Can You Imagine How the Buddha Played the Flute?

We all know that Lord Krishna played the flute and held the entire world in the sway of its music. One of his several names is Bansidhar, which means the holder of the flute. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me that Buddha, the enlightened one, too, played this divine musical instrument made from the bamboo plant. And oh boy, did he play it beautifully!

The revelation came through the book Old Path White Clouds by revered Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. The book is a majestic retelling of Buddha’s eighty years of life built on multiple sources and accounts in several languages.

While Nhat Hanh mentions a young Siddhartha (Buddha’s given name) playing the flute serenely under a moonlit sky in the early chapters of the book, to me the real magic and melody of Buddha’s flute came alive in Chapter Twenty-Five, aptly titled Music’s Lofty Peaks.

In the episode, Buddha is said to have met a group of young people in a forest between Varanasi and Rajagriha (written Rajagaha in the book, now the city of Rajgir in Bihar). As the story goes, one of them asked the Buddha to play the flute for them just as some of them burst out laughing, dismissing the idea of a monk playing the flute.

Never the one to be perturbed, the Buddha just smiled.

Now, as the Buddha took a few deep breaths and put the flute to his lips, can you imagine how those young men felt? Can you imagine the music that wafted magically in the wind of that forest? Before he touched the first note, the Buddha reflected on how many, many years ago he played the flute as the Sakya prince in the capital city of Kapilvastu.

I believe it must take the spiritual depth and simplistic genius of a true monk to put forth the description that follows. This is how Thich Nhat describes the Buddha playing the flute in his book:

“The sound was as delicate as a thin strand of smoke curling gently from the roof of a simple dwelling outside Kapilavatthu at the hour of the evening meal. Slowly the thin strand expanded across space like a gathering of clouds which in turn transformed into a thousand-petalled lotus, each petal a different shimmering color. It seemed that one flutist suddenly had become ten thousand flutists, and all the wonders of the universe had been transformed into sounds—sounds of a thousand colors and forms, sounds as light as a breeze and quick as the pattering of rain, clear as a crane flying overhead, intimate as a lullaby, bright as a shining jewel, and subtle as the smile of one who has transcended all thoughts of gain and loss. The birds of the forest stopped singing in order to listen to this sublime music, and even the breezes ceased rustling the leaves. The forest was enveloped in an atmosphere of total peace, serenity, and wonder.”

Can you imagine how the Buddha played the flute?

As I read those lyrical words, I could feel a certain peace within my own self. It is as if you are being transported into another realm of existence on the wings of a swan. As if the gentle embrace of a child is holding you in its inexplicable delight. As if your heart has become so much full of love and divine grace that it is overflowing with joy…As if all the pain of thousands of years buried deep in the multiple births of your existence is melting away into a single note of relief…

Can you, can you imagine how the Buddha played the flute!