Thankful! Grateful! Blessed!

Such a treat reading your flurry of snippets, @Srama! You have a way of elevating even the mundane to the sublime. Lovely pictures too!
I have always found the ocean to be hypnotic. I can sit there for hours just watching the waves. My favorite place after all these years is still Marina Beach, which evokes childhood memories of when my grandfather would sneak us grandkids off to eat thenga-manga-pattani sundal away from the disapproving gaze of my grandmother.

 

Dear Sabitha,

Never ever apologize for too many snippets as we can't have enough of your snippets and enjoy reading everyone of them. Lovely photographs and thanks for sharing them!

I used that reference about the earth is round to my students to mention that no one is a stranger in this world and we are bound to meet them if we journey in this planet. One of the smart students asked me, "You said not to leave our phones unattended even when we go to the restroom as strangers could access it. Who is that stranger?" I replied respectfully to that student that those strangers are devils and not fit to be in this planet where we meet other good souls again and again.

The mind is a cauldron of thoughts and when the fire of emotions is lit up, thoughts in the mind start boiling. When the fire is subsided, thoughts remain dormant. Like the waves, they exist only peripherally and not in the depth of who we are. We are an ocean of love.

Thoughts are like subatomic particles and they appear only when they are observed. When we live in unreal world inside our head, we spend the entire life to seek silence whereas when we live in reality, we realize that our inherent nature is silence.

 

Sabita,
To me silence in between two noises (is it the right word!) or two activities or meaning between two sentences.... take us to a sort of meditative state. Brain takes a gap and we ponder to think beyond the two things and that is what is conveys to us the reality. Many of Bach's ideas convey this and that is the beauty of them.
I am unable to convey exactly what I mean... but I hope you can understand.
Syamala

 

Smt Rama's snippet on appreciatioon of slow walking on sands was superb.
Her every step reminds me of some talams of carnatic music.
Especially her conclusion about silence was exemplary.
This being music season, most of my time is being spent in listening to kutcheris.
At the end of each performance , it makes me think " What is music?"
All sounds cannot be called music. But definitely all music is a cluster of sounds.
Then how do we differentiate sound from music?Let alone the aspect of aestheic sense,
Bhakthi, emotion,elevating us to higher plane etc etc be there.
Music is not just sound.It is the minute 'gap' between sounds that creates music.
When sounds are put in harmony, it is music.
What is harmony? It is 'silence' between two sounds.The sound creates a 'depth' to
the 'silence' & 'silence' creates a depth to the
' sounds'.So 'silence' and' sound' start interplaying with each other to form a
symphany called MUSIC.Depending on the intervel of silence and the impact it creates
on various types of sounds , the whole world of music is created -
we have a sea of ragas in Karnatic, Hindustani & Western Classical & all other types of music
in the entire world.Rhythmic patterns and jatis are also produced similarly.
Without silence, there will be no music.

Music has popularly been defined as the harmonious blending of sounds, aimed at giving contentment, solace and happiness to people. However, some of our greatest Carnatic music geniuses have contended this definition and offered their own conception of music. Let me delve into my memories and try to re-live the process of one such re–definition.
Before that, let me explain why the popular definition of music as a blending of harmonious sounds, which seems quite reasonable, could possibly be contended. Here, let me call linguistics, the scientific study of languages, to my aid.
One of the principal tenets of linguistics is that language acquires the capacity to communicate because it deals with ‘differentiation’. For example, what is meant in English by the word ‘cat’ is that which is not ‘not cat’.
When this analogy is transferred to music, we naturally find that music or musicality necessarily resides in the possibility of ‘non music’ or to use a better and a more succinct term, musicality is one of the functions of ‘silence’! Many are the stalwarts of Carnatic music who have recognized the enormous implications of this possibility and worked upon it to build up glamorous and spacious edifices of music.This we can realise when we listen to Thani Aavathanam of percussion instruments.
The tempo, weight and grace of the program were enhanced many times over by the inimitable accompaniment of Mani iyer. How ever, what still lingers in my memory is Mani Iyer’s impromptu lecture in the middle of the concert.
What started out as an emotional out pouring against the wide spread dependence on the microphone at the expense of full throated singing, soon turned into an intellectual exposition of how silence becomes the golden frame that adds to the value of good music.
In essence, Mani Iyer’s argument was that the corridors of silence, consciously crafted by vaggeyakaras of the old was what differentiated music from sound. It is the juxtaposition of sound against silence that makes or mars music.
You see my five fingers, but somebody can see the five gaps between my fingers.

Ordinarily you will not see the gaps, you will see five fingers. But the gaps are more real:
fingers may come and go, gaps will remain.

Between sounds of music there are gaps of silence. The authentic music consists not of sounds,
but of the gaps. Sounds come and go; those gaps remain. And music can make you aware
of those gaps more beautifully than anything else; hence I have to say that music comes
next to silence. But it is possible even the musician may not be aware of it, unless his music
is his meditation too. Then, soon, the shift from sounds to silence.

The ancient Chinese story is that whenever a musician becomes perfect, he throws
away his instruments; whenever a swordsman becomes perfect, he throws away his sword.


When a musician starts shifting his attention from sounds to silence, his music becomes
almost perfect; when he starts listening only to the silence and forgets all about sounds,
his music is perfect.

Madam,my response might have shifted your intention behind this snippet.
I am really sorry for this diversion. This being music season, I can't but keep silent.

Jayasala 42

Jayasala 42

In the East, music has been always accepted as a spiritual phenomenon. If your music cannot create silence in the people who are listening, it is not music. If your music does not become an unmoving no-mind in the people of your audience, it is not music. It is just making noise.




Music can be understood only by those who have a musical ear. And those who have a musical ear should think themselves fortunate because beyond music, just one step more, they enter the world of meditation, silence.

Silence is the ultimate music.