The melodies of chants create a repetition of beauty, a recapitulation of the sacred that fills the deep places in the heart's longing for spiritual union. . . . Melody in the form of spiritual chanting reverberates with gratitude, joy, and prayer, drawing us into the heart and our connection with the Divine.

-- Christine Stevens
(Music Medicine)

Chanting is an integral part of all the world's religious traditions -- Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Islamic, and others.  At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just want to sing; it breaks into song.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast
(The Music in Silence)

First Born, the Grandfathers told, had emerged from quivering mud to the rhythm of his own heart, and so man had known the true rhythm from the beginning.  Soon afterwards, man had learned to use this rhythm for making songs.  And then certain ones had discovered the true power in song; the power for making spiritual contact.

-- Ruth Beebe Hill
(Hanta Yo)

There is a temple in heaven
That is only opened through song.

-- Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz
(translated by A. B. Birnbaum)

Immerse yourself in the rapture of music.
You know what you love.  Go there.
Tend to each note, each chord,
Rising up from silence and dissolving again.

Vibrating strings draw us
Into the spacious resonance of the heart.

The body becomes light as the sky
And you, one with the Great Musician,
Who is even now singing us
Into existence.

-- Sutra 18, Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (The Radiance Sutras)
(translated by Lorin Roche)

A flower is a smile of God,
A distant echo of heaven,
A single, fleeting note
Of God's own music,
A perfectly-formed note
In his all-making harmony,
A voice full of mystery, dear Saviour,
That sings of your great power:
     Infinitely melodious,
     Sweetly harmonious
Silence of flowers,
Telling God in his grandeur.

-- St. Therese of Lisieux
(in  Invincible Spirits:  A Thousand Years of Women's Spiritual Writings,
compiled by Felicity Leng)

Give me the flute and let me sing,
And through my soul let music ring;
For music opens the secret of life,
Bringing peace, abolishing strife.

-- Kahlil Gibran
(in A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris)

Give me the flute and let me sing,
And through my soul let music ring;
For music is a heart that grows
With love, and like the spring it flows.

-- Kahlil Gibran
(in A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris)

Give me the flute and let me sing,
And through my soul let music ring;
For music is the heart's great bliss,
From heaven a joy, from God a kiss.

-- Kahlil Gibran
(in A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris)

Give me a flute and let me sing,
And through my soul let music ring;
Heaven's melody alone will ever remain,
All of earth's objects are but vain.

-- Kahlil Gibran
(in A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris)

In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song -- a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
          . . . . .
It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamour,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening,
And sung by the soul.


-- Kahlil Gibran
(in The Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris,
edited by Martin L. Wolf)

Many great men attained their glory by surrendering themselves in complete submission to the will of the spirit, employing no reluctance or resistance to its demands, as a violin surrenders itself to the complete will of a fine musician.


-- Kahlil Gibran
(in The Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris,
edited by Martin L. Wolf)

The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven.

-- Kahlil Gibran
(in The Treasury of Kahlil Gibran,
translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris,
edited by Martin L. Wolf)

I come home from the soaring
in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke
(in Rilke's Book of Hours,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow.  For all things
sing you:  at times
we just hear them more clearly.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke
(in Rilke's Book of Hours,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke
(in Rilke's Book of Hours,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know:  am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

-- Rainer Maria Rilke
(in Rilke's Book of Hours,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Two individuals who are quiet to the same degree have no need to talk about the melody that defines their hours.  This melody is what they have in common in and of itself.  Like a burning altar it exists between them, and they nourish the sacred flame respectfully with their occasional syllables.

-- Ranier Maria Rilke
(Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Music, of course, is still close to us in its essence:  it rushes toward us and we block its path so it passes straight through us.  Music is almost like the air of higher regions:  we breathe it deeply into the lungs of our spirit, and it infuses a more expansive blood into our hidden circulation.  Yet how far music reaches beyond us!  Yet how far it pushes on with no regard for us!  Yet how much of which it carries right through us we still fail to seize!  Alas, we fail to seize it, alas, we lose it.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Even when music speaks, it still does not speak to us.  The perfectly created work of art concerns us only insofar as it survives us.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

The creations of art always result from a state of having-been-in-danger, from an experience of having-gone-to-the-end, up to the point where no human can go any further. . . .  In this way the art object can be of such tremendous help in the life of the one compelled to create it -- it is his summary:  the knot in the rosary at which his life says a prayer, the ever recurring proof of his unity and truthfulness that is given to no one but himself and whose outward effects appear anonymous, nameless, as nothing but necessity, as reality, as existence.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

But in the painting, the building, the symphony -- in a word, in art itself, they [the artist and nature] seem to join together as if in a higher, prophetic truth, to rely on one another, and it is as if they completed each other to become that perfect unity that characterizes the essence of the work of art.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Poet or painter, musician or architect, all solitary individuals at bottom who turn to nature because they prefer the eternal to the transient, the profound rhythms of eternal laws to that which finds justification in passing.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Fame has to occur quickly in an era when its results are worn thin so rapidly; even the youngest people live among these fame-motors set up around them by a publisher and a few friends.  It is quite rare to encounter a truly creative and productive person who resides in his own stillness or simply in the midst of his melody, close to the honest beating of his heart!


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

The loneliest people above all contribute most to commonality.  I have said earlier that one person might hear more and another less of the vast melody of life; accordingly, the latter has a smaller or lesser duty in the great orchestra.  The individual who could hear the entire melody would be at once the loneliest and the most common, for he would hear what no one else hears and yet only because he would grasp in its perfect completeness that which others strain to hear obscurely and only in parts.


--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Whether you are surrounded by the singing of a lamp or the sounds of a storm, by the breathing of the evening or the sighing of the sea, there is a vast melody woven of a thousand voices that never leaves you and only occasionally leaves room for your solo.  To know when you have to join in, that is the secret of your solitude, just as it is the art of true human interaction:  to let yourself take leave of the lofty words to join in with the one shared melody.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)

Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs.  It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world.

It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.

They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?

-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life.

I shall tune it to the notes of forever, and when it has sobbed out its last utterance, lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent.

-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

My song has put off her adornments.  She has no pride of dress and decoration.  Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown they whispers.

My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.  O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet.  Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.


-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

I have had my invitation to this world's festival, and thus my life has been blessed.  My eyes have seen and my ears have heard.

It was my part at this feast to play upon my instrument, and I have done all I could.

Now, I ask, has the time come at last when I may go in and see thy face and offer thee my silent salutation?


-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

The light of thy music illumines the world.  The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky.  The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.

My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice.  I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled.  Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!


-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing.  I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.


-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony -- and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.


-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.  This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

-- Rabindranath Tagore
(from Gitanjali)

     And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, -- buy of their gifts also.
     For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul.

-- Khalil Gibran
(from The Prophet)

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

-- Khalil Gibran
(from The Prophet)

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me?

-- Khalil Gibran
(from The Prophet)

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing
a tender agony of parting,
never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.

-- Rumi
(from A Year With Rumi,
translated by Coleman Barks)

Birdsong brings relief to my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say.

Please, universal soul, practice some song,
or something, through me.

-- Rumi
(in Rumi:  The Big Red Book,
translated by Coleman Barks)

Take a music-bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what a water-bath is to the body.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness.  Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit!  Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy!  O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Ode to the West Wind, Canto V)

Today like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-- Rumi
(from The Big Red Book,
translated by Coleman Barks)

Since I am coming to that holy room,
     Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
     I tune the instrument here at the door,
     And what I must do then, think here before.

-- John Donne

Last night this body was a stringed instrument
playing love songs.

There is a kind of accounting going on with you and me.
But all I want from this exchange is your peace.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

Who is the luckiest in this whole orchestra?  The reed.
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.
All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only of this chance.
They sway in the canebrakes,
free in the many ways they dance.

Without you, the instruments would die.
One sits close beside you.  Another takes a long kiss.
The tambourine begs, Touch my skin, so I can be myself.

Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,
that what died last night can be whole today.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

I empty out whatever blocks a clear note.
Not a food sack, I am a reed flute.
There is no cure for this soul but you . . .


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

Look at the overcast sky.  It is not the splendor of feeling near.
We have been lazy.  We should either disband altogether,
or not stay apart so long.

Let music loosen our deafness to spirit.
Play and let play.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

A deep sweetness comes through sugarcane,
into the cut reed,
and now it is in the empty notes of the flute.
                   . . . .
Let wind blow through us.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

This love we feel pours through us like giveaway song.
The source of now is here.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

Play no music but the soul's,
that friend who sometimes takes a form like Joseph,
a handsomeness that tears coverings,
beauty that says secrets and gets bewildered.

As dogs lap blood, we drink life.
This is how we are with love's melody,
a taste of springwater, birdsound near.


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

There are no words to explain, no tongue,
how when that player touches the strings,
it is me playing and being played . . .


-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)

Someone comes in from outside saying,
Do not play music just for yourselves.
Now we are tearing up the house like a drum,
collapsing walls with our pounding.
We hear a voice from the sky
calling the lovers and the odd, lost people.
We scatter lives.  We break what holds us,
each one a blacksmith heating iron
and walking to the anvil.  We blow on the inner fire.
With each striking we change.

-- Rumi
(in Rumi: The Big Red Book, 
translated by Coleman Barks)