There is a remarkable connection with a garden created by my friend Mark, a Native American shaman. He has been intentional in bringing the Directions together in his garden.
There is a stream of water, labyrinthine in its wanderings, alive with emerging frogs. There is bamboo--multiple species--bringing refreshment and revitalization with abundant gifts of life-sustaining oxygen. There are Japanese lanterns that filter flickering flames of gentle light. And a seated Buddha, holding in his folded hands a stone from the high bluffs above the upper Mississippi where ancient Natives built countless ceremonial bear effigy mounds. All is alive; all in motion. Even the stones of the waterstream and the gathered puddles of water.
I love sitting there as Mark plays his Maya clay flute, the waters flowing, the birds, insects, and animals all in concert. And here is where John Daido Loori's writing intersects. The passage from Loori's book speaks of a player of the ancient traditional bamboo flute, the shakuhachi.
Two things strike me especially. One is that the flute being played is rough, barely finished, the bamboo still near its raw state, whereas the traditional shakuhachi is highly refined.
The other is that it is not the flute making the music, rather, the breath.
Not the material, rather, the spiritual.
Ruach is the Hebrew word for it. Ruach means breath, Spirit. The root of the word is related to voice, thunder and wind. Ruach is the creative activity of the Divine, who breathed or spoke or sang creation into being. “The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” (Job 33:4) Both words, "Spirit" and "breath," are translations of the Hebrew ruach.
Another thing I hear here, is that the ascending consciousness which the Maya calendar reveals, is something that has been evolving for centuries among the Zen Buddhists.
Again, I am aware of the Eagle (North) and the Condor (South), the Buddha (East) and the Christ (West), coming together from the four sacred directions in this garden. Mark, then, and those whom he invites to stand with him, stand in the vortex of the completing directions: Above, Below, the Center Within.
To many, it will be apparent that not only are the Seven Directions present, but so also are the Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. As well as Metal.
Aho.
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When Watazumi Doso came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery, I gave him a tour of the grounds. We came upon a plumber who was working on our new bathhouse. Cast-iron piping lay outside the building. Doso playfully picked up a three-foot-long piece and began to play it as though it was a shakuhachi flute. Although the pipe had no holes in it, he was able to create a surprisingly wide range of sounds and a haunting melody.
Doso gave a concert at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and soon after the performance started, an LAPD helicopter flew into the area and hovered overhead. TUM! TUM! TUM! TUM! Doso's flute immediately picked up the rhythm and developed a counterpoint. An infant cried. Doso's flute responded. A car drove by at high speed. The flute whizzed with it. Doso's concert included the totality of all the sounds that were happening around us. He blended, merged, answered everything he heard, incorporating it into his experience and expression, rather than being distracted by it.
The ability to be free in his music was the result of Doso's life-long, unrelenting commitment to the discipline of the breath. He actually wasn't very interested in the shakuhachi as a musical instrument. He called his flute suijo, which loosely translates as "concentrated breathing tool." Doso saw himself not so much as a musician or entertainer, but as one who is totally devoted to developing his life force--chi--by utilizing and strengthening his breath. The bamboo flute was simply a tool for that practice. He said once, "Since I must have some way of knowing how my breath is doing, I blow into a piece of bamboo and hear how it sounds."
Doso didn't use the highly polished lacquered and well-tuned flutes that were common in the Japanese shakuhachi tradition. His flute was much less processed and far closer to its natural state. The inside of the section he used still revealed the bamboo guts. Most people, even experienced masters, considered that kind of instrument unplayable. Doso's music proved that wrong. His playing always touched the very core of one's being. Sometimes the sound had a tremendous strength, like the driving force of a cascading waterfall. Sometimes it roared like thunder. At other times it was gentle and sweet like birdsong at sunrise. It always seemed to reach me, but not through my ears: It entered my body through the base of my spine, moved upward, and spread through my being.
The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. John Daido Loori. New York:Ballantine Books. 2004. pp. 172-173
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