Samatha is a Pali word meaning calmness of mind. It is a practice in Buddhist Vipassana meditation. We present these viola meditations as an offering of peace and healing through music.
Years of musical and spiritual practice have fused the disciplines into one way of being: the music bridging material and astral planes, and the spiritual offering purpose to the whole experience. In college, I began meditating, discovered Indian Classical Music, and was given the Hazarat Inayat Khan classic The Mysticism of Sound and Music, a book that has been my sonic-spiritual guide ever since. Through Khan’s explanations of how energy is created in this world by the material and ethereal aspects of sound, he gave me words to describe the intuitive experience I felt when I played. His teachings opened my perception to the energetic impression that each sound leaves on a place, and how a place has a memory for all the sounds that has shaped it through its history. This is a powerful mantra for one who sits alone in a room with their instrument and nothing else. Every sound I make here and now will not only stay here forever, but will shape and contribute to the presence of this place, forever.
From the second teaching of the Bhagavad Gita:
No effort in this world
is lost or wasted;
a fragment of sacred duty
saves you from great fear.
Every note that is produced by my instrument has a lasting impression, whether or not it’s “on record.” In some ways, the impression of music not on record is stronger than a recording, possibly because it exists in the living, breathing, moving memory, and the way that sound affects memory in one moment can alter how we hear and remember everything for a lifetime. Memory is a place, and sound very well may be its material foundation.
Samatha was recorded in a place, at a time, and with the intention for the sounds to be shared in new places, at new times. The performances are expressions of a moment, and are presented on this record as both glimpses into that moment of creation, and as an offering for new moments of sonic memory creation.
-Gregory Allison
Although I don’t (and have never) considered myself a Buddhist, mindfulness meditation (Samatha meditation) has played a key role in my life for many years.
When I was in college, although outwardly I was doing well in my academic studies, I was experiencing significant inner psychological and spiritual turmoil. I was depressed and anxious, easily distracted, lonely, and full of self-doubt. At first, I tried to use discipline by itself to overcome my depression.. This discipline actually worked for a while, and gave my life a renewed clarity, but after a couple of years I started to feel exhausted by being so hard on myself, and I realized I needed another spiritual reset. At this point I was 22 and I had just started making music for the first time since the beginning of college. I wanted to take music very seriously and I was trying to find ways to stay focused and disciplined but also feel balanced and keep the depression away. That’s when I discovered mindfulness meditation, when I read a book about how to use mindfulness as a way out of depression.
I joined a meditation group to learn and practice, and then started meditating on my own ever since. It was utterly transformative for me to realize that all of my dark negative thoughts (about not being good enough, or being doomed to failure) were just that: thoughts that passed through my mind, that I didn’t need to identify with if I didn’t want to. By the simple, beautiful act of focusing on my breath, I realized that I had everything I needed in the present and that I was good enough to enjoy this wonderful existence. Meditation practice has stayed with me since then in various forms, and this album represents a tribute to it. The album was for the most part composed in one long improvised session, in which Greg and I allowed ourselves to sink into a creative flow and trust the process of what we were making in the present.
It’s some of my favorite work that we’ve made, and I hope that it resonates with you and helps you find that sense of calm in the present that I first experienced in meditation.
-Tristan de Liège
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