>From: Peter H <voxsonorus@yahoo.com>
>Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 03:18:06 -0800 (PST)
>
>I should have said "as suizen," or at least as part of one's Zen
>practice--in the original sense of dhyana, in contrast to playing
>the shakuhachi as a musical instrument. In my experience, very
>often players who play the shakuhachi as suizen are less concerned
>with musicality than players who play it for musical reasons alone,
>or in addition to playing honkyoku. So again, does that make sense?
>Should such considerations as pitch, quality of tone, etc, matter?
>not? ... I was thinking of the difference in intention and how that
>affects ones approach to not just the thechnical aspects of playing,
>but the way one expresses the honkyoku.
If, by "honkyoku" you mean a series of notes, sounded in a particular
order, and therefore recognizable as belonging to a particular
"tune" (for lack of a better, less musically-oriented term), that
comes out of a particular tradition, then yes, it matters a great
deal whether or not the player pays attention to pitch, quality of
tone, etc. Otherwise, how does one recognize this particular piece
as be a specific piece of honkyoku (for instance, Reibo) and not
just random doodling on the flute, however spiritually motivated it
might be?
As I understand it, meditation, in whatever form, is supposed to
bring you face to face with yourself. Struggling with pitch,
quality of tone, and that arrangement of notes in a particular order
is what brings me face to face with myself, in the form of my own
desires and expectations. I suspect that this is true for anyone
who plays the shakuhachi, even those who are not practicing suizen.
bj
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