Sound Meditation and Meaning: Beyond the Ten Thousand Things

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

— E.E. Cummings

When I was working, the problem was always too much, never too little. The challenge was to be the kind of person E.E. Cummings describes in his poem above — who likes the here of this earth and loves this now of the sky — despite having a lot on my mind. I was never bored, or lonely, or rudderless.

But I knew when I retired it would eventually hit me: the void that’s been there all along but obscured by the ten thousand pressing things.

For the first months of being retired I just replaced the ten thousand pressing work-related things with my ten thousand hobbies. A gardener is never bored; there is always something to be done.

But then I spent a month in Maine, separated from all of that. I was shocked by how quickly it came, and how profound it felt. The panic of meaninglessness. I was bored. And a bit terrified. The chill of fear that it’s all just “sound and fury signifying nothing.” If there was a shore, I could swim to it. The problem is that I don’t, really, think there is a shore.

If you are reading this and don’t know what I’m talking about, count yourself lucky, my friend, and stop here.

But if this sounds familiar to you, perhaps this account of a technique that helps to take me out of it might help. I’m writing this as much for me as for you, so that I can remember the way when I forget.

Sound meditation

What works best for me is sound meditation — noticing the sounds around me. It’s pretty simple. Here’s how to do it.

This works best when you are at your wits’ end, feeling yourself unravel (or, better yet, feeling that you’ve never been “ravelled” in the first place). So if that’s where you are: Very good.

You don’t have to close your eyes, but you can if you want. What you are doing is just listening to whatever there is to hear: traffic going by, a dog barking, some people talking in the distance. You are hearing and you are not trying to make sense of what you are hearing. You are hearing and you are waiting.

What are you waiting for? You are waiting for the sounds to start to feel kind of good – like the sounds are enough. The birds and the buzz of a chainsaw are on equal footing, and both of them make you feel something kind of like a fundamental goodness of the world.
For me at least, when conceptual judgments, analysis and predictions, (if, but, hope, fear) fall away, what remains is something that feels fundamentally good.

When I say “fundamentally good,” I don’t mean that in a moral or aesthetic sense. The sound of that chainsaw is probably my neighbor – or more precisely the people my neighbor has hired and instructed to buzzsaw their naturally beautiful bougainvilleas into ridiculous uniform balls and squares. But when you are doing sound mediation the buzz of the chainsaw just is. You are just accepting that sound because it is. You aren’t judging that sound, or your neighbor, or their aesthetic choices.

I’m saying this in words but you aren’t going to be feeling it in words. You are going to be feeling it in something like peace. I can’t tell you how long it will take but you will know when you are there. In Zen they say “this is such” or “this is thus.” You might just say “this is.” But you don’t need to say anything.

Doing this sound practice while walking can also work. For me, the sound of my shoes crunching on gravel is particularly effective for bringing me into reality. Because ultimately the point is to notice and accept reality while you are walking, talking, eating, gardening, etc. To keep that peace as you walk across the street. As you buy a book, as you talk to someone.

As you return to the ten thousand things, you are looking to find that groove where all it just feels like enough, whatever it happens to be; where each foot loves the here of this earth, and both eyes love this now of the sky.

Why does it work?

Doctrines, dogmas, and other castles in the air take you in the wrong direction. Because abstract thought promises permanence, but reality is impermanent. The panic comes from believing the promise. From the great Alan Watts, in the Wisdom of Insecurity: “We are perpetually frustrated because the verbal and abstract thinking of the brain gives the false impression of being able to cut loose from all finite limitations. It forgets that an infinity of anything is not a reality but an abstract concept, and persuades us that we desire this fantasy as a real goal of living.” In other words, the panic isn’t a flaw — in you, me or the Universe. It’s just misplaced expectation. Nobody can promise you a permanent forever.

The only solution I’m aware of is to set those abstractions aside for a moment and give yourself over to noticing reality. Actual reality. Not some book (or blog post – ha!) talking about reality. That is what sound meditation aims to do. Other people might count breaths or name sensations, but all of that feels a little too close to thinking to me. My auditory pathways are further removed.

This practice brings me back to reality and stops that panic of meaninglessness. And it also helps me to see things I would otherwise miss, and to react to people, things or circumstances with a little more genuine presence.

But what about saving the world?

Noticing reality doesn’t mean not trying to make changes. What I’m talking about here is a start, not an ending. It is easier to start seeing meaning in the world if you focus on something small. The idea is to keep the reality of the world squarely in focus even while you pursue some goal. The reality comes first, the abstractions that allow us to be effective come second. Well-meaning people have done truly horrible things in the name of “saving the world” when they’ve gotten that order wrong.

And then there’s a harder question: what if the reality of the world you are experiencing is really bad – and you have no power to change it? Not just a neighbor’s horticulture error, but the kind of atrocities I’ve personally been lucky enough only to hear about? Does this kind of noticing and accepting reality work even then? I can’t claim to know for sure. But I believe the answer may be: yes, even then. Viktor Frankl, who survived 3 years in a Nazi concentration camp, believed that “life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable.” His therapy system, logotherapy, is built on the notion that meaning is found in the trees of the world, not the forest of analysis. And ultimately, for Frankl, the meaning or unavoidable reality for a particular person may involve a great deal of suffering. That’s still real.

Right action, right thought

The great thinker Alan Watts understood what I’m trying to get at in this post better than any human ever has or will, and articulated it in dozens of books and radio shows throughout his life. But he died an alcoholic. Perfect intellectual understanding doesn’t necessarily get you where you need to be in any particular moment. In Alcoholics Anonymous they have a saying: right thinking doesn’t produce right action but right action can produce right thinking.

Sound meditation is not an intellectual framework — some insight of enlightenment that rearranges your whole life in an instant. It’s a practice to try when you’re unraveling. You have to keep doing it. And whatever peace or insight you might find, you can’t will yourself to hold it permanently. It comes and it goes.

Here’s a cautionary story almost too fantastic for me to expect you to believe (but I promise it’s true!). A few weeks ago, a bobcat came and sat on the other side of my garden fence to watch me do this sound meditation. It was absolutely magic and there is no question he was looking right at me. Greedy as I am, I reached for my phone to get his picture. Of course, he immediately disappeared. All I could see was the creosote bush shaking just a little to mark his retreat.

So, this is the kind of thing you have to keep working at. And I’m the kind of person who hates routines. But I’m starting a ten-minute-a-day sound meditation practice. Maybe ten minutes of listening can be enough to return me to the here of this earth and this now of the sky — and maybe it can be enough for you, too.

If you try it, let me know in the comments.