A BELL SOUNDED, slow and sonorous, from a nearby church. It was early in November, the maples still ablaze against a cloudless sky. Such rusty reds and flaming golds, such a delicate, pale bright blue! It was as if the chimes swirled out around each separate tree, burnished and released each leaf, caressed the grass, entranced my watching eye. Such listening is at the heart of spiritual practice, opening (if one is fortunate) into a new clarity and serenity, a deeper knowing. “When you listen with your soul, you come into rhythm and unity with the music of the universe,” wrote the Irish writer John O’Donohue.
Buddhism has numerous
