The Unique Powers of Music and Meditation

(mouse clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to Radio Headspace. It's a Wednesday morning. A couple of days back, I was in the car, I was driving to a meeting. Not too many external meetings happen these days, but this one was, and I was driving along, and I listened to 80s radio 'cause I love listening to music from that era. And anyway, I had one of those moments where one of your favorite songs come on and you turn it up unreasonably loud. If you are wondering what it was, it was New Order, it was "Bizarre Love Triangle." And anyway, it was playing and the phone rang. And for some reason, normally when the phone rings and I answer in the car, the music stops. For some reason, the phone answered, but the music continued and all the person could hear, they couldn't even hear my voice, they could just hear the music. And once I turned it down, they were like, "You're having a little moment there?" And I was having a little moment. I was thoroughly enjoying myself, I have to say. And I was thinking back to the power of music. And I feel very often when you think of meditation and training the mind, it's kinda like there's no room for entertainment and joy. And I think there's a lot of room for all of those things. But within a monastic context, actually, there is no music. I mean, there's the music of the monastery and sort of the the ritual and that kind of thing, but there's certainly no listening to external music. And it's quite possible to go many years, in fact, without hearing any music. And I remember one Italian monk at a monastery in India, talking to him, and I think he'd gone about four years or so in retreat, and him coming out, and he'd come from an education, a schooling in Italy where he was really sort of into opera. And he had been standing on a trail in India, and it's like the most unlikely place where you would ever hear opera in Italian be sung. But someone was playing something from their house and he heard it, and he said it just moved him to tears. It wasn't just the emotional memory or connection that he had to another time in his life. There was something in the spirit of the music itself. To a lesser degree I have to say, the first piece of music I listened to kind of after I been a monk as well, it was really moving. And I, I remember yeah, sort of crying, and really feeling something, like as though it had touched a part on me. And whether we think of music in terms of an aid to joy, to inspiration, to creativity, whether we think about it in terms of an aid to relaxation, there are so many different ways in...