When most people say they want music for meditation, what they really mean is they want relaxation music.

Music relaxation can go hand in hand. The right kind of music can be quite meditative and put you in a relaxed mood.

But, in almost all meditation traditions the actual meditative practices are done silently.  In fact, most meditators try to escape to the quietest place possible to avoid any sort of distractions, especially sound.

Or, if you've ever meditated in India, you get the idea that many people come to meditation practice so that they can block out all the noise from the big cities that you can't seem to escape in any other way.

So if you're looking for a free meditation MP3 or to download free meditation music, be aware of the difference between something designed to be pleasant and relaxing — like background music — versus meditation instruction you can download.

In Japan and India there are traditions of music coming from monasteries.  There's the shakuhachi flute, the Japanese version of a banjo called the shamisen (which honestly sounds less like music for meditation and more like in an impression of cats being strangled).

In any Hindu temple, there's the sitar and tabla which make up Indian ragas.

This is obviously much different than what most people think of as meditative music, like Enya or Kitaro or some of the wonderful music meditation CDs created by Jonathan Goldman.

In fact, when you hear Tibetan monks chanting or playing music, that's not actually meditation.  Those are prayers and invocations, but the actual meditation is something they do silently.

Similarly, even with Hindu chanting or singing mantras for hours on end, the actual meditation practice is the silence that occurs once the meditation music stops.

Music relaxation is delightful. I have a virtual stack of meditation downloads, and an actual stack of CD relaxation programs. But when I meditate, you won't hear any of them.

Next Post: You've got the (binaural) beat… (electronic meditation CDs)

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