My daughter Jayanthi and I recently visited the Creative Arts Center in Pontiac to hear the Biakuye Unity Ensemble, a "melorhythmic world percussion" band.  We arrived early and the band let Jaya try out all their instruments (she's almost four and can be hard to say "no" to, for lots of reasons; not that Biakuye seemed like the kind of folks to deny anyone a moment of musical expression).  And you never saw so many instruments on one little stage! 

The Center is a gorgeous space, intimate yet open, all hardwood floors and history.  When Biakuye played, Jaya danced like we all do before self-consciousness hits us later in our lives.  There was something else, though; something I'd never quite seen in her so strongly before.  Eyes closed, head back and swaying, this little person was enraptured. She became the most primal human response to music.  And she, and it, were timeless.

Probably her favorite musician of all-time is our friend, Joe Reilly, who wrote of Dharma and music in Still Point’s most recent newsletter.  He actually wrote of learning to re-inhabit, in a way, the response of a three-year-old to music:  "Always in a performance, when I am able to accept myself and let go of my ego, I experience joy and have fun."  And because of this perhaps more than anything, a Joe Reilly concert is one of the best Dharma talks you'll ever hear.

This word "ego".  It doesn't seem to have a synonym, so we're kind of stuck with it.  But to use it I think we can't be too cautious.  It's all too common that we tend to understand "ego" as something solid and monolithic that we have to do battle with, maybe with prostrations or chanting or zazen. So we make "ego" very central and important, as we simultaneously cling to and try to destroy it.  "Ego," though, is nothing more than the moment-to-moment appearance of our self-centered armor.  Or not.  It's our choice, moment to moment, which is exactly what Joe is pointing to.

And I think it's a testament to his wisdom that Joe gets so into the marrow of it by saying, "accept myself and let go of my ego."  Who we truly are and what our "ego" masquerades as us are two different things entirely.  Unfortunately, when we identify too closely with our "ego", we tend to assume that awakening must mean its eradication and a sort of drying up.  How will we function?  Who will we be? 

But what actually happens?  "I experience joy and have fun." 

After over a decade spent in retreat in a remote Himalayan cave, Ven. Tenzin Palmo* had this to say about detachment:  "It's not a cold emptiness, but a warm spaciousness."  And one of the first things she did when she came back down the mountain, this yogini, is start listening to music:  "It was a wonderful thing to find Mozart.  I completely fell in love with him."

Retreats, zazen, prostrations:  all are done in silence.  But we’re not actually privileging silence.  It's just that our lives are often so noisy that we’ve forgotten how to hear them.  The silence teaches us to listen again.  Silence is not the absence of sound:  silence contains all of it. 

It's instructive that the Bodhisattva of Compassion Avalokitesvara's Korean name "Kwan Seum" translates as "perceive world sound."  Not "always be perfect" or "six-pack abs" or "always be right."  No, the Bodhisattva of Compassion is one who hears the sounds of the world, its cries and its laughter.  This listening, then, this hearing, is the foundation stone of any true compassion we can bring to the world.  This kind of listening leaves nothing out.  And it's endless.  As Dharma Teacher Chapak Patrick Smith wrote elsewhere in the newsletter, "You can't wash a dish so well you never have to wash it again." 

I recently heard the musician Patti Smith say -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that the easy thing in this time and place is to be cynical and scared and unhappy.  But it's lazy, isn't it?  Far more ethical, she said, is the refusal to forfeit or sell our joy (again, I'm paraphrasing). 

This takes effort because fear is the world's oldest sales pitch.  Fear can sell anything.  From news programs to the deodorants that sponsor them.  Politicians to the wars they wage.  Land yachts we don't need to the Clubs we attach to their steering wheels to keep them safe in our overstuffed, temperature-controlled garages. 

Fear is ours, yes, but joy also is ours.  Hearts were the world's first drums. 

So let us listen together, truly listen.  And for the sake of every dancing three-year-old everywhere in the world, let us reclaim, as Joe writes, "the courage to be happy."  It takes effort, of course, but only about as much as dancing with your eyes closed.

*see Cave in the Snow:  Tenzin Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment by Vicki Mackenzie.  Bloomsbury:  New York and London, 1998.