To be open and impressionable, to hear everything, is dangerous. You can be damaged all too easily.

When you daydream about what others hear, you miss the essence of your labor.

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

Here is a good practice using recorded music. Get a clean copy of a short piece (three

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

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.

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

Sound is sense, and it is more intensely pleasurable the more open your ears are. Naked