On the first true day of fall this year, I found myself wrist-locked with the steering wheel of my silver 2009 Chrysler minivan, staring down the cold barrel of an arduous seven-and-a-half-hour-long drive. Marred by cavernous serotonin withdrawal after a weekend getaway to Maine with my closest friends, this return trip to New Jersey was looking bleak. What saved me was the “Motorhythm”  playlist on my iPod. Thirty songs deep, it houses a six-hour sampling of history’s greatest creations from the influential 1960’s and 70’s “Krautrock” genre. Described as “motoric,” and often utilizing steady, drawn-out beats, this type of music echoes the solid churning of an engine; I call this music “digital dharma,” and I listen to it almost every day: to complete tasks, look inside myself, and feel at peace with the world. In short, this is meditation through mp3.

At college, a brief stint as a Religious Studies major turned me towards the primary sources of our world’s religions, and this introduced me to the beauty of the Chandogya Upanishad, one of Hinduism’s oldest texts. It begins with the simple suggestion that one should venerate the syllable, OM: the repeated collection of speech and breath to make sound. Synchronizing speech, breath, and sound fulfills desire: the desire to know, or forget, or be at peace—to answer questions we have about the universe and its mysteries.

Music helps achieve similar goals. Take writing this blog for example: As I write, I’m listening to that playlist and reviewing my copy of the Upanishads, and through the works of Can, Neu!, and Kraftwerk, easing myself into a state of mind where I feel removed from the distractions of the world around me. All this in order to seek knowledge of these Hindu texts and the syllable they so greatly revere. Played at work, this and all music is perfect for the average “morning routine,” research project, or source-gathering task for the very same reasons. While I’m into German proto-electronic, you probably have your own jams that do the trick. As OM gathers the mind about itself, helping the individual to contemplate experiences or focus through mental clutter, so, too, does our favorite music.

Listening to the motor-like beats of my dearest rock genre churn through that fall road trip, I fell into what can only be described as a meditative state cruising down I-95 to the pace of soundboards and steady cords; at one with the car and the wheel, myself, the pedal, and the road. Venerate this next time you hit “play.”