What do the Dalai Lama and a bass-music fanatic getting low at 3am at Burning Man have in common?
A surprising amount, actually.
From mood enhancement and relaxation to full-blown oneness with the cosmos, music has the ability to powerfully shift our state of mind. Meditation is not that different. Meditation lowers the stress hormone cortisol, helps us sleep better, and rewires the brain with a host of positive emotional qualities. Attempting to meditate in a nightclub may not be high on the list of recommended practices for monks and yogis, but maybe it should be: When you’re fully lost in music, you’re getting a taste of nirvana without any of the rigorous training.
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As both a musician and meditator, I believe that there is a connection between the exalted states on the dancefloor and the spiritual states achieved in meditation. Since the late 1990s I’ve been DJing and producing music with the likes of Bassnectar, Santigold, and Professor Green, and I’ve also been trained in meditation in the Yogic, Tibetan Buddhist, and Theravada Buddhist traditions.
The goal of both music and meditation is to create a powerful and positive shift in our mental state. Music is a reliable source of transformational experience for many, and we are attracted to music for the same reasons that meditators meditate. Music and meditation both allow a fuller and richer experience of our emotions: They stop our incessant and often negative mental chatter and offer us an opportunity to inhabit the present moment more fully and meaningfully. These are all important for good health and happiness in human beings.
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Music and spirituality
“Music is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit” – Ludwig van BeethovenADVERTISEMENT
Our species has a longstanding obsession with rhythm, melody, and harmony. The aboriginal people of Australia believe in “songlines,” which manifest reality and everything in it, and some native Americans believe that life was brought about and sustained by the “song of the creator.”
Music is part of all authentic spiritual traditions: It has been utilized as an important element of spiritual rites and rituals to unify groups with each other and the divine, to focus the mind, explore deeper truths, and to transcend the bounds of ordinary existence. The chanted mantras and ragas of the Hindu traditions, the psalms of David in the Bible, yoga’s seed syllable “om,” and the hymns of modern gospel churches are all examples of tools that are universally used to bring spiritual practitioners to higher states of consciousness.
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So what is it about music that imparts these shifts in mental state almost instantly, when it might take a meditator many years to achieve the same effect reliably without music? It’s not one thing, but a combination of many different effects that work on different parts of the body/mind complex. Let’s have a look at some of them.
Listening in the present
“Music can minister to minds diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with its sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the full bosom of all perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart” — William Shakespeare
NOTE – This article was originally published in QZ and can be viewed here
Tags: #Bible, #cosmos, #getgreengetgrowing, #gngagritech, #greenstories, #health, #life, #meditation, #mental, #music, #Neuroscience, #yoga
