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Last Tuesday, my son had a band,
Recycle. 

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He's had these before, but 
something about this one felt a 

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little bit different. 
Or maybe it was just because I 

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was paying attention this time. 
At the beginning of the program,

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a jazz ensemble took the stage. 
As they played, I was reminded 

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of a Logic professor I once sat 
in college. 

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He was also a jazz musician and 
often spoke about jazz and 

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philosophical terms. 
I don't remember all of his 

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analogies, but something stirred
to me that night and I found 

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myself thinking, you know what? 
I think the self is a lot like 

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jazz or being in a jazz band. 
So today I thought I'd like to 

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explore that idea with you. 
So let's start with the basics. 

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And I started thinking about the
self as an instrument. 

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Now sometimes maybe yourself is 
a trumpet or a drum, or my son 

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plays clarinet, so clarinet or 
something like a bass guitar. 

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The point is that each of us is 
shaped a little differently, and

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all of us have our own distinct 
sound. 

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And because we are kind of like 
instruments, we often believe 

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that we are meant to play solos.
We go through life Tooting our 

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own horns, trying to make sure 
that our sound gets heard. 

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Listen to me, we say. 
Here's my sounds. 

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But when we really pause and 
listen, we realize that maybe 

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soloing isn't everything. 
Now, sure, some people sound 

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pretty good on their own, but 
have you ever heard like, a full

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song? 
A real ensemble where each 

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instrument is kind of 
contributing, responding and 

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weaving something together 
that's far greater than any one 

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of the parts. 
And here's where I think the 

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metaphor kind of deepens. 
It's not just like the self is 

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like an instrument, it's that 
life itself is kind of like a 

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song, and we're not the only 
ones playing. 

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There's always been a whole 
ensemble here, family, 

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community, the natural world, 
etcetera. 

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The music has always been bigger
than any one of us. 

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And so kind of in Buddhism we 
speak of anada, or the concept 

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there's no fixed self, that's 
we're not a solid eye sitting 

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apart from the world, just as no
single instrument sits apart 

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from the music. 
We are the music arising moment 

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by moment as part of a larger 
field of sound and 

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interdependence. 
If you isolate one instrument, 

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it sounds incomplete. 
The saxophone mine without 

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context, the drum beat with no 
melody, but together something 

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living emerges. 
The music isn't in the notes 

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alone, it's in the relationship 
between them. 

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I'm fond of working this quote 
in so that she I'm surprised to 

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know one, but Dylan said it 
beautifully in the Genju Cohen 

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when he offered that to study 
the self is to forget the self, 

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and to forget the self is to be 
actualized. 

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I'll say by all things in this, 
but he said the 10,000 things. 

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What do we mean by this in this 
context? 

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That's when we forget the self. 
We stop clinging to our little 

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solos. 
We start hearing the whole band,

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and in that hearing something 
subtle shifts. 

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The self stops being a noun and 
becomes a verb. 

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We don't possess the self. 
We participate in selfing moment

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by moment. 
Reminded now of Alan Watts 

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saying that were these people 
people? 

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Something along those lines of 
but still within, confusion 

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arises, right? 
Sometimes we think we're 

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supposed to be playing something
like jazz, but the world around 

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us is playing Blues or classical
or maybe just chaotic noise, and

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so we struggle to find the 
writing note. 

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We push our melodies too hard. 
We can feel attitude. 

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Sometimes we try to play 
somebody else's part. 

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That's my favorite. 
Sometimes we try and play like 

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the song of success or the song 
of being put together people or 

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the song of who we think we 
should be instead of listening 

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to what's actually happening 
right now and trying to play 

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that. 
We forget this. 

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The we forget the song it was 
never ours to control and that 

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we don't make the music happen. 
The music kind of makes us 

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happen. 
The self doesn't create the 

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music, the music creates the 
self. 

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I think this is where the 
Daoists offer helpful teaching 

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of something called wuwei, of 
non, doing more effortless 

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action. 
Participating doesn't mean 

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sitting around or being passive.
It means moving in harmony with 

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the flow of the music. 
Kind of like a jazz music 

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machine. 
Who doesn't overthink the next 

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note, the trust, the listening 
and trust the moment to tell 

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them what notes need to be 
played? 

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And so when the rhythm shifts, 
they shifts. 

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When another instrument takes 
the lead, they fall back. 

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There's no struggle, no control,
just participation. 

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And this to me, feels close to, 
I think, what we could call 

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Nirvan, right? 
Like not a distant realm or 

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perfect stillness or perfect 
song, but the deep kind of the 

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easiness of being In Sync with 
what's unfolding. 

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Play your part without clinging 
to it. 

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Do that a self kind of drop 
slay. 

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Not because you as a player 
disappear, but because there's 

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no longer a boundary between you
and the music that's being 

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created. 
Even the small everyday moments 

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have their own melodies. 
The song of washing dishes, of 

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waiting in line, of being angry,
alone, retire. 

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Each of these is part of a great
improv that we are playing. 

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And how do we play alongside 
those moments? 

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Do we fight the rhythm, 
insisting the song should sound 

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different? 
Do we keep playing a cheerful 

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tune when the moment calls for 
something soft or slow or even 

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silent? 
No, but we can listen instead. 

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We can let each moment teach us 
the song. 

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It's already single, and when 
the song ends, we can let it in.

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When the next one begins, we can
take a breath and play again. 

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That is impermanence, right? 
Not so that the tragedy of 

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something ending, but it's the 
natural ebb and flow of the 

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rhythm of the universe, every 
note kind of depending on the 

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silence around it, every melody 
eventually dissolving back into 

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stillness. 
If we can hear that, if we can 

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trust it, then maybe we can stop
trying to play solos and instead

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join the music that's already 
happening around us. 

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And so maybe maybe that is what 
practice really is, kind of 

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learning to listen, listening 
deeply enough to hear not just 

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our own sound, but the sound of 
everything. 

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And when we can listen that way,
with attention, curiosity, 

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humility, we might find that 
life is not a performance that 

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we need to get right, but it is 
something more like jazz. 

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It's interdependence, it's 
impermanence. 

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It may or may not be exactly 
what the Buddha taught. 

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And maybe enlightenment isn't 
the final chord that we are 

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aiming for. 
Maybe enlightenment is just 

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losing yourself in the music, 
not vanishing but becoming 

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inseparable from the song that 
is be played.