A Medley of Singing Bowls

What is the structure of sound, and what is its special meaning? I had a chance to reflect on this topic today during GuoYuan Fashi's talk about singing bowl meditation. Fashi had presented some ideas of how and why masters from the past had become enlightened through the simple hearing of sound, followed by a presentation of singing bowls. Meditating on the sound was an incredibly interesting experience for me, and I would like to share my understanding of it.
    For the most part, there tends to be a lot of scattered thoughts arising during evening meditation, and due to some fatigue, it takes me some time to relax and settle the mind. What I noticed upon hearing the sounds of the singing bowls was a sense of unity and totality: here was this beautiful, reverberating echo of the singing bowl, in contrast with the unreality of wandering thoughts. When contrasted with the purity of the singing bowl sound, the thoughts seemed so unnecessary and unreal, a kind of chatter between two mouths sitting on the same face. Not only this, but I also had a sense of unity in that moment of sound. Even as the sound faded, I had to wonder, where does the sound fade to, and how can sound really disappear when there is still a hearing faculty that is doing the hearing? Here again, subject and object suddenly ceased to feel relevant, seeing that there is this kind of present-moment awareness that is allowing sounds to arise with wholeness.
   Sound is really interesting, especially when it is shouted or when it has a certain presence of being, much like the sound of a gong. Unlike thoughts which tend to have a wispy characteristic, the sounds of gongs or other Buddhist instruments tend to herald the bold simplicity of now. They communicate an unmistakable reality, rather than allowing the listener to 'evaluate' their meanings or qualities. In this way, these kinds of sounds mirror a grounded nature of mind which is always 'such': it has no beginning or ending, no quarrel with anything, and no subject/object division. When the sound is made with this total and simple awareness, it can have a profound impact which is harder to achieve through words or explanation.