Question 4

Over the years i had a long affair with a drum -- and have met so many brothers and sisters who have fallen into meditation through drums. why do dancers love drums?

 

In the nohdrama of japan there is a story about a drum. would you illuminate this little play?

 

Almost two thousand years ago in china, a woman dreamed that a wonderful drum fell from heaven -- that night she conceived. she bore a son and named him tenko, which means heavenly drum. some years later a drum did fall from heaven, and whenever tenko beat upon it, it made beautiful music.

 

The emperor demanded the drum, but tenko took it into the forest and hid. he was captured and drowned. the drum was taken to the emperor's palace but it made no sound.

 

Tenko's father came to the palace and touched the drum, and it sang again. the emperor repented and granted a memorial service for the son. tenko's spirit appeared and danced in gratitude for their prayers.

 

 

The drum has a special appeal -- the reason is very deep rooted You will have to understand it.

 

When a child is conceived in the womb, the child grows, but he cannot breathe, he has to breathe from the mother. In fact, the mother breathes for him. And for nine months continuously he hears the beating of the mother's heart -- continuously. It is the first meeting with music and rhythm.

 

For nine months the child goes on hearing the heartbeat of the mother. That is the first drum he encounters, and it becomes very deep-rooted in the being of the child. Every pore of him is filled with it, every fibre of his body vibrates with it, he has no life except the mother's heart. And there is the beating continuously for nine months... you just think about it.

 

And then the child is born. The whole body system, the mind system, carries that desire for the beat, for the rhythm of the mother's heart. And mothers know, knowingly or unknowingly, that whenever a child is restless, crying, weeping, uncontrollable, they have just to put his head on their chest, and immediately the child goes to sleep, falls into sleep. When again he hears the beat -- the beat is soporific -- he immediately falls into sleep.

 

And not only a small child -- even a young man, when he rests on a woman's heart, falls immediately into sleep, because the woman becomes the mother and the lover, the husband, becomes again a child. The heart goes on having the appeal.

 

If you don't feel that sleep will come, just close your eyes, put the light off, and listen to the clock, tick, tick, tick.... That will do, no tranquillizer is needed because it almost gives you the feeling of the mother's heart. A closed room, a closed womb, and then the tick, tick, of a clock. And always choose a clock which really gives a 'hearty' feeling -- not a metallic sound but more human. Old grandpa clocks used to be that way; now we have more efficient clocks but they are less human. Old grandpa clocks on the walls are something beautiful. They create an atmosphere.

 

Hence, from this deep biological experience of the child, comes the appeal of the drum. The drum is the oldest instrument of music, everything else has followed it. So whenever somebody is beating a drum the temptation is too much -- you start moving your legs, you start swaying your body. If the beater is good and really knows how to create atmosphere through the drumbeat nobody can be there who is not affected. Even a Buddha would like to dance. It is natural. That's why everybody enjoys a drumbeat. And it is very primitive, it is not sophisticated. Go into the jungles of Africa or deep into the Indian forest where only aboriginals live. You will find everywhere the drum.

 

The drum is the most primitive instrument. When you feel that drum beating, your body responds, sways, you start falling into the beat, moving with the beat, and suddenly you have become a primitive, a natural being: all civilization drops. You are no longer here in this twentieth century and all the nonsense that goes on around -- you have moved back almost ten thousand years.

 

Just the other night, our Ethiopian SANNYASIN, Neeraj, came to show me a few Ethiopian dances. They were wonderful. He danced with a very primitive beat, very, very primitive. Ethiopia is one of the oldest lands on earth, it is the country of Solomon. Since Solomon they have been dancing with the primitive beat. It has a deep appeal. There is no need to understand it, your body will understand it. Nobody could understand the song that was following the beat but everybody understood the beat. There were Americans, there were English, there were Indians here and everybody could follow it. The language of the drum is universal.

 

It is very unsophisticated, simple, nothing much to it, anybody can learn it. In fact, everybody drums. Knowingly or unknowingly, if you are sitting at a table you start beating; if you feel good, you start beating the table. It is primordial. Your natural being is called again, and it responds. All the centuries of civilization disappear in a second. Suddenly you are again under the stars, you have moved back thousands of years. Everything is natural, dark, mysterious. That is the appeal.

 

And the man who does not respond to a drum and its beat has no heart. He lacks something. He has become completely plastic, a twentieth century model, absolutely. He has lost all contact with history, with the past, with the millennia that have passed. In his heart nothing of nature lives any more; it is dead.

 

And this story is also very, very beautiful:

 

ALMOST TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO IN CHINA, A WOMAN DREAMED THAT A WONDERFUL DRUM FELL FROM HEAVEN.

 

Of course, how can man invent the drum? Such a beautiful phenomenon. It has been so long on the earth that nobody can visualize that there was ever a time when man was and the drum was not. So God must have created them simultaneously. It is possible that he may have created the drum first and man later, because immediately the man will need the beat, the vibration of it. Otherwise how will he be alive? Every child comes later; the mother's heart is beating first.

 

The heart is ready to beat and flow with love -- and then comes the child. The drums must have been in existence before man was created.

 

It is not said so in the Christian story of the creation of the world, because that story is not complete. No creation story can ever be complete. The story of creation is going to be as vast as creation itself.

 

This story is symbolic. It says: IN CHINA A WOMAN DREAMED THAT A WONDERFUL DRUM FELL FROM HEAVEN. Good, perfectly true. Man cannot make the drum; the beat is biological, it precedes man.

 

THAT NIGHT SHE CONCEIVED. Now the path of the story is absolutely clear. First she dreamed that a drum was going to fall from heaven, and then she conceived.

 

SHE BORE A SON AND NAMED HIM TENKO -- HEAVENLY DRUM. SOME YEARS LATER A DRUM DID FALL FROM HEAVEN AND WHENEVER TENKO BEAT UPON IT, IT MADE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC.

 

Man is from heaven and the drum is from heaven. The meaning is symbolic. Man is from heaven and the music is from heaven and whenever you know the keys of how to open the doors of music you have opened the doors of heaven also. The secret lies in the music. If there is a choice between philosophy, religion, science and music; if you ask me to choose one, after which all the remaining ones will disappear from the earth, I will choose music. Because if there is music, religion will follow. It cannot disappear.

 

If there is music how is it possible that religion can disappear? Music will give such a mysterious feeling to everybody that people will start thinking about what this mystery is. If music is, philosophy cannot disappear; if music is, science cannot disappear; if music is, literature cannot disappear.

 

But it is possible for philosophy to be there, and no music. If you choose philosophy, then philosophy will be there, but there will be no necessity for music to be there.

 

Music is the most primordial phenomenon because it is in nature, in the breeze passing through the trees, in the birds singing -- you will never find a bird being a philosopher but all birds are musicians. You go and search -- you will not find a stream religious, but all streams are musical. Go and ask these winds passing through the trees -- they may not have ever heard about the Bible and Koran and Gita but they know music. Music is involved in life itself. It is existential.

 

So if there is a choice for me to make I will choose music and drop all else, because I know they will have to come back. Music is so vast that it will create them all again. Music is heavenly.

 

SHE BORE A SON AND NAMED HIM TENKO -- HEAVENLY DRUM. SOME YEARS LATER A DRUM DID FALL FROM HEAVEN AND WHENEVER TENKO BEAT UPON IT, IT MADE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC.

 

If you really want to enter into music you will have to go as deep as the music is. Music is the greatest mystic discipline. Islam has denied music completely, and that's why Islam has remained a crippled religion. How can there be religion without music? It will be very poor. Sufis again revived it, they had to revive it. That's why Islam always feels an antagonism, a deeply antagonistic attitude toward Sufis, because they revived music again after Islam had completely denied it.

 

There is a story. It happened that one of the Moghul emperors, Aurangajeb -- he was a very orthodox, a fanatically orthodox Mohammedan -- was very much against music. He was so much against it that in the capital, music started dying. People were afraid to sing, or to dance, or to play instruments, because it was a crime. He prohibited it by law.

 

One day all the musicians of the capital gathered together, and they created a protest march. They followed an URTHI. When a man dies in India the dead body is bound on bamboo -- it is called an URTHI -- and then it is carried to the cemetery. So they carried an URTHI of music to the cemetery. It was a great procession because the capital was filled with musicians, and they were all weeping and crying. They created so much noise that Aurangajeb came out of his palace to see what the matter was, who had died. There were thousands of people, musicians and their lovers and their disciples, because in the Delhi of those days music was a great phenomenon. They all followed, weeping and crying.

 

Aurangajeb came out and he asked: What is the matter? Who has died, somebody very, very important? I have not heard. The musicians said: Sir, music. Aurangajeb said: Good, it is good that music is dead. Now go and bury him so deep that he cannot revive again.

 

This has been the Moslem attitude but Sufis again revived dancing and music and everything, because no religion can be without music. Mohammedans feel deeply hurt by the fact. They suspect that Sufis are somehow enemies and they tried to kill Sufis but they could not. And the irony is that Sufis are the real core of Islam, they are the substantial religion: in fact, they are the flowering.

 

Music is a milieu in which religion arises and develops and grows. Anything that is growing needs music. All your prayers should be musical, your meditations should be musical, your whole being should by and by become musical.

 

THE EMPEROR DEMANDED THE DRUM. BUT TENKO TOOK IT INTO THE FOREST AND HID. HE WAS CAPTURED AND DROWNED. THE DRUM WAS TAKEN TO THE EMPEROR'S PALACE BUT IT MADE NO SOUND.

 

The drum in itself will not make any sound, the drum in itself is nothing. An alive heart, a loving heart, has to be brought to it. You have to put life into it, you have to get involved in it -- only then does it make a sound. That sound is the meeting of the man with the drum. The sound is not possible only with the drum, it is not a technical thing. The king could have called technicians, but music is a love affair, it is not technology. You can learn the technique and you can miss the music.

 

If you love you may not know the technique but you need not worry about it -- the music will come. Life responds to love; God responds to love; and whenever you become technical you miss life and you miss God. You miss all that is beautiful.

 

Because it was an emperor's court there must of course have been technicians -- but you cannot capture the citadel of music by violence. You cannot be aggressive towards truth, towards love, you cannot make an attack on God's house. No. Then you will miss. You have to go surrendered, you have to go there humble.

 

THE EMPEROR DEMANDED THE DRUM BUT TENKO TOOK IT INTO THE FOREST AND HID. HE WAS CAPTURED AND DROWNED. THE DRUM WAS TAKEN TO THE EMPEROR'S PALACE, BUT IT MADE NO SOUND.

 

A deep love is needed. You may have seen Indian musicians: before they start playing on their instruments they bow down to them. It looks absurd to Western eyes. What are they doing bowing down to their own instrument? It is sacred. It is divine. You have to take its permission: Do you allow me to play on you? Am I accepted?

 

I have heard about one musician who will actually ask his veena: Am I allowed? And then he will wait. And sometimes it will happen that he will say: No. The veena is not ready. At this moment I am not pure enough. I will have to wait. Today I cannot play.

 

It will be difficult for the Western mind to understand. What are you saying? A veena is an instrument, there is no need to ask. You can force, you can command -- but there you miss. You can force, and there will be a certain kind of music; but it will not be a response, it will be a reaction. If you hit the veena there will be a reaction, of course. But it will not be a response. A reaction is a rape of a woman; a response is the response of your beloved. They are totally different.

 

TENKO'S FATHER CAME TO THE PALACE AND TOUCHED THE DRUM AND IT SANG. THE EMPEROR REPENTED AND GRANTED A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THE SON. TENKO'S SPIRIT APPEARED AND DANCED IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR PRAYERS.

 

Everybody who has been violent with life will repent. Don't be violent with life. Persuade it. Persuasion is needed. Don't be aggressive and violent -- otherwise all music will disappear.

 

I will tell you a story. It happened that in a house there was a very ancient veena. For centuries it had been there. And through the generations the people of the family had by and by completely forgotten what it existed for, what its function was. It had become a nuisance in the house, because it was so big and it needed space. And not only that, sometimes the children would go and play on it and they would disturb the peace of the whole house. Sometimes in the night the cat would jump on it, or the rats would run through it. So it was a nuisance, always creating noise, disturbing the sleep, disturbing the people of the house and the neighbors.

 

Finally one day they thought: Why are we keeping it here? Throw it out. Every day we have to dust and clean it, and it is useless. So they went and threw it outside the house.

 

A beggar passed. He saw the veena lying there and he started playing on it. It created such a divine music that the whole neighborhood gathered. Even the people who had thrown it out came running out of their house. They were stupefied, hypnotized. They couldn't believe that this veena could create such beautiful music, so mysterious. It created such a milieu around that all the traffic stopped, houses were empty and whosoever heard, came. The whole town gathered, and when the beggar stopped, the people to whom the veena had belonged for centuries jumped on him and said: Give this veena to us, this is ours.

 

The beggar said: The veena belongs to one who can play on it. It is not a possession. It is a love. If you can play on it, play on it -- then it belongs to you. If you cannot play on it, don't be possessive -- it belongs to me. I was waiting for it and the veena was waiting for me. Now we have met and now nobody can separate us. If you insist, you can take it, but it will be a dead veena and I will be a dead musician. Between us two something meets and mingles, between us two something becomes one and organic. I am half, the veena is half, and when we meet we become one -- then there is music and there is love and there is life.

 

- Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 2, #10, Q4"