c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Les Kaye is the author of”Zen at Work”(Crown) and abbot of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, Calif.)

UNDATED _ When I was very young, I had a childhood friend who was learning to play the violin. Late one autumn afternoon, when several of our crowd had taken refuge in the warmth of his home, his mother interrupted our playing to remind him it was time to practice.

The other boys left, but I stayed to observe. I remember vividly the way he tuned-up his instrument, plucking each string in turn, adjusting its peg to tighten or loosen it. Back and forth he went between strings, plucking, listening, and adjusting. It seemed to take a very long time.

I felt my friend’s effort to fine tune his instrument must be one of life’s most boring activities. I didn’t understand why he put up with it. Yet he seemed to like it; he remained intent and absorbed. Later I learned he tuned his violin every day!

I was glad I didn’t play the violin, that I didn’t have to do all that tuning-up. It was too much work. I felt it was not something a normal, lively young boy would want to do. Besides, I didn’t like classical music. I was into jazz. Yet I was struck by the realization that my friend didn’t seem to mind.

Years later, listening to a cut from”Charlie Parker with Strings,”I heard my beloved jazz in a new way. I was surprised and excited by the new dimension of music. Not long afterward, I started to appreciate classical music. I listened to the music made by violins. I learned to appreciate tuning-up.

Stringed instruments don’t work well if they are not tuned with care. Too loose, and the string makes a dull, deathly sound; too tight, and it yields a squeaky, skin-crawling vibration.

I have discovered that life works in the same way. Each human being is like an instrument, capable of beautiful music. But just as with my friend’s violin, it is very easy to fall out of tune. And it is never certain we will be”in tune”to a new situation, to some change in our life. So each of us has to pay attention to the sounds we make with our life and to make the effort to be”in tune.” We know we are”in tune”when we feel no separation from ourselves, from each other, from what we are doing, from life all around us. When we are”in tune,”we feel as if we are part of a finely tuned orchestra.

Life has many dimensions. We are composed of many strings, so we express ourselves in a variety of ways. If we want to make music with our life, rather than noise, we need to be tuned in all ways, not just in some ways; in all moments, not merely some of the time.

What prevents us from being in tune? What distracts us from tuning ourself to our life? It is the simple, unreflective notion that we are already in tune. We like to believe we are somehow automatically in tune enough. Like the young boy not understanding the need to make the effort, the notion”I am not interested in tuning up”means we have determined to settle for a”noisy”life. But when we are not willing to settle for a life of discord, we turn to spiritual practice to understand how we can make the music we are inherently capable of creating.

Spiritual practice is the process of continually tuning ourself. It is how we find harmony with our life and with others. When we ourselves are in tune, the entire world feels in tune. As my friend’s violin practice demonstrated, spiritual practice includes doing our own tuning-up work. There can be no appeal for someone else to do it for us.

More than 50 years ago, I witnessed a caring mother encourage her son to learn to create music, to set aside playing for awhile, to pay attention to tuning-up. It remains a warm memory, a reminder of the power of ordinary events and their capacity to be metaphors for the larger life.

DEA END KAYE