Today's DailyOM Offerings...
October 29, 2012
Shakuhachi Flute Meditations
Riley Lee
2012
For connecting with breath, meditating on its natural rhythms, it’s life-sustaining motions and its ability when blown through a reed to sing the language of the soul, there is no better music than the Shakuhachi Flute Mediations of the acclaimed flute master and Zen practitioner, Riley Lee. The American-born shakuhachi Dai Shihan (grand master of the ancient Japanese bamboo flute) studied yokobue (a more high-pitched, transverse bamboo flute) and taiko (Japanese ceremonial drumming) as well as shakuhachi from Japanese teachers in Hawaii where he lived for many years. His Zen-based musical training found him fluting barefoot in the snow, at the base of waterfalls, and in the midst of blizzards as icicles formed on the end of his instrument. Once, the well-traveled and uniquely driven Lee ran the Boston marathon only to perform taiko at the finish line. After traveling the world, Lee settled in Australia, where he earned a PhD in ethnomusicology and planted the roots o! f traditional Zen music Down Under.
On Meditations, you will hear Lee quite audibly draw healthy helpings of air into his lungs before transmogrifying his breath into searching melodies. These melodies have the power to bring peace and calm, to center their listener and to free the mind. On “Solo,” the album’s opening track, long silences punctuate explorations of the shakuhachi’s rumbling and crashing lower register, which can almost evoke the sounds of a gong. Most of Lee’s compositions feature long caesuras and a skillful use of dynamics. Pieces like “Quiet Places” also offer melodic explorations and harmonics reminiscent of Western classical music.
Many of the highly emotive shorter tracks on this predominately cool and quiet album feel like a narrative, thanks to contrasting textures and rises and falls in temperature that seem pitched on an arc, but Meditations also includes a few longer tracks, “Mountain Valley (San’ya),” “Yearning for the Bell (Nagashi Reibo)” and “Exile (Ryûhei),” which feel particularly ideal for letting go of the imagination to focus purely on the breath, on finding one’s center, or on the private aims of one’s own mediations.
October 29, 2012
Carving Your Path
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
Even if you’ve let others direct your life path in the past, today can be the day that you choose to make your independent mark on the world. You may be highly driven to achieve success on your own terms, and your assertiveness and need for self-determination could confuse those you’ve previously relied on for guidance. You’ll likely feel more confident about your abilities and fulfilled by success if you make your own choices. Being the master of your destiny can help you discover a life path that is molded from your values and dreams. If you can take stock of what is important to you before you move forward today, your decisions will likely be the right ones.
Asserting your independence and living your life on your terms can help you discover who you truly are. Only you can create the life that will make you happy, and only you can do what’s necessary to make that life a reality. Asserting your independence can help you realize that you are the main force of momentum in your life. While listening to advice from others can be enlightening, it can sometimes steer you away from your true path. When you are confident enough to make the choices that empower and gratify you, regardless of what others advise, you guarantee that the life you create is the one you most desire. Exercise your independence today, and you’ll discover the satisfaction that comes from being your own personal light.
October 29, 2012
Life’s Scales
Balance
by Madisyn Taylor
A balanced lifestyle is simply a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures.
Like pieces of a puzzle, the many different aspects of your being come together to form the person that you are. You work and play, rest and expend energy, commune with your body and soul, exalt in joy, and feel sorrow. Balance is the state that you achieve when all of the aspects of your life and self are in harmony. Your life force flows in a state of equilibrium because nothing feels out of sync. While balance is necessary to have a satisfying, energetic, and joyful life, only you can determine what balance means to you.
Achieving balance requires that you assess what is important to you. The many demands of modern life can push us to make choices that can put us off balance and have a detrimental effect on our habits, relationships, health, and career. In creating a balanced lifestyle, you must ascertain how much time and energy you are willing to devote to the different areas of your life. To do so, imagine that your life is a house made up of many rooms. Draw this house, give each part of your life its own room, and size each room according to the amount of importance you assign to that aspect of your life. You can include family, solitude, activities that benefit others, healthy eating, indulgences, exercise and working on self. You may discover that certain elements of your life take up an inordinate amount of time, energy, or effort and leave you with few resources to nurture the other aspects of your life. You may want to spend less time on these activities and more on the ones that! fulfill you.
A balanced lifestyle is simply a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures, as well as time to live well and in a gratifying way. With its many nuances, balance can be a difficult concept to integrate into your life. Living a balanced existence, however, can help you attain a greater sense of happiness, health, and fulfillment.
Shakuhachi Flute Meditations
Riley Lee
2012
For connecting with breath, meditating on its natural rhythms, it’s life-sustaining motions and its ability when blown through a reed to sing the language of the soul, there is no better music than the Shakuhachi Flute Mediations of the acclaimed flute master and Zen practitioner, Riley Lee. The American-born shakuhachi Dai Shihan (grand master of the ancient Japanese bamboo flute) studied yokobue (a more high-pitched, transverse bamboo flute) and taiko (Japanese ceremonial drumming) as well as shakuhachi from Japanese teachers in Hawaii where he lived for many years. His Zen-based musical training found him fluting barefoot in the snow, at the base of waterfalls, and in the midst of blizzards as icicles formed on the end of his instrument. Once, the well-traveled and uniquely driven Lee ran the Boston marathon only to perform taiko at the finish line. After traveling the world, Lee settled in Australia, where he earned a PhD in ethnomusicology and planted the roots o! f traditional Zen music Down Under.
On Meditations, you will hear Lee quite audibly draw healthy helpings of air into his lungs before transmogrifying his breath into searching melodies. These melodies have the power to bring peace and calm, to center their listener and to free the mind. On “Solo,” the album’s opening track, long silences punctuate explorations of the shakuhachi’s rumbling and crashing lower register, which can almost evoke the sounds of a gong. Most of Lee’s compositions feature long caesuras and a skillful use of dynamics. Pieces like “Quiet Places” also offer melodic explorations and harmonics reminiscent of Western classical music.
Many of the highly emotive shorter tracks on this predominately cool and quiet album feel like a narrative, thanks to contrasting textures and rises and falls in temperature that seem pitched on an arc, but Meditations also includes a few longer tracks, “Mountain Valley (San’ya),” “Yearning for the Bell (Nagashi Reibo)” and “Exile (Ryûhei),” which feel particularly ideal for letting go of the imagination to focus purely on the breath, on finding one’s center, or on the private aims of one’s own mediations.
October 29, 2012
Carving Your Path
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
Even if you’ve let others direct your life path in the past, today can be the day that you choose to make your independent mark on the world. You may be highly driven to achieve success on your own terms, and your assertiveness and need for self-determination could confuse those you’ve previously relied on for guidance. You’ll likely feel more confident about your abilities and fulfilled by success if you make your own choices. Being the master of your destiny can help you discover a life path that is molded from your values and dreams. If you can take stock of what is important to you before you move forward today, your decisions will likely be the right ones.
Asserting your independence and living your life on your terms can help you discover who you truly are. Only you can create the life that will make you happy, and only you can do what’s necessary to make that life a reality. Asserting your independence can help you realize that you are the main force of momentum in your life. While listening to advice from others can be enlightening, it can sometimes steer you away from your true path. When you are confident enough to make the choices that empower and gratify you, regardless of what others advise, you guarantee that the life you create is the one you most desire. Exercise your independence today, and you’ll discover the satisfaction that comes from being your own personal light.
October 29, 2012
Life’s Scales
Balance
by Madisyn Taylor
A balanced lifestyle is simply a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures.
Like pieces of a puzzle, the many different aspects of your being come together to form the person that you are. You work and play, rest and expend energy, commune with your body and soul, exalt in joy, and feel sorrow. Balance is the state that you achieve when all of the aspects of your life and self are in harmony. Your life force flows in a state of equilibrium because nothing feels out of sync. While balance is necessary to have a satisfying, energetic, and joyful life, only you can determine what balance means to you.
Achieving balance requires that you assess what is important to you. The many demands of modern life can push us to make choices that can put us off balance and have a detrimental effect on our habits, relationships, health, and career. In creating a balanced lifestyle, you must ascertain how much time and energy you are willing to devote to the different areas of your life. To do so, imagine that your life is a house made up of many rooms. Draw this house, give each part of your life its own room, and size each room according to the amount of importance you assign to that aspect of your life. You can include family, solitude, activities that benefit others, healthy eating, indulgences, exercise and working on self. You may discover that certain elements of your life take up an inordinate amount of time, energy, or effort and leave you with few resources to nurture the other aspects of your life. You may want to spend less time on these activities and more on the ones that! fulfill you.
A balanced lifestyle is simply a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures, as well as time to live well and in a gratifying way. With its many nuances, balance can be a difficult concept to integrate into your life. Living a balanced existence, however, can help you attain a greater sense of happiness, health, and fulfillment.