Mindful Sound

A couple years ago, I was driving home from work.  I was going through a particularly busy street, and rolled my windows down.  I took in all the sounds around me... the sound of the tires of cars driving by. The sound of engines. The pauses between these sounds. Birds chirping in the nearby trees.  Voices of pedestrians in the distance.  It felt really good... and in that moment I felt like I would as if I were meditating.
I was meditating... in a way.

Years later I came to read a passage from someone, perhaps it was Bhante Gunaratana... or Seikida Katsuki.  I can't recall. But what they said was... something like this:
A man wakes up at night and hears a dog barking in the distance. He is upset because the sound is annoying to him.  But if he were to take in the actual sound, without a label of whether it's nice or not, he would hear how beautiful the sound is. The pauses, the changes.

They described that even that sound would be meditative.

Later I did read some in Mindfulness in Plain English by Gunaratana, and found that it was referred there as well, as well as other Vipassana teachers.  They teach that if you are meditating, and concentrating on your breath, but you become aware of sounds... to stop focusing on your breath and start focusing on the sounds.  Follow them. Listen to them. Listen for the pauses, the changes.

Sound, like breath, is a good way to enter the present moment and to reach a meditative state.  It's funny because many years ago, I studied under a Tibetan monk - and he told us that we need to have a special meditation place... and it's impossible to meditate where there is distraction and noise.  This seems very logical. He even went so far as to suggest some people should move from where they live... after all, "who could meditate under a freeway?"

But as he said it, I knew he was wrong.  I could feel it's inaccuracy.  If it where as he suggested, then those who couldn't relocate were doomed.  Yet there are very meditative people who live in very inharmonious locations.  The sound itself, that noise, is only a distraction if you label as so.  Without the label, the sound, the noise can become the object of meditation itself.

Another organization that I'm very close to, teaches that modern music is a source of darkness.  While I never really agreed with their assessment, I did see that anything that uplifts the ego is a detriment and in many cases, music can do that (modern or otherwise.)  But then I also realized later that if you deconstruct the audio tones you hear, as just sounds and listen to each sound - you can find it becomes yet again, the object of meditation.

The point?  Sound is amazing, and a great object of meditation.  Don't be discouraged if you live in a noisy place, or not - you can use the detriment of "noise" to your advantage.