Warning: this post will re-use an idea!
Resonance is an incredible phenomenon: do it a little, the power of the action grows, do it again, do it again… a cycle of increase. Sound is a cycle, the same pattern of vibration thousands of times to hear even a short bit of it. And the idea of resonance has been cycling through my head for years now. A few years back, in a blog that preceded this one and is now merging into it, I wrote:
“Resonance is an upwelling of unity. When in the presence of vibration, certain objects will start to vibrate in synch with the original stimulus. Think of sympathetic vibration in instruments like the sitar (a set of strings not directly articulated vibrates when the other strings do): the term means something! Sympathy is coming into congruence with another’s feelings, this is a kind of unity as well. A piano or a violin is constructed as a resonating box, an object whose purpose is to vibrate in sympathy with the string source, amplify it so it spreads further. When someone states that what you said resonates with them, they are rather saying the same thing, that it stirred within their mind a sympathetic thought or feeling, a vibration.”
So there is something about vibrating together, yes? Isn’t the phenomenon of entrainment much the same? When in the presence of rhythm, a steady beat, we start to tap, sway, dance. Isn’t a beat sort of a slow vibration, a periodic reality? When people listen to music together, they become entrained to the same vibration, they resonate with the music, if you will. So a yet-unexplained (but well-documented) neurological phenomenon, entrainment, is a clear demonstration of the ability of musical engagement to create unity.
One of my favorite Zen sutras begins: “absorbing world sounds awakens a Buddha right here”. Absorbing means there is no push-back, no excitement, no reaction except to allow sounds to penetrate, to enter. This is exactly the idea in Just Listening, but there is more to that story.
The distinction of resonance is the growth that occurs as a cycle repeats. We know this phenomenon in the world of sound production as feedback. It’s something I referred to obliquely in the essay “Sounds that make me move my mouth”, and is very much a phenomenon of growth. After the essay about the stove teaching me lessons, it now occurs to me that the secondary burn on the modern woodstove – the catalytic burn, the cycling back through of the smoke in order to burn soot – is something of a feedback loop itself, like the feedback loop describing resonance in a previous essay. Feedback on an electric guitar allows one to sustain a note, a sound, for a very long time. And in the world of ideas, feedback is of great importance in allowing an idea or concept to stay alive and grow.
All this is meaningful, connected to that “absorbing world sounds” quote: absorbing sounds as in the sutra would mean no resonance, since the idea is that it goes in but does not become a subject of thought. But it does also mean that the sounds are received, not rejected, not bouncing off unperceived. This is such an important area, I think. Fully accepted but not agitating the receiver in any way. Not rejected, just not acted upon in the moment. But as in a box made to amplify the notes of a string, if vibration occurs in its vicinity, the catching is effortless, nothing but a coming-into-sync with the stimulus.
What I’m talking about is a way of approaching knowledge. Gentle, not pushy — resonance requires a bit of patience! Allow insight to arise, deepen understanding. The SEA approach emphasizes hearing the whole, allowing anything of importance to be honored. As embodied in the Just Listening paradigm, it asks for total engagement in the listening, for honest appraisal afterwards of what went on while listening, what one’s reactions were. And it asks that we stay centered in the listening, willing to forget what we think in order to stay with the unfolding.
Getting from simply speaking what is remembered, sharing that with others, listening again: I created Just Listening because enacting the SEA approach over the years awakened me to the fact that it worked so well only partially due to its basis in the analysis of energy, and succeeded in large part because of my total acceptance of others’ responses to what they hear. Beginning from that standpoint, the effect is to nurture a growing, shared spirit, a kind of resonance that builds community. Once such a spirit is established, differing points of view do not threaten others, and weighty discussions can follow.