The Listening Book

But if you are shut tight against the world you cannot receive nourishment.

You know that light you saw? Imagine it as a constant beam, with no flicker. Imagine the beings who might be that awake.

There is a sense of value inside you that is more powerful than either your individual self or your cultural self.

Get a clean copy of a short piece (three to six minutes) of instrumental music that you can listen to wholeheartedly—classical, jazz, country, rock, anything you love—and play it twice in a row every day for about five days. Don’t do anything else when you listen to it: no read, no look, no sing, no think, no dance, no dream, no scheme, no mad, no

You will see that there is a joy in it; in plain daily talk there is a playful joy.

The truth is, most of us have to learn specifically the single, pure act of listening to music.

and the sense that what you are doing is useful because it is connective. Give yourself the authority to do it, to focus your energies on keeping perfect time with a little matter-music.

When you practice this over several days you learn to ride easy in the saddle. Your absorption in sound works like a trusty mule beneath you and a path of music emerges, one note after another.

As sound is diffused and softened through space, so, when we listen to it, is our sense of self. We are spread out over the land, rarefied, free at last.