As for the spiritual side that was the subject of my 7 hour workshop at the
Fire Lotus Temple last July in Brooklyn. Here is what I just wrote to Nelson
who was asking about how the Goal and Mirror differ because of
content or process? For me the Mirrow Way has everything to do with
spirituality which I explain a little below. The goal oriented way is just a
busy, doing thing...and not particularly sensitive or aware or awake doing.
The two ways differ in content and process.....In the Goal Way you are
concentrated on learning technique and pitch and notes only, on just learning
the practical things, the skills.... in the Mirror Way you are learning that
too, but at the same time because of the way you are doing it, you are
learning the other half of the shakuhachi too, which is your own body and
mind. You are learning how you squeeze your own muscles habitually...(maybe
for the first time in your life you start to become aware of this) and also
you start to learn to see what thoughts come up while you are playing and
what they do to the body...and that means that they affect the sound
too....this is not part of the attention range of the goal oriented way. So
in the mirror way you are aware of much, much more and more deeply. You can
not feel into these things and think at the same time. As long as you can
say, "I am aware; I am playing; I am trying," you are too far from your
sound. Feeling into these things, you learn the flute and the music and
yourself....that is why it is a way, because you learn yourself. It is as
Dogen Zenji said, "To study the self, to forget the self and to forget the
self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things." All Ways have that
(learning self) as a goal and once you learn yourself you can get beyond
yourself (by feeling deeply enough)...to a different space and playing music
from that space...well......... ml PS: This is just standard zen stuff, but
then there are Zen Schools and then there are Zen Schools.
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