Japan Is Only a Foot and a Half Away!

For a little more than a year now, I have been making daily visits to ancient Japan. My means of transport has been the shakuhachi, which is sometimes called the Japanese Zen flute. It is made of the root end of a bamboo stalk. It is blown on one end, where there is a sharp edge. In looking through it (as if it were a telescope or a spyglass) you will see that its bore is painted an inky, shiny black. This black is like the beautiful darkness of the soul that the sound of the shakuhachi connects us with. The darkness that heals us. That gives us rest and renews us, the way that the night renews us with sleep. We are addicted to light. We see far too little of the dark.

The standard length of the flute is one shaku plus a hachi: which is to say approximately one foot and one half. Hence its name, and also why I say Japan is only a foot and a half away. Do I feel the yearning to be there, in that beautiful ancient country where the sea and the mountains, cherry blossoms and rice paddies, clouds and sun come together in one island place, which is always just a little too complete to really need the rest of the world? Well, all I need to do to find it is to pick up the flute, put it to my lips, and blow. 

The instrument is not easy. After I first received my flute from the maker in LA, it took a good two weeks of patient daily blowing (sometimes to the point of faintness) to learn to make a consistent sound. Twelve months of faithful daily practice have followed, and still I am not really stringing notes together in what most people would call melodies or tunes. Miles Davis said that the best musicians are known by their sound, and although he was a trumpeter, not a flute player, I am taking his implied advice, and taking my time at it. Savoring the sounds of each note and each register. Learning to bend the pitch by drawing in the jaw or nodding the head. Finding the center of each pitch, by means of a modern electronic pitch meter. Blowing the fundamental note Ro time after time after time, in the understanding and faith that Ro contains every other note above it, and that in mastering Ro I will master the matrix out of which every melody will eventually proceed. 

The shakuhachi has five fingering holes, for five basic notes. The rest is amiable cheating and adjustment. Which in itself seems like a sort of parable about life. So much can be built with so little. As long as you're willing to give and take. Mix and re-mix. Negotiate and reflect.

The shakuhachi literature goes back centuries. And the art of playing the shakuhachi has developed in different ways in different parts of the country of Japan. I think of this process of individuation as similar to the way that butterflies evolve differently in different locations. They are spotted one way here. Striped another way there. They float just so here, and glide with sweet meaningful undulations there. Just so with the schools of shakuhachi. Every good player knows a certain school. And cultivates affection for it, as if it were his or her own dear family of notes. This is where we belong, the patterns of flight we know. The angle of the sun is so specific here. We love it that way.

I am far from joking, when I say that I consider the shakuhachi an instrument of travel. It's not of course a jet plane or a boat. It's definitely not an automobile, which means literally something that goes by itself. But the flute does get me there, to Japan, or, all right, to an inward spiritual sum that I picture as a Japan of the mind and soul, a place filled with mystery and with beauty that can only be accessed by means of discipline, mindfulness, patience, and self control. By thoughtful formation of the lips, and intelligent breathing. By means of a posture of the spine that joins heaven and earth in one strong up-and-down bodily brush stroke. The flute simply cannot be played properly without a beautiful muscular posture. And you must smile subtly as you blow, with a smile reminiscent of the Buddha's. And you must believe as you blow, along with all the Zen masters, that the human breath, in the here and the now, is plenty enough to think about. Almost too much. 

So, is it practice time? Well, pick up the flute and let go of the ego, yes at least once today let go of that most masterful and misleading of illusions that is the ambitious calculating self. Drown it in sheer beauty of sound and in the science of the production of that sound. Breathe in, then return that breath to the universe through the medium of the flute. The flute will do the rest.  It will Ro you all the way to Japan.

HB