Carol Lem as Music Student

THE SHAKUHACHI, OR JAPANESE BAMBOO FLUTE, CAME INTO MY LIFE IN THE 1960s, at exactly the right moment. I was in my twenties, and all around me seeds of rebellion were sprouting questions about where I was going, where I had been. Amidst the political, societal, and familial clamor, I was searching for a way out, or away in-inside myself. And though I did not realize it then, I was searching for a sound. As a child, I studied piano with my Aunt Ethel; as a teenager I played a cornet in the Chinese Drum and Bugle Corps-both under the watchful eyes of my parents. The Western flute I chose for myself was a response to a growing love for Debussy and things solitary. But it wasn't until I heard a record of honkyoku (meditation pieces for the shakuhachi) that something else called to me. The something else led me to Sensei Wakita and his group Baido-Kai, who performed once a year at Koyasan Hall in Little Tokyo. But after eight years or so of lessons and performances, that something else eluded me, and I respectfully placed my shakuhachi in the closet for fifteen years. At the tender age of forty-six, finding myself once again in a spiritual crisis, I spotted a few Japanese students in the English class I was teaching at East Los Angeles College and asked, "Does anyone know of a shakuhachi teacher?" It just so happened that one woman did, the man who tuned her piano. What synchronicity! Not only did he live in my neighborhood, Temple City, but he also had inherited many of Sensei Wakita's flutes and much of his sheet music; he was good friends with his daughter, Kayoko, whose house I used to visit for my weekly lessons. At my first lesson with Masakazu Yoshizawa, he wanted to hear how I played Rokudan. After a few passages, he stopped me and sighed, "You can play the notes okay, but your playing is mechanical." He proceeded to draw a map of techniques to bring out the sound of the bamboo, that sound that had once eluded me. Hence began Chikudo, the bamboo way, which continues to this day. Living the bamboo way is a devotion to a sound. To become that sound is to reach high level of spiritual development, as in Basho's teaching, "Learn about the pine from the pine, learn about the bamboo from the bamboo." Learn about yourself from yourself with the bamboo flute as your practice. Just as zazen means sitting meditation, suizen means blowing meditation. Practice now is not those tedious mechanical scales I played in my aunt's living room, but a way of playing them. As Sensei Yoshizawa is always reminding me, "It's not what you play, it's how you play it." "Just playing slowly is not meditation. It's also playing fast." But as in all spiritual practices, the struggle is to nurture a certain state of mind. For after the techniques are mastered, then what? What is that difference between the student's sound and that of Katsuya Yokoyama? How do you teach that? That's the mystery. The relationship between teacher (sensei) and student is reflected in the way they sit with each other during the lesson. Traditionally, as was the case with Mr. Wakita and still is in Japan, the student sits opposite the teacher, the space between them, the unshared space, symbolizing that one is above the other. So when Masakazu Yoshizawa, or Masa, came to my home for my first lesson, I set up the chairs with the music stand between us. The first thing he did was to place my chair next to his, saying only, "It's easier to read the music together." Only later did I learn that his departure from traditional custom was a tribute to the relationship between teacher and student; we were participating in a shared teaching and learning experience. He is a demanding instructor because he treats his students as professionals. Respect for musical composition and interpretation is at the core of his teaching. He is concerned with honoring the music, not the teacher. Yet each of us pays the highest honor to Masa by practicing well. Like Japanese poetry, shakuhachi music, in particular honkyoku, is a reflection of nature, so Masa's teaching focuses on shaping the sound to the music's content. For example, in Tsuru no Sugomori (Nesting Cranes), the sound of cranes, which is close to a fluttering sound, is created by a technique called koro koro, a precise way of moving your fingers. The challenge is to create this subtle pattern of sounds without fluttering the fingers. He told me to practice this while visualizing a nesting crane, before playing the whole piece. Imaging a crane was not easy, so I looked it up in the dictionary for the picture. I incorporated the crane into my poetry and listened to shakuhachi masters like Goro Yamaguchi, to immerse myself in imagery and sound. One Sunday, while going through the travel section of the newspaper, I came upon a misty photograph of a place in Japan where people go just to see cranes. I cut it out, hoping one day to paint it. As Basho might say, "Be the crane by going to the crane." Short of going to Japan, painting the cranes and blowing their sound are ways of going to the crane. Another birdlike sound, tamane, is created by placing the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth, right behind your front teeth, then blowing. Since this was an impossible task in the beginning, he told me to practice making the fluttering sound without the flute. So I'd walk around the house fluttering my tongue. l fluttered my tongue while cooking and putting the dishes away. I fluttered my tongue in the shower while chanting a sound which had the effect of OM. Once this began to feel natural, I then played the note using tamane which took me to a place I hadn't been before. Perhaps because more air is used, or so it seems for the beginner, a slight light-headedness created an airy feeling close to a high in meditation. While practicing Tsuru no Sugomori and Sanya (Three Valleys), I continue to struggle with getting koro koro and tamane right. If sound reflects content, then this may be appropriate. In a piece like Sanya, for example, the three valleys refer to three high-pitched melodies or echoing sounds, or the three high points in the struggle toward enlightenment. Masa is constantly reminding me that in my effort to get it right, I risk losing the mood and the music. This is especially crucial in rhythmic passages, as in ensemble pieces with koto and shamisen in which just playing the notes right is not enough. I often find myself so concerned with moving my fingers correctly, staying on pitch and timing, that my playing sounds like a bunch of notes. "You're not listening to yourself!" is a refrain I've heard over the years. Masa suggests that I imagine my spirit leaving my body and listening to me play, like someone is playing me, and I am the flute. Masa says, "It's never the same," meaning you never play the same piece in the same way, as in Heraclitus's statement, "You never step in the same water twice." All depends on your mood, the atmosphere around you, and your relationship to the piece at that moment. In this way, the shakuhachi is a mirror of the player's soul. As a tool of meditation, then, it helps me to look within. If I feel somewhat scattered or exhausted by the day's events, my playing will reflect that. So I will blow ro, low D, for ten minutes. When I find thoughts entering my mind, I let them fall away like leaves by bringing my attention back to my blowing until I hear my sound (my soul) clarify itself. After centering, I am ready to practice. Masa calls this "relaxed attention." As in zazen, where the posture itself is the meditation, so in suizen. Whether sitting in a chair or on the floor, you slowly raise the shakuhachi from your lap to your lips, eyes cast slightly down, back straight-this posture triggers a state of meditation, a readiness to begin playing. That the Japanese bamboo flute called to me in a way that the Western flute didn't has to do with these techniques that merge you, whoever that you is or is becoming, with the bamboo. I remember when Masa was teaching me komibuki, a breathing technique in which an unrefined vibrato is created by pumping the diaphragm. He first demonstrated this without the shakuhachi by making a hoo, hoo, hoo sound as his stomach bounced up and down. He then gave me a piece to try: Sagariha (Falling Leaves). As after doing koro koro for the first time, I felt a little light-headed, which helped me imagine the staccato falling of leaves moved by the wind. After practicing this technique in other pieces, it began to sound natural. Indeed, there are times when I'm doing komibuki that I feel like a windswept tree, or like falling leaves. When these moments come and my entire being resonates through the bamboo, the shakuhachi is a projection of self. And the you who walked into the practice room an hour before is not the you blowing Sagariha. In fact, there is no you. There is only the practice room (dojo), the shakuhachi, and the playing. In these rare moments my spirit has left the body and someone or something is playing me. That something else that called to me in my twenties, this sound that Masa is teaching me to keep inside my life, is chikudo, the bamboo way. *Carol Lem has studied the bamboo flute (shakuhachi) with Masakazu Yoshizawa for ten years. Her other practice is writing poetry. She has published poems in Asian Pacific American Journal, Blue Mesa Review, Chrysalis, Hawaii Pacific Review, Luna, Rattle, The Seattle Review, and others. She also teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at East Los Angeles College.

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