SOUNDSCAPE

It is 6:42 a.m. in late June. Through open windows, I am bathing in the sounds of birds I do not know, trills and whistles, warbles and clicks, calls and responses, short and long, some soon recognized in repeats, others not so easily distinguished again, all modulated, syncopated, melodiously and chaotically spilling into the air, filling the world with song under song over song, within song, after song. It goes on and on in a clamor, moment by moment, ever new, ever exuberant, a cornucopia of sound spilling out everywhere.

There is also the not-too-distant and unmistakably growing hum of traffic on a not insignificant artery flowing intently deep into the body of the metropolis toward the heart of the city from the northwestern periphery, and pouring out in the other direction under similar pressure. The occasional roar of a semi accelerating is discernible but for the most part, the impatient tire whirs and insistent engine purrs merge into one sound stream announcing that the world of human purpose and industry is waking from its slumbers along with the birds.

Delicious soundscape, punctuated at times by the fluttering of leaves on the gigantic Norway maple behind me, so close to the house, and by sighing from the boughs of the hemlocks in front of me caressed by intermittent gusts of gentle wind, all coupled with, just now, the conversational voices of dog walkers passing by in the unpaved street under those hemlocks. Now a siren sound is contributed, distinct, brief, not repeated, and now and again a bang from something heavy being dropped off a truck on the farm below the hill. There are also beeps from something big backing up somewhere. This soundscape is always present. It is always the same and always different as the minutes and hours flit by. And always, in each moment, there are the birds’ songs and occasional screeches.

I cease thinking any thoughts about sources and give myself over to hearing. It is very much a bathing in sound, a sensuous luxuriating in pure sound and the spaces between them, in layer upon layer of sounds. Now they are simply what they are, no longer identified, no longer listened for in a straining, reaching sort of way. I simply sit here moment by moment, receiving whatever is arising in the soundscape, not even inviting it to come to my ears, since it is always coming anyway, if mostly not really heard or known because the mind is elsewhere, preoccupied with something, anything at all, which can always include thinking about the origins of the sounds I am hearing or preferring some to others, having opinions instead of just hearing.

In this giving myself over to the hearing, pure and simple, in these moments there is only the hearing. The soundscape is everything. It is no longer in the world. It is the world. Or, more accurately, there is no world anymore. And no me listening, and no sounds “out there.” There are no birds, no trucks, no airplanes and sirens and ladders being put up. There is only sound and the spaces between sounds. There is only the hearing in this all-of-a-sudden timeless moment of now, even as it flows into the next timeless moment of now. And in the hearing, there is also the immediate knowing of sound as it is heard in its arising, in its brief or sustained lingering, in its passing away. Not the knowing that comes with thinking but a deeper knowing, a more intuitive knowing, a knowing that is somehow before the words and concepts that clothe our knowings, something underneath thinking, more fundamental… the co-arising with sound of the knowing of sound as sound, as just what it is, before it gets dressed up by the thinking mind and evaluated by our naming, by our liking and disliking of things, by our judging mind. It is something like a mirror for sound, this knowing, simply reflecting what comes before it, without opinion or attitude, open, empty, and therefore capable of containing anything that presents itself.

In this moment, the immersion is so complete that there is no longer any immersion. Sound is everywhere, the knowing is everywhere, within the envelope of the body and without, for there is no longer a boundary of any sort. There is only sound, only hearing, only silent knowing within an infinite soundscape, only this, only just this.…

That is not to say that thoughts do not arise. They do. It is rather to say that their presence no longer colors the hearing or interferes with it. It is almost as if the thoughts themselves have become sounds and are heard and known along with everything else, in their arising and in their passing. They no longer distract or disturb, for in being known, they tend to melt away, no longer proliferating endlessly. The knowing is skylike, airlike. Like space, it is everywhere, boundless. It is nothing other than awareness itself. Pure. Utterly simple. It is also utterly mysterious for it is not something that I am creating but rather a quality not separate from being alive that sometimes emerges, like a shy animal come to sun itself on a log in a forest clearing. It lingers if I am quiet and don’t make sudden movements within the space of the mind.

The clock before me now shows 8:33. In these hours an infinite number of moments have gone by—and yet no time has passed. I feel anointed, blessed by this bathing, by this immersion in a soundscape that knows no beginning and no ending, by this miracle that is hearing, that is wakefulness, that is knowing. I wonder if there is any moment in which this “just this” is not available to me. What does it take to hear what is always already here to be heard, punctuated and buoyed as it always is by an even greater underlying silence?

I do notice, later on, that if I am not careful, meaning grounded in awareness as the day unfolds, within no time I might be hearing nothing for hours on end other than the roaring noise of the thought stream in my own head—no matter what is presenting itself to the ears.

Meditating with a group of environmental activists on a rocky beach on Windfall Island, at the mouth of Tebenkof Bay in the Tongass Wilderness in southeast Alaska, just off Chatham Strait and across from the snowcapped peaks of Baranov Island, none of us can but take note of how the humpback whales contribute hugely to the ambient soundscape in this pristine wilderness air as they come and go with the tides day and night between the bay and the strait. We hear the whoosh of their out-breath, long, deep, sonorous, and so basic, so ancient, it is as if we are immersed in breath sounds that have been going on uninterrupted for millions of years in the same place, which of course, they have. If we are sensitive enough, we occasionally hear the in-breaths as well, just before they dip back under. With eyes open, we can see as well as hear their out-breaths, even from quite a distance, as the white vapor geyser bursts forth high into the air with every surfacing. We feel they somehow know we are here on the beach, sitting, our eyes closed for the most part. For a time we are immersed in a world that is probably little different from the way it was five or fifteen thousand years ago or more, a vast and primordial silence, ebbing with sounds. Bald eagles cry out, ravens squawk, smaller birds on the water and in the air all contribute their various calls and cries, the waves lap at the shore, the wind blows through old-growth Sitka spruce and western hemlock temperate rain forest that has known the force of the brutal winters but never the clear-cut saw. We sit here, opening to this world, to this soundscape, to its ancient memories. Or are they certainties?

Our dog knows that the soundscape includes what is not heard every bit as much as what is. If she hears the screen door open and close, but does not hear it slam shut and click, she knows she can escape the house. She just knows. This is merely an example of how not hearing in the soundscape is full of significant information, if we are tuned in enough to detect the absence of sounds, and changes in patterns of sound and silence. Music may tickle our auditory nerves, as Taj Mahal used to sing it, but the soundscape isn’t just sound, it is the entire universe of sounds and silences, shared by our hearing when we are willing to give ourselves over entirely to just being, nothing more, just being with hearing.

There is a sound like a garbage truck outside as I sit here. It is not garbage day. Perhaps it is a street sweeper, says my mind, seeking some way to identify it. But it is not going away. Maybe they are drilling. It sounds like a truck going up a steep incline forever, not getting nearer or farther away. Perhaps they are doing some work up the street. I can sit here and think endless thoughts about it, where it is coming from, how much I wish it weren’t here, why it is happening so early in the morning. Maybe I should get up and investigate, see where it is coming from, what is making that noise.

To what end? Right now, I am sitting here. I can choose to be disturbed or not. But that choice seems difficult and remote, an exercise of willpower, a way of resisting what is already so, already here, this sound. I watch the disturbance and non-disturbance oscillate back and forth.

Behind this play of my mind is pure sound. Hearing the sound and not knowing “what” it is are both knowing. In this moment, can I simply rest in that knowing, the knowing that doesn’t know and doesn’t need to know, and is content because these sounds are already here in this moment? Things are already just like this right now. Can they be accepted as they are because anything else is going to lead to disliking, to frustration, to disturbance, to greater distraction?

The mind secretes a thought… perhaps I could accept it better if I knew what it was, who was making it, how long it was likely to go on.

Awareness also knows that thought as a thought as it is emerging. It sees the thinking mind groping, grasping, desperate now for some kind of explanation, for reassurance, for a coordinate system within which acceptance might reside, having managed to turn what were just sounds into noise, a magical if unnecessary alchemy. Awareness also sees these thoughts, the annoyance, the struggling, and the grasping as extra, as equally unnecessary. They are impediments to tranquility, impediments ironically far greater than the sound itself. There is tranquility in the hearing and in the knowing underneath the sound. I let go into it. The sound stops momentarily, then resumes. No hindrance arises.

All of a sudden, the mind experiences a spasm of discomfort. It insists on finding out. Somehow, awareness and my larger purpose evaporate. The spasm of desiring to identify the source gets the body up to look out the window.

A big truck is going by. It is a noise, but not the noise. What has getting up and looking done for me? Nothing.

I resume sitting, and settle in to hearing. The urge to find out grows enormous the longer the sound goes on. I continue sitting, and disappear into it. After a while, the sounds move off into the distance and birdsongs reemerge. Thinking comes up with something else, even now that things are more quiet. That is seen. A smile is spreading across my face. Breath moving in and out. Sitting here, just sitting here sitting… a spaciousness no longer tainted by thoughts of sounds or of silence. Awareness. There are no longer any interruptions. The mind no longer interrupts itself. For now, there is only just this. Just this.

The sound comes back. The smile widens, lingers, dissolves.