Hindustani classical music
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Shunya (Void)
Shunya Or Void In Classical Music
Bindu Chawla
The Times of India 2013/07/04
It was the traditional, eastern way of things. In terms of basic numbers, what followed as we counted after the number nine – a number known as poornam or completeness – was not 10, or even one, where the count begins again, but zero. The concept of zero, otherwise referred to as nothingness, emptiness or the void, is shunya, a state of everythingness, fullness, or wholeness, and a condition of mind our gurus asked us to reach before the singing of any raga, before its unconditional manifestation could begin.
Shunya in the ancient texts is known as pujyam or ‘worthy of being prayed to’. In Buddhism it is ‘the phenomenological term for the experience of Absolute Reality’. Shunya is also another word for equilibrium, the state of equipoise, a state of ‘yuja’ or union, the end and beginning of all cycles of existence. And that is why in classical music it is symbolised by ‘sa’, the first swara or note, the root note where all notes rest, lying in dormancy.
Japa or chanting of the ‘sa’, which in universal language is the same as the japa of ‘Aum’ or any other mantra, activates the shunyata or nothingness of ‘sa’, which then begins to manifest unconditionally. Whatever it manifests, provided it is unconditional, or pure, and not conditional, or sullied, is the active word of God, and his message for all. Ashunyata stirs, so does the divine, opening out its light, along with nada or sound, its initial manifestations or vibrations, which then formulate as swaras unfolding the Brahmanda or universe of the seven notes.
When the raga is sung by a pure soul, the notes will be accompanied by light (difficult to see for the ordinary listener), a light that will reflect the colours and hues that the specific raga configuration shows up, which have immense healing properties. The raga and its colours are the celebration of intuition, the inner eye, having no reason as its manifestation, and that is why also, the classical raga in our music has to be sung without reason, or ‘conditionality’, or nihilism or empty zeroes.
On the other hand, any music sung conditionally is a spiritual contortion. And so, singing with your breath was unconditional; singing with your external voice was contortion. Thejabda taan or the fast pattern in the khayal sung with the jabda or jaw was contortion, and the halak taan or the fast movements in the khayal sung with the halak or breath were pure and unconditional. Singing for yourself was unconditional. Singing for an audience was conditional.
The temples, symbolically, have a garbhagriha, garbha meaning womb, or an innermost chamber, where the ‘deity’ is. When you visit, one chamber opens into another, and another, and another, till you finally reach the garbhagriha. And when that is opened for worshippers, ‘nothing’ lies there, it is empty to the naked eye. It is this that symbolises the fullness of Zero.
We were once in Milan, where my guru, Pandit Amarnath, was preparing for a concert at the Teatro Piccolo di Milano. Each green room had a huge mirror into which was reflected another, which was across, and that seemed to reflect another and so on, almost like a series of chambers opening into each other, like our own temples of old, ending with a small tiny mirror inside which was finally nothing – like the garbhagriha. Pandit Amarnath was overjoyed when he saw this. But it took me 20 years to understand the master’s joy. And what he meant by telling us all the time – ‘Shunya ho kar gaao.’ {Sing, with your mind cleansed of everything else]
