Music of the Silence

Let’s start at the beginning. At first there is nothing; then there is something; then it changes or goes away. There is a lot more nothing than something. In fact, something is always limited—it always has a beginning and an end—but nothing, silence is unlimited. As soon as you limit it, there is something.

So nothing, silence, emptiness, is always greater than somethingness: infinitely greater. Therefore we start from nothing, silence, and to silence we return at last. Then what is in-between? It’s whatever you want it to be.

This is becoming, this is being; this is creation and creativity. This is the world of the artist, the world of nature, of dharma. Dharma means reality: what is, the way it is, why it is the way it is. In one sense, everything is dharma.

But in another, very important sense, there are many things that seem real, but are not dharma. Like what? Names, labels, designations, abstractions, the ‘self’, ‘possession’, ‘control’, ‘profit’, ‘purpose’, ‘desire’ and many other human fabrications are illusory, not-dharma or adharma.

Most music is adharma; it feeds off other fabrications, reinforces them, enhances their apparent reality. Dharmasar means the essence of dharma. It is an experiment in creating dharma-music: music that just is, that has no place to go, no purpose, no axe to grind. Music that invites you to look at life just as it is, without embroidering.

And oh yes, music that is beautiful. Let us begin the journey.