The Flute Does Not Know Music - by David Carse

“The flute does not know music: it does not know ‘G’ from ‘B flat;’ it does not know tempo or emphasis, and cannot make music come out of itself: it’s just a hollow bamboo stick with holes in it! It is the musician who has the knowledge and the skill and the intention and the dexterity, and whose breath blows through the instrument and whose fingers manipulate the openings so that beautiful music flows out. When the music is ended, no one congratulates the wooden stick on the music it made: it is the musician who is applauded and thanked for this beautiful gift of music.

It is precisely so with what we think of as our ‘selves.’ We are instruments, hollow sticks, through which the Breath, the Spirit, the Energy which is Presence, All That Is, Consciousness, flows. Just as it is not the flute making the note, but the Musician making the note through the instrument, so it is the breath which is Presence which animates this mind and body and comes out through this mouth to make it seem that this mouth is speaking words.

The basic misunderstanding, the basic ignorance, is this unwitting usurpation of the role of Musician by the instrument. This inversion of the truth is spontaneously realized when the Understanding occurs. It becomes obvious that there is no individual, that there is ‘nobody home,’ no entity here to be the doer or not. Because awakening is simply the Understanding that there is no one here to awaken.”

~ David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness