Seamless Unity

"We have a word for leaf, twig, branch, trunk, roots.  The words make it easier for us to categorize and comprehend reality.  But we must not think that just because we have words for all the parts of a tree, a tree really has all those parts.  The leaf does not know when it stops being a leaf and becomes a twig.  And the trunk is not aware that it has stopped being a trunk and has become the roots.  Indeed, the roots do not know when they stop being roots and become soil, nor the soil the atmosphere the sunlight.  All our names are arbitrarily superimposed on what is, in truth, the seamless unity of all being."

Expansion

                                                                                  

"The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he had suddenly become aware of the mass of the piano-part beginning to emerge in a sort of liquid rippling of sound, multiform but indivisible, smooth yet restless, like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But then at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to grasp the phrase or harmony — he did not know which — that had just been played and that had opened and expanded his soul, as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating one’s nostrils.”
                                                                                            Proust, Swann In Love

Listening

"Sometimes you hear a peace of music on the radio or someplace without having any clue about what it is and who did it, but nevertheless are spontaneously overwhelmed by its beauty and just want badly to know the references in order to hear it again? In such a case, the music itself appeals to you directly and that's enough. We should listen to any work of art, and in fact to life itself, with an open mind. You let truth unfold and unveil in your non-qualified awareness."
                                                                                                              LD