Part 1: Listening
Musical listening is non-dual. This is explained through the phenomenology of attunement—what in the German tradition is referred to as Stimmung. This term captures how under normal circumstances, we do not listen to music 'as an object'. Music is neither heard as something 'out there' (in the 'material world') nor as something 'in here' (as something solely 'in the mind'). Rather, music is actualized through an effortless, spontaneously non-dual, ego-less process of attuning our mind-bodies with the music. Since musical attunement rests the mind in non-dual awareness, the act of listening to music provides listeners with meaningful referents and valuable experiences to draw upon when practicing zazen–the act of actualizing that primordial non-duality that Buddhist scriptures call the nature of mind. There is therefore a substantial soteriological value to all forms of musical attunement.
In both zazen as well as musical attunement, the mind is free from dualistic reference points. In such moments, we are not listening to 'something' to be grasped but rather we experience how phenomenality arises non-dually. Kasulis (2018) describes zazen as being a state in which the "specifics of the situation dissolve back into the meaningless flow, the as-ness or presencing" (230). Such a formulation suggests a difference between zazen and music since music is not just a meaningless flow: when we listen to music, a musical world is always brought forth and engaged from a perspective of being attuned to that world. But according to Dōgen, zazen does not entail that the meditator adopts the kind of perspectivelessness that turns phenomenality into a kind of undistinguished white noise–a view of nothing from nowhere. It is not that kind of meaninglessness that is achieved in zazen. According to Davis (2011), Dōgen argues for a kind of perspectivism that recognizes that a kind of 'perspective' is a necessary feature of all phenomenality–even the phenomenality that appears to the awakened. Unlike the perspectives of saṃsāric existence that due to the "winds of externality" (The Lankavatara Sutra 2012, 75) conceptually constructs a false dualism between self and world, the 'perspective' that Dōgen has in mind is non-dual. Phenomenality is engaged from a non-dual perspectival opening: what is brought forth is a kind of world–a world that is the result of dependently arising phenomena–but a world in which subject-objective duality and the objects imputed by false imagination (abhūtaparikalpa) have no objective existence (Davis 2011).
When Kūkai talked of how liberation could be achieved through the non-dual attunement to 'empty space'—the dharmakāya–he likewise did not mean an attunement to a vacuum, a plane of non-existence, or complete meaninglessness. 'Empty space' points to the fact that all phenomenality, in all its forms, when seen correctly, is like 'empty space'. In a non-dual attunement to empty space, the absolute and phenomenal are recognized to be without difference: both are empty appearences–"wonderful functions", as Mǎzǔ Dàoyī had it–that occur "because of the revolving of the mind" (Mǎzǔ Dàoyī in Jia 2006, 78).
Davis (2019) argues that awakening for Dōgen is not a matter of attaining omniscience or seeing things without a perspective, but rather that it "entails a radical change in the "attitude" or "fundamental attunement" with "which one participates in perspectival delimitation" (2019, 333). Musical attunements are moments where such 'radical change' in 'fundamental attunement' can be actualized. These moments are not about giving up perspectives, but are about the way in which we give ourselves over to the world of the musical attunement–to the perspective of the music. Attuning ourselves to the world of the music is a 'pure action' that is "not forced by you or others" (Dōgen 1999, 114). Resting the mind in its natural non-duality is to be attuned to all myriad forms, but it is an attunement to these forms as the empty revolving of a mind that is neither internal nor external. When seen as empty, these forms appear as focal points that gather a world; they are perspectival openings in events of interconnection (Davis 2019, 334).
That music in this way can be a verification of non-duality does not mean that all musical attunements always are this 'pure'. Kasulis' usage of the word 'meaningless' is crucial because it points to the difference between the kind of music that does this and the kind of music that does not. 'Meaningless' is then not taken to refer to the non-enactment of a world or a kind of perspectivelessness but rather 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 moves towards closing the gap between aesthetic modes and zazen. It comes down to not requiring the listener to 'make sense' of the music either narratively or conceptually, but rather to invite the listener to dwell in a kind of forgetfulness—a forgetfulness that is acutely sharp and perceptive rather than dull and hazy. When relieved of the burden to 'understand' or 'make sense' of the phenomena, the listener is brought close to the bare attention of zazen that sees things as they 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 mind’s spontaneous 'free play' (Skrt. līlā) to come to the foreground of experience. This gives rise to insight into the spontaneous workings of the nature of mind. As the quote by Kasulis reads in full: "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). The 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, that of "roaming at will" (逍遙遊, xiāoyáo yóu):
"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).
When musical attunement is completely pure, sounds appear but leave no traces. Phenomenality is playfully engaged with but leads to no clinging. All sounds appear like echoes–illusory and insubstantial moments of mind's wonderful function.
Usually, we do not relish music's beauty with this kind of true equanimity, i.e., without rejecting or affirming the phenomenal experience on at least a subtle level. This is so despite the aesthetic distance of non-attachment that comes with aesthetic modes of perception. We are usually not completely like wood, stone, or heaps of dried ashes when it comes to agreeable sounds. This is true even when we expand our idea of agreeable sounds to include traditionally 'plain' or even 'ugly' sounds, and even when we expand our idea or poetic moods to not involve the highly charged rasa-s but rather to involve those moods that seem most ordinary and insipid–moods that intimate the most mundane and unspectacular moments of our everyday life.
Drawing upon the moods that seem most ordinary and insipid is precisely what aesthetic qualities like blandness (Ch. 淡 dàn) and moods of peace (Skrt. śāntarasa) do. These qualities invite the listener to extend the nondual awareness of hearing even when there are no garlands of pleasurable sounds or strong affective states (rasa-s) compelling its spontaneous continuation (as is usually the case when listening to music). As François Jullien wrote of the bland paintings of Ní Zàn (倪瓚): "Nothing here strives to incite of or seduce; nothing aims to fix the gaze or compel the attention" (2004, 37). Poetic moods like dàn and śāntarasa can move the musically attuned nondual awareness from the pleasure of agreeable sound into an equanimous relationship to phenomenality–a mode of experiencing where phenomena 'leave no traces'. Dàn and śāntarasa are poetic qualities and moods that intimate a way of being that corresponds with our Buddhist goals. Despite this, there is a subtle way in which we usually relish these moods–in which this insipidity is agreeable: we are not unmoved by the aggregates and the realms of sense. It is because of this subtle relishing that, from a conventional perspective, we can not say that nondual musical attunement always means the same as resting the mind in the primordial, nondual wakefulness of zazen.
Part 2: Tuning
The wish to intimate emptiness through artistic practices is the spontaneous function of the dharmakāya as it is expounding the dharma through human mind-bodies. When we find ourselves being spontaneously attuned to the emptiness of the dharmakāya–the non-duality of nothing and something–we can feel the wish to express this attunement in phenomenal forms. Táo Yuānmíng upon encountering a vast blue sky, felt the dharmakāya beckoning him when he commented: "Today’s skies are perfect for a clear flute and singing qín" (Hinton 1993, 61). Open skies are "perfect" for the performance of music because they invite to an attunement to emptiness that makes the musical sounds performed in such an attunement arise as audible emptiness. In the history of Chinese poetry, the contemplatives often took to chanting and musical instruments to express such an attunement. Verses that depict scenes of seclusion and open landscapes–environmental features that for these poets were most conducive to such an attunement–often end with a performance of music. This process is illustrated in a beautiful 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 and settled in meditation. It is luminous and empty like the moon that lights up the world. From this attunement to emptiness arises the musical activity depicted at the end of the quote. This activity is not a frivolous respite from meditation. On the contrary, it is the spontaneous function of this attunement.
Another example is found in a famous verse by Wáng Wéi:
"Late, I love but quietness:Things of this world are no more my concern. Looking back, I’ve known no better planThan 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, it is the pine breeze, quietness, and, just as it was for Xíngchè, the moon that attunes him to the empty space that allows the dharmakāya to expound the dharma through his musical instrument. In Wáng's verse, this is directly acknowledged if we translate the terse Chinese to mean that the moonbeams are the agent for the act of playing the qín (山月照彈琴). It is not that the moonbeams co-exist with the playing of the qín: they are what play the qín. The sounds of qín are how the moon expresses itself.
For Hánshān, the qín was excessively associated with the literati and well-educated elite. In one poem (HS5), he jokingly derides such upper-class activities when ironically saying that he "really should take up calligraphy and qín". When Hánshān encounters a landscape "infinite in all directions" and the moon, he instead takes to chanting to express his attunement. Besides this preference for the voice, the verse carries the same essence as those quoted above:
"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)
When the singing gives over to silence at the end of this verse, the poet continues to dwell in a nondual, empty state that is beyond both 'meditation' and 'non-meditation'–as Hanshan says, "there is no Zen". Iriya Yoshitaka, in an often quoted passage, put it eloquently when describing the work of Hanshan in the following way:
“His best work, those examples sucessful 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)
If Hóngzhì above described meditative equipoise as a state of roaming and playing in samādhi, Hanshan can be said to have found a way to make this meditative insight an integrated part of his very being. Hanshan is not just romping and playing in samādhi while seated in meditation. What Irya describes is how Hanshan's attunement to the dharmakāya results in an 'outward' function–an artistic creation–that is free and playful, yet completely grounded in the equanimity of zazen and vipaśyanā–a samādhi that is sportive.
Another example of this kind of chanting can be found in Bái Jūyì's "Idly Chanting upon Getting up Early on a Winter Day":
"At night, practicing Chan, I sit a lot,Affected by the autumn atmosphere I chant. Leisurely, other than these two things, My mind does not dwell on anything else." (modified from Poceski 2007, 48)
The scenery is similar to Xíngchè's verse: it is late autumn and the poet is practicing meditation. Finding himself "affected by the autumn atmosphere"–in other words, attuned by empty space–Bái chants. It is not that the practices of zazen and chanting represent meditation and non-meditation. Similarly to the verse by Xíngchè, chanting is not a frivolous respite from meditation and neither is it something Bái forces himself to do. Both meditating and chanting are completely leisurely activities–the spontaneous function of this attunement. As with all the verses quoted here, this verse expresses the nonduality between meditation and functioning, between emptiness and phenomenality.
We do not have to be sages, monks, or nuns to be attuned to the dharmakāya, and through this attunement feel the spontaneous 'desire' to play music or chant verses. An author who recognized this clearly was Kawabata Yasunari, who let the geisha Komako in two passages in Snow Country be the person who, attuned to the vast sky, feels the urge to play music. Upon experiencing the attunemental effects that the crystal clear sky has on her, she regrets not being home to practice the shamisen. The first passage strongly echoes Táo Yuānmíng when Komako says: "I should have gone home early to practice the samisen. The sound is different on a day like this". It would be incorrect to assume that the 'difference in sound' merely refers to the air being drier because of the clear sky. It rather has to do with how the clear sky attunes Komako to emptiness and the way in which this in turn enables the sound of the shamisen to arise as inseparable from that clear sky. Later in the book, Kawabata describes Komako's attunement as complete when he describes 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)
All of these examples are of solo performers, and indeed there is something about the setting of a solitary musician that naturally invites a relationship to emptiness. The composer and musician Antoine Beuger said 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). But the attunement to the dharmakāya can certainly happen in ensemble music as well. Furthermore, while most of the examples above emphasize the presence of some kind of phenomenal openness (clear sky, autumn atmosphere, the top of a peak) to facilitate this attunement to the dharmakāya, the goal of the meditator and musician is to have no need for any special type of 'stimuli' for this to happen: the attunement to empty space can happen anywhere and at any time. It is about recognizing that all phenomenality is like empty space.
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 in the water 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 creates 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 coming from Xíngchè's qín or Bái Jūyì's voice in the poems above that resonates with such an attunement and allows the sounds of music to arise as emptiness?
It would be naive to assume that merely being attuned to emptiness is enough to enable us to play sounds that maintain this actualization of the union of appearance and emptiness. If this were the case, then any Dzogchen master would automatically be a great composer-performer, but this is not the case. The musician must have practiced something, and the composer must have studied something. In his Dialogues in a Dream (夢中問答), Musō Soseki is asked if people who awaken to their original nature without encountering the Dharma can teach the Dharma. In the tradition of Zen, this is a relevant question since Zen claims to be a tradition that does not rely on words or scriptures (the Dharma) but directly points to Mind's nature. In the Zen tradition, there is, therefore, a theoretical possibility to awaken without going through the traditional Buddhist training, such as studying the scriptures and following the traditional path laid out. Musō answers that a person who has realized their Original Nature but does not know the Dharma "cannot serve as a teacher since he lacks the means to help others". For this person, "the intent is understood, but the words are not" (trans. Kirchner 2015, 178).
It is exactly the same with music. The composer/performer might have a realization, but in order to attune the audience to this realization, the composer/performer must also study music. But what has a musician skilled in this way learned that the non-musician master meditator has not? What is it that they have learned about sounds that make them able to perform music so that sounds arise as soundful emptiness and dissolve back into the audible boundlessness of emptiness? In order to answer this question, it is not satisfying to simply repeat poetic utterances about how "music is the dharmakāya expounding the dharma through humans". It would be facile to leave the discussion there. Instead, we must move closer to a study of the nature of sound and the combinations of sounds–the study of poetics. We should study how the particular usages of parameters such as quietness, timbre, pointillism, and intonation can be used. It is by being intimate with sound in this way that we can become 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, as we allow for the music to not only serve as the spontaneous self-expression of the dharmakāya but also to serve as an upāya that disseminates this attunement to dharmakāya to other listeners. Listeners will then be able to access the attunement to dharmakāya through the music. This, ultimately, is the goal of music as I see it.
Another example is found in a famous verse by Wáng Wéi:
"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, it is the pine breeze, quietness, and, just as it was for Xíngchè, the moon that attunes him to the empty space that allows the dharmakāya to expound the dharma through his musical instrument. In Wáng's verse, this is directly acknowledged if we translate the terse Chinese to mean that the moonbeams are the agent for the act of playing the qín (山月照彈琴). It is not that the moonbeams co-exist with the playing of the qín: they are what play the qín. The sounds of qín are how the moon expresses itself.
For Hánshān, the qín was excessively associated with the literati and well-educated elite. In one poem (HS5), he jokingly derides such upper-class activities when ironically saying that he "really should take up calligraphy and qín". When Hánshān encounters a landscape "infinite in all directions" and the moon, he instead takes to chanting to express his attunement. Besides this preference for the voice, the verse carries the same essence as those quoted above:
"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)
When the singing gives over to silence at the end of this verse, the poet continues to dwell in a nondual, empty state that is beyond both 'meditation' and 'non-meditation'–as Hanshan says, "there is no Zen". Iriya Yoshitaka, in an often quoted passage, put it eloquently when describing the work of Hanshan in the following way:
“His best work, those examples sucessful 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)
If Hóngzhì above described meditative equipoise as a state of roaming and playing in samādhi, Hanshan can be said to have found a way to make this meditative insight an integrated part of his very being. Hanshan is not just romping and playing in samādhi while seated in meditation. What Irya describes is how Hanshan's attunement to the dharmakāya results in an 'outward' function–an artistic creation–that is free and playful, yet completely grounded in the equanimity of zazen and vipaśyanā–a samādhi that is sportive.
Another example of this kind of chanting can be found in Bái Jūyì's "Idly Chanting upon Getting up Early on a Winter Day":
"At night, practicing Chan, I sit a lot,
Affected by the autumn atmosphere I chant.
Leisurely, other than these two things,
My mind does not dwell on anything else." (modified from Poceski 2007, 48)
The scenery is similar to Xíngchè's verse: it is late autumn and the poet is practicing meditation. Finding himself "affected by the autumn atmosphere"–in other words, attuned by empty space–Bái chants. It is not that the practices of zazen and chanting represent meditation and non-meditation. Similarly to the verse by Xíngchè, chanting is not a frivolous respite from meditation and neither is it something Bái forces himself to do. Both meditating and chanting are completely leisurely activities–the spontaneous function of this attunement. As with all the verses quoted here, this verse expresses the nonduality between meditation and functioning, between emptiness and phenomenality.
We do not have to be sages, monks, or nuns to be attuned to the dharmakāya, and through this attunement feel the spontaneous 'desire' to play music or chant verses. An author who recognized this clearly was Kawabata Yasunari, who let the geisha Komako in two passages in Snow Country be the person who, attuned to the vast sky, feels the urge to play music. Upon experiencing the attunemental effects that the crystal clear sky has on her, she regrets not being home to practice the shamisen. The first passage strongly echoes Táo Yuānmíng when Komako says: "I should have gone home early to practice the samisen. The sound is different on a day like this". It would be incorrect to assume that the 'difference in sound' merely refers to the air being drier because of the clear sky. It rather has to do with how the clear sky attunes Komako to emptiness and the way in which this in turn enables the sound of the shamisen to arise as inseparable from that clear sky. Later in the book, Kawabata describes Komako's attunement as complete when he describes 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)
All of these examples are of solo performers, and indeed there is something about the setting of a solitary musician that naturally invites a relationship to emptiness. The composer and musician Antoine Beuger said 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). But the attunement to the dharmakāya can certainly happen in ensemble music as well. Furthermore, while most of the examples above emphasize the presence of some kind of phenomenal openness (clear sky, autumn atmosphere, the top of a peak) to facilitate this attunement to the dharmakāya, the goal of the meditator and musician is to have no need for any special type of 'stimuli' for this to happen: the attunement to empty space can happen anywhere and at any time. It is about recognizing that all phenomenality is like empty space.
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 in the water 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 creates 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 coming from Xíngchè's qín or Bái Jūyì's voice in the poems above that resonates with such an attunement and allows the sounds of music to arise as emptiness?
It would be naive to assume that merely being attuned to emptiness is enough to enable us to play sounds that maintain this actualization of the union of appearance and emptiness. If this were the case, then any Dzogchen master would automatically be a great composer-performer, but this is not the case. The musician must have practiced something, and the composer must have studied something. In his Dialogues in a Dream (夢中問答), Musō Soseki is asked if people who awaken to their original nature without encountering the Dharma can teach the Dharma. In the tradition of Zen, this is a relevant question since Zen claims to be a tradition that does not rely on words or scriptures (the Dharma) but directly points to Mind's nature. In the Zen tradition, there is, therefore, a theoretical possibility to awaken without going through the traditional Buddhist training, such as studying the scriptures and following the traditional path laid out. Musō answers that a person who has realized their Original Nature but does not know the Dharma "cannot serve as a teacher since he lacks the means to help others". For this person, "the intent is understood, but the words are not" (trans. Kirchner 2015, 178).
It is exactly the same with music. The composer/performer might have a realization, but in order to attune the audience to this realization, the composer/performer must also study music. But what has a musician skilled in this way learned that the non-musician master meditator has not? What is it that they have learned about sounds that make them able to perform music so that sounds arise as soundful emptiness and dissolve back into the audible boundlessness of emptiness? In order to answer this question, it is not satisfying to simply repeat poetic utterances about how "music is the dharmakāya expounding the dharma through humans". It would be facile to leave the discussion there. Instead, we must move closer to a study of the nature of sound and the combinations of sounds–the study of poetics. We should study how the particular usages of parameters such as quietness, timbre, pointillism, and intonation can be used. It is by being intimate with sound in this way that we can become 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, as we allow for the music to not only serve as the spontaneous self-expression of the dharmakāya but also to serve as an upāya that disseminates this attunement to dharmakāya to other listeners. Listeners will then be able to access the attunement to dharmakāya through the music. This, ultimately, is the goal of music as I see it.
