jimtrue.com : school : MUH1110 : Assignment Three: The Shakuhachi
Posted by Jim True on September 20, 2004 11:30 AM. Last Updated October 22, 2006 9:23 PM
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Meditation is a mental practice used to clear one's mind of all other thoughts, to concentrante on tranquility, calmness and the oneness of being. Nothing could be simpler and yet more complex in today's noisy, hurried world. Likewise, nothing signifies the Zen art of 'blowing meditation' more than the Shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute.
Constructed from one piece of bamboo, hollowed out with 5 finger holes placed along it's length, one could not imagine a simpler flute in appearance. Rather than a formed mouthpiece, the shakuhachi player blows across one open end of the flute, much like a person blows across the top of a coke bottle, creating a tone that travels down the length of the bamboo exiting from the end. The complexity of the instrument comes from variations in the way the player holds their head and mouth, the strength of the air blowing into the bamboo, and varied 'partial' closings of the fingerholes that can produce upwards of 84 tones from this deceptively simple instrument! (Weiss)
Believed to have been brought to Japan from China, the Shakuhachi has been used in suizen, or "Blowing meditation" for hundreds of years. Students of the Shakuhachi study and perform a series of honkyoku, or "original pieces", that are series of melodic phrases devised by the Buddhist monks as breathing exercizes. The spaces between the tones, the emptiness of sound, the Ma, is just as important as the tones produced by the flute that can be heard by the ear. According to Ronnie Nyogestu Seldin, an American Grand Master of the shakuhachi flute, every piece of the music "starts off very simply, then it rushes towards implosion, and finally everything is stripped away and ends up very simple again, but subtly different from how it began." (McCoy-Eller) This demonstrates a principle of Japanese aesthetics, known as the Johakyu, which is something like an arc; in relation to life it symbolizes that we start at the beginning knowing little, through the piece we will gain enlightment and grow, and we will return to our starting level, performing the same act (or tone), but knowing more about it, having learned from our journey.
During the feudalistic period of Japan, a particular sect of zen priests wandered Japan, known as the Komuso. These were former samurai who were now masterless; they wore baskets over their heads, called the tengai, to hide their faces and to supress their sense of identity. These priests would wander from village to village, playing the shakuhachi for the sick and dying. The 'ko' in komusu literally means 'emptiness' or 'nothingness'; the belief was that these 'priests of nothingness' would take the pain and suffering from the patients upon themselves through the playing of their suizen music. (Nyogetsu) As if the komusu were empty vessels, the sickness and pain could be poured into them, and the patient could be healed by the beautiful, sombre tones of the shakuhachi flute.
McCoy-Eller, Holly. Interview with Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin. Urthona Magazine (as reprinted under Nyogetsu.com). http://www.nyogetsu.com/urthona.html Accessed 9/15/2004.
Nyogetsu-Seldin, Ronnie. Beliefnet Interviews: Blowing Meditation. http://www.nyogetsu.com/blowingmeditation.html Accessed 9/18/2004.
Weiss, Barry Nyosui. Blowing Zen Classes. http://www.blowingzen.com/classes.html Accessed 9/19/2004.
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