Last Tuesday, my son had a band, Recycle.
He's had these before, but something about this one felt a
little bit different. Or maybe it was just because I
was paying attention this time. At the beginning of the program,
a jazz ensemble took the stage. As they played, I was reminded
of a Logic professor I once sat in college.
He was also a jazz musician and often spoke about jazz and
philosophical terms. I don't remember all of his
analogies, but something stirred to me that night and I found
myself thinking, you know what? I think the self is a lot like
jazz or being in a jazz band. So today I thought I'd like to
explore that idea with you. So let's start with the basics.
And I started thinking about the self as an instrument.
Now sometimes maybe yourself is a trumpet or a drum, or my son
plays clarinet, so clarinet or something like a bass guitar.
The point is that each of us is shaped a little differently, and
all of us have our own distinct sound.
And because we are kind of like instruments, we often believe
that we are meant to play solos. We go through life Tooting our
own horns, trying to make sure that our sound gets heard.
Listen to me, we say. Here's my sounds.
But when we really pause and listen, we realize that maybe
soloing isn't everything. Now, sure, some people sound
pretty good on their own, but have you ever heard like, a full
song? A real ensemble where each
instrument is kind of contributing, responding and
weaving something together that's far greater than any one
of the parts. And here's where I think the
metaphor kind of deepens. It's not just like the self is
like an instrument, it's that life itself is kind of like a
song, and we're not the only ones playing.
There's always been a whole ensemble here, family,
community, the natural world, etcetera.
The music has always been bigger than any one of us.
And so kind of in Buddhism we speak of anada, or the concept
there's no fixed self, that's we're not a solid eye sitting
apart from the world, just as no single instrument sits apart
from the music. We are the music arising moment
by moment as part of a larger field of sound and
interdependence. If you isolate one instrument,
it sounds incomplete. The saxophone mine without
context, the drum beat with no melody, but together something
living emerges. The music isn't in the notes
alone, it's in the relationship between them.
I'm fond of working this quote in so that she I'm surprised to
know one, but Dylan said it beautifully in the Genju Cohen
when he offered that to study the self is to forget the self,
and to forget the self is to be actualized.
I'll say by all things in this, but he said the 10,000 things.
What do we mean by this in this context?
That's when we forget the self. We stop clinging to our little
solos. We start hearing the whole band,
and in that hearing something subtle shifts.
The self stops being a noun and becomes a verb.
We don't possess the self. We participate in selfing moment
by moment. Reminded now of Alan Watts
saying that were these people people?
Something along those lines of but still within, confusion
arises, right? Sometimes we think we're
supposed to be playing something like jazz, but the world around
us is playing Blues or classical or maybe just chaotic noise, and
so we struggle to find the writing note.
We push our melodies too hard. We can feel attitude.
Sometimes we try to play somebody else's part.
That's my favorite. Sometimes we try and play like
the song of success or the song of being put together people or
the song of who we think we should be instead of listening
to what's actually happening right now and trying to play
that. We forget this.
The we forget the song it was never ours to control and that
we don't make the music happen. The music kind of makes us
happen. The self doesn't create the
music, the music creates the self.
I think this is where the Daoists offer helpful teaching
of something called wuwei, of non, doing more effortless
action. Participating doesn't mean
sitting around or being passive. It means moving in harmony with
the flow of the music. Kind of like a jazz music
machine. Who doesn't overthink the next
note, the trust, the listening and trust the moment to tell
them what notes need to be played?
And so when the rhythm shifts, they shifts.
When another instrument takes the lead, they fall back.
There's no struggle, no control, just participation.
And this to me, feels close to, I think, what we could call
Nirvan, right? Like not a distant realm or
perfect stillness or perfect song, but the deep kind of the
easiness of being In Sync with what's unfolding.
Play your part without clinging to it.
Do that a self kind of drop slay.
Not because you as a player disappear, but because there's
no longer a boundary between you and the music that's being
created. Even the small everyday moments
have their own melodies. The song of washing dishes, of
waiting in line, of being angry, alone, retire.
Each of these is part of a great improv that we are playing.
And how do we play alongside those moments?
Do we fight the rhythm, insisting the song should sound
different? Do we keep playing a cheerful
tune when the moment calls for something soft or slow or even
silent? No, but we can listen instead.
We can let each moment teach us the song.
It's already single, and when the song ends, we can let it in.
When the next one begins, we can take a breath and play again.
That is impermanence, right? Not so that the tragedy of
something ending, but it's the natural ebb and flow of the
rhythm of the universe, every note kind of depending on the
silence around it, every melody eventually dissolving back into
stillness. If we can hear that, if we can
trust it, then maybe we can stop trying to play solos and instead
join the music that's already happening around us.
And so maybe maybe that is what practice really is, kind of
learning to listen, listening deeply enough to hear not just
our own sound, but the sound of everything.
And when we can listen that way, with attention, curiosity,
humility, we might find that life is not a performance that
we need to get right, but it is something more like jazz.
It's interdependence, it's impermanence.
It may or may not be exactly what the Buddha taught.
And maybe enlightenment isn't the final chord that we are
aiming for. Maybe enlightenment is just
losing yourself in the music, not vanishing but becoming
inseparable from the song that is be played.