Mi'sen

Answers in same order: I use it as a warmup/for doing rapid alterations between broad/narrow attention. I'll often pick a song with a strong percussive bass/drum line that occasionally disappears. While it's there, focus on the percussion. When it's gone, open up to everything.

Yes the spatiality aspect - broad/narrow, inclusive/exclusive, etc - seems like a key strength in using music, and pretty accessible to the beginner, eg: brother immediately grokked what I meant when I said something like, 'open to the experience of silence in which sounds arise'

Musicianship combines the flow-like ability to stay in focus with the aesthetics of meditation, IMO. A footballer or w/e can also be "in the zone"... ... but musicians share something of the meditator's relationship with silence, which is a more subtle thing.

I hadn't made that connection - probably because I'm not a musician - but that makes perfect sense to me. As I said, once I started considering it I realised what a broad & rich area of exploration it is, or could be.

That fully absorbed immersive experience you get playing a musical instrument is an every-day-life example of the fruit/result of lhatong (mi-gyo-wa, ‘no-movement’). I think it’s the most common example I’ve heard, & one I can relate to having been a musician.

Ok that’s a really interesting connection you just made. So that is in the context of Sems De? In which case would you equate the indivisibility of the sound of music and the space of silence with ro-cig, or is that still at the level of lhatong?

Yes (re sems de). The indivisibility in the context of the Ting-ne-dzin is nam-nyid (“not separate”) - next stage on from lhatong if you view them linearly. That occupies roughly the same position as ro-cig in Mahamudra terms.

Sorry, nyi-mèd translates to “not separate” - that’s the practice that leads to nam-nyid/indivisibility.