"To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening"<p>This is a phenomenon I constantly battle internally in my consciousness when assessing the various layers of musical composition.<p>So if we stop ourselves from thinking about music as we listen, the result would then consist of "experiencing/feeling" music?<p>The mechanics of it being a mindless, automatic response to the auditory stimulation. (neurotransmitter release/binding)<p>I don't know where I'm going with this, but how do you all listen to/analyze/experience particular music of your liking?
The joy of being lost in the moment, and to know we can only do that now, makes every moment valuable. But we find ourselves again and again telling ourselves stories about who we are, and who others are. I've been trying to piece together how it's possible to interact with others without this need for ego narrative, but haven't found the way just yet.
My first exposure to this concept was in Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". I look forward to reading Watt as well to gain further insight, thanks for sharing.
The obvious conclusion of this is that this implies you should have no goals for the future, you should work towards nothing, and just take life as it comes.<p>I feel that to be a little rediculous.<p>You can't control the future, but I feel that intelligent planning is important.
The core idea is simple, but explained this way it seems to give wrong impression. Also, the title is somewhat misleading. So if somebody is interested in that kind of things I'd suggest reading Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be?"[1]. It's also heavily influenced by eastern philosophy and zen buddhism and is supposed to explain the same thing as this article does, but in my opinion does it much better (although I disagree with Fromm in many details, but it still feels like a good read).<p>[1] - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Have_or_to_Be%3F" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Have_or_to_Be%3F</a>