Music is like meditation….
Sink into the eddies created by the seven notes and one is swirled away from the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of everyday routine to the breathtaking calm and peace and beauty of the ocean floor, where fishes big and small, swim in shoals amongst the coloured corals and spectacular sea-weeds sway in rhythm on rocks. .
Music is medication ….
A salve that anoints the muddled mind and heals the hubris in our sequestered souls.
Music is manna showered down upon us in the wilderness of our wants, that satiates our senses and our spirit .
Music is the bird that beckons from blossom-laden branches , the fragrance that floats in the spring air, the lightness and lure of a child’s laughter, the growth of green moss on a rock turned bare, the solitary shell on a stretch of sand, rain that runs in random ripples, the hush that hums to the mountains grand , the mellowed dusk on a meadow and the grass that tickles.
Music is magic to our mortal fears, that casts a spell on our ordinariness , the whisperings of the wise old seer who foretells of our freedom from madness.
Music is love for it is a rising swell that envelops the peaks and the dust in the dell.
Music is divine for it annihilates the shelf on which we stack our illusions of self.
Music is grace.
Okay all that as an introduction to my Sunday morning.
Usually , I’m not wont to synchronising my day with the rising sun and am better attuned to stretch in slumber in the early hours of the morning. But for the past couple of weeks, my Sunday mornings have been different and refreshingly so.
I’d convinced myself that there was no age –bar to being a student and a while ago, had spent a few hours surfing the internet to locate a teacher who taught Hindustani classical music in the vicinity of where I lived and had courageously enrolled myself in one such group.
It’s okay for you to smile or smirk at this stage.
I’d been given a slot that began at eight in the morning and that sort of dampened my spirits in the beginning.
But here I was waking up this morning at 6 : 00 A.M , feeling bright and beautiful by the time I had finished having tea and bath, had watered my plants , practising the sargam under my breath and was sitting in an auto, with a braid of jasmines in my hair that I had bought on the way.
My voice is not at it’s best ever and in the mornings it is at it’s worst. But I’m beyond the feelings of embarrassment. The others around me will just have to deal with it 🙂
I would like to share with you all a beautiful prayer from the Rig Veda to which I was introduced by my music teacher.
संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं
सं वो मनांसि जानताम्
देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे
सञ्जानाना उपासते ||
saṃgacchadhwaṃ saṃvadadhwaṃ
saṃ vo manāṃsi jānatām
devā bhāgaṃ yathā pūrve
sañjānānā upāsate ||
May you move in harmony, speak in one voice; let your minds be in agreement; just as the ancient gods shared their portion of sacrifice.
समानो मन्त्र: समिति: समानी
समानं मन: सहचित्तमेषाम्
समानं मन्त्रमभिमन्त्रये व:
समानेन वो हविषा जुहोमि ||
samāno mantraḥ samitih samānī
samānaṃ manaḥ sahacittameṣām
samānaṃ mantramabhimantraye vaḥ
samānena vo haviṣā juhomi ||
May our purpose be the same; may we all be of one mind. In order for such unity to form I offer a common prayer.
समानी व आकूति: समाना हृदयानि व😐
समानमस्तु वो मनो यथा व: सुसहासति ||
samanī va ākūtiḥ samānā hrdayāni vaḥ |
samānamastu vo mano yathā vaḥ susahāsati ||
May our intentions and aspirations be alike, so that a common objective unifies us all.
