There's a paradox buried in how we listen to music: the notes you hear exist only because silence surrounds them. The ancient Indian philosopher Nagarjuna built his entire metaphysics around exactly this — the doctrine of śūnyatā, or 'emptiness,' which argues that nothing possesses independent, self-contained existence. Everything is what it is only through its relationships with what it is not. Theologians have wrestled with a strikingly similar problem when trying to define God: if God is infinite and all-encompassing, what does it mean to say God 'does' anything, or 'is' anywhere in particular? The mystic traditions of both Vedanta and apophatic Christian theology (think Pseudo-Dionysius) suggest that the divine, like a rest in music, is known precisely through what it brackets, not through what it fills. Today, when you listen to something — a song, a conversation, even ambient noise — notice the gaps. The shape of what's absent is telling you something about what's present.

When you encounter something you find meaningful — a piece of music, a belief, a relationship — are you actually attending to the thing itself, or to the contrast it creates against everything surrounding it?

Drawing from Indian Philosophy (Madhyamaka Buddhism) — Nagarjuna (with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite)