Does Meditation Make Us Better Musicians?

Meditation an Music by Markus Bak 2024, transcribed from youtube

I was asked by a friend, how meditation affects the way I make music. It’s a very good question, I haven’t thought about that before. So I thought it might be an interesting topic for a video. I started meditating six years ago and I sit everyday for 30 minutes, at least during the working days. I try to sit with the group and my teacher once a month. I live about two hours with the car away and so it’s not always that easy.

What is Zazen? The kind of meditation I do is called Zen. Zen is a buddhist tradition with its origin in Japan. There are two main schools in Japanese Zen: Rinzai and Soto. I don’t want to talk to much about the differences between the two of them, I am practicing in the Soto tradition. This is based on Master Dogen, a Zen Master who lived in the first half of the 13th century. The core of Zen is Zazen, the sitting meditation in the upright posture. The attitude of Zazen is “just sit”, so it’s basically very easy, but hard to do at the same time. The issue with meditation is, that the mind is always distracted and as soon as you sit still, it appears that the mind is more active, thinking is more active than in any other moment. First of all: I am not a Zenmaster or a Zenteacher, all I am going to tell you are things I have experienced, I have learned from my teacher or it is content I read in books. We retreat to a quite and calm place and we sit crosslegged on the floor. We use a little round cushion, called a Zafu. It would be perfect to sit in the full lotus, which is hard to do in the beginning, so any other way to sit grounded on the floor would be fine as well. You can also sit on a bench. I personally prefer sitting in the half lotus. The pelvic is tilted a little bit forward, so the spinal is upright in a very natural way. We hold our hands like this, this is called a mudra. The eyes are half open, because we want to be relaxed and wide awake at the same moment. We are not focussed on anything in special. in the beginning it might be helpful to focus on the breath. We don’t force breathing, we just observe our body inhaling and exhaling. When you focus on a point called Hara – which is two or three centimetres beneath the belly button, your breath becomes deep, calm and slow automatically. When we talk about meditation we may have the idea, that meditation is a state of mind free of thinking, but this is not necessarily the case. We don’t try to suppress our thoughts and we don’t follow them either. It’s like watching the clouds in the sky come and go, noticing them being around. Our attitude is not to hold on to anything or to reject anything. There’s an expression for that by Kosho Uchyama: “open up the hand of thought” – which I find very helpful. Zen is sometimes called the goal less practice. What is this supposed to mean? It means: we sit without intention and without expectations, because expectations sometimes can be an obstacle. There was a influential Zen master in the 20th century – his name was Kodo Saswaki – he used to say: Zazen is good for nothing. This sounds ridiculous, of course Zazen is good for anything. This is common knowledge today, there is a lot of scientific evidence either: meditation has a positive impact on our body and our mind. And why would you sit crosslegged on the floor with hurting knees, if it wasn’t good for anything? So why would he say that? The answer is easy. It’s all about the attitude. The attitude is to sit without intention. This not-gaining or not-wanting mind has helped me a lot with Zazen, with my daily life and with making music. I call it “wanting without wanting”. This is also my attitude to making music.

The Musician As you know, I make my living as a musician. This is the best job I ever could imagine, and never wanted to do anything else. I consider it a gift doing that for almost 30 years. I have a few students, so I’m a guitar teacher. I play in a couple of bands, I play concerts. And also I do some theatre work. So if a symphony orchestra e.g. needs a guitar player, because they want to play a modern piece of music, like a musical, I am one of the guys they use to call. That means, I need to read music a lot. Most of the time I sit in the middle of an orchestra with an electric or acoustic guitar in front of a conductor. I have to read and simultaneously follow the hand of the conductor. I have to admit, that sometimes I experience a little bit of pressure doing that. I have to be highly focussed and concentrated. A little bit like a laser ray. Another night, when playing with a funk band and we jam on one or two different chords, it feels like the opposite. My mind is open and I am in a flow or maybe in the zone, however you want to call it, or however you define these expressions. These or two totally different states of mind I am in, when making music. And it has nothing to do with having success or not, with doing it right or not. Having fun or not. It simply means, that there is no static state of mind we use to be in, when making music. Of course we want to be in a flow when making music, being one with ourself, the instrument, the other musicians, the audience and the whole entire universe. But it’s not that simple. Making music is a very complex challenge, we need to do a lot of different things. Being focussed on the right notes, the right velocity, the right timing and just let go and feel the music at the same time. This is a difficult thing. When we observe ourself honestly, we will recognise, that we tent to gain for pleasant emotions all the time and try to avoid unpleasant emotions. The more intense, the better. But this does not necessarily lead to a better music performance. This is just, what our ego dictates us. Just following our ego blindly without reflecting doesn’t lead to a good music performance. We have to go one step further. What does that mean? Robert Fripp said in an interview in the early 1990th: “music is not about expressing the self”. This is a clear and strong statement. The focus must be on the music, not on the ego. But can we just eliminate our ego? Certainly not. Let’s take a closer look to what’s going on in the mind, when we are making music. The body is in motion. There are sensations, we hear, what we play and what the others play. We act and react. We see the sheets, the instrument and the audience, we sensate our emotions and feelings and we hear our thoughts inside our head. And the thoughts are just appearing from the unconsciousness or wherever they are coming from – I am no psychologist – and they are disappearing again. I am not able to willingly create or decease them. It’s just the way it is and I have to accept that. No matter if they are pleasant or not, helpful or annoying. Fortunately most of the time I enjoy making music and there is nothing wrong with that. I just want to say, BEING IN THE ZONE OR FLOW does not necessarily happen all the time, and I am fine with that. There’s no need to change that. During Zazen we just recognise whatever comes and goes. We don’t try to hold on to anything or try to reject anything, like I said before. If you practice this for a couple of years, it will affect the way you experience your inner life, you will get more aware of what’s going on. Maybe you will learn to accept things as they are, that’s what is called letting go. So “Letting Go” means actually “Letting Be”.

The Mind So you can say, there’s no particular state of mind. Everything is just changing from moment to moment. Always being “in the zone” is just an idea, an ideal. But we are not living in a perfect world. With the experience of meditation, the mind becomes calm, clear and open. Open for all the things that come and go, we let them be. No matter, if they are pleasant or not. And when we do that, something changes by itself. Without forcing it. It happens automatically. Let’s take a look to the statement of Kodo Sawaki. Zazen is good for nothing. You can say the same thing about playing the guitar. Playing the guitar is good for nothing. Of course we all have a motivation to make music. It’s hard to practice for a long time to improve the skills you need. Without a strong motivation you wouldn’t do that. However, this motivation can lead to a lot of struggle. So you can to go one step further and leave the gaining mind behind. It’s wanting without wanting.

In The End In the very end, there is one thing left. Just dive into it and really become it. Be this very moment! This very moment is the only time I can play a note. The only time I can breathe or experience anything. The past is gone, there’s only a memory left, the future is not here yet. I can anticipate, what I want to play in the future, nothing more. Be aware of how long the present moment is. How long or how short. Maybe one or two seconds, not a freeze or fixed image. Only a few tones out of a melody, you can never hear a whole melody at a time. Have you ever thought about that? In the present there is no such thing as a melody, only a motion from one note to another. Being one with this very moment, going this one step further, to drop off every any idea of good and bad, right or wrong, self or not self, guitar or guitar player, musician or audience. Wanting or not wanting, being in the zone or not being in the zone. It is just this very note and this very experience. You cannot put it into words or even think it. This is a wonderful and ongoing experience. So finally to me Zazen is a mind wide and open. Nothing fancy, nothing esoteric, nothing strange. Just the ordinary life, and so is music.