Meditation halls are very, very quiet places. The one I find myself in every week is no exception. Sitting there, I can hear all of the minutest and subtlest sounds a human being will ordinarily make: the rhythmic sound of one’s breathing, the ruffling of clothes as someone adjusts their posture, and the grumbling of somebody’s stomach because they skipped breakfast on the way there. It’s actually quite easy to pick up on these things, too, because in the midst of extreme silence, the mind, accustomed to stimulation, will look for something to fixate on, or perhaps make something up altogether!

You see, we might all look calm and relaxed while we sit there, but make no mistake: it’s more than likely that, at least for most of us, our minds are a flurry of activity, wasting precious brain cells on the most nonsensical stuff possible—anything at all to keep from going bored. In my case, this one Sunday morning, I had a song stuck in my head, which played on a loop as I sat there, and despite the fact that the sound didn’t exist, it was as though I was blasting it through my noise-cancelling headphones. It consumed my fields of perception, as though it were the only thing to exist. For though I watched ahead, I could not see; though I wrapped myself in a warm blanket, I could not feel. There was only one thing: the music.

“If music be the food of love, play on!” So, I allowed it play in my head for a bit—like a leaf caught in the wind, it passed me by. And when it passed, I could hear nothing at all: total absence. Curious about this sensation, I played-and-paused the music in my head for some few minutes, observing how it felt for the music to start and stop like that. All I could make out was that the world without music was empty, and the world with music was chaotic and loud, but I enjoyed it. In fact, I enjoyed the feeling of emptiness as well. For nothing at all to be happening was one of the most peaceful things in the world.

Then it hit me: just like the copper wire is our controlling of natural electrical currents, music is our imposition of form onto the silence of the world, which is formless. But the sweet melodies of silence are not lesser for not having been manipulated by us. On the contrary, there was something freeing about it. That which is formless might be imagined to take any form that you wish to grant it. I suppose this is how musical geniuses throughout history might have felt, especially Beethoven, who no doubt expressed one of humanity’s finest musical minds. In the silence of his own life, he heard something beautiful nonetheless.