Old conditioning. Isn't that a classic answer, that fits everything? Why do you have your problems - old conditioning. For most of us as we grow up, music was a big part. Well, I assume for all of us - music was a big part. We identify with a certain song, a certain music, something happened at a certain stage in our life and that song was playing and this and that and so on. The other day the high school was having their annual sports fair for several days and all that music was coming up the hill from there.
Now, very fortunately for everyone in this retreat, very fortunate for me and Rosemary, very fortunate for the Poochooays working during the retreat, very fortunate for all of us that the music was not the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or whatever else is new these days, Britney whatever her name is, I don't know. Fortunately the music coming up the hill wasn't Western music. If it was Western music, we may have recognized it and experienced all our memories attached to it. What would it be like if it was your favorite band? This is one of the greatest things that I reflect on regularly, whenever we get the music from the Thai Discos, I am so glad that it is not my old favorite music! If it was all my old favorite music, it would produce all those memories. And for some people, including this person in particular, it may produce spontaneous tears as some tender memory is associated with that music. So this is just the old conditioning manifesting.
If you actually want to work super hard to stop that old conditioning manifesting, you have to be very vigilant, very much on guard whenever you are going to a shopping center and music is playing or whenever you are around somebody with music. It depends upon how much you want to work on that area of your practice, how much hearing music bothers your practice or not. If you have a particular problem with music in your practice, ask us about that in your interview as there are some special meditation techniques that we can give you, but they may not be appropriate for everyone.