Learning to exhale: Lessons in Zen flute, shakuhachi, in Kyoto

KYOTO, Japan — Ripping the evening air, a passing motorcycle imposes a harsh counterpoint to the bright, ringing tones of Yoshio Kurahashi's bamboo flute.

"I enjoy performing with city sounds," says the master of the shakuhachi after his performance in northeast Kyoto. "The music becomes part of the city — not like playing in a sealed room."

Kurahashi's signature piece, "Jinbo Sanya" ("Three Valleys"), is a haunting 400-year-old tune once played by wandering monks. Kurahashi helps keep the tradition of the sound alive by teaching and performing in Kyoto and overseas.

"Sometimes it seems that most people interested in shakuhachi live outside of Japan," he says.

Indeed, of the nine people performing under the full moon on the Hosomi Museum's outdoor stage, only two are Japanese. Five are American students of New York teacher Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin.

Seldin is in Kyoto for his yearly tour through Japan. Eager to take as many shakuhachi lessons as I can with Kurahashi, I've joined the group for the weeklong Kyoto leg of their tour.

The lure of the flute

A year ago, ignoring the advice of every gardener I've ever heard, I decided to introduce bamboo to my garden.

"Once you plant it you can never get rid of it," echoed their voices as I surfed the Web, searching for cultivation techniques.

Suddenly my attention was diverted by a link to something called a shakuhachi — the Zen flute — and its fascinating history as a meditation tool.

Within a week, I'd made a cheap flute out of PVC pipe. After drilling the fifth hole — the thumb hole — I sat down, took a deep breath and blew: Nothing.

A few attempts later, through the haze of hyperventilation, a clear and sustained note emerged. The bamboo was planted inside me.

The shakuhachi can be a relentless teacher of awareness. Notoriously difficult to play, it forces a face-to-face confrontation with expectation, self-criticism, disappointment, frustration and impatience — all in a single breath. Exhaling through all those impediments and releasing one's attachments to them can dissolve the ego so that one can experience only the sound — and become the sound.

Two hours of practice a day, an upgrade to a bamboo flute and 11 months later, I flew west to taste Japan for the first time and snatch a few moments of teaching from one of the country's top shakuhachi players.

Kyoto, about 230 miles west of Tokyo, occupies a basin surrounded by mountains to the north, east and west. Home to the Japanese imperial family for more than a thousand years (until 1868), it is the ancient cultural heart of Japan, harboring imperial gardens and palaces, museums, scores of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.

The city was spared from bombing in World War II, but much of the old architecture has fallen anyway to developers and their sterile concrete, steel and glass buildings. Even though the city is exceptionally clean, tidy and safe, it hums with a frenzied modernism. To escape that, one need only to step through the gates of a temple, wash in a sacred fountain and gaze at the countenance of the Buddha.

Learning from a master

In the southern part of old Kyoto, only a block away from the legendary location of the Rashomon Gate, Yoshio Kurahashi teaches shakuhachi in his home studio.

Sensei (the honorific term for teacher), a robust 53-year-old with a disarming smile, lives with his wife and three children in the house his grandfather built 80 years ago. He leads me through two sets of sliding doors and to an indoor stoop, where we remove our shoes. We pass through a living room and ascend a steep staircase into his studio, where I sit on the floor, facing Sensei across a low table on which the sheet music rests.

An important accessory to the lesson is tea. Before beginning, Sensei serves a small cup of buttery-tasting green tea.

The lesson begins with an old song, "Shintakasago," about sailing from Takasago to Osaka.

Traditionally, shakuhachi teachers play in unison with the student, often drowning out the notes of the weaker flute. But Sensei stops and asks me to play alone so he can study my sound.

My confidence swells as I nail a difficult meri note, where a finger slightly opens a hole as the head is bent forward to create a flat, muted tone.

"No," Sensei stops me. "Too loud. It must be very soft."

I try again at about half the volume. A tiny nasal sound emanates from my flute.

"No. Softer. Make a very, very small sound."

I attempt the note again, but with only the slightest stream of breath. The sound barely hovers above my hearing threshold.

"Yes," says Sensei, smiling. "I like this sound."

Rich history

At my next lesson, Sensei introduces the oldest of the ancient Zen tunes, "Kyorei" ("Empty Bell"). At least 600 years old, it's a slow, repetitious, mournful tune played in the flute's low register.

"The loudest tone is at the start of the first note of the phrase," Sensei instructs. "As the breath continues, the sound grows softer until it fades into silence."

Like a bell. Like Fuke's bell.

Fuke was a ninth-century Chinese Zen monk who rang a bell to draw attention to his street preaching.

"If attacked from the light, I will strike back in the light.

If attacked from the dark, I will strike back in the dark.

If attacked from all directions, I will strike back like a whirlwind.

If attacked from emptiness, I will lash out like a flail."

According to legend, Sensei explains, one of Fuke's followers, Chohaku, was very fond of the sound of Fuke's bell but could not afford a bell of his own. One day, as he was walking through a bamboo forest, he heard the sound of Fuke's bell made by the wind blowing across a cut bamboo stalk.

The birth of the shakuhachi?

More likely, says Kurahashi, the shakuhachi developed from similar end-blown flutes that migrated from Egypt, across Asia and finally into Japan about 1,400 years ago.

As centuries of feudal warfare ended in the 17th century, and Japan grew unified and relatively peaceful, many samurai warriors became masterless. Some of those ronin adopted and modified the tradition of the komoso (straw-mat monks), who played bamboo flutes on the street for alms.

The Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism became a refuge exclusively for samurai who wanted to withdraw from the world and become komuso (monks of nothingness). The komuso temple in Kyoto was called Meianji (Bright Dark Temple), in reference to Fuke's rant.

Meianji opens its gates to the public during the day. Inside stands a huge slab of rough granite with two chiseled Kanji (Chinese) characters: Sui Zen (blowing Zen).

"There are two characters missing from this," says Kurahashi. "The full sentence should say 'Blowing Zen One Same,' meaning 'Blowing (the shakuhachi) and Zen are the same thing.' "