Well, I read every email, but none of them really pertained to my
original questions. Perhaps we shold create a couple of sublists:
shakuhachi-related, and Zen philosophy-related.
In Daoism enlightenment is "zixian," literally self-appearance, though
the usual translation is "self-realization," and I think with the
natural inclination to conceputalizing things that we Westerners have,
the inference is something cognitive rather than the root meaning of
"to make real."
In Zhuangzi, meanwhile, it says "There must be a true person before
there can be truth." Truth is one of those words we could debate for a
while, no doubt, but my point here is rather that I think this line
summarizes the Zen approach: rather than debate how many Buddhas it
takes to change a lightbulb, just work on yourself.
As for shakuhachi, well of course I think it's a meditational tool, and
I think that one benefits more the better one plays it, but I'm still
unsure whether, if one or more of the "musical" things like pitch,
timing or phrasing, expressivenes, quality of tone, etc, are lacking in
one's playing, the spiritual side suffers. Can you say "well, his
technique and sound are terrible, but his playing has great spirit."
How about the opposite, and if so is one the converse of the other,
i.e. can just one but not both be true? Anyone care to bite this time?
After meditating off an on for about ten years, I one day decided that
despite what my venerable meditation teachers had told me, I couldn't
meditate any more because I didn't know exactly how focusing on my
breath would enlighten me; there were breaks in the chain. A few days
later, due to a chance (of course) encounter in a train, I found myself
at a Vipassana meditation retreat, and had the question answered to my
satisfaction by the method taught there. I'm asking these questions in
the same spirit of skepticism.
Peter
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