ID Music: Zen Essence Supersession

A newsletter-exclusive heavy mellow mix for when you try to abandon existence but end up clinging to emptiness

An abbreviated version of this Zen Essence Supersession originally aired on Marfa Public Radio in on January 11, 2026. I really do record these mixes “live-to-FLAC from the yoga mat” so sometimes I get into a zone and ride the vibes beyond the hour-long time slot that MPR has let me occupy on Sunday nights since 2010. As newsletter¹ subscribers (and anonymous lurkers) you have exclusive access to the full-spectrum 98-minute heavy mellow experience the encompasses proto-industrial sludge dub, ecstatic polyrhythmic electronics, and Live D’Angelo.

FLAC² and mixcloud links are below, or click here to stream/DL as you read:

Live feed from the Cosmic Chambo Studio dharma room where I am having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, dancing ecstatically. (Big Boi the cat is not my friend: He works here).

This extended mix is the conclusion of a series of programs that began last November, organized around selections from Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom, a collection of writings from 12th Century Zen Masters. I focus on the writing of Ch'an Buddhist monk Yuanwu because that was the page that I opened to the first time I picked it up, while visiting my Zen teacher Linc in a nursing home. He’s in his 80s, and he’s a lot better after relocating to California and gaining access to proper physical therapy, but on this first visit—see the previous Zen Essence newsletter—I was devastated to see him having such a hard time. Sitting in a state of sadness and distress, and finding relief in 800-year-old teachings, is why I’ve stayed with Zen practice—however sloppy that practice may become from time to time—for 25 years now.

These very old writings are the bones of Zen practice, the basic forms around which so much else—both good and bad—has grown. It’s reassuring to see the intrinsic Zen concepts unclouded by the delusions of self-improvement that transform something infinite and inconceivable into a meditation app subscription, yoga T-shirt slogan, or productivity hack.

At the other end of the spectrum there’s the strictly ascetic approach to Buddhism that can seem like a rejection of the world rather than acceptance of life as it is. Linc has been my teacher because he walks a third path that is neither the streamlined prosperity Zen of management seminars, nor the fundamentalist method that can seem inaccessible if one does not have the option of retreating to a spiritual enclave. Linc’s dharma—both lived and spoken aloud at meditation practice—is closely aligned with the simple yet confounding language used by these 12th Century monks. As the jacket copy to Zen Essence reads, “In contrast to the popular image of Zen as an authoritarian, monastic tradition deeply rooted in Asian culture, these passages portray Zen as remarkably flexible, adaptive to contemporary and individual needs, and transcending cultural boundaries.”

The Indianapolis Zen Center where I lived with Linc for several years is home to a thriving, radically diverse sangha in part as a result of Linc’s adherence to rigorous practice while de-emphasizing the harsh dogma that might discourage return visits from first-time practitioners. While the IZC’s foundations are in the Kwan Um School of Zen, it’s a space that has adapted to the peculiar needs of Central Indiana’s fledgling Buddhist and Buddhist-adjacent communities. This final piece of language from Yuanwu—heard throughout this ID Music Supersession—is one way of understanding this variation of Zen practice:

Many intelligent people understand Zen subjectively, and are unable to let go of their subjectivity. They still their minds without experiencing their real nature, and think this is emptiness. They try to abandon existence to cling to emptiness. This is a serious malady.

I love when these cranky old monks proclaim such esoteric concerns to be serious maladies. It’s melodramatic language, but it’s also crucial to remember that the avoidance of suffering is just another form of suffering: Abandoning existence and clinging to emptiness is just another form of suffering. To experience the fullness of life is to sit with the darkness and the light, joy and sorrow, despair and jubilation. The fullness of life is just as much about watching your delighted Zen teacher drinking a Bud Light and eating a hot dog under kaleidoscopes of fireworks exploding over the White River at a July 4 block party as it is commiserating with him over the gnarly bathroom-centric details of his body’s deterioration on a gray afternoon in a gnarly, gray nursing home. Linc’s dharma is reflected in the fullness of his own life, and has become a crucial text in my own study of the science of freedom. Linc never asks me how my meditation practice is going, but he always asks me about my persistently unpopular yet surprisingly long-running FM radio broadcast.

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Inter-Dimensional Music January 2026
Zen Essence IV: Clinging to Emptiness Supersession

FLAC | mixcloud

As former participants in the still-on-pause Basking in Gravity yoga and meditation art project will know, the original intent of these live ID Music mixes is to provide a soundtrack for sitting still or rolling around on the floor in slowed-and-throwed yoga poses. Thus the long runway and landing strip provided in this session by Ruven Nunez, whose hour-long NYOP Ghostlight composition guides us slowly out of, and eventually back in to, the subjectivity we suffer from here in the provisional realm of names and forms.

From there it’s an hour of pastoral psych from the Hudson Valley . . .

. . . woozy Australian “solar-powered belt-driven drone” . . .

. . . bass-forward gamelan jammage . . .

. . . hybridized New Age zones incorporating throat singing and Aztec death whistles . . .

. . . plus Peter Gabriel, proto-industrial sludge dub, and vintage Sufi trance music of cryptical provenance.

Ruven Nunez - Ghostlight (excerpt)
Wilde Vier - Map of 33rd Dream
Ninth House - Reading Dub
Peter Gabriel - San Jacinto
Komodo Kolektif - Temple Ball
REDUCER - Nada Nuevo
Steve Roach / SoRIAH - Stars of Darkness
ZULI - سلام يا صاحبي
Muqaddium Mohsen Bin Arafa - (unknown)
James Holden - Seven Stars
Ninth House - Pendulum Dub II
D’Angelo - One Mo’ Gin (live)
Ruven Nunez - Ghostlight (excerpt)

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1. Speaking of subscribers and lurkers, it is getting more difficult to keep publishing on SubstaKKK for several reasons, but the big one is that the publishing platform is complacent at best—and IMO complicit—in not just hosting nazis and other white supremacists, but promoting and monetizing literal national socialist newsletters with actual swastikas in their headers. The Guardian published a story about this earlier this month, and while there’s not much new in their reporting, that’s kind of the problem.

“The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found,” writes Geraldine McKelvie in “Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters”. At the time of this writing, Substack has not commented on any of this beyond the statement they issued when it first came to light a couple years ago: “We don’t like Nazis either – we wish no one held those views,” Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie wrote in a blog post waaay back in 2023. “But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetising publications) makes the problem go away – in fact, it makes it worse.” Which is the position of all the most annoying middle school debate club contrarians, a population that surely has significant demographic and intellectual overlap with Silicon Valley dipshits. Also, de-monetizing Nazis on a private, for-profit publishing platform is a consequence, not censorship.

So I’m still trying to figure out how to turn Vøid Contemplation Tactics into a Wordpress.org website that is distributed via newsletter. I am an artist and writer, and not a designer, programmer, publicist, or marketing guy. I do not like entrepreneurship: I am an adherent to Alan Watts’ concept of “extraordinary laziness,” and I think people should, generally speaking, slow down and do fewer things when that’s an option. As soon as I think about any of my projects as businesses, or as “building a brand,” then at best I feel kinda gross, but more often I just feel like another mundane failure because my projects all lose money and aren’t really growing. Despite providing so many opportunities to stay in touch with all of you. Also, while writing will always be difficult for me, recording the show is a lot of fun.

These are problems I could use some help with, as I don’t really understand how the web works despite making online projects for several decades now, most of which are dormant yet extant. If any of the 905 subscribers and followers who have opted-in to the newsletter have suggestions—not Ghost btw—I would love to chat.

2. I favor FLAC because I want lossless audio and I don’t like proprietary codecs like ALAC. If you need a good audio player that isn’t an annoying Apple Store TV Interface, I love Swinsian. If you prefer MP3s and are having trouble converting, drop me a line and I can help! I use MediaHuman Audio Converter, which works great.