13/03/2026
Sound is the primordial force, the first mover. In his book, Buddhism The Religion Of No-Religion, the great philosopher/spiritualist, Alan Watts, had this to say about sound:
“The Hindus say that in the beginning was vac, which is exactly the same thing as saying, “In the beginning was the word,” as in the Gospel of John. But vac doesn’t mean logos as it does in the Gospel of John, it means vibration. It is fundamentally the sanskrit word om. […] Om is the holiest of all names. You can chant om, you know, and really stir things up.
All Hindus and Buddhists alike use this word to induce a meditative state. It is very easy to concentrate on sound. It is much more difficult to keep your eyes still. But sound is very easy to concentrate on, and the is the whole point of a mantra: it is a method of digging sound. I hope you know what I mean by “to dig.” It means to get right down into. When you dig sound you realize that the flow or vibration of sound is a way in which you experience basic existence, being here. You can learn everything from sound, because it is not a constant. It comes and goes. It is on and off. You only hear it because it is vibrating. The lesson is that life is on and off, black and white, life and death, inside and outside, knowing and not knowing: they’re all vibrations. It’s easy to explain that in words, but to feel and understand that in your bones you have to learn how to listen to a sound. It was to teach that skill that this system of chanting was invented”.
Dreamy pic by for her photography project with sound sister Beehive Healing.
