Sand and Pearls

Robert Schumann.

The undisputed master of the sad song.

I remember one night, thinking to myself….what is all this meditation for?  And from time to time, it’s clear.  Tonight was just such a time.  I bought tickets to hear Susan Gilmour Bailey sing The Schumann Letters. I went with my son.

Without thinking, I do what I always now do at a music concert, one of the tiny wondrous by-products of forty years meditation practice.  Tiger Stalks a Mouse.

An early meditation teacher gave us this meditative exercise years ago.  He said as the singing bowl fell silent, “In the eaves of the zendō, a tiger stalks a mouse.  Make sure you hear him.”  At first, I began to focus, to attend to sound in a tight, focussed way, but it soon became clear that never, in this way, could the tiger stalking the mouse be heard.  They could be anywhere!

Realising that in order to hear the tiger and its tiny prey, I would have to listen everywhere at once, for the eaves surrounded the zendō, a little ripple of despair arose.  How was I to do this?

Of course, I couldn’t do it at all.  I needed to get out of the way.  I needed too much, controlled too much, was too focussed, too desperate for the goal to every come close to reaching it.  As this understanding arose, so too did the way.

What was needed simply began to happen.  It was an opening, not of my capacity to hear; but of my capacity to listen. Surrendering wholly into the listening, what was possible to be heard became like a vast plain upon which sound played.  Letting sound be, without following it, without anticipating, without searching, without the actions of the self, all sounds became accessible, everywhere, all at once.

All  sounds simply are.   That afternoon, I found the Zen of Listening.  And it has blessed me whenever I remember.

Tonight I remembered, and Susan’s clear, rich voice,  bright and smooth like a river over polished stone, filled me with Schumann’s yearning, his desperation, and the exquisite beauty of his delicious misery; the delight of each excruciating, playful note of the first Kinderzenen.

The storyteller in me receded; I receded.  The music filled me.