The Tired Searcher, Why and how I chant nam myoho renge kyo Options

[Apres Laulyam]

Could we leave aside 'blasphemy' for a bit while I blunder around?

I been reading some Wittgenstein. One thing I like about him is he tried to separate out how we get all wrapped around the axle about things that exist primarily because we are animals with a language. I mean we talk to ourselves all the time, and when we do that we make a world. That's one reason old people get off on being around babies, because it's nice to be around someone who doesn't represent everything to herself or himself, he or she just puts it in her mouth to see what's what. It's refreshing, it's basic.

Now I'm sitting here tonight on a mountain of words, and it reminds me that when I get really tired of that, even though I love words, I love reading and writing and I like people who know their way around a language,
I get tired of representing everything to myself and others. That's why I like Buddhist chants and meditating on my breath. I get a little separation from the inner mono/dia/bazilliona/logue. I see how every few seconds I got more thoughts. In between the thoughts is a very peaceful silence. Even calling it 'peace', well, you know what I mean, it isn't even that, but it's pretty close.

Then when I come out of it it's like the little word-engine starts puffing away and woo ha there I go again representing everything to myself, and pretty soon I get up from the couch and start representing everything to someone else, if there's anyone around.

I don't think that makes me an 'impersonalist'. Unless of course, person-hood depends largely on language. I'm really personal. It's a habit. But maybe underneath of that is just the silence between oscillating vibrations of, er, of, well, if you don't stop to try to call it something, it isn't even fuzzy Brahman. Whatta relief.

That's why I like chanting nam myoho renge kyo, because I like sound, because I am a lonely creature, but I like not to know what it 'means'. Kind of like when I listen to opera in a foreign language. All this maya and Supremeness. They're both trouble in a three piece suit, to me.

(don't get me wrong; I love trouble in a three piece suit and when I find him again I'm going to give him a big hug and we'll be off and running)

(P.S.; this post is dedicated in an obtuse way to Angrezi, in whom I recognize a jovial spirit even though there was someone else underneath the name)

[Brainiac]

I know what you mean. A fleeting glimpse of no-mind. It's great when that happens.

[Dhyana]

That's why I like chanting nam myoho renge kyo, because I like sound, because I am a lonely creature, but I like not to know what it 'means'.

This strikes a chord. I often like the music better than the lyrics for it. With a number of songs I really like, once I figure out the lyric I wish I didn't, because the text disappoints me. (Lyrics are usually not easy to understand if the language is not your mother tongue.) Sometimes I feel the music is wasted on the text.

And among the music I like best are some film music scores with either no text at all or just a few lines.

I read meaning into the music, I imagine what this might be about, but nonverbally.

[Brainiac]

Ditto. I'm quite happy listening to a lot of music without ever caring what the singer is singing.

[Kalisurfer]

Words, meaning, associations, language, culture, communication, being and sharing that being with another being. I can relate to no meaning before it becomes learned or personal meaning, especially in music, literature, art, poetry and chants. It does seem that once meaning is put onto something, it then meets the grinder of history, culture and judgment, which can kill a good thing fast.

Trying to put ones finger on that freshness of a birthed thought or new realization before it becomes filterized is a noble attempt, though experience seems to say don’t try touching it, don’t try holding on to it, for then it is gone, a memory, a written remembrance in a journal or book, a theory, a goal, something that quits existing in the moment, something that was or could be.

Perhaps it's the ephemeral spontaneous quality of it all that keeps us going, keeps us creating, keeps us plowing the fertile grounds of our selves, while religion and faith is the promise of it in another life, another space, somewhere else outside of the moment we are currently in?

It’s worth contemplating, it’s worth chasing, it’s worth being.

[Apres Laulyam]

In the vein of 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail'......................

When all you have is a mind, everything looks like an idea. hahahaha. That's not quite as effective. Kind of sounds like something Plato might have said as a teenager.

[rhapsodieff]

I am listening to Hebrew and Persian music at the moment... love the rythms and funnily enough I seem to get the sense of what the song is about without understanding the words which seems very odd....

The meaning is not a meaning I put there but one within the song, I know this becuase I had a friend round a couple of days ago whe told me what the songs were about.

Does something like music which can address the soul directly transcend language sometimes I wonder....

[Kalisurfer]

I am listening to Hebrew and Persian music at the moment... love the rythms and funnily enough I seem to get the sense of what the song is about without understanding the words which seems very odd....

The meaning is not a meaning I put there but one within the song, I know this becuase I had a friend round a couple of days ago whe told me what the songs were about.

Does something like music which can address the soul directly transcend language sometimes I wonder....

This is an interesting phenomena Rhapsodieff, the effect of sound on people, especially music and how it can transcend culture and language. I was listening to Persian and Arabic music when I was writing my post earlier, and I was having a similar experience, enjoying the sounds without really knowing the meaning of the song, and when the DJ came on to say what the songs were about, they were mostly songs of love and longing, and a few spiritual themed ones also. This also reminds me of English songs that I like but don't pay much attention to the lyrics, but sometimes when I read the lyrics and find out what the song is really about, I become disappointed for the meaning did not seem to match the sound and feelings I was experiencing while listening.

[Dhyana]

I often like music with religious themes. I like it for the sound and the emotion. It used to embarrass me after I left ISKCON and theistic worldview, I did not want to feel attracted. Now I have accepted it more.

Among my favorites are the soundtrack for The Mission, soundtrack for Da Vinci Code, Latin canons (sometimes used as themes in "Celtic" music), pilgrim songs, Gregorian chants, Hildegard von Bingen, Russian orthodox choirs, of course Sanskrit mantras in various musical arrangements, and many more. After buying a CD with songs and instrumental music, after listening to it a few times I naturally pick a couple of favorites. Time and again, these will turn out to have a religious theme. As if I homed in to something there, willing or not.

[Brainiac]

I hope you'll be contributing these Persian and Arabic stuff in Twilight Zones soon if possible, and everything else of course, Gregorian chants and all (I love Gregorian chants!).

[Apres Laulyam]

'It used to embarrass me after I left ISKCON and theistic worldview, I did not want to feel attracted. Now I have accepted it more.'

Dhyana,
I know you're talking about music, but this sentence LEAPT out at me. I'd like to offer you a little piece of advice which you are free to throw back in my face, preachy scoundrel that I am, but,
as far as prudence will allow, don't ever waste time being embarrassed by that, whatever, to which you are attracted. You make me smile. Resistance is useless!

I find great solace and excitement in music, and I'll be damned if I will let my, whatever face it wears, 'not wanting to feel attracted', get in the way between me and sound vibration. I know what you mean, and because I do, I understand your 'As if I homed in to something there, willing or not.' At some point, if we live long enough, we trust our homing. This is why I'm so discombobulated at this time of my life; because I freely go to rude boys with guitars, as well as Brazilian songstresses, as well as monks or nuns chanting, or philandering harpists, whatever, whomever.....I'm beyond embarrassment!

This 'theistic worldview', that now you have 'accepted more', it can't be more or less vital to you, at any given time, than any other view, ON PRINCIPLE, can it? Vitality is what we're after. I say, let's go and be free. They had one thing right, saying the mind accepts and rejects. Okay. But we are not only or all 'mind'. We are animals, with all kinds of heritages. Sound vibration, whatever we call it, whatever temporary name it has, is a way of finding our selves. Like a cat, circling and circling to find the comfy spot, or if we need to be agitated to find some truth, then agitated.

Sorry, you just touched me off with your admission, and then your list of music. I guess because you remind me of myself some ways. There's got to be some place on this earth where I go exACTLY where I want to, and keep the company I want to. Music is one such 'land' that I can inhabit just as I am. For heaven's sake, I'm glad of it, wherever I wander.

[Apres Laulyam]

I am listening to Hebrew and Persian music at the moment... love the rythms and funnily enough I seem to get the sense of what the song is about without understanding the words which seems very odd....

The meaning is not a meaning I put there but one within the song, I know this becuase I had a friend round a couple of days ago whe told me what the songs were about.

Does something like music which can address the soul directly transcend language sometimes I wonder....

Hello rhapsodieff,

I don't know if there's a soul or if I am one, but, look at the world the way it is now, and tell me that musicians are not, in many cases, among the only ambassadors who roam freely, irrespective of politics and bombs and borders and bullshit. I don't know what's 'universal' and at this point I don't care. What I do know is that people are able to share and understand and enjoy music across all kinds of boundaries of time and space. It is a force for integration and recognition of our deep-most inner 'places'.

It's funny, when you mention '... love the rythms and funnily enough I seem to get the sense of what the song is about without understanding the words which seems very odd....' I don't think it's odd at all. We who are embodied have alot in common! I mean, music addresses and pulses with our against our heart-beat, which is intrinsic to us from the time we have a heart; we have a beat! thanks for telling us that about your listening.

[Apres Laulyam]

Aye Dhyana,
here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzUdJ-5fscA
er, sorry, I'm just a sap for this. I was introduced to it by a beautiful Englishman, I'll never meet him, in 'real life', but boy did he have my number in this poppy little tune. Just discovered the YouTube thingy. Now I suppose Brainiac or someone could come on and say I'm hard-wired to this scene somehow, but I love the music and the words, and the little moive isn't bad either.


And I can't send it to you here, but Karl Wallinger's rendition of 'What's A Sweetheart Like You' is The Best, e'en though it's a Dylan song. I'm listening to it right now and the voice and words are a sort of psychic chiropractic. God. How a temporary voice, and some words, can cut me to the quick. Pah! 'What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this'....I've never gotten 'over' his voice, atall, atall. What're we like, eh?

[Brainiac]

Does something like music which can address the soul directly transcend language sometimes I wonder....

What I do know is that people are able to share and understand and enjoy music across all kinds of boundaries of time and space. It is a force for integration and recognition of our deep-most inner 'places'.

Language Of Music Really Is Universal, Study Finds.

(P.S. I don't really believe in hard-wiring, but I do love different sorts of music. My tastes are genuinely eclectic, I can't possibly list them all.)

[Dhyana]

'It used to embarrass me after I left ISKCON and theistic worldview, I did not want to feel attracted. Now I have accepted it more.'

Dhyana,
I know you're talking about music, but this sentence LEAPT out at me. I'd like to offer you a little piece of advice which you are free to throw back in my face, preachy scoundrel that I am, but,
as far as prudence will allow, don't ever waste time being embarrassed by that, whatever, to which you are attracted. You make me smile. Resistance is useless!

You will be assimilated! [The Borg]

I find great solace and excitement in music, and I'll be damned if I will let my, whatever face it wears, 'not wanting to feel attracted', get in the way between me and sound vibration. I know what you mean, and because I do, I understand your 'As if I homed in to something there, willing or not.' At some point, if we live long enough, we trust our homing. This is why I'm so discombobulated at this time of my life; because I freely go to rude boys with guitars, as well as Brazilian songstresses, as well as monks or nuns chanting, or philandering harpists, whatever, whomever.....I'm beyond embarrassment!

You are wise, Apres Laulyam. What good does it do to be our own shaming critic?

Here are a few songs from my "top list" for you:

Lyke Wake Dirge

House Carpenter

Who by Fire

[Apres Laulyam]

'It used to embarrass me after I left ISKCON and theistic worldview, I did not want to feel attracted. Now I have accepted it more.'

Dhyana,
I know you're talking about music, but this sentence LEAPT out at me. I'd like to offer you a little piece of advice which you are free to throw back in my face, preachy scoundrel that I am, but,
as far as prudence will allow, don't ever waste time being embarrassed by that, whatever, to which you are attracted. You make me smile. Resistance is useless!

You will be assimilated! [The Borg]

I find great solace and excitement in music, and I'll be damned if I will let my, whatever face it wears, 'not wanting to feel attracted', get in the way between me and sound vibration. I know what you mean, and because I do, I understand your 'As if I homed in to something there, willing or not.' At some point, if we live long enough, we trust our homing. This is why I'm so discombobulated at this time of my life; because I freely go to rude boys with guitars, as well as Brazilian songstresses, as well as monks or nuns chanting, or philandering harpists, whatever, whomever.....I'm beyond embarrassment!

You are wise, Apres Laulyam. What good does it do to be our own shaming critic?

Here are a few songs from my "top list" for you:

Lyke Wake Dirge

House Carpenter

Who by Fire

Aye mio!!! Nothing like a good beautiful dirge with a flowering tree in a cemetery. I LOVE cemeteries! Ooooo, I love this straight-laced yet somehow frolicking music. How funny. Just imagine Heloise and Abelard, listening to the Christly radio of an evening.......humming along. Maybe with a dram of wine from the Abbott.

'I will not be reconstructed'. (Shane MacGowan, of all people. Pah!)

P.S. House Carpenter. Aye, we were born too late eh? I mean this time, hahahahaa.

[Dhyana]

Aye mio!!! Nothing like a good beautiful dirge with a flowering tree in a cemetery. I LOVE cemeteries! Ooooo, I love this straight-laced yet somehow frolicking music. How funny. Just imagine Heloise and Abelard, listening to the Christly radio of an evening.......humming along. Maybe with a dram of wine from the Abbott.

'I will not be reconstructed'. (Shane MacGowan, of all people. Pah!)

P.S. House Carpenter. Aye, we were born too late eh? I mean this time, hahahahaa.

Glad you liked them. Here goes another. I was so happy to find that scene from Da Vinci Code on YouTube yesterday. This is yet another track that has me all helplessly hooked up and which just happens (?) to be religious. It knocked me out when I watched the movie. This is the final scene of finding Mary Magdalene's tomb. Her musical motif, which has been coming and going and trailing off or being interrupted throughout the entire movie, here becomes a hymn of triumph. There is something to crescendos.

I must have listened to this track hundreds of times, replaying the scene in my mind. Don't know if there is any other that gives me goosebumps after so many repetitions.

Hans Zimmer, Chevaliers de Sangreal