A Zen-Monk practizing Zazen.
(photography by Hiroshi Moritani, Kyoto, cf bottom of this posting)
Listening - sitting - meditating - solitude - seclusion - emptyness - silence - repetition - monotony - eternity - seclusion - prayer - liturgy. When you hear these words, you are immediately associating a deep religious context. But it seems that in our modern times all of these things are lost forever. Maybe only in attentive listening to good music some of these age old religious practices are really preserved, at least in a secular form.
Especially in the case of the HNW-sound and performance the parallels to religious rites and practices are absolutely striking. This should be absolutely clear, when you remember how Romain Perrot performs and talks about HNW. Since HNW in its original form has always to do with revealing absolute nothingness at the core of our inner self, it is clear that it can be closely related to zen-buddhist pratices and rites. So it is only consequent to relate the act of listening to HNW to the buddhist technique of Zazen.
The aim of zazen is just sitting and opening the mind. This means to suspend all judgmental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without taking notice of them. Zazen is a meditative practice to calm the body and the mind, and be able to concentrate enough to experience insight into the true self, which is nothing more than nothing. This experience of breakthrough to absolute nothingness is also an awakening to absolute nothingness. This awakening (satori) can only be achieved through really hard work and cannot be attained by reading books about it. So please stay away from all the new-age-rubbish about satori.
Bankei Yotaku writes about the difficulties of zazen and of the achievement of satori: "I pressed myself without mercy, draining myself mentally and physically; at times, I practiced deep in the mountains, in places completely cut off from all human contact. I fashioned primitive shelters out of paper, pulled that over me, and did zazen seated inside; sometimes I would make a small lean-to by putting up two walls of thick paper boards, and sit in solitary darkness inside, doing zazen, never lying down to rest even for a moment. For a whole week I was unable to swallow anything except some thin rice broth. I felt a strange sensation in my throat. I spat against a wall. A mass of black phlegm, large as a soapberry, rolled down the side. Suddenly just as that instant. I realized what is was that had escaped me until now: All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn. After fourteen years of incredible hardship, he had achieved decisive enlightenment, his doubts and uncertainties disappearing like a dream." (Bankei Yotaku, trans. Norman Waddell).
The posture of zazen is seated, with folded legs and hands, and an erect but settled spine. The legs are folded in one of the standard sitting styles The hands are folded together over the belly. In many practices, one breathes slowly from the belly. The eyelids are half-lowered, the eyes being neither fully open nor shut so that the practitioner is not distracted by outside objects but at the same time is kept awake. Dogen says, in his book Shobogenzo, "Sitting fixedly, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen."
During Zazen you try to cut yourself off (like in the husserlian technique of phenomenological reduction) from the innerworldy phenomenons, in order to break through to your true innermost self. An old master has once said: "Take one step beyond the top of a hundred-foot pole". This means that you must cast away body and mind, as though climbing the top of a hundred-foot pole and letting go of with both hand and feet. But always remember how hard it is to achieve satori or to say it simpler: to break through to absolute nothingness. To encounter absolute nothingness means in the end to realise that we are made out of nothing but nothing and nothing else but nothing.
The non-variational, unforgiving, static and in the end micro-repetitive character of the real HNW sound seems to circulate like pure, sometimes deep black and sometimes deep white nothingness in your head. There seems to be nothing to focus on: except pure nothingness. The sound of HNW seems almost like a mirage; the longer you listen to and the longer you try to penetrate the sound, the deeper it goes. It is almost like an artwork by James Turrell, which is painted completely with light, so that the canvas becomes a deep abyss when you try to touch it.
When you listen to HNW it totally depends on your own singular (!) state of mind, what you can perceive during an attentive listening-session and what not. Confronted with your innermost self, it could be either heaven or hell, darkness or light, memory or total amnesia, landscapes or dungeons, madness or sanity, concentration or distraction. I think this explains the difficulties, that some totally unconcentrated listeners have with HNW. They can't stand the intensity of nothingness in HNW and the danger to see, what it is really hidden deep inside of them. If YOU are unable to concentrate yourself, don't make the music responsible for it.
Can 80 minutes of HNW be so bad ? Remember that Bodhidharma bursted out into laughter as he finally achieved satori after seven years of seated meditation without pause in a cave in front of a wall. So stop the crying and the complaints about the monotony and the monstrosity of HNW right now. Stand up, buy good headphones and stay away from the now so boring and uninventive Harsh-Noise-Conservativism. Try to get more and more good (!) HNW-records until your record shelf breaks apart under the weight!
Maybe you will also finally burst out into laughter, maybe after seven years of constant seclusion in HNW-sounds. Then you will maybe find yourself just sitting there smiling - most probably deaf like an old donkey - in the eye of the storm.
Of course, this is not the only possible interpretation of HNW, but one! More interpretations and reviews will follow soon on this blog. A preview of the forthcoming reviews will be posted in the next days. The VARGRWULF-Review is following real soon...
Have a nice day !
Stay tuned and expect the unexpected !
And please respect the copyright of my texts !
And please respect the copyright of my texts !
P.S. Dear copyright owner of the picture, please contact me, if you don't want to see your picture above in this context! Your picture will of course be instantly removed! Thank you. S.K.G:
