The Musical Key

I wrestled with an urge to stand, or at least to wriggle around. I was perhaps more absorbed by my plastic chair than by meditation - wondering if the designer had ever sat in its prototype for more than a few moments.

I wanted to be there; I wanted to meditate. No doubt I tried to listen as the exercise unfolded, but perhaps caught my own eyes studying a tape mark on the painted wall and wondered what had been fastened there, or pondered how the speaker came to wear that particular shirt on that particular day. What will I do tomorrow? What would I have done yesterday if… Perhaps I dared not study the contents of my heart, for fear they would be too plain, or too intoxicating.

The carpet was thin and cheerless. The light was grey and ageing. The speaker spoke. The chair grew in stubbornness.

Musical instruments were carried in from one side.

* * *

Lungs know fine air without cerebral confirmation; they drink their fill impulsively. Leaves know the sun, and stretch their bellies out to it. So it is for me with ripe berries, or my mother’s baking - it seems every cell of me says, “Yes!” to them with complete and pure abandon. It is an elemental response; a recognition of source; an ancient resonance beyond the mechanics of questioning.

So it was with that music.

I had known beauty - it hides in the eye of any wren, and the throats of all blackbirds. I had known vastness, having long consorted with the skies and oceans. I had heard music – reams and reams and reels of it, but it had never reached those depths in me.

Seated on the floor, with voice and simple Indian instruments, they offered Sri Chinmoy’s music. The words meant nothing to my English ear, but that was nothing to me. Perhaps one string was too tight, or a note stumbled here and there, but that was nothing either. I only knew my heart and that music, in an endless now. It seemed there was no body to demand, and no mind to take requests. I knew no imperfection, no bounds within or without, yet sensed myself with sudden clarity and certainty.

Tears cascaded to my peaceful smile. Of all places, in that room, it seemed to me that I was free. I was meditating.

Though such moments pass under the veils of my worry, regret, irritation, and other immeasurable humanness, in my heart they prosper untarnished by time.

Sumangali Morhall
May 2006

Photograph by Kedar Misani