The perfection of art is when the work and its meaning are without distinction. Music, we say, is the highest form of art, for music is beyond meaning.
One cannot listen to music from a distance. To listen is to enter into the music, and to be entered by it. It is communion, a collapse of space, time, and identity into the ungraspable life of the moment. It is a miracle which cannot be born of effort; indeed, it only happens when the mind falls silent, and its quest for meaning is forgotten. Then, as Eliot writes, there is “music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts”.
But music is not the highest form of art—life is—and how difficult an art at that! We are educated out of surrender, taught to identify with the frantic activity of the mind. Constantly seeking meaning beyond life, we let the truly meaningful slip through our hands: life beyond meaning. We act out the assumption that a meaningful life is an achievement, a distant goal to be attained through more effort, more search, more activity… And we heap dirt over the very treasure we seek to possess.
We exhaust ourselves seeking the taste beyond the fruit, failing to notice that the fruit is in our hands, and the taste is in the fruit. But one day, once failure has humbled us enough, we look down and bite into the fruit. Then begins our apprenticeship in that highest of arts.
May we taste that beyond meaning,
Simeon
“When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten; when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten; when the heart is right, ‘for’ and ‘against’ are forgotten.”
— Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)
Suggested Reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
A journey through roads, minds, and meanings, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance reveals that perfection is not found in fixing but in seeing. Pirsig’s “quality” is that music beyond meaning. The hum of life lived fully awake.
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This piece reflects on the subtle shift from searching for a meaningful life to inhabiting the life that’s already meaningful in its very unfolding. When effort softens and presence deepens, the ordinary becomes luminous, and we rediscover ourselves not as interpreters of the moment, but as the moment itself.
So profound 🙏 grateful for your sharing Simeon❤️