By Hanuman |
Each week, I have the privilege and honor to play the guitar as the meditative music for our Sunday Service. This provides a unique opportunity to approach playing in a very different way. In this quiet setting, there is no room for “rocking out”; or trying to impress. So, with those directions out of the way, in what direction does the music flow?
Exploration
The space is ripe to explore and yet there are creative limitations from within which the exploration can be made. I’m often staying within the major scale and navigating the pathways that make up the framework of the most basic musical structure.
I open the space for the ears to guide where to go next and the fingers blaze the way. Sometimes I stumble and need to recover and regroup. Other times I stumble upon a surprising new pathway. I hope to get more courageous to follow unknown routes and have them lead me into new tonal territory and avenues of connection. New melodic
ideas that expand the aperture of possibilities. Can I trust more boldly in Music to be the guide?
I am led to ask several additional questions. Where does the creative impulse come from? What is the Source of Music? Who is actually playing?
These are questions that can help to take my mind away from a thought train like; this is “me” playing the guitar, based on what melodies, harmonies, and rhythms I have been able to learn, musical knowledge and skill I have been able to accumulate, and based on the technical ability I have to play the instrument. If I approach the meditation from this angle, I’m bound to be stifled by self-imposed limitations, worried about how it sounds to others, frustrated by the repetitive nature of what comes out, and overall, judgemental about the offering.
But instead, if I can trace back the impulse to play, not to a way of pleasing my mother and getting her attention, but to the Source of all life, then it becomes a portal to leave behind the limits of the ego mind. I follow the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic thread back to its origin.
There I discover, the person I thought I was, who is identifying as a musician, is in essence an instrument of the mind of the creative Source. And then, the exploration expands onto an exponentially more vast canvas…
New Creation
The Sunday Service meditations can also be a nursery for musical ideas. Sometimes, I’ll spontaneously connect to one of the beautifully natural melodies created by the birds singing just outside the meditation hall. And recently, our friend Maarten, asked me to collaborate on a creative audio/video project. It was a joyful process of taking a theme that emerged during one of the Sunday Service meditation improvisations, and developing it in tandem with Maarten’s masterful videography. The result was this beautiful window into life at the Sat Yoga Ashram…
Video collaboration with Maarten Drupsten set against the audio backdrop of Hanuman’s Sunday Service guitar.
I am very grateful for all of the unique musical opportunities that have emerged over the years at the Sat Yoga Ashram. They are always connected to a higher purpose and nurture deep self-reflection and growth!
Namaste,
Hanuman
The wind, a silent messenger,
arriving from nowhere and everywhere,
retelling the story of everything and nothing.
The growing green speaks in subtle melodies,
breathing in delicate motion,
nourishing the creative mind.
One takes in the gentle scene,
warmed by the summer breeze,
touched to song by the hand of patience.
Naturally, the organic information bursts forth
in bright beams of watery notes.
Sailing out into the world on that precious touch.
Like tendrils stretching to wrap around
that next trellis rung,
the progression supports itself
with each tick of time’s unfolding beat.
Three and three in the ongoing upward journey
towards the trinity.
Bend and swing in unseen maturation…
