実聞 Hearing with your own ears

Tuesday training at Ayase, Hatsumi Sensei talked about 虚空, kokuu, which is the name of a technique in 玉虎流骨指術, Gyokko-Ryu kosshi jutsu.

But what is in the kokuu? The word 虚実, kyojitsu, means falsehood and truth. It starts with the same kanji as kokuu. The 虚 part of the word means variously empty and false, and can imply the empty thing is something abstract. The 空, ku part of kokuu is about emptiness, too, and often indicates a void in a object.

In Japanese, people often refer to the sky as 虚空. Hatsumi Sensei remarked that a dying person will grasp at the kokuu as they are departing this world.

He tells us again and again the same words – use the air as your shield.

He also made a comment to the effect that, one moment, you think, “There it is!” and the next moment it is not.

Here is a shakuhachi performance of a piece called 虚空. The sound is created essentially by air, shaped by the movements of the player’s hands and breathing, through a reedless bamboo tube. What makes the sound? The player, the air, the bamboo tube, your ears catching the sound, or your mind?