Concerning the Way - Confucianists, Buddhists, tea
masters, masters of ceremonial practices, Noh dramatists and such – none of
these are within the Way of the Warrior. Even though their Ways are not ours,
if you know the Way broadly, not one of them will be misunderstood. It is
essential that each person polish his own Way well – Miyamoto Musashi
One thing about music that I love is that by
learning its Way you learn so much about yourself and the world around you. I
teach this dealing directly with the functioning of our mind and that to learn
efficiently you will need to know how the brain works, and then you will become
able to learn the technique of playing with great ease.
Due to my interest and maybe my addiction to music I
have begun to understand how music changes the state of consciousness of the
listener and the player and how our ancient forebears used it for ceremonial
use. This really came home to me when I was in South America listening to the
icaros of the shaman and how it ramped up their work; this introduced me to the
notion that great musicians particularly from roots styles of music have that ability
to change states of mind.
I was playing through some old blues numbers by
Muddy Waters and you can see that this man who Eric Clapton called ‘Buddha’ could
play one riff for several minutes and sing a song that would drive an audience
into a frenzy (Mannish Boy) or sing a song about the magical charms that he had
and how he was destined to be a great man (Hoochie Coochie Man). This is easily
found in all other musical forms, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer in Reggae, Jimi
Hendrix in rock music, Elvis Presley in Rock and Roll and John Lennon in Pop music,
where the musician would take you on a journey to a different place which you could
say was ‘spiritual’.
What is interesting for me is that when you see what
really works on a deep level in one sort of music you will recognise it in
other forms of music and then in other places, such as sport, business human relationships
because music is a reflection of human consciousness.
As Musashi says if you polish your Way, you will
understand all others; not one of them will be misunderstood.
Vic
