This spring and summer the subject of ego and music has come up in various ways on some of the blogs I follow, so I asked Lama Tashi about it. I began the conversation describing the feeling most music makers have from time to time that their ego fades and the music just sort of flows through them, and asking if that didn't happen to him from time to time back when he was Chant Master at Drepung Loseling, and how would he describe what was happening.
He knew exactly what I was talking about and said it was very similar to the type of absorption one tries to achieve in meditation. One is aiming to be like an "innocent baby" totally absorbed in looking at a picture or an object, with no "secondary thoughts" and "no concept of self".
He also said that while this kind of "focus" is what you're working towards, there's also "introspection", which is observing the meditation with a "neutral ego" to make sure things are going as they should.
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