Author: dorakuan

This blog is sometimes a bit theoretical, I feel … so here comes some practical suggestion. My understanding of Zen is that it should support our life in all aspects.

I love eating. Since I am fortunately also quite successful at loosing weight without suffering, I am happy to
share my findings: a Zen-talk on diet.

A lot of pain and suffering is caused by overweight. Practising Zazen is just one of the activities which are difficult and potentially dangerous (for the knees and spine) with too much fat on the body. Overweight does not only shorten our lives, it also makes especially the final years much less pleasant and joyful. Since part of my scientific research is related to understanding cardiovascular diseases, I know what I am talking about. Feeling just happy with significant overweight is no plan for life, it is one of the illusions we maybe can get rid of practising Zen.

The best way to loose weight is staying at a Zen temple. I lost 3.5 kg in 7 days this spring in Japan, although I ate a lot, three times a day. A physically active daily schedule, a regular life-style and healthy food work automatically.

The next-best way is applying some science and psychology. So here my basic rules:

• Energy balance: you must burn more energy than you intake by eating and drinking. If the energy balance is negative, you inevitably loose weight, since your body needs to compensate from it’s own savings. 1 kg of body fat are approx. equivalent to 7000 calories. That amount of energy you need to burn more than you eat, in order to reduce 1 kg. Said that, I don’t like counting calories, a “volume control” by using a small bento-box for lunch (see picture) works perfectly fine for me! And preparing a nice and healthy o-bento every day can be very motivating …
• Insulin level: after eating carbon-hydrates, sugar (and maybe even sweeteners, though this is under discussion), the insulin level in the blood rises to help transporting energy into the body cells. In other words: it locks the exit doors to the fat reservoirs you want to burn. I avoid eating “in between”, or drinking sweet stuff (including zero calories diet drinks containing sweeteners), because this pushes the insulin level up, and I cannot efficiently burn my fat for a certain time.
• Moving: moving burns calories, but just a little. Much more “expensive” for your body is being 24 hours prepared for physical activity: filling the reservoirs with energy and providing sufficient muscle power is very expensive. Therefore, regularly moving is an important key factor for a successful diet, far beyond the few calories you burn during the activity itself. And it prevents you from reducing your muscle volume during diet, instead of burning fat.
• Enjoying food: eating too less brings your body into an emergency mode: all functions burning energy go to a minimum, you won’t just feel weak and bad, but also significantly reduce the ability to burn fat. When in spite of a strict diet the weight does not further reduce, this is a clear warning to eat more!
  Also, I guess it is important to appreciate and enjoy good and healthy food, which should include it’s preparation. When I am on diet, I spend lots more time with cooking and enjoy eating much more than usual. So a diet is not so much about eating less, but more about food.
• Motivation: imagine your life after reducing weight! You’ll be a different person, and most likely much more active and healthy. For motivation, it might help to keep records of what you eat, of your morning weight, it might help to tell others and install some social control, and to visualise the amount of weight you already lost (by buckets filled with water carried upstairs once a day, if you like).
  But most important I consider the motivation to actually start developing a focus on (preparing) healthy food, and to enjoy the process of improving your life, not to focus on the final result of a diet. This kind of motivation is not for enduring a horrible time until eventually you lost a few kilos, the process itself of improving your life by new eating habits is the goal!

Another story is keeping a low weight, once reached. This is the tough part, it requires changing the whole life-style, permanently. In my case, since it is so easy for me to loose 10 or 20 kg within a few months, I usually simply forget about healthy eating after some time and go back to old habits … no good idea!

What is the link to Zen? you might ask after reading this. Some say, for reducing weight you need a strong will-power, and you must get rid of a scheme in which eating is a compensation for something else missing or going wrong in your life. I don’t know … but for sure regularly practising Zazen will help you with both aspects. In Zen, we try to do the next step right. Prepare the next meal in a suitable and healthy way, and forget about “diet”…
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WARNING: The above is my personal experience and might very well work for a physically and mentally healthy adult. In case of doubt, before trying yourself better consult a medical doctor or certified diets expert (I am not!). You’ll very likely reduce weight with the above suggestions and enjoy the positive and unexpected side-effects, but you do so on your own risk!

This morning I played the piece Eko (回向) on the Shakuhachi in my Dojo. Following the tradition, performing Eko is like chanting a sutra for the benefit of souls who have passed away. This morning’s Eko was dedicated to the up to 160.000 human beings killed in Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945.

Living in a region and era of relative peace, I do not want to forget that Germany is currently number three in the list of arms exporting countries. August 6th and August 9th are special memorial days, not just for Japan. Though, there are good reasons to perform Eko every day …

“Is that sufficient” one is allowed to ask “just playing the Shakuhachi?”. I wonder, what can we do acting for piece, without causing further destruction?

Dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is described in many history books as a well justified action to establish piece, end the pacific war and by this save many lives. Others say it was just a demonstration of power towards the Soviet Union at the onset of the cold war.

I prefer performing Eko, every day …

The Japanese professor plays the cello for us. He is a skilled medical doctor and surgeon, but his cello performance is just as good as it can be after three years of practise. So we admired more his brave performance in open air public, in a country where the cello and its ancestors are at home for centuries, and maybe not so much the musical qualities of his play.

After he was finished, we talked a bit about music in general and why he is so enthusiastic about the cello. “Japanese people love classical music” he explained. When I promised to play the Shakuhachi for him in return for his cello concert next time I come to Japan, he was seriously taken aback: “Shakuhachi … that is Japanese instrument. Western people can really play …?”.

Well … maybe, if they are brave enough …? I don’t like music, I love it …

In my today’s lecture I explained to the students what might be the most important discovery in physics within the past 100 years, the detection of the Higgs boson with the LHC at Cern in Geneva. Alas, to my disappointment, my excitement was not really shared by the future engineers and computer scientists. Partially, because I might have failed to properly summarise the underlying basics of the theory, partially, because getting even the rough sketch of what “is likely to greatly affect human understanding of the universe” is just too complicated and confusing.

Doesn’t that mean that today’s theoretical description of the nature and universe is so far from our common way of thinking, that graduate scientists can hardly understand even it’s very basics? What kind of knowledge about “the universe” is it, which can only be discussed amongst a handful of experts world-wide? And, is there an alternative and satisfying way to “understand our world”, which does not require years of hard work in the field of theoretical physics?

I imagine a dialogue between a scientist (maybe at Cern) and Chao-Chou, the ancient Chinese Chan Buddhist Master:

Scientist:We just detected the Higgs boson, that indicates our theory of the Universe might be correct !
Chao-Chou: Did you wash your bowl ?

No … Chao-Chou might have asked on July 4th, 2012 “Did you switch of light ?”

An ancient Chinese tale explains that dogs are difficult to paint because they are so common; in contrast, demons are easy to draw because they are product of our imagination. This idea I first learnt from Alex Kerr’s controversial book “Dogs and Demons – Tales from the Dark Side of Japan”.

Thinking back, all my efforts studying Zen and Japanese Arts was a process of searching demons and finding dogs. The shiny, much appreciated, rich of impressive effects teachers luckily never crossed my way …

In Martial Arts, Zen, Calligraphy and Shakuhachi at first I was attracted by super-human power and superficial beauty, but regularly ended up with teachers following a very plain and seemingly unattractive way. No cheap effects, no glory … and no high ranks or certificates to earn.

I must admit I often was full of doubt against my teachers and secretly imitated the “demons art” while learning their plain lessons. Are they cheating me? Are they just teaching the basics year after year, and I miss any advanced lesson? Will I ever be able to do the real thing?

It took me many years to understand the secret behind dogs and demons. The plain calligraphy, the sober Aikido and Iaido style I learnt, the frugal Shakuhachi and most of all a simple approach to Zen and every day life is all I want to practise and teach nowadays. Nothing but dogs …

My house and Dojo is filled with the fragrance of roses. Just outside the kitchen window stands an old rose bush, meters high and in full blossom. I only have to open the window to enjoy the view and let the odour in. The rose survived last years pre-mature spring (with a second blossom in autumn), this winter’s most severe frost (which destroyed my bamboo and maple tree), and even a lightning stroke a few weeks ago. In size and beauty it easily matches those examples I appreciate so much in the courtyards of some old Oxford colleges.

Until yesterday. My neighbours cut the rose down and dug the roots out, they said it was “too large”, the falling petals were producing “too much of a mess” and the whole appearance was “too disorderly”. Very sad, I collected some blossoms from the ground and put them in a bamboo vase I produced last week from a rod left over after making a Shakuhachi.

This unreasonable act of destruction reminds me of an episode with the tea master Sen no Rikyu, who once destroyed all morning glories in his garden just to display one single blossom during a tea ceremony with Toyotomi Hideyoshi. I must admit, I never much liked this tale … though we can maybe learn from it that “too much” of something is always at risk.

I guess it is time to leave this place for good …

As beginners of Zazen most of us went through a similar experience: after the first excitement about the new discovery vanished and we learned to master the leg-pain which kept us busy the first half year or so, we sit on our pillows fighting sleepiness, boredom and a wandering mind.

A good practise maintained (and possibly with the support of a good teacher), after some time we learn to benefit from regular Zazen and appreciate the time sitting on our pillow, instead of just waiting for endlessly long minutes to pass by (change your teacher, if you got stuck here for years!).

For many years, though, I was unable to transfer my positive Zazen experience into playing the Shakuhachi. While sitting Zazen felt very o.k., I was often bored and tortured by a wandering mind when practising Honkyoku, and hoped to reach the end of a long ancient piece to come soon while playing. It almost drove me mad to realise how difficult it was to take something of my Zen experience into “daily life”, and be it just another Zen exercise.

What made me not give up were the lessons with my teacher. Physically and intellectually very demanding and never boring hours, each time I saw and heard him play or played together with him I was once again sure where this way can lead me, if I just keep on going.

These days, playing the Shakuhachi or Kyotaku and sitting Zazen is the same for me, no difference at all … but it was a very long way to get there. Thanks to this experience I consider it so very important to study a Zen-Art in addition to just sitting Zazen. It gives us the chance to learn how to expand Zen to every day life, and it provides us with a qualified and maybe sobering feed-back about how deep or shallow our Zen experience really is.

The ancient name for the Japanese bamboo flute Shakuhachi is Kyotaku (虚鐸), which means “false bell”. Legend has it that the Chinese Monk F’u Hua Ch’an Shih was ringing a bell when he went begging. His want-to-be student Chang Po, though being rejected by F’u Hua Ch’an Shih, tried to imitate the sound of the bell with his bamboo flute.

I consider the idea quite inspiring that the Shakuhachi origins from the imitation of a bell by a rejected student, though nowadays it is believed this legend was just made up by the Komuso, the Shakuhachi playing monks of the Fuke sect.

While the modern Shakuhachi, which developed since the Meiji era, is just for musical performance, the ancient sound of the Kyotaku can still be heard at hidden places. Many of it’s followers insist their practice of the original pieces, the Honkyoku (本曲), is some kind of prayer and never for public performance.

In my Dojo, playing the Kyotaku is performed as “Blowing Zen” (Suizen 吹禅) practice, and instead of reciting Sutra after Sutra. Said that, I believe that like the music of J.S. Bach, which extended beyond its original religious purpose in Western culture, the Kyotaku has a similar potential. Be it a prayer, a Sutra recitation or just music, the sound of the Kyotaku is able to directly touch the listeners heart, independent of his or her religious or cultural background.

When my daughter was little, she insisted doing everything on her own before she was actually able to do it … dressing up, closing shoe-laces, climbing up and down the stairs. No parent’s help allowed! All kids are like that: looking out for new challenges and expanding their skills by overcoming difficulties.

Becoming adult, many of us loose that attitude, and we spend considerable effort into making our environment and things and tools of our daily life as easy to use and comfortable as possible. The sad extreme is someone who is best at operating the TV’s remote control while lying comfortably on the sofa, eating ready-made food.

A significant part of practising Zen or Zen-Arts is overcoming difficulties. Why do we sit on a pillow instead of a sofa, why do we use an ancient brush instead of computer software to write and draw. Why is Budo training so close to pain, sweat and tears? And why is Suizen (“blowing Zen”) practised with a rough seven-hole bamboo stick instead of perfectly tuned and easy to play modern Shakuhachi or silver flute?

We learn new things and grow only with overcoming difficulties, and by that we become more and more free and independent from random circumstances. The deep essence of Zen is no-ego … that suffering, nerve-wrecking needy “I” “I” “I”, which does not feel comfortable until the whole world around is modified to meet it’s requirements vanishes … and one day everything what just comes along is good.

Though, it requires a bit of a kid’s enthusiasm and focussed effort to get there, or “Zen-training”, as we adults like to call it …

When I started learning how to play the Shakuhachi about thirteen years ago, I got the impression it is not much more than a roughly cleaned stick of bamboo with seven holes: one on top, one on the bottom and five finger holes. And it is terribly difficult to produce any proper sound with it, if not any sound at all. I was shocked how much this very expensive flute I got from my teacher failed to match any criteria for a proper musical instrument I for example saw perfectly fulfilled by my cherished Selmer saxophone.

It took me ten years to understand why the seemingly imperfection of the Shakuhachi I struggle to play makes it so suitable for my practise, and why the modern Shakuhachi, designed considering the complicated physics of sound generation and therefore easy to play, do not.

Recently I started making Shakuhachi myself … just rough bamboo sticks with seven holes. They sound very much like my teachers flute, yet they are a bit too easy to play. I guess I have to impair their musical quality, to make them good instruments for Zen practise.