Question
Thank you, Master Kosen, for your answer and that very touching (!) photo of your father (I assume) with Sidney Bechet. I also looked at the Guthrie Govan link you sent me… Indeed… he plays wonderfully.
As for the Lowden, it is an excellent guitar with a great sound, but there are others… :-) and nothing is stopping you from keeping another one around, because it isn’t the guitar that makes the musician, but the other way around :-). Your fingers come back very quickly, even after a year off. I know from experience. And there is no difference between you and me in that respect, since you already know how to play. Besides, you compose with great musical taste, so where is the problem? :)) There is a memory in the hands that is never lost. A little like the depth of Zen and original nature, which I believe in, although that is another matter as far as I am concerned :-)) and even though there is nothing to lose or gain in Soto Zen, I still haven’t realized this full awareness :-)). Perhaps there is nothing to realize, and perhaps that is realization or satori :-)) (Something that must be so simple we can’t even see it.) Between “being” and “nonbeing,” as the Buddha says. That is also what sometimes happens to a musician at a concert with an audience, but most don’t know it :-). I have felt this at certain concerts I played, when the music was so intense there was no longer an audience or a player, only a moment of full awareness, joy, and absolute peace. The ideal would be to have that permanently and in everyday life. How can this moment be prolonged? That is another question for you. Perhaps you will answer that there is no need to prolong it, just leave it as it is, and that by leaving it as it is, it naturally continues. The problem is that I have already done that, but it ends up disappearing anyway :-) even though I know it is always present, because this moment has existed at least once. To me, nothing dies or is born; everything is rediscovered, first through learning and then through deliberately forgetting that learning. In music, for example, at some point you have to burn your knowledge to let your whole being speak through the instrument. Another question: “Must we learn or unlearn life?” In Zen, there are very deep koans. Master Kosen, do you know this saying by Mozart: “The real music is between the notes”? To me it is like a koan, and this one is Austrian :-)).
Best wishes,
Stéphane Guéry (!) :-)))
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
Time is connected to space.
We can return here, but we cannot return now.
Wanting to hold on to the moment is already losing it.
There is a now that does not disappear, but we cannot find it in time, only in space. There is a path to reach it, a path within our own brain. We must clear this path and travel it again and again until it becomes familiar and we no longer lose it. Once we know it, we are no longer afraid of getting lost.
Kosen