Could I ask you to explain the music of heaven for me?

Sounding the ten thousand things differently, so each becomes itself according to itself alone, who could make such music?  –Chuang Tzu (369-286 BCE)

Maybe it’s like this, maybe we are all strings to be played.

I have played the cello since I was seven. I love the human sound of the instrument. Its low strings are warm and peaceful, the high strings are clean and bright. Like all stringed instruments, when the strings are set in motion they vibrate according to their length, tension, and thickness. The vibration is then transferred through the bridge to the wood body which vibrates at the same frequency and amplifies the sound. The cello is played with a bow which creates an enormous variety of voice. The notes can be short and tight, or long and sustained; and the intensity of a note can be changed throughout its duration by the changing speed and pressure of the bow. The variety, richness, warmth and texture of the sound she makes, can feel entirely human.  

It shouldn’t surprise me because I know my cello is a living thing. She sounds better the more she is played, as if she somehow relaxes into the warmth of my body and opens.  She likes certain environments, climates, and music. She sounds fuller and more vibrant when I play Rachmaninoff, Elgar, and Bach. It’s as if she creates deeper and more textured harmonic tones when the music passing through her is in resonance with her nature.  

In music and physics, harmonics are pure tones that occur when the frequency of sounds are positive integer multiples of the original sound wave. Each instrument has its own frequencies to which it naturally responds. My cello has a sound uniquely her own based on her fundamental frequency and the multiple harmonics of varying strengths that resonate with the original sound waves. That is, she creates her own distinct resonance through varying harmonic tones that are sweet, bright, warm, rich, and full way beyond the single notes being played. 

Maybe we are the same. Perhaps when we empty ourselves of ourselves, we are free to be played at our fundamental frequency, instead of allowing our minds to determine the length of our strings and the vibration of our being. Of course, we can live any variety of the beautiful lives our minds can create, just as we can make a string longer or shorter and still play beautiful music. However, I feel it is like this: when we empty entirely, we vibrate at our original frequency in harmony with the symphony of the universe. When we surrender completely, we express a melody beyond what our minds can imagine or create. When we die to ourselves, we are free to resonate with the original song and live the unique, beautiful music of creation.