If this were the case, any Dzogchen master would automatically be a great composer-performer—but this is not so. The musician must have practiced something, and the composer must have studied something. Musō Soseki illustrates this point in his Dialogues in a Dream (夢中問答), when asked whether a person who awakens to their Original Nature without encountering the Dharma can teach the Dharma. In Zen, which emphasizes direct pointing to Mind’s nature without reliance on words or scriptures, the question is relevant: can realization alone suffice for transmission? In Zen, one could, in theory, awaken without following traditional Buddhist training or studying scriptures. Musō answers that such a person "cannot serve as a teacher since he lacks the means to help others. The intent is understood, but the words are not" (trans. Kirchner 2015, 178).
The same principle applies to music. A composer or performer may have realized the nature of emptiness, but to convey this attunement to listeners, they must also study music. What, then, does a musician skilled in this way know that a master meditator does not? What knowledge of sound allows them to perform so that sounds arise as soundful emptiness and dissolve back into the boundless auditory indeterminacy? To answer this, it is not sufficient to cite poetic assertions that "music is the dharmakāya expounding the dharma through humans". Instead, we must examine the nature of sound and its combinations—the study of poetics. We should study how the particular usages of parameters such as quietness, timbre, pointillism, and intonation can be used intentionally. Each of these, when handled with awareness, can allow the listener to enact the arising and dissolving of sound as empty yet manifest. Bái Jūyì knows something about phrasing, timing, intonation, and timbre that allows his chanting to be in a continuum with his meditation. By becoming intimate with sound in this way, the composer or performer becomes intimate with sound’s emptiness.
If we are intimate with sound, our attunement to emptiness will then be beneficial not only to ourselves but to others as well. The music becomes both a spontaneous expression of the dharmakāya and a means—an upāya (skillful means)—for transmitting attunement to listeners. Listeners may access the attunement to dharmakāya through the music, entering a shared experience of emptiness manifested as sound. This, ultimately, is the goal of music as I see it.
For Wáng, the pine breeze, the quietness, and—just as for Xíngchè—the moon attune him to the empty space through which the dharmakāya expounds the dharma via his instrument. Yet the moonbeams do not merely inspire the musician; they are what play the qín. The terse Chinese—山月照彈琴—casts the moon as the agent of performance. The sounds of the qín are the medium through which the moon expresses itself.
In answering what is Final Truth, Wáng offers the echo of a fisherman’s song. In doing so, he moves beyond Xíngchè and Bái Jūyì, emphasizing not only the non-duality of stillness and activity—meditation and non-meditation—but also the non-duality of the religious and the non-religious. Unlike the previous two poems, Wáng's verse does not mention sitting in meditation. In a sense, he is asking what the need is for religious contexts when the ultimate truth of reality can be expressed by the humble song of a fisherman and found through quietly attuning oneself to the natural world.
This theme is made more explicit by Hánshān, who concludes his own poem on the subject by asserting that "there is no Zen", indicating that whatever transpired between him, the night sky, the moon and its reflection in the stream, and his act of singing cannot adequately be captured by a religious framework:
High up, on the top of the peak:
Infinite in all directions.
Alone I sit: no one knows I'm here;
A lonely moon shines on the cold stream.
But there is no moon in the stream;
The moon's right there, in the night sky.
And as I chant this single song:
At the song's end, there is no Zen. (HS 287, trans. Rouzer 2016, 137)
If Hóngzhì described meditative equipoise as a state of roaming and playing in samādhi, Hánshān can be seen as having integrated this insight into the very fabric of his being. He is not merely playing in samādhi while seated in meditation. Hánshān’s verse evokes how the duality between chanter and landscape dissolves as voice and surroundings merge in a direct, unselfconscious act of expression. As Iriya notes in an oft-quoted passage, Hánshān’s attunement to the dharmakāya produces an ‘outward’ function—an artistic expression that is simultaneously free and playful, yet fully grounded in the equanimity of zazen and vipaśyanā: a sportive samādhi spontaneously manifesting in creative action:
"His best work, those examples successful as genuine poetry, are not those which attempt religious statement, but those in which the poet disports himself in a free, effortless revelling in the Way—the joyful outpouring of a 'sportive samadhi'." (in LaFleur 1983, 24)
Because there is no Zen in this attunement, one need not be a sage, monk, or nun to attune to the dharmakāya and feel the spontaneous desire to play music or chant verses. Kawabata Yasunari captures this vividly in Snow Country, portraying the geisha Komako as someone attuned to the vast sky, prompting her urge to play music. When she experiences the attunemental effects of the crystal-clear sky, she regrets not being home to practice the shamisen. In the first passage, strongly echoing Táo Yuānmíng, Komako says:
"I should have gone home early to practice the samisen. The sound is different on a day like this."
The ‘difference in sound’ does not simply describe the drier air of a clear day; it reflects how the sky attunes Komako to emptiness, enabling the shamisen’s sound to arise as inseparable from that clear sky. Later, Kawabata depicts her attunement as complete, describing her as becoming "a part of nature":
"Komako looked up at the clear sky over the snow. “The tone is different on a day like this.” The tone had been as rich and vibrant as her remark suggested. The air was different. There were no theater walls, there was no audience, there was none of the city dust. The notes went out crystalline into the clean winter morning, to sound on the far snowy peaks. Practicing alone, not aware herself of what has happening, perhaps, but with all the wideness of nature in this mountain valley for her companion, she had come quite as a part of nature to take on this special power." (trans. Seidensticker 1956)
Komako’s experience demonstrates the same principle seen in Xíngchè, Wáng Wéi, and Hánshān: when one is attuned to emptiness, music arises as a spontaneous, non-dual expression of the dharmakāya. Her experience shows that this sensitivity to emptiness transcends time, place, and vocation—it manifests wherever clarity and solitude converge. The performer and the environment are no longer distinct; the musical sounds are inseparable from the vastness and openness that attune the mind, revealing a seamless interplay between phenomenality and emptiness.
A common thread in these examples is the prominence of solo performers, suggesting that the solitary musician is particularly receptive to a relationship with emptiness, a phenomenon noted by the contemporary composer and musician Antoine Beuger. He observes that "[t]his focus on emptiness and silence, I feel, is absolutely connected to the idea of solo music. Today I would, axiomatically, say that the content of a solo is the void" (Saunders & Beuger 2009). Still, attunement to the dharmakāya is not confined to solo performance; it can manifest equally within ensemble music.
While many of the examples above emphasize forms of phenomenal openness—a clear sky, an autumn atmosphere, or a mountaintop—as conducive to attunement, the ultimate aim for meditators and musicians alike is to cultivate a state in which no specific stimulus is required. Kūkai described awakening as the recognition that all phenomena are like empty space. Although literal empty spaces can inspire such attunement, the goal is not to withdraw from the world or deny its forms, but to perceive phenomena differently. Thus, attunement to empty space may arise anywhere and at any time, through the recognition that all phenomenality is, in its truest apprehension, like empty space. At this point, the excerpts above show that listening and composing are no longer distinct activities: both arise from the same attunement to emptiness, differing only in whether sound is received or given forth.
Part 3: Composing
As musicians and composers, the way we create pieces that evoke emptiness is an intuitive process that cannot be put into words. It cannot be reduced to a set of playing techniques or stylistic strategies. It begins with the simple act of sitting in zazen, a state of attunement to dharmakāya that is neither meditating nor not meditating. In this state, ambient sounds are like ripples on the ocean of emptiness. The musician is inspired to contribute a sound, and by creating sounds, they facilitate the hearing of sounds as audible emptiness. If successful, this produces music that embodies the message of the Heart Sūtra: that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. But what kind of sound could we imagine arising from Xíngchè’s qín or Bái Jūyì’s voice in the poems above—sound that resonates with such attunement and allows music itself to arise as emptiness?
It would be naive to assume that merely being attuned to emptiness is enough to produce music that maintains this realization of the union of appearance and emptiness. If this were the case, any Dzogchen master would automatically be a great composer-performer—but this is not so. The musician must have practiced something, and the composer must have studied something. Musō Soseki illustrates this point in his Dialogues in a Dream (夢中問答), when asked whether a person who awakens to their Original Nature without encountering the Dharma can teach the Dharma. In Zen, which emphasizes direct pointing to Mind’s nature without reliance on words or scriptures, the question is relevant: can realization alone suffice for transmission? In Zen, one could, in theory, awaken without following traditional Buddhist training or studying scriptures. Musō answers that such a person "cannot serve as a teacher since he lacks the means to help others. The intent is understood, but the words are not" (trans. Kirchner 2015, 178).
The same principle applies to music. A composer or performer may have realized the nature of emptiness, but to convey this attunement to listeners, they must also study music. What, then, does a musician skilled in this way know that a master meditator does not? What knowledge of sound allows them to perform so that sounds arise as soundful emptiness and dissolve back into the boundless auditory indeterminacy? To answer this, it is not sufficient to cite poetic assertions that "music is the dharmakāya expounding the dharma through humans". Instead, we must examine the nature of sound and its combinations—the study of poetics. We should study how the particular usages of parameters such as quietness, timbre, pointillism, and intonation can be used intentionally. Each of these, when handled with awareness, can allow the listener to enact the arising and dissolving of sound as empty yet manifest. Bái Jūyì knows something about phrasing, timing, intonation, and timbre that allows his chanting to be in a continuum with his meditation. By becoming intimate with sound in this way, the composer or performer becomes intimate with sound’s emptiness.
If we are intimate with sound, our attunement to emptiness will then be beneficial not only to ourselves but to others as well. The music becomes both a spontaneous expression of the dharmakāya and a means—an upāya (skillful means)—for transmitting attunement to listeners. Listeners may access the attunement to dharmakāya through the music, entering a shared experience of emptiness manifested as sound. This, ultimately, is the goal of music as I see it.
