Text / A body-mind silence.

Teaching shakuhachi on the front porch next to the street there were a lot of sounds: cars, trucks, birds singing, the wind.
I asked the students to play from memory and firstly think of their breathing, then focus on and experience external sound, lastly think of the sound of the instrument.

I have been thinking about John Cage’s piece Ryoanji; a set of pitch curves played as glissandi set against a metric but irregular percussive beat. Glissando is a change of pitch free from discrete rhythmic articulation. Percussive sound exists almost totally as articulation free of discrete pitch.

Cage’s comments on the relationship of objects and space relating to the Ryoanji garden are also well known – that the amount of space in the garden could support the stones in any configuration.

Reading to each student about aspects of breath and timing in shakuhachi honkyoku, I was struck by a description of a Zen rock garden as empty.

The rocks in a Zen garden are rough, un-hewn, raw. The gravel or pebbles they are set with are meticulously raked into patterns each day. Raw with refined – rocks and gravel.

Playing on the porch I was suddenly struck by the fact that the rocks represent noise in sound; the un-directed or unintentional in our experience. Gravel represents desired sound or music, carefully raked into beautiful shapes and patterns.

The truck passing by our lesson is the rock. The act of playing the shakuhachi is the act of raking the gravel. When raking, do not think of the rake or gravel, only the action of raking. There will no longer be any division between gravel and rock.