John Cage and the Silence of Zen

Mabel Nash-Greenberg

Essay for Religious Experience & Literary Form with Alan Hodder

12.08.11

 

John Cage and the Silence of Zen

 

John Cage, (1912-1992) was an American artist, philosopher and music theorist. He was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde and is regarded widely as one of the most important composers of the 20th Century. Cage was deeply inspired by Zen Buddhism and other Eastern modes of thought and philosophy, inspirations which reflected in his creative works. In 1952, Cage composed what would be viewed by many, later, as the pinnacle of his musical career: 4’33’’. 4’33’’ was a piece consisting of three movements, and not a single musical note, lasting four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  4’33’’ may be John Cage’s most widely-known, and most controversial piece. By drawing into question the nature of music and performance, as well as the relationship between performer and audience, he not only lost a handful of friends; Cage introduced to the Western art world an entirely new mode of interpreting art that was influenced greatly by his fascination with Zen Buddhism and its treatment of silence.

Any attempt at realizing the “Truth of Zen” by way of discursive thought and language is a nonsensical one, a road to a dead end. This must be said before any attempt can be made to do so:

The idea that the ultimate truth of life and of things generally is to be intuitively and not conceptually grasped, and this intuitive prehension is the foundation not only of philosophy but of all other cultural activities, is what the Zen form of Buddhism has contributed to the cultivation of artistic appreciation among the Japanese people… It is here then that the spiritual relationship between Zen and the Japanese conception of art is established. (Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 219-220)

 

Despite the inability of language to convey tathata, Zen texts still utilize form, language and art, but in a far different manner than most religious scriptures. Zen is anti-dogmatic and anti-scriptural; emphasizing instead the importance of experiential wisdom, the direct realization of spiritual truths through intuition rather than intellect. Belief in the non-reality of a pervading Self is ubiquitous in most (if not all) Zen Buddhist texts. How then, is it possible that an artist may be both them-Self, a distinguished creator of artistic works, and Zen? How has John Cage incorporated Zen Buddhism into his creative works? Is the concept of a “Zen artist” not inherently problematic? 

Zen is a product of the meeting of Chinese and Indian thought. Though many legends focus on The Buddha as the primary figure of Enlightenment, Zen incorporated much from Taoism in terms of metaphysics. Technically a school of Mahayana Buddhism, Zen is believed to have been born when Indian monk Bodhidharma (470-543 CE) taught at the Shaolin Monastery of China. 

Zen differs from other forms of Mahayana Buddhism in its characteristic method of realizing its philosophy. It emphasizes experiential wisdom as the path to enlightenment. This method is known as za-zen, meaning “practice enlightenment.” In Zen, meditation-practice (za-zen) is itself considered Enlightenment, not a means of achieving It. D.T. Suzuki (who is often credited with bringing Zen to the West in the late 1940s) wrote that “one should free oneself of the idea that practice and enlightenment are not one in the same.” According to Suzuki, the method of transmission of Zen consists in seeing directly into the mystery of our own being, which, according to Zen, is Reality itself: 

Zen advises us not to follow the verbal or written teachings of the Buddha, not to believe in a higher being other than oneself, not to practice formulas of ascetic training but to gain an inner experience which is to take place in the deepest recesses of one’s being. This is an appeal to an intuitive mode of understanding which consists in experiencing what is known in Japanese as Satori (wu in Chinese). Without Satori, there is no Zen. Zen and satori are synonymous. The importance of this satori experience has thus now come to be regarded as something exclusively related to Zen. (Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, from “Zen and Haiku,” 218)

This Satori experience is an intuitive grasp of reality, beyond the forms it takes, and is reminiscent of William James’ qualities of a mystical experience. Suzuki lays out the characteristics of a Satori experience: “That there is noetic quality in mystic experiences has been pointed out by (William) James…Another name for satori is “kensho” (chien-hsing in Chinese) meaning “to see essence or nature,” which apparently proves that there is “seeing” or “perceiving” in satori…Without this noetic quality, satori will lose all its pungency, for it is really the reason of satori itself.” (Suzuki, Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T, Suzuki, 103-108.) 

Suzuki states that the noetic quality is “the reason of satori itself.” The satori experience operates outside of logic and discursive thought, and knowledge of this very fact is the only reasonable element of satori experience. In the moment of Satori, and in any attempts to express it linguistically, the ineffectiveness and limitations of language are seen clearly by the person experiencing these things. 

The [spiritual] relationship [between Zen and the Japanese conception of art] rises from an appreciation of the significance of life—of we may say the mysteries of life enter deeply into the compositions of art. When an art, therefore, presents those mysteries in a most profound and creative manner, it moves us to the depths of our being; art then becomes a divine work. The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture, or poetry, have invariably this quality—something approaching the work of God.  The artist, at the moment when his creativeness is at its height, is transformed into an agent of the creator. This supreme moment in the life of an artist, when expressed in Zen terms, is the experience of Unconscious (mushin, no mind), psychologically speaking. Art has always something of the Unconscious about it. (Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 219-220, emphasis mine.)

In the moment of Satori, the artist is transformed into an agent of the creator, experiencing their unconscious and imitating nature and creation. The experience of Satori seems to solve the problem of the artist within Zen. Satori is a passing experience, it is a sort of temporary enlightenment which allows the artist to take part in the process of time and creation. The ego does not factor into this experience. According to Suzuki, “sense of the beyond” is one of the characteristic traits of satori experience. It consists of a “loosening” of one’s sense of individuality, “a melting away into something indescribable, the feeling that one has finally arrived at a destination… In satori,” Suzuki writes, “there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience indeed is my own but I feel it to be rooted elsewhere. The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of satori.” 

 

The Satori experience is bound inherently to the inability of language to express that experience. This is why, in Zen literature, the use of language is very deliberate and oftentimes nonsensical—Koans are a common form of written word used to express Zen; they are inaccessible to the discursive mind operating with Logic, and only may be understood through use of ones’ intuitive faculties. Haiku, oftentimes called “sublime poetry” is also historically bound to the Japanese written tradition. Haiku is restrained by its syllabic form, controlled to moderate the syllables and breath of the reader.

When used to convey the truths of Zen, language (and, as John Cage would have us amend, any other medium that Zen may take in the mind of the artist), is always used self-critically. The Zen artist or writer, having experienced Satori, is always aware of the limitations of their chosen medium. 

Zen follows a lineage of direct transmission from teacher to student, which according to legend originated with the Flower Sermon, in which The Buddha transmitted the True Dharma Eye to his disciple, Mahākāśyapa, the only one of his disciples who intuitively understood the meaning of the “sermon.” The Flower Sermon is Zen Buddhism. Before the legendary Flower Sermon, The Buddha offered regular ‘Dharma talks,’ where he would lecture to his disciples about a given topic related to Buddhism. 

According to the legend of the Flower Sermon, one day The Buddha gathered his disciples for the Dharma Talk, and without a word, he lifted his hand, which held a lotus blossom. His eyes twinkled and he smiled. At that moment, one of the disciples (Mahākāśyapa) smiled, signifying to the Buddha his direct cognition of the sermon. The Buddha said, “I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma Gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.”  Thus began the tradition in Zen Buddhism of the close relationship between teacher and student, and the practice of Transmission from the former to the latter, which is still practiced today. 

 

In response to having received the Kyoto Prize in November 1989, John Cage delivered a commemorative lecture for the Inamori Foundation, called simply, “An Autobiographical Statement.” In it, Cage addresses his artistic and intellectual influences, and provides a summary of his artistic ventures as they had progressed and evolved over time. Cage first became aware of Zen Buddhism while he was young, and studying at The Cornish School. He writes that later in life, Zen came to replace psychoanalysis for him. Cage regards his creative pursuits in a way that is reminiscent of Zen:

In my late thirties I heard a lecture by Nancy Wilson on Dada and Zen. I mention this in my forward to Silence then adding that I did not want my work blamed on Zen, though I felt that Zen changes in different times and places and what it has become here and now, I am not certain. Whatever it is it gives me delight and most recently by means of Stephen Addiss’ book The Art of Zen.  I had the good fortune to attend Daisetz Suzuki’s classes in the philosophy of Zen Buddhism at Columbia University in the late forties. And I visited him twice in Japan. I have never practiced sitting cross-legged nor do I meditate. My work is what I do and always involves writing materials, chairs, and tables. Before I get to it, I do some exercises for my back and I water the plants, of which I have around two hundred. (Cage, From Where’m’Now, in “Statement”  p . 4)

 

When Cage writes, “I have never practiced sitting cross-legged nor do I meditate. My work is what I do”  it is clear that his “work” serves a meditative purpose in his life. He has created a ritual around that which comes naturally to him. If Zen is about embracing the mind and following one’s intuition, then Cage seems to be doing both of these things. There is no sense of desire in him to practice in any other way. Cage does not willingly identify himself as “being Zen,” but he does feel that Zen changes in different times and places. 

In his forward to Silence, John Cage asks, “What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?” (xi) He does not eliminate the possibility that his own practice may be in line with Zen Buddhism though they may be different—and he never apologizes for its difference. He says he “is not certain” what Zen has become here and now, but that he finds delight in Zen regardless. Cage’s early encounters with Zen Buddhism were accompanied by a sense of frustration in his inability to convey a certain emotion to his audience. This ultimately lead him to the belief that the purpose of music is to “imitate nature in her manner of operation”:

I was disturbed in my public life and my private life as a composer. I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could find a better reason for doing it than communication. I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation. I became less disturbed and went back to work. (Cage, “Statement” p. 3, emphasis mine)

Cage discovered in an anechoic chamber, that there is no such thing as silence, and that life is constant noise. The body unconsciously creates two sounds, a high tone created by the nerve’s systematic operation, and a lower tone created by the blood’s circulation throughout the body. John Cage promptly decided to devote his music to silence. His understanding of life and sound are intrinsically linked. For Cage, sound is life—both literally and figuratively. 

Following this idea, Cage asserts quite explicitly: “Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.” (Silence, 8) However, Cage states that: 

fearlessness is only possible if one turns in the the direction of those [sounds or silences] he does not intend. This turning is psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity—for a musician, the giving up of music. This psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything is gained. In musical terms, any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity.” (Silence, p. 8)

The rhetoric used to convey Cage’s “turning toward silence” is reminiscent of Zen enlightenment narratives: He discusses sound and silence as Buddhists speak of existence, nonexistence and emptiness. He realizes the nature of emptiness in a sonic sense and then experiences the joyous realization of unlimited possibility that exists in every moment.    

In his essay on Experimental Music, Cage states that humans are, in fact, “technically equipped to transform our contemporary awareness of nature’s manner of operation into art.” (Silence, p. 9) But there is a parting of ways; one must choose: 

If he does not wish to give up his attempts to control sound, he may complicate his musical techniques towards an approximation of the new possibilities and awareness. (I use the word “approximation” because a measuring mind can never finally measure nature.) Or, as before, one may give up the desire to control sound, clear his mind of music, and set about discovering means to let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human sentiments.” (Silence, 10) 

 

Cage seems to be calling into question whether the idea of an artist is problematic within Zen. He desires to approximate nature in his musical works. Yet to do so requires that he control sound, thus going against nature. Cage has controlled sound in such a way that they might serve as vehicles for his man-made theories (consider 4’33’’). If his intuition urges him to create music and control sound, is that necessarily problematic?

John Cage’s goal as an artist seems to be to create the musical equivalent of a kōan, or a meditation, for his audience. Many of his works engage with the same ideas as Zen, such as chance, randomness, nonsense. Cage was a major proponent of Indeterminate Music, which incorporates an element of chance into the compositional process. In a letter to Pierre Boulez, he wrote, “chance comes in here to give us the unknown.” Cage’s work frequently incorporates this idea of chance/indeterminacy, releasing a controlled element of “the unknown” within a larger structure or constraint. Over time, Cage developed complicated mathematical processes using the I Ching to introduce these elements of chaos, indeterminacy. The use of time in his pieces is sometimes the random variable; other times, in the case of 4’33’’,  it was the audience in the room. 

In reading John Cage’s Autobiographical Statement, a pattern begins to emerge from his body of work: He begins his compositional process by developing a theoretical concept or problem (which oftentimes draws from Zen,) and then he plans his method of composition. Usually his method involves a set of self-imposed boundaries, and an element of chance.  Cage frequently created pieces such that the structure of the artwork or performance allowed for the incorporation of external, uncontrolled environmental events. This is his philosophy of Indeterminacy. Cage uses what he calls “experimental actions” as the pursuit and engagement with the unforeseen in his work. He wrote, “an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen” (Cage 1961, 39). Of Experimental Music, Cage wrote: 

In this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those that are notated and those that are not. Those that are not notated appear in the written music as silences, opening the doors of the music to the sounds that happen to be in that environment…There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. (Silence, p. 7-8)

 

This creative structuring which involves an element of the unknown resembles za-zen. There are certain limitations one must abide by in practicing Zen meditation, such as the proper stance. (Sitting either cross-legged or on the edge of ones’ chair, with the spine in an erect posture.) One is told to focus on their breath, and to cast away any thoughts that enter their head. These thoughts resemble the element of chance that Cage consistently employed within his work. 

In the late forties I found out by experiment (I went into the anechoic chamber at Harvard University) that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention. To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices. (Statement, p. 4)

 

Cage’s use of chance and indeterminacy may be viewed as an attempt to “remove [him]self from the activities of the sounds [he] makes” (Cage, Silence. p. 10) something Cage desired to do on some level. Of 4’33’’, he wrote: “I wanted my work to be free of likes and dislikes, because I think music should be free of the feelings and ideas of the composer.” (Gann, No Such Thing As Silence, 16) Thus, Cage relinquished his artistic responsibility of “making choices” to chance, as an “exploration of non-intention.” However, the strictness of the mathematical processes used in the execution of chance in his music almost manage to eliminate the sense of spontaneity that is characteristic of Zen.  

Cage regards his writing and his creativity much in the same way as a Zen Buddhist regards za-zen; as a process rather than an object: “I don’t hear the music I write. I write in order to hear the music I haven’t yet heard.” (Cage, “Statement,” p. 8) As he matured, Cage developed a fascination with the relationship between performer and audience—how is it similar to the teacher/pupil relationship of Zen? His goal as an artist seems to be to manipulate these relationships in order to create a sort of meditation in his audience, to transport the listener to the current moment:

People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be at this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is. (Cage, “An Autobiographical Statement” p. 8). 

John Cage expected his audience members to listen to their environment much in the same way as somebody practicing Zen meditation would be aware of their surroundings. This, of course, was not communicated to the audience, which was clear in their response to 4’33’’.  The “boundaries” Cage established, and the element of chance present in 4’33’’ were determined by the space where it was first performed: in a concert setting, at a particular point in time, 

where any muttering or clearing one’s throat, let alone heckling, was a breach of decorum. Thus, there was already in place in these settings, as in other settings for Western art music, a culturally specific mandate to be silent, a mandate regulating the behavior that precedes and accompanies musical performance…

 

…4’33’’, by tacitly instructing the performer to remain quiet in all respects, muted the site of centralized and privileged utterance, disrupted the unspoken audience code to remain unspoken, transposed the performance onto the audience members. (Douglas Kahn in No Such Thing As Silence, p. 18-19)

4’33’’ casts a shadow of doubt on the simplicity of the models used to determine indeterminacy.  David Tudor (the pianist who performed 4’33’’ at its premiere) was made fully aware of the content of the music and his directions. All aspects of the composition were determined ahead of time, though the individuals who comprised the audience added an element of chance to the performance. However, 4’33’’ complicated the dynamic between performer and audience members by forcing the audience to become performers, in effect switching the rolls of performer and audience member.

In his book, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’3’’, Kyle Gann pointed out that the public reception of 4’33’’ is inseparable from the piece’s sonic identity: 

One of the crucial aspects of 4’33’’ at least in the first performances, is that there was a pianist onstage, whose presence, and whose behavior in the previous pieces on the program, clearly led the audience to expect that his hands would at some point engage the keyboard, and that they would hear deliberately made sounds coming from the stage. That this did not happen, that the listeners’ expectations were deliberately flouted, cannot be entirely divorced from the sonic identity of the piece. (Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, 17)

In a sense, Cage’s presentation of 4’33’’, and its public reception, echoed the legend upon which Zen Buddhism is built: The Flower Sermon, in which The Buddha conveyed the ineffable tathata (Sanskrit: thusness, suchness) to his disciple Mahākāśyapa, which could be understood as “the Truth” of Zen. Sandwiched between two “normally-played” pieces as it was, when 4’33’’ began, the audience had developed certain expectations of the pianist onstage, David Tudor, who sat poised before the piano. Similar expectations were present in all of The Buddha’s disciples except for Mahākāśyapa. When the Buddha, who had delivered many Dharma Talks before the Flower Sutra in a normal manner, held up the lotus without a word, his audience was confused, and even angry that their expectations from the previous Talks were not being met. Just as members of Cage’s audience stormed out of the concert hall, Buddha’s group of disciples did not intuitively understand the beauty of the present moment that The Buddha conveyed to Mahākāśyapa, without a single sound.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

• Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1961. Print.
• Cage, John. “An Autobiographical Statement.” Southwest Review (1991). Print.
•  Gann, Kyle. No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” New Haven: Yale UP, 2010. Print.
• James, William, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Bruce Kuklick. “Lectures XVI and XVII: Mysticism.” The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Library of America, 2010. 242-386. Print.
• Matsuo, Bashō. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel Sketches;. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. Print.
• Plasencia, Clara, and Jorquera Ana. Jiménez. The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art. Barcelona: Museu D’Art Contemporani De Barcelona, MACBA, 2009. Print.
• Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T, Suzuki, (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), pp. 103-108.

• Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, and Richard M. Jaffe. Zen and Japanese Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2010. Print.