Wise Words? Music: the Pleasure and the Idea

 Recently, I've been reading the Book of Joy, which is a chronicle of a conversation between the Archbishop Tutu and the Dali Lama. The book is a joy :) and it contains a lot of wonderful suggestions on how to bring more joy into your life. However, one particular remark caught my eye (or my minds ear I suppose).

 The remark, to paraphrase, was part of a discussion of what brings suffering into our lives. When this was the topic of conversation,  the Dali Lama, being Buddhist, placed an especially high value on not relying on pleasures and attachments for happiness. The author then provides a list of things which exist in the "physical dimension of joy and happiness" and lists "a good meal or a good song" as two of the things which can help keep us locked into this shallower dimension of joy (p.54, The Book of Life, Abrams). Now I have not been exposed to Buddhist thinking for a super long time, and especially growing up in the Midwest watching A Christmas Story every year, the idea of all external things being shallow sources of joy which eventually lead to more suffering is a difficult concept to grasp on every level. However in the case of most material possessions I see this view as more of a difficult reality which I struggle to accept and live by, but this author's assertion that it applies to music as well made me stop and think. Is music a sense of shallow pleasure doomed to shoot our third eye out, or can it lead to what the Dali Lama refers to as "deeper happiness." 

In order to answer this question we have to try looking at music through something of a Buddhist lense. Again I am not an expert, but from reading this book as well as another on fundamental Buddhist teachings (Teachings of the Buddha) combined with some additional research online I think I can make the following observation. It seems that Buddhists tend to not value anything material, such as money status or fancy possessions. The sense of pleasure we get from material things or external sources of joy are said to be a sweet flower with bitter roots. We taste what is sweet and follow that sensation, but the bitter root of suffering is not escapable once we have tasted the fruit. One is necessitated by the other, much in the same way death is necessitated by life. Its easy, if a little painful, to see that this is true for most of the things which populate our store shelves and online stores. We may really want a thing when we see it on the shelf in the store or on the website, it seems so shiny and filled with so many possibilities for happiness and joy. However, inescapably, the reality of owning the thing is different from what you imagined. Inevitably, it will be cast aside in favor of some other new thing and then it becomes a thing which has to occupy space somewhere, be it in your house or in a landfill, and its cost both to you and the planet becomes harder to justify. However, not everything which we exchange money for is doomed to bite back in this way. At the minimum we need food to eat, clothing to shield us from the elements, and a place to return to where we may have a bed to lay our head and a little sympathy. So, as there so often are in life, we have two opposing ends of a spectrum with clearly defined ends and less clearly defined spaces between. The principle question is, where does music fall on this spectrum?

Well, from where I'm sitting, it seems as though music can land on either side of this spectrum, it largely depends on the piece of music and the way the intentions behind it. After all, music just like art rock and rap is just a label, and it does not denote intention or quality. The biggest measure of quality, especially when trying to determine whether something can help bring lasting happiness, is devotion to truth. Essentially, when the artist was creating, were they speaking with their true voice in order to say something which comes from an intrinsically motivated desire to convey a particular and special message? This is not always easy to judge, and how each piece of art is judged is determined just as much by the judge as it is by the qualities of the work. With someone growing up with my sense of proclivities and preferences, it was easy to look even within a video game like Dark Souls, a medium and particular subject which many may argue does not contain any artistic value, as a work which could present a meaningful message capable of contributing to everlasting joy. After all, the experience of playing that game (to paraphrase my way too long souls article) provides not just fun but a sense of humility, resistance to adversity, and even the cyclical and ever changing nature of the natural world. To use a more conventional art example, look at the way Picasso painted people. I have had the pleasure of examining some of his works up close in person, and for me it was clear that his later tendency to convey objects and faces as fractured pieces which all contributed to one somewhat coherent whole did speak meaningfully to my experience as a human being with many different fractured pieces of a personality which all contribute to some unknowable whole. Life is often coherent chaos, and I don't think there's anything wrong from a Dharma centric perspective with presenting these pieces to the world with the intent of spreading a message to other people. After all, if a message is spread, be it one of positivity or sadness, it can let others with that same particular feeling understand that they are not alone in their feeling, and it may even increase their compassion for other people. 

So its probably pretty clear, based on the fact that I wrote this article and the examples provided, that I do think music is something which can provide lasting joy. While it may not provide a direct pathway to Nirvana the way mediation can, what it does is convey emotions from one human to another in a way which can help that human to be a more compassionate and kind human, and these things as the book of joy talks about are essential to building happiness. When I think back on my own life in particular, its easy to attribute a lot of my early desire to do good, to be respectful of other people, to think independently yet for the good of others, to work hard, to be understanding, and to be compassionate from the lyrics of Rush songs. A vast and shocking majority of the Rush discography deals with deeply human and emotional realities and does a great job of both reassuring someone that their emotion is heard and providing a way to deal with challenges. One example which stands out to me for the former is a song which provided a tremendous deal of solace during the loneliest moments of my upbringing: Subdivisions. Subdivisions is one of the synthesizer Rush hits, and paints a technicolor picture of the repressing power of the American suburb. Now I know that this is not exactly the peak of human suffering but it did make me feel bad and it still kinda does so Im going to talk about it. In these developments, people are often encouraged to follow a prescribed path of behavior and livelihood in order to achieve the same kind of middle of the road success enjoyed by the elders of the community. Risk taking is discouraged, original and creative thinking is discouraged, suffering and conformity is encouraged. However because people in these communities are taught that their situation is ideal, and because the rest of the world has such a lower standard of living, it can often feel like any amount of complaining about this environment is melodramtic and better off repressed than expressed. And yet, this song made me feel that even my favorite band, the three coolest dudes on the planet, could feel these same feelings of osctrization that I felt. I did not follow the mold of my community or any other mold for that matter, the few times I tried it turned into a painful regret, and this song made me feel like all of that way okay. It increased my perspective and made my circumstances seem less entrapping than I had feared. Another wonderful song by the same band, this time more sharing a good ideal as opposed to offering consolation for suffering, is the song Closer to the Heart. I love this song, its the one that every single person at every single one of their shows belted at the top of their lungs every time they played it. I think there's something so wonderfully human about singing without technical ability, but thats another topic for another time. The reason this song transcends so many bounderies and speaks to so many people is because the message it teaches is so wonderful. No matter what your situation is in society, no matter what kind of society you live in, you can and should live your life closer to your own heart. This can be reflected in art, be it practical beautiful or both, as well as people. 

So basically, music is awesome, I love it intensely and always have, and I think that when its motivated intrinsically it can provide compassion and teachings which contribute to everlasting joy.

Stay Weird,

Sam