Think on these things...

Listening to Music

THE SUN HAD just set behind the trees and the clouds, and the golden glow came through a window of the large room, which was filled with people listening to the music of an eight-stringed instrument accompanied by a small drum. Almost everyone in that audience was following the music with complete absorption, especially a girl in a bright dress, who sat like a statue, her hand keeping perfect time as it gently beat out the rhythm on her thigh. That was the only movement she made; with head erect and eyes glued on the man with the instrument, she was oblivious to everything else about her. Several others in the audience were keeping time with their hands or their heads. They were all in raptures, and the world of wars, politicians, worries, had ceased to exist. Outside the light was fading, and the flowers that shone with bright colours only a few minutes before had disappeared in the gathering darkness. The birds were quiet now, and one of those small owls was beginning to call. Someone was shouting from a house across the way; through the trees one or two stars could be seen, 55and a lizard on the white garden wall was just visible as it stealthily crawled towards an insect. But the music held the audience. It was pure and subtle music, with great depth of beauty and feeling. Suddenly the stringed instrument stopped, and the little drum took over; it spoke with a clarity and precision that were really quite incredible. The hands were astonishingly gentle and swift as they struck both sides of the little drum, whose sound said more than the wild chattering of men. That drum, if asked, could send out passionate messages with vigour and emphasis; but now it was speaking quietly of many things, and the mind rode upon the waves of its sound.When the mind is on the flight of discovery, imagination is a dangerous thing. Imagination has no place in understanding; it destroys understanding as surely as does speculation. Speculation and imagination are the enemies of attention. But the mind was aware of this, and so there was no flight from which it had to be recalled. The mind was perfectly still - yet how rapid it was! It had moved to the ends of the earth and was back again even before it had started on its journey. It was faster than the fastest, and yet it could be slow - so slow that no detail escaped it. The music, the audience, the lizard, were only a brief movement within it. It was perfectly still, and because it was still, it was alone. Its stillness was not the stillness of death, nor was it a thing put together by thought, coerced and brought into being by the vanity of man. It was a movement beyond the measure of man, a movement which was not of time, which had no going and coming, but which was still with the unknown depths of creation.

J.Krishnamurti, COMMENTARIES ON LIVING - SERIES III, CHAPTER 36

SEATED ON A raised platform, he was playing a seven-stringed instrument to a small audience of people who were familiar with this type of classical music. They were sitting on the floor in front of him; while from a position behind him another instrument, with only four strings, was being played. He was a young man, but completely the master of the seven strings and of the complex music. He would improvise before each song; then would come the song, in which there would be more improvisation. You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations the greater the musician. On the strings, words were not possible; but all who sat there knew the words, and they went into ecstasies over them. With nodding heads and gracefully gesturing hands, they kept perfect time, and there would be a gentle slap on the thigh at the end of the rhythm. The musician had closed his eyes and was completely absorbed in his creative freedom, and in the beauty of the sound; his mind and his fingers were in perfect coordination. And what fingers! Delicate and rapid, they seemed to have a life of their own. They would be still only at the end of the song in that particular frame, and then they would be quiet and reposed; but with incredible rapidity they would begin another song within a different frame. They almost mesmerized you with their grace and swiftness of movement. And those strings, what melodious sounds they gave! They were pressed by the fingers of the left hand to the proper tension, while the fingers of the right hand plucked them with masterly ease and control. The moon was bright outside, and the dark shadows were motionless; through the window, the river was just visible, a flow of silver against the dark, silent trees on the other bank. A strange thing was going on in the space which is the mind. It had been watching the graceful movements of the fingers, listening to the sweet sounds, observing the nodding heads and the rhythmical hands of the silent people. Suddenly the watcher, the listener, disappeared; he had not been lulled into abeyance by the melodious strings, but was totally absent. There was only the vast space which is the mind. All the things of the earth and of man were in it, but they were at the extreme outer edges, dim and far off. Within the space where nothing was, there was a movement, and the movement was stillness. It was a deep, vast movement, without direction, without motive, which began from the outer edges, and with incredible strength was coming towards the centre - a centre that is everywhere within the stillness, within the motion which is space. This centre is total aloneness, uncontaminated, unknowable, a solitude which is not isolation, which has no end and no beginning. It is complete in itself, and not made; the outer edges are in it but not of it. It is there, but not within the scope of man's mind. It is the whole, the totality, but not approachable.

J.Krishnamurti, COMMENTARIES ON LIVING - SERIES III, CHAPTER 23

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