On Music

[PureInsight.org] The Surface and Inner Meaning of Music

The surface meaning of the two Chinese characters that make up the word “music� means bringing pleasure to people with the melody of sound. However, some people may disagree with that definition for music, as sad music cannot bring pleasure to people. Actually the pleasure that real music brings to people does not come from the surface. It doesn't bring any strong sensation that makes one's physical body feel emotionally satisfied. If it were the case, wouldn't obscene music be real music too?

The pleasure brought by real music comes from the understanding of beauty based on a human's compassion and righteous mind. Real music should "display what's beautiful, what's upright, what's pure, what's good, and what's bright and positive."("Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Creating Fine Art" by Master Li Hongzhi) It is able to elevate one's human nature, as real happiness can only be experienced by those with sublimed souls. Therefore, real music is the sound of virtue. Its beauty doesn't come from its surface manifestation, nor does it come from come from whether the tone is sad or happy. The key aspect lies in whether its artistic conception is aimed at displaying wonderfulness. Only this kind of music can bring people real pleasure.

Curing Illness with Music

With respect to curing illness with music, we have to start with our understandings of Chinese medicine. The normal circulation of energy through energy channels in a human body is essential to a person's life. While all internal organs influence the circulation, the heart dominates the overall changes of all internal organs, therefore the heart is the basis for the circulation of energy and life. It goes without saying that it's extremely important to have a good psychological state. From the Chinese medicine point of view we can see that the key to curing illness with music is to adjust one's psychological state, in other words, let the person obtain a good and positive psychological state with the beautiful artistic conception of music.

As a matter of fact, curing illness with music also has its material reflection. "The ancient people held that the five musical notes were the authentic sounds. Just like the five organs of ears, eyes, lips, nose and tongue, every internal organ corresponds to a musical note. Based on the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, the ancient people have worked out a complete theory, and found that metal corresponds to the lungs, wood corresponds to the liver, water corresponds to the kidneys, fire corresponds to the heart, and earth corresponds to the spleen. Although the five musical notes sound like flowing water, they have corresponding relationships with human internal organs as well. For instance, the lung corresponds to the note of mi, the heart corresponds to the note of sou, and the spleen corresponds to the note of dou. In practice, people have also discovered that a piece of music mainly composed of a certain note can adjust the status of its corresponding internal organ." ("Music, Five Elements and Health" - Interview with Dr. Chen Zhiping)

According to the ancient theory of the Five Elements, the Five Elements constitute all things and all matter in the universe, including the human body. When the human body develops symptoms of illnesses, it is because the Five Elements have lost their balance in the human body. As a matter of fact, sound exists as a physical field and is also composed of the Five Elements. Different authentic musical notes are composed of different substances, and therefore music that is composed of different authentic notes has healing effects on different internal organs that the music notes correspond to. For instance, if one's spleen has problems, it means the human body is short of the element of Earth, and one should be treated by hearing music mainly composed of dou which belongs to Earth.

Analyzing Heavenly Music

Music is culture passed on by gods. This is something that atheists won't believe in. If human beings are the ones who truly create music, why is there no concrete record on how the theory of music creation was developed and how the ancient musical instruments were created? On the other hand, there were many stories about gods passing music on to human beings. Many such records exist from different historical periods. The methods by which gods pass culture and art on to human beings include: sending a God to the human world, a higher being giving hints to a human, leaving memories in a human's brain, showing images, or through supernatural capabilities, etc. These ways for gods to pass culture to humans all have detailed written records.

There are records of a few lucky human beings hearing music that comes from heaven. Why is the heavenly music they heard so pleasant to the ears? Also why is it so magical? Why can't more people hear it? There are reasons. Here is an event recorded in history. By coincidence, a god was playing a flute on a boat. Upon the first blowing, everyone became quiet. Upon the second blowing, mighty waves became turbulent. Upon the third and fourth blowing, the seas ran dry and the rocks crumbled. And upon another blowing, the precious flute broke. Why is this? Heavenly music makes gods happy. Everything has a soul, so can human or the things in the human world bear it? No. Speaking from the angle of substance, heavenly music has a finer substance field and the elements making up every note are finer too. In addition, the charm and wonderfulness of the music make its sense of reality perfect, and therefore a human being will find it extremely attractive and sweet-sounding. In the mean time, the substances in the human’s dimension cannot bear the emitting of such a fine substance field. Therefore, normally, when a human being hears heavenly music, it happens in his/her dreams or in a specific dimension. It happens very rarely in this dimension.

Let me explain why a beautiful piece of music can shake people's hearts. It is because this kind of music comes from the wonderfulness of human nature and a peaceful soul. The beauty of human nature is obtained through the cultivation practice of a soul and the removal of selfishness and filthy thoughts. Therefore the process of composing real music is a process of cultivating one's soul.

In practice, you will notice that a beautiful piece of music can suppress improper human thoughts and make one listen to the music wholeheartedly without any distracting thoughts. In fact it also has its physical manifestation. Today's science has discovered that human thoughts are a kind of substance. Instead of taking the simple form of electric waves, it is in a complete form of physical existence. When a peaceful soul is manifesting beauty, his/her mind will be more concentrated, and the substance field that his/her brain emits will be finer and stronger, when expressed as sound by musical instruments, the strong substance field can dominate over the weak substance field created by distracting thoughts.

Appreciate Music in Reality

In today's human society, along with the moral decline, the music has become overly emotional and overly rock-n-roll and some music even has a lot of inferior and sexy elements. Listening to this kind of music may satisfy one with emotions and give pleasure for a moment, but one will be filled with extreme emptiness afterwards. Especially since today's people have strong desires for fame and gain, the music that they have composed has an ever-decreasing portion of recognizing the beauty of art. Instead, for personal gain the music is constantly composed to please the declining morality. Thus music is no longer real music. It has become merchandise, music merchandise.

It wasn't until I logged into Heavenly Music website that I have retrieved classic atmosphere and exquisite melody. In here I was given the opportunity to hear beautiful, righteous, pure, bright, thankful, god-eulogy and Buddha Fa-eulogy music composed by Falun Dafa practitioners. The wonderful artistic conception has been reverberating in each and every cell of mine. Listening to such music can pacify souls and elevate human nature, because this kind of music is created through cultivators' ever-rising morality!

Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2006/7/6/38419.html