Zen Guitar

Philip Toshio Sudo

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781439126486
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Budismo

Unleash the song of your soul with Zen Guitar, a contemplative handbook that draws on ancient Eastern wisdom and applies it to music and performance. Each of us carries a song inside us, the song that makes us human. Zen Guitar provides the key to unlocking this song—a series of life lessons presented through the metaphor of music.Philip Sudo offers his own experiences with music to enable us to rediscover the harmony in each of our lives and open ourselves to Zen awareness uniquely suited to the Western Mind. Through fifty-eight lessons that provide focus and a guide, the reader is led through to Zen awareness. This harmony is further illuminated through quotes from sources ranging from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Miles Davis. From those who have never strummed a guitar to the more experienced, Zen Guitar shows how the path of music offers fulfillment in all aspects of life—a winning idea and an instant classic.

black belt

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responsibilty

Some people have a great sense of moral responsibility; unfortunately, it’s backed up with a poor sense of musical taste. Other people have great musical ability, and very little sense of moral responsibility. It’s very difficult to have a good balance.

—Eric Clapton

Those who train hard enough and long enough get to a point where body, mind, and spirit come into balance. The body has developed its own intelligence and the mind trusts this intelligence, allowing the spirit to express itself. One’s playing becomes so fluid, thought and action seem to occur simultaneously.

To reach this point on the path of Zen Guitar, you must be good at what you do. But to truly know the Way, it’s not enough to be good at what you do. You must go beyond.

One does not earn the black belt through technical proficiency alone. In this school, even the most dazzling guitar skills are not enough to turn the belt black. There may be players with monstrous chops, who know every kind of style, whose playing can whip an audience into a frenzy or drop a listener’s jaw. But if they lack the proper character, their belt is not black in this dojo.

The Way of Zen Guitar requires responsibility and truly giving of one’s self. Only through accepting our debt to the world and giving something back does our song have any meaning.

The Japanese language is again instructive here. The very word for human being, ningen, suggests a connection to the surrounding world. Nin means person, while gen means “space.” In other words, we only become human—a ningen—in relation to the space around us.

Ningen

To live responsibly means to be accountable for ourselves, our actions, and our charges. Many people today refuse to accept this. From child neglect to juvenile misconduct, even to murder, we see people looking to shift blame from themselves, pretend innocence, or walk away from a mess of their own making. There are musicians who, in the name of artistic freedom, espouse violence, racial hatred, and sexism, then disavow the ripple effects of their actions. Many more exploit the media to gain fame, yet refuse to accept that they serve as role models for young people.

This is not the Way of Zen Guitar. Those who wish to earn the black belt here should accept, at minimum, five responsibilities:

A responsibility to yourself

Apply yourself and develop your talent to the fullest capacity, without excuses.

A responsibility to your talent

Put your talent to good use, not to bad, in the service of something outside yourself, and do nothing to waste it.

A responsibility to your art

Express your song truthfully, in the face of all opposition.

A responsibility to your audience

Respect those who come to you with open ears and foster a sense of community.

A responsibility to the Way

Act as sensei to those who sincerely seek to find their own path, and share with them what you know to be true. The Way is for everyone.

To abdicate even one responsibility is to diverge from the path of Zen Guitar.

Giving of ourselves—sharing a song purely—does not mean we need to perform in front of crowds; one can share a song sitting alone in a forest, so long as the spirit is right. To share a song purely, it must arise from the soul without thought or regard to getting something back. Training to do this takes the deepest kind of soul searching. We haven’t gone far enough until we come face-to-face with the very principles by which we live our lives—what we believe and how we treat others.

In this dojo, the purest song is the one shared through humility, openness, and generosity. We learn these qualities here as we work to develop our chops; the process is one and the same.

Through the frustrations of learning a new skill, we learn humility—how much we don’t know.

Through the exploration of knowledge, we learn openness—a willingness to try new things, to see things from another person’s perspective.

Through playing with others, we learn generosity—how to share and contribute to the good of the group.

The path to a black belt is not through becoming the best player, but the best person. Raise your living to the level of an art form, and your playing will reflect it. That is the Way of Zen Guitar.

In this section, I have divided the teachings into three categories:

Black-Belt Head describes the mind of the Zen Guitarist at this stage of the path—the thinking, strategies, and knowledge used to follow the Way.

Black-Belt Hand covers the physical aspects of playing at this level—the posture, touch, and feelings that characterize an advanced understanding of Zen Guitar.

Black-Belt Heart concerns the spirit of high-level Zen Guitar—the attitude, awareness, and devotion required of those who come this far.

Through these teachings, you will learn what characterizes excellence in this dojo—and what does not.

Black Belt Head

Know One Thing

Make a Statement

Decide

Prepare the Mind

Establish the Context

Play the Changes

Draw the Frame

Zoom In, Zoom Out

Trust the Tale

Attend to Detail

Thought: Process

Know One Thing

Writer to Frank Zappa: Have there been parts of your life that you’ve neglected because you’ve been absorbed in your music?

Zappa: Well what am I missing? Do I regret not going horseback riding, or learning how to water ski? Well, no. I don’t want to climb mountains, I don’t want to do bungie-jumping. I haven’t missed any of these things. If you’re absorbed by something, what’s to miss?

Many people hear the phrase “black-belt Zen Guitarist” and think it means a thorough proficiency in all aspects of guitar playing. This is not necessarily the case.

To be sure, there are black-belt players who know the guitar inside and out, the same way there are chefs who can prepare a different delicacy seven nights a week. But others may know only one song, like the grandmother who cooks only one meal each Sunday—her special lasagna, with a secret recipe that will get handed down from generation to generation. The grandmother may not have the talent and range of the star chef, but both are black belts in their own way.

In other words, to be a black belt in this dojo, all you need to know is one thing: where your passion lies. If you follow that passion to find the truth for your life, your belt will be black in Zen Guitar.

For some people, “one thing” may be playing the guitar or singing a particular song. For others it could be sailing or hiking or child rearing. Whatever the case, knowing that one thing gives our life meaning and makes it worth getting up in the morning.

Endeavoring to know one thing does not mean becoming a specialist to the exclusion of all other knowledge. In fact, too many specialists burrow themselves in their corner of learning without connecting what they do to the world at large.

In this dojo, knowing one thing means to see the relationship of what we do to everything around us. If your passion is simply to play one song, study the spirit and character of that song until you know what unites it with all the other songs of the world. Through one song, or even one note, you can find the true meaning of harmony.

On the other hand, you may view your “one thing” more broadly. There are athletes in track and field, for example, who don’t excel at the high jump, sprinting, or the pole vault, but thrive in the decathlon. Maybe you’re not the best guitar player on your block, but your collective passions—for music, your family, your friends—make you a black belt in life.

The Way of Zen Guitar is to know the depth of one thing, however large or small, and from that one thing, to know ten thousand things. Get to the bottom of your song, and you will know what you need to know. That is all.

Make a Statement

The question is, “What are you saying with [the guitar]?” Not “Can you play this lick?” or “What’s your speed like?” It’s, “What are you saying with your instrument? What is being communicated in this song?”

—The Edge, U2

A teacher of mine once walked into an instrument dealership and began testing a guitar with an eye toward buying it.

After a time, the salesman said, “You know, you’re the first person to come in here all day who’s played a song.”

The vast majority of people, when handed a guitar, simply noodle—that is, their fingers run up and down the guitar playing notes and phrases that form no coherent statement. It is the musical equivalent of babbling at the mouth. Even within the context of performance, many players let their fingers fly without thought, running off a flurry of notes, grabbing the whammy bar, bathing themselves in feedback. They seem to be saying something, but the notes go in one ear and out the other without adding up to anything. They lack a coherent concept.

Think of all the guitar solos you hear in popular music. How many of them are transcendent or truly memorable? This is not to say these players lack impressive technique. It merely suggests their playing veers toward self-indulgence—a kind of musical masturbation.

The Way of Zen Guitar is not through self-indulgence, but self-awareness. Everything you play says something about you—how you think, what you think, the way you view yourself and your art. Know why you play, and make it stand for something. You should not regard your music as disposable any more than you would regard yourself as such.

You do not need lyrics to make a statement, either. Words can crystallize your message, but the music carries a message of its own. A good beat or a pretty melody can make a song work in spite of insipid lyrics; it’s much harder to work the other way around. Like the sound of laughter or a lover’s nibble on the ear, Zen Guitar should communicate heart to heart, soul to soul, without any filter from the mind.

Self-indulgence is when a player feels the music without caring whether or not the listener does. The black belt here knows what it means to put an idea across—to give something to the listener with character, content, and concision.

Character

To make a statement with character means delivering an honest, uncompromising vision that ...