Life lesson from a Zen flute master
I gave myself John Daido Loori's "The Zen of Creativity" for Christmas (also bought an extra copy to give to a little friends who are artistic types).
This morning we came across a story in a book about a Zen shriek master which appealed to me. Here's how Loori tells it:
When Watazumi Doso came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery, we gave him a tour of a grounds. We came across a plumber who was operative upon our brand new bathhouse. Cast-iron piping lay outside a building.
Doso playfully picked up a three-foot-long square as well as began to fool around it as though it was a shakuhachi flute. Although a siren had no holes in it, he was able to create a surprisingly far-reaching operation of sounds as well as a haunting melody.
Doso gave a unison during a Zen Center of Los Angeles as well as shortly after a opening started, an LAPD helicopter flew in to a area as well as hovered overhead. TUM! TUM! TUM! TUM! Doso's shriek immediately picked up a rhythm as well as developed a counterpoint.
An tot cried. Doso's shriek responded. A car drove by during high speed. The shriek whizzed with it. Doso's unison enclosed a totality of all a sounds which were function around us. He blended, merged, answered everything he heard, incorporating it in to his knowledge as well as expression, rsther than than being distracted by it.
...Doso didn't make use of a highly discriminating lacquered as well as well-tuned flutes which were usual in a Japanese shakuhachi tradition. His shriek was much reduction processed as well as far closer to its natural state. The inside of a territory he used still revealed a bamboo guts.
Most people, even gifted masters, considered which sort of instrument unplayable. Doso's song valid which wrong. HIs playing regularly touched a very core of one's being.
Sometimes a receptive to advice had a tremendous strength, similar to a pushing force of a cascading waterfall. Sometimes it roared similar to thunder! . At alt ernative times it was peaceful as well as honeyed similar to birdsong during sunrise. It regularly seemed to strech me, though not by my ears: It entered my body by a bottom of my spine, changed upward, as well as widespread by my being.
I gave Doso a attend myself, thanks to a little MySpace pity of his music. At first we thought, "what a heck..." But afterwards a sounds grew upon me. They're raw, real, from a depths of breath.
An aged crony of cave plays a shakuhachi. I've been told which it's a difficult instrument to even get receptive to advice out of, much reduction fool around melodically.
