Dear List Members,
Here is my latest update from Japan. Please forgive the lengthiness of it. I
hope you can feel a little bit of my experience. I hope all is well with
everyone.
All love,
Al
Epilogue:
Moving light spearshots in the back of mountainsides. If I lead to death, it
may reap some detailed elements. Inside the realm of the rounding spirit,
can feel it everywhere I go. No completion and competition. Trinity and
major combinations set out on a path of settled states and dynamic trips. I
want to see beyond the silk and touch the seeds that make up this world so I
can move the universe in an expanding shining manifest. The forests are
empty now, living in the world of ancestors and clouds. Waiting for the
seeds to restore the air back to silent bells. Pure. Impure. Big sounds
killing.
Update 9: Musubi (The Binding)
Part 1:
In the dim light, thought clouds drift in slowly. Faint vibrations of life.
Soft light, quiet voice. Sea and earth swimming within the depths somewhere.
Luminous, floating in space. Curves and skin so wondrous. In movement with
the currents, graceful and glowing in the dark.
In the land the ancient spirits still move fluid among the living. You are
the land from whence I came where the stars determined I was to be placed.
Bamboo, you came delivered by the gods in harmony. The land is me. Before my
return I will leave part of me in the land.
Bamboo world of mysteries. I am the secert, opened to a cavern in my heart.
No shadows where the light is deeper. The Gift, beyond society into the
Universal where intuition resides and logic is dissipated. Danger and chaos,
unbounded potential. Like a knight on a quest I encounter the Gods and bow
to them in supplication. Bamboo--the grail beyond the opposites. Enter the
realm of the sorcerer, shaman, alchemist. The unseen world, where the
soundless sound rules, giving and guiding, playing nothing.
Deep under the cold earth, the fire blazes strong. True blaze, heat intense.
Looking into it blinded by its power, beauty and danger. Dancing around it,
I am mesmerized. With the aid of spirits I touch it and hold it, protected
by the dampness and earth which calms the fire and karma, burning in a
ceremony of hollow sounds and change. Immersed in culms of fire, a world is
revealed to me. Musubi. Weeping walls, I drink from your mouth, the air of
the ages. The flame engulfs, burning away body into ash; black chips as
waterfalls, leaving a mark that moves metal into rainbow. Remains upon dead
heaps of incense, soft ash; powder is memory now becoming a spirit returning
to the center of all things.
I emerge reborn between cracks in the deep earth. Two but one. Temple bell
sounds from the bamboo universe.
The Return to Miyajima
"Shariputra, form not different from emptiness.
Emptiness not different from form.
Form is the emptiness. Emptiness is the form."----From the Heart Sutra
Last year someone told me about an event happening in Japan where His
Holiness the Dalai Lama would be coming to consecrate a Sacred Music
Festival. I was interested in going to this event but eventually forgot
about it until a few months ago when I attended the dance performance of a
friend where I came across a flier for this event again. It was called the
World Festival of Sacred Music, held on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima, July
1,2 and 3. Hiroshima?! How am I going to get all the way there? It's too far
for me and too expensive. I can't go there with work and all. I've been
there many times before, since I used to live in the neighboring prefecture
of Yamaguchi for three years, so to return there to play in this interesting
event would be a pleasant nostalgic journey. I checked out the website and
it looked more and more enticing. I worked myself up into a kind of hot
desire to go there and participate in this event so I personally visited the
office in Tokyo and submitted my recording of shakuhachi asking to be part
of the roster of musicians. They said it was a little late, but they would
think about it and let me know. A few weeks later, they called me back and
said, "We'd love to have you play. We'll even pay for your room, food, and
part of the transportation." "I'm there!", I said.
The weather on Miyajima was exceptionally clear, comfortable and visually
stunning. The calm before typhoon season. Magnificent sunsets of fiery reds
and oranges and gradations of purples cooling into a sea of velvet where a
dream-like moon floated amongst thin whisps of clouds. The powerful image of
the giant red Shinto Gate rising out of the ocean, in front of Itsukushima
Shrine, illuminated by flood lights was a wondrous sight out of the
imagination of the goddess Amaterasu.
Interestingly enough, I was the only honkyoku player to perform there. There
were a few other flute players there who played, but they basically did
improvisation. The only other kind of Japanese sacred music which was
represented was Shomyo chanting from the monks of the local Shingon esoteric
sect of Buddhism. They chanted The Heart Sutra together with Tibetan
Buddhist monks, which was quite powerful. (Perhaps superficially) thinking
about the sacred musical tradition of Japan, it would seem that next to
sutra chanting Shakuhachi Honkyoku is the strongest and most well-known of
Japan. Shamisen, koto, etc. were not really religious per se, they were more
secular than anything. Gagaku had a religious overtone but was more
ceremonial than spiritual. Taiko and other percussions instruments were also
more ceremonially used. Heikyoku of the biwa was more a release and
entertainment rather than a religious practice. But I think moso biwa was
used in the early days as an accompaniment for sutra chanting. Anyways, it
would've been great to have more players of Japanese instruments there. The
other flute player whom I met on Miyajima who was on the play list was Clive
Bell from England. I've heard his name in shakuhachi circles before. It was
interesting because I had never met Clive before, but my friend, Kiku Day
(who is a student of Okuda Atsuya) who is a honkyoku/hocchiku player in
England attending the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) just
met Clive recently at a shamisen performance in England. I didn't know Clive
would be playing at the Festival so I was very surprised to discover it was
the same Clive Bell that my friend just met! He improvised on various kinds
of European horns and flutes with another wind instrumentalist who played on
a chanter and various sizes of recorders. These two played with a big rock
band which was quite interesting. But the subtleties of their instruments
were drowned out by the sheer power of the band. The groups that I got to
experience that really sent my spirit soaring were Samura Rati, the
traditional Gamelan group from Bali, Raj Rang devotional group from
Rajastan, and the Australian Aborigine didgeridoo players. They had the
power to transport you to their homelands. It was very moving.
My performance was in the main hall of a beautiful shrine/temple, called
Daishoin (Great Holy), overlooking the ocean. Images of Buddhas and Shinto
pervaded and harmoniously mixed together to make up the marvelous
shrine/temple complex. Syncretism at its best. I played Honshirabe, Yamagoe,
Tamuke, Tsuru no Sugomori (Oshuden), Shika no Tone, Daha, and Reibo. Just
exactly an hour. I met a few students and friends of Uwe Walter, a German
Shakuhachi player living in the mountains of Kobe. One guy even knew
Okuda-san. Also some Tozan players, and Daniel Ribble, from Kochi, who plays
Kinko style. I first heard about Dan in 1992 when I was living in Yamaguchi
perfecture from a newspaper article I saw of a foreign shakuhachi player
living in Kochi. Then I met Dan for the first time at the first
International Shakuhachi Festival in Okayama in 1994, then in Boulder again
at the1998 World Shakuhachi Festival www.Colorado.EDU/music/WSF98/Home.html.
Now again on Miyajima at WFSM www.wfsm-jp.org/. (Next year it will be in New
York. So let's get more shakuhachi players to play there next time!) It was
nice to talk to him again and think about our chronological connection with
shakuhachi.
If I had more time I would have visited the Atomic Bomb Dome again to pay my
respects and visited shakuhachi friends around Hiroshima, but I had to get
back to Tokyo right after the last show. No time for even indulging in the
exquisite fresh, local oysters (kaki). I made some new friends and had some
ecstatic experiences and saw again how we are all bound together as bamboo
brothers and sisters. Musubi. Whatever you desire the most, it will come to
be.
Part 2:
Breathing and listening to air mix magically with body and spirit and
bamboo. The colors of sound float through me like mist through a temple. The
light visible, reflecting off ghostly particles of clouds from orange points
of burning sticks of cured woods. The sound of the light, gentle as the kiss
of a deva in a deep forest. Embraced by the sonic pollen of the bamboo flute
the reaction creates a substance in my soul so sweet, the demons around me
die from its overdose. From the scent I ride on a wave that takes me into
transcendence. Whenever I recover from the illness it comes upon me and I am
opened up to the matrix of energies which I feed off of and read.
The last quarter of The Dream. I am making The Sound. It's in my body now.
The circle is almost complete. This last season was characterized with
thoughts about the relationship between Eternity the Tool and Transcendence.
I've come to see that there is neither a connection and it is all connected,
and that I aspire to the equanimity of the Center.
Ignorance is Bambooless
I'm contantly missing it. To try to place importance on things is a sign of
the ego at work. Shakuhachi--it's a vessel for learning, for healing, of
focus, of controlling the ego with a wild thing. Wisdom in the animal.
Hearing and seeing, tasting with the whole being. Mind and spirit create our
sound and life. Our sounds, our music are closely related to our attitude
towards life. Essentially we don't need the bamboo to develop ourselves.
Inner meditation is all we need. Reduction of breath and stillness and
silence is speaking of the essence of Reality. It takes a lot of effort to
play shakuhachi. Perhaps a lot of wasted energy. It's better not to play!
Just sit and meditate, and pray. But as humans living on the earth, we can't
help but be subject to the illusions of surface thinking. There is a need to
harmonize with surface life and to go deeper into life, and bamboo flute is
perhaps one starting point. Bamboo is a living substance. When it is
harvested from the ground it doesn't die, it takes on new life and new
meaning in the one who plays it as a flute. The changes in temparture, body,
mood and atmosphere all effect the sound of the flute. Changing constantly,
like subatomic particles. It's a Kyotaku, a bell that's not there. And the
more you play, and with guidance from a teacher, the better your sound gets,
naturally. Living life with a purpose, with integrity. Moving the soul.
Extending beyond technique to live within the spirit, thoughts and heart.
This is the real basis of creating life. A tender heart which reveals life
and emotion and have a feeling of strength will be conveyed when you play
and this is what really moves me. Usually it is very simple and not overdone
for effect with excess decoration and fancy techniques. This excess hides
the true heart of the player. In honkyoku one can see the heart of the
player. When you can abandon desires and greed, your true spirit shows
through in your honkyoku and this is when it becomes real. Playing
emptiness, illusion. Too much effort. But we keep going because we are on
the surface. Until we can abandon our material attachments, can we get
deeper and become empty. It's all Love.
"Bamboo Aripana": The symbolic representation of the cosmos as a bamboo
grove--an image of fertility and of family life, which grows up round an
ancestor like a clump of bamboo round the first shoot--demonstrates that
everyone must find that aspect of divinity most appropriate to him/herself.
Some plants--the bamboo, for example--most particularly manifest one or
another aspect of the Supreme Being, whom the Bhagavad Gita has say: 'When
one of my faithful desires with all his faith to worship me in a particular
form, I take that form.'
Blowing good energy your way,
Takegawa
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