“Music is not in the notes but in the silence between.”
–W.A. Mozart
Silence, Music, Colors
Silence is freedom. Noise constrains: the currents of the mind become tight and binding, your range of choice limited to the narrow confines of predisposition.
And then silence falls. The mind stops, if only for a moment. Anything is possible.
There Is Silence Here Too
In a Krishna temple, where I spent a good portion of last year, a moment’s quiet is hard to come by. No matter the time of day or night, someone is ringing bells, or banging on kartals and mridanga, or loudly chanting their japa. Recorded kirtan plays constantly in the kitchen.
Think you’ve finally found a quiet spot outside under a tree? Here comes the harinam crew on their way into town!
Yet here, there is silence too.
God’s Name is silence, whether spoken out loud or in the innermost chamber of your heart.
There is silence in the fluid notes of a bansuri and silence in the roar of an airplane engine, silence in the dust of Vrindavan and the pavement of New York City.
Anywhere God is, silence reigns supreme.
The silence of God has no conditions and no opposite. It is freely available for all at any time. It is the lifeblood of creation, the space of the universe.
Out of silence, the dream of name and form takes shape.
Out of silence, the heart beats. What causes that first impulse, none can say.
Out of silence, our eyes open and we find ourselves moving within these strange reservoirs of flesh, our vessels through the curling spirals of our lives. Mind and body blossom like a dream, bright and sharp.
God’s Name is silence and this does nothing to diminish its sweetness on your lips. Resounding eternally in the heart of all beings, like a seed, like an ocean of milk, the Name of God is the only one you have ever known.
Anywhere God is, silence reigns supreme. And could you point to a single place in all the wide world where God is not?
Thoughts Come From Silence
Thoughts are loud but they come from silence. Watch them—where do they come from? The thought that echoes so vividly in your head was first a soft ripple in the pond, only a vague impulse, before it crystallized into words and images.
Where does the thought go when you are done thinking it?
The same place the light of a flame goes when the candle is blown out, where “me” and “mine” goes when truth dawns.
Silence contains every word, every sound, every mantra, and it remains silence.
The quiet essence of the mind is not touched by thoughts. Thoughts come and go. Sometimes they come on like a raging river, sometimes like drops from a dripping faucet. Does the essence of the mind change?
Thoughts are loud but you are quiet. Watch them.
In the space between thoughts, I am here. In the arising and dissolution of thoughts, I am here. In the noise, the anguish, the joy, I am here.
That Which Colors the Mind
Indian classical music is based on raga and tala, melody and rhythm. A raga includes a set of notes and rules for relationships between those notes. Channeled by rishis in ancient times to align with the movement of cosmic energies, each raga has a specific mood and correspondence with a time of the day.
The word raga literally means “color” or “mood,” and translates roughly as, “that which colors the mind.”
The mind resting in its nature is like a blank canvas, or perhaps a glass of water into which a drop of coloring is added, and when you look through that glass, you see the world in that color.
You are a musical instrument and God’s melodies play through you. How many compositions will He think of? How many new notes will He pluck from your strings? The Beloved is a great artist with unending creativity. He likes to revisit certain themes but has not yet repeated a phrase.
Yet underneath the raga is the shruti note, the base note from which the raga emerges.
In any performance, the tamboura is always the first and last to play, droning the first and fifth notes of the scale: pa, sa, sa. Pa, sa, sa. You don’t notice it when the tabla is pitter-pattering like mad and the sitar keening to the high heavens, but it’s there. Pa, sa, sa.
I am. I am. I am.
From this shruti, the music of life emerges. The colors of the mind play their show. Melodies weave and intertwine, dance around each other, build and fade, and all the while, silence remains.
Naveen is a Hridaya teacher and a frequent contributor to our blog. You can read all of her posts here.
