The All-Consuming Paradox of the Zen Playlist

Let us count the many ways of relaxing, Zen-style, with music. But let us first define Zen and see how it plays into the kind of music we want to listen to.

Zen is a Japanese school of Buddhism that emphasizes the value of intuition over the study of scriptures or ritual. When we compare the tenets of Zen with the ways that we sometimes listen to music, it turns out that there might be a gentle contradiction in play; there is quite a lot of ritual involved in our music consumption.

So, do you consume music or does it consume you?

You might favour a tropical cocktail besides some sun-kissed beach. You may be the kind of person who cools-out in smoky rooms with a long doobie (where local jurisdictions permit, but also where they don’t) listening to precisely engineered stream-of-consciousness LPs or laid-back tunes from your favourite bass station. Some like to elevate their slippers in a comfortable armchair and go easy listening; others prefer to seek some kind of inner enlightenment, hoping to achieve that while contorting their body to a soundtrack of whale song or plant music. There is no right or wrong way, but all of the above seem to be unnecessarily complicated and, yes ritualistic, because all you really need is the right music to lose yourself in.

If you need to tie yourself in a reef knot, skin up, find beaches, cocktails or slippers in order to enjoy relaxing music, I can’t help but think you haven’t found the right music to surround yourself with yet. It really shouldn’t be that difficult.

To achieve the correct balance of stimulation and relaxation, engagement, arousal, restfulness and slack you need to let the music do whatever job that you have chosen for it to do, and the only way that is going to happen is for you to simply surrender to complete and utter engagement. The music must be all-consuming, like a novel or a film. In order to captivate you, the sound must envelope your whole being, from your ears to your feet.

Music is a unique art form. As a writer, I am intensely jealous of its power, its immediacy. Its power lies in its direct connection to its audience’s emotions, unmediated by intellect, analysis or thought processes. Its immediacy marks it out as a sensory experience as primal as scent – nothing else unlocks memories and states of being quite so quickly as the hook line from a cheap pop song from your teens, a thunderous guitar from your favourite album, or the delicate synthesized plinky-plonk breakdown from a festival techno set.

I can prove my point about immediacy and power by simply embedding my mix here and turning a five-minute read into a two-hour journey. See what you think – it goes to show, I hope, that downtempo isn’t the only way to go if you need to chill.

As long as the music overcomes you in some way, by which I mean if it gets you to tap your foot, find some boogie shoes or nod your head along, then it has already done the job – in that you’ve already disassociated yourself from your everyday cares and worries. Better still, if some of it subverts your expectations of what comes next or makes you laugh. Either way, the disconnect is achieved.

A couple of times every week, I mix two-hour sets of music just like this for an online platform. The only criteria I have for selecting the tunes is that they must attempt to become part of an over-arching narrative that twists and turns as the time goes by. When I am successful, they tell a story about another way of being oneself. They let your mind slip its moorings just enough to let your body feel the rhythm because only that can transport you from your mind’s room to somewhere new. I know if I’ve succeeded because building that kind of story puts me in a happy, well-adjusted state of mind. In other words, I have transcended the rational mind and achieved a measure of calm. Very Zen.