ID Music: Dōgen II - IV
ID Music: Dōgen II - IV
North America's Gnarliest Introduction to The Practice of Meditation
This May 2022 four-episode series of Inter-Dimensional Music features the full text of Zen Master Dōgen’s essay “The Practice of Meditation.” The essay is included in images below, and various translations are linked to throughout the newsletter.
No previous experience required, but if you’d like to start at the beginning of the series, you can find it here …
Writing about something as esoteric and subjective as zazen – literally “seated meditation” – was as futile and as important an undertaking 700 years ago as it is today. Eihi Dōgen was a 13th Century monk who founded the Soto school of Zen shortly after returning from studying in China. “The Practice of Meditation” is his first major work, a 570-word essay also translated as “Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen” or “Fukan Zazengi” in transliterated Japanese.
Dōgen establishes an anti-authoritarian bona fide shared by many good Zen teachers in the first line of his succinct tract. He warns seekers upon arrival that he has no fresh revelations to reveal. “Truth is perfect and complete in itself,” he writes, and “not something newly discovered.”
My own disclaimer – as someone who is no more and no less than a veteran slop-style Zen student – is hopefully self-evident. These profound teachings are presented in the mix with expansive psychedelic death metal, a non-denominational soundclash of devotional music, classic New Age drone, and Azu Tiwaline’s Tunisian digi/dub/techno fusion inspired by an encounter with asteroid fragments. I’m making a sustained effort to keep anyone from mistaking me as an authority on any of the above subjects.
As with the music, the language we hear on each show helps me make it through the day. Your experience likely differs from mine, but it is no less truthful. If words from the guy who invented Zen “cannot help you see the reflection of your true self,” then my sonorous narration of a slopped-not-chopped DJ mix isn’t going to do much good either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining, or that it won’t reveal new paths. There are no methods for attaining enlightenment, and there are no truths to seek. Meditation is enlightenment, and truth has always existed right here.
Tune in, turn on, sit down, shut up.
“The Practice of Meditation” is close to perfect as far as introductions to sitting meditation go, and it’s certainly complete in itself. Once the author has undermined his authority it’s time to introduce a few of Zen’s confounding core concepts like “when you have thrown away all your conceptions of mind and body, the original person will appear.” The modern day mindfulness industry consists largely of people taking these concepts and writing circles around them until they have a book to sell, or a weekly experimental meditation community radio show to broadcast, rather than a pamphlet to hand out. We thank you for your patronage, but everything you need is right here, and has always been right here.
There’s also a warning against indulging in the kinds of “conceptual thought” that commercial Zen is founded on. Sutras, books, dharma talks, meditation apps, and jarring mixes of allegedly Zen-adjacent psychedelic music are good for gaining knowledge, but can distract you from recognizing wisdom. This is one of the strategies for enjoying the often bumpy Inter-Dimensional Music meditation experiment. The more you try to figure out what’s coming next, whether the mix is good or bad, or why it can’t be a more pleasing flow of “lofi New Age soothers to study/relax to,” the less likely you are to realize the unity of all things, including blackened death metal and Live Dead.
Dōgen then gets into straightforward meditation instruction. The general idea remains the same, but human bodies have changed more in the last 700 years than human minds, and many modern practitioners’ physical forms – such as the remarkably inflexible 210lb corpse your middle-aged host is carrying around – have been ruined by the mundane dystopian phenomena of repetitive motion injuries incurred while remaining sedentary for hours on weird chairs and hot couches. Trying to twist my legs into full lotus position is no more helpful than trying to attain enlightenment. Both things will keep me in delusion, and self-criticism of something as unavoidable as my own body is a great way to get super frustrated even before considering how to keep my eyes slightly opened and unfocused on the floor at a 45º angle.
As with a physical exercise practice, it’s good to find a mindfulness practice that you can honestly expect to pull off at least a few times a week. If that means sitting in perfect symmetry on a deluxe $200 limited edition Dharma Crafts Velvet Zafu Zabuton and gazing at the freshly buffed floor of a dharma room in silence that is only broken by songbirds and a gurgling stream, good for you. You can also get going by plopping down on a chair, bench, or some creatively positioned couch cushions. You can direct your half-lidded gaze at a pile of laundry while car alarms trill and the refrigerator makes that weird wheezy-gurgle noise.
Wherever you settle in, find a shape that is comfortable. The foundation of that shape often becomes more apparent when considering overall “balance,” or aligning your body so that the discomfort of gravity’s pull doesn’t distract you from the discomfort of your spinning thoughts. Then simply “think the unthinkable” for 20m or so and BLAMMO: you’re practicing meditation. “Don’t doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of its method.”
This form is also how I sometimes listen to music. Jamming ID Music isn’t zazen, but deep listening is one gateway to silent meditation. Both are an opportunity to sit with “life as it is” especially if you don’t like the noisy parts of the show.
The rest of “The Practice of Meditation” is made up of Zen’s signature poetic and counter-intuitive brain puzzles designed to aid in the dismantling of logic, reason, binary worldview, and conceptual thought.
“Don’t allow your mind to dwell on thoughts of good or bad.”
“Zen meditation … is peace and blessedness itself.”
“… you yourself are the mirror reflecting the solution to your problems.”
“If you can’t find the truth right where you are, where else do you think you will find it?”
There’s also an inkling of the “give up hope” concept that Dōgen’s dharma heir Charlotte Joko Beck would flesh out six hundred years after his death. It’s an idea that has been of great comfort to me when confronted with the “unwholesome actions that swallow up all things1” like global warming, attacks on basic human rights to body autonomy, or the more existential challenges that I wrote about using metaphors of crypto-art and police violence in the “Hope is Part of the Problem” and “Hope Against Hope” essays …
“Don’t work towards freedom” Dōgen writes, “but allow the work itself to be freedom.” I prefer Joko’s substitution of “effort” for “work.” Work is closer to “labor” which distracts me from the underlying principle, given the current hegemonic dystopian economic and political system under which we toil.
Not working towards freedom means giving up hope. It’s letting go of the idea that effort is wasted without the attainment of a goal. Practicing kindness or not being a jerk is an end in and of itself, just like meditation. Effort becomes freedom if the goal of effort is the effort. The goal of zazen is to be wherever it is that you’re zazen-ing. This isn’t self-improvement, and it doesn’t require faith in a better tomorrow. Hoping for a “better tomorrow” distracts from being “okay today,” regardless of what’s happening.
Zen is all-encompassing and unattainable. It’s an effortless flow of unthinkable thoughts. It’s a palace of wisdom that you can only enter by forgetting the way in. It’s wearing something comfortable and breathing normally because life is short. Nobody knows what happens next, and here and now is the only place to start. If your deluxe organic buckwheat hull cushion is still out for delivery, or your meditation room is a cluttered and noisy office, then perhaps Inter-Dimensional Music can at least provide an excuse to be still and embrace the unexpected. Even though North America’s Gnarliest Mix of Heavy Mellow, Kosmische Slop, and Void Contemplation Tactics is no more likely than Dōgen’s essay to show you the reflection of your true self.
Thanks as always for being here via free subscription (right on), paid subscription (so sweet!), direct traffic to the website itself (love 2 lurk), or tuning in via the Mixcloud archive, 320kbps DLs, or FM dial.
Keep scrolling for links to the episodes.
Bowing deeply across the airwaves and over the wi-fires,
Daniel Buckmaster-Chamberlin
SOON COME …
A new Void Contemplation Tactics meditation video featuring a reading of “The Practice of Meditation” as heard on these episodes of ID Music. Images in the series are from my “White River, Slow Flow” project documenting our local riparian zone with heavily manipulated slow-motion video. You can catch up on past installments in the archive.
If these projects have helped you to discover treasures of wisdom or if our airwaves have led you to kernels of gnar, please share this knowledge “abundantly with others, bringing them happiness and peace.”
We are deeply honored when you introduce us to your nice friends.
20220513 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for not wanting to attain enlightenment
For this week's session, we'll continue our series on the Master Dogen's 13th Century text "The Practice of Meditation."
The soundtrack to our practice includes long-form Japanese doom with foul-mouthed lyrics en español, moss-covered blackened death metal, and South African vocal stylings that are “part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation” from Sibusile Xaba.
We’ll also hear classic yet under-circulated pastoral kosmische as brought to our attention by Save Your Face2, a long-time inspiration and friend of the show.
artist - work
Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (Part 1) (edit)
HAUNTER - Overgrown With The Moss
Faust - Jennifer (alt mix, IV bonus track) via Save Your Face
Corrupted - Hay Que Joderse
Kendra Amalie - Look at the Light (Source)
Sibusile Xaba - MAKWANDE LWENDE
Chelsea Carmichael - Fractuals
Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (Part 1) (edit)
☸️ Dōgen - The Practice of Meditation
20220520 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for trying to think the unthinkable
For this week's session, we'll continue reading from Zen Master Dōgen's "The Practice of Meditation". Our soundtrack includes a Yaman Taka Mandala Initiation chant, a variety of organic ambience arising from memory and mourning; a beloved update to classic New Age bliss; and Tzompantli’s "crushing Death Doom war march built on a bedrock of Native / Indigenous themes, rituals and history, illuminating the splendor, brutality and despair within."
Our program begins, and comes to an end, with Forest Kelley’s dub techno-informed "soundscape ecology" representing "nematoda, annelida, and other abyssal worms inhabiting the aphotic depths, sensing each other without light."
artist - work
Forest Kelley - Silt, No. 001 (edit)
Monks of the Gyuto Tantric University - Dorje Jigjed - Yamantaka Mandala Initiation Chant (via MusicRepublic)
Tzompantli - Eltequi
Carlos Ferreira - Aimless Wandering
Dntel x Enya - Deireadh An Tuath
Rafael Anton Irisarri - Kiss All The Pretty Skies Goodbye
Hell - The Stretch Out Their Hands
Thou - Into the Void
Abstracter - Warhead Twilight
Forest Kelley - Silt, No. 002 (edit)
☸️ Dōgen - The Practice of Meditation
20220527 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for cultivating your mind while you still have the opportunity
For this week's session, we'll complete our reading series looking at Zen Master Dogen's 13 Century text "The Practice of Meditation."
Our soundtrack includes music inspired by an encounter with asteroid fragments, experimental art from the Eastern Algonquin side of the world, and documentation of vegetal sentience from Gav & Jord of the Equinoxx Crew.
Our program begins and comes to an end with selections from Shabaka Hutchings' extraordinary Afrikan Culture EP of great Black meditation music, ancient to the future.
artist - work
Shabaka - Explore inner space
Iration Steppas - Kilimanjaro (African Bellz Mix)
Gav & Jord - Appinness
Ricardo Villalobos & Oren Ambarchi - Fast
Azu Tiwaline - Into The Void
Ossa - A Conversation with Mira Calix
Holden & Zimpel - Tuesday
Medicine Singers - Sunset
Shabaka - Black meditation
☸️ Dōgen - The Practice of Meditation
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Another Dōgen line, taken from the much more substantial Shōbōgenzō collection.
The Save Your Face blog is largely focused on expertly curated Live Dead mixes that reduce some of the repetitive or less-inspired moments from Grateful Dead shows. These lovingly assembled collections bring out under-represented aspects of the Dead’s music, drawing attention to their work with jazz luminaries, and compiling highlights from specific eras into ecstatic revelations from this over-analyzed and collected band. In addition to their work with the Dead, SYF makes occasional detours into post-punk, industrial, and in this case, the classic German psychedelia known commonly as krautrock. Just as their Dead mixes serve as ideal entry points to an overwhelming discography, “Faust for Beginners” opens new perspectives on the difficult but ultimately transcendent kosmische of Faust. We’ll hear an alternate mix of “Jennifer,” a four-minute sample of the exquisitely melancholy pastoralia that awaits you in the full collection.
