Musica che affronta il silenzio - Scritti su Toru Takemitsu - Pavia ...

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
In terms of religion, one only has to think of the insistence in all the schools of Zen Buddhism
on the need to go beyond the words, whether written or spoken, to grasp experience in
its nascent state, in all its ‘innocence’, before it is captured and imprisoned in the net of
words, concepts and reasoning. For Westerners accustomed to the pre-eminence of the logos
this is a particularly difficult concept. I dissent from those who insist on the distinction between
a ‘mystical’ Orient and a ‘rational’ West. One can recognise an analogous quest for
pure experience in the work, for example, of the outstanding philosopher Edmund Husserl: in
essence all phenomenology is characterised by the attempt to arrive at a pure, pre-categorical
experience, prior to the appearance of words, concepts and so forth.
Let us look, for example, at two passages from Dgen:
It means that the universe is not bound by ideas of vast or minute, large or small; it is not
square or round, not the center, not liveliness, not brightness – when we transcend those
forms the universe emerges. (Dgen 1975: 24) 3
[Water] that is not bounded by any bank or shore: this is water that is clean right to the
bottom. When fish move through this water, swimming is not non-existent. Swimming,
for however many tens of thousands of distances it progresses, is unfathomable and is
unlimited. There is no bank from which to survey it, there is no air to which it might surface,
and there is no bottom to which it might sink. Therefore, there is no one who can
fathom it. If we want to discuss its measurements, [we say] only that the water is clean
right to the bottom. (Dgen 1994: 104) 4
This metaphor of water is one of the most common in Buddhist teachings. It is fundamental
because it explains, better than any other abstract concept, that experience cannot be captured,
and yet it is at the heart of every capture. In this sense there is no opposition, but continuity.
Alternatively we can consider the sense of this outburst by Linji, a master of the
Rinzai school:
Students of today get nowhere because they base their understanding upon the acknowledgment
of names. They inscribe the words of some dead old guy in a great big
notebook, wrap it up in four or five squares of cloth, and won't let anyone look at it.
‘This is the Mysterious Principle’, they aver, and safeguard it with care. That’s all
wrong. Blind idiots! What kind of juice are you looking for in such dried-up bones!
(Linji 2009: 260)
The meaning is perfectly clear: truth, like water or nature or silence, cannot be grasped.
Whoever seeks to follow the writings or teachings of some master or other is an idiot: Linji
is that famous no-nonsense teacher who said, ‘If you meet Buddha, kill him’. If you should
3 See also chs. 23 (Tsuki), 24 (Gaby) and 61 (Rygin). Or. ed. Dgen Zenji, Shbgenz, Nakayama Shobo,
Tokyo, 1975: 7, Ikkamyju [A shining pearl].
4 Or. ed. Dgen Zenji, Shbgenz, Nakayama Shobo, Tokyo, 1975: 12, Zazenshin [Instructions for zazen].
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