FUSHO ZEN Zen and Music: Unlock the Ancient Keys to Samadhi, Find the E...

Zen and Music

Today I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting with Jitsudo Tusha Roshi of the Fusho Zen Institute and some of the other leaders of the group.

Tsuha Roshi and I sat down for a casual conversation to learn a bit more about who he is and what he brings to Los Angeles this week with their Zen and Music program. (see links on the bottom of this post for more information, reservations, and tickets).

Tsuha Roshi is a Rinzai Zen Priest who for his entire working career taught music to teenagers. For him these seemingly two aspects of his life are not two. Zen and Music both are beyond what we have in our heads, beyond the words in the experience that they bring to our lives.

He told me that the experience of music is both universal and accessible to all, and can serve as a wonderful intro to the Zen experience. Everyone of us has access to music, maybe we play music or maybe we just turn on the radio. But the sound and vibration with some choices are particularly conducive to entering the Zen path.

In this program Tusha Roshi follows the mission of the Fusho Zen Institute to make Zen training Accessible to the general public using everyday language and tools suitable to the modern lifestyle, while remaining true to the principles and teachings of Zen as it has been handed down for generation after generation.

We experience both Zen and Music directly and immediately through our senses in this very moment.

Through sound, vibration, and resonance... Awareness of this very moment is experienced.

Being in the presence of Tsuha Roshi was a great intro for me to the Fusho Zen Institute and it's mission that "...Though Zen training, one transcend individual desires and becomes a human being capable of providing the deepest of compassion Semui (to give fearlessness) - to all sentient beings.

I am certainly looking forward to the next two nights of music and hope you will follow the links below and join us.


https://www.fushozeninstitute.org/

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/zen-and-music-tickets-49761945318

Little Tokyo Visit August 18, 2018

Our usual visit to Little Tokyo.
This weekend we had to choose between the many Nisei Week events, as we do each August.
We simply chose our own favorite, the JACCC and their Nisei Week Bonsai Exhibit.
Below are pics of a small sampling of the beautiful works or art on display.

a few, like this one, had fantastic splashes of color.

Being Nisei Week, lunch choices were limited by the wait times. But one of our regular haunts, 'Gazen' on 1st Street and plenty of seating; the cuisine was delicious as always; and the atmosphere calm and relaxing.

We went back to JACCC, there were so many events there it was great. Lantern making, The dolls were on display, and even Ogasawara Sencha Tea.

Misso Memrial Service for Rev. Thomas Kurai

Kodo (The Way of Incense) Ceremony at the JACCC. Little Tokyo Los Angeles

Kotohajime 2018

I volunteered to help set up so I was able to snap a couplt photos of rehearsal.

Even as we wait for the curtain to go up, and Kotohajime to begin, we are blessed with beautiful voices of Daiku.

 Actually all we see is the dynamic conductor. The singers are above us in the balcony, we hear the beautiful voices all around us.

As the curtain is raised the snow begins to fall and a Buddhist monk walks across the stage ringing a bell.

He is followed by 7 other priests doing their walking mediation to his bell.

The precession of Buddhist Priests is followed by an Okinawan Dance Company: Majikina Honryu Ryugu Dojo Aigen No Kai, led by Majikina Aiko Tengan.

The next performer was the haunting voice of story teller Kyokkaku Kawamoto Sensei with her biwa.

As Kawamoto Sensei finishes, the Buddhist priests (to the sound of the ringing bell) have returned and wind their way in to sit on the stage.

With the Priests as his background, the director Hirokazu Kosaka himself (with his assistants) comes on to the stage to purify the incoming year with the shot of a sacred arrow piercing an exploding target.

Kotohajime ends with the explosion releasing a hundred streams of ticker tape, as if from the side of a ship from long ago that brought the Issei to America from Japan.

Hirokazu Kosaka has again, somehow, made a new version of his annual event. Perhaps even better than the last. I can't wait to see what he does for his 36th Kotohajime Performance in 2019. We highly recommend this annual event.

(small disclosure: I am a personal friend and long time associate of Hirokazu, having been a student of his for these past 35 years, so I might be slightly biased... but maybe not too, It's really quite a performance).

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