Reality: Fickle, Flexible And Merciless

When you are involved in ego-manufactured situations of any kind, the actual reality of the nakedness of mind and the colorful aspect of emotions will wake you up, possibly in a very violent way, as a sudden accident or sudden chaos.

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The Salieri Effect

Don't mess with Mother Nature, and definitely don't mess with Mother Music. Consequences are guaranteed. Peter Shaffer's play (and subsequent movie) Amadeus speaks ominously and forcefully to that issue. I once asked my late friend, Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, whether there might be something afoot in classical music that could be termed The Salieri Effect. What I was implying was that in contradistinction to the healing properties of Mozart's music might there not be its malevolent counterpart, embodied so effectively by F. Murray Abraham's riveting portrayal in Amadeus the movie. Don, not having done hard time in the contemporary music galleys, didn't quite get the implication and merely replied that, no, Salieri's music would unlikely be as effective in a therapeutic setting. At the risk of launching an overly Manichean canard, I would say that Western Classical Music most definitely is playing with, at best, Yin and Yang, and, at worst, God and Lucifer. Bach understood that and ran with it. Stockhausen too, for his part. And then, alas, there was Wagner. Perhaps that is a function of the Austro-German musical ethos having cornered the market on the archetypal polarities, which had implications for the tumultuous upheavals of the last century. But it doesn't have to involve total war; it can and does happen at the kitchen sink level. Mozart in the jungle.

Madras Music Season In Chennai, 2016-17

Delighted to have received confirmation that thanks to a Canada Council Grants to Artists I will be able to continue my exploration of Asian music that began with Balinese music in 2012 and continued with Korean traditional music in 2013 and Thai music in 2014. This grant will allow me to attend the Madras Music Season, which is the largest music festival in the world and is devoted to South Indian classical music. Spanning some six weeks, large and small kutcheris (Carnatic music concerts) are performed, totaling around 1500 individual performances by various renowned and amateur artists. This will take place next December-January in Chennai. It promises to be a powerful initiation into an exotic musical universe.

Rebirth

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”

― Hazrat Inayat Khan, Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening

Everything That Is Profound Loves The Mask

Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he manifests.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The Brighter The Light, The Darker The Shadow

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it shows up outside as fate.

- Carl Jung

Kinhin: The Dignity Of The Buddha

Kinhin is the Japanese word for walking meditation in Zen Buddhism. It is a form of circumambulation that links it to the contemplative practice of walking the labyrinth. 

http://wwzc.org/printpdf/book/export/html/81