I recently conducted a meditation retreat in the States with meditators from different meditation backgrounds. It was an intimate, experienced group, unified by practising the same sound-based method throughout the weekend. The experience stimulated the following reflections: For me ‘Sound Meditation with eyes closed’ is like throwing a line into the water. It bobs for a while then gradually sinks as its weight increases. The fish of the deep become interested, and if one tak

Q, Music can always take me out of myself, out of my worries. Just for a time I am nowhere. How can it do this? A. When you listen to music, are you listening to notes? In fact you are not listening to, giving your attention to notes, but to the ‘weave’ the whole pattern which is the unified background. You are responding to the unity and it gives delight or pleasure according to what perception you bring to it. A musician discerns a complex unified pattern and is delighted

Q. It’s probably the ultimate question, but where does Will come from? Can some-thing come from no-thing? From where in me does my will arise to do anything? A. The only conceivable answer is that Will is outside the chain of Causality which ‘causes’ everything in creation. No thing in existence is without its multiple causes, on a vast wheel of dependent originating and co-conditioned arising, as theory has it. But all that can be said of what occurs to set off any proces