These sounds may be unfamiliar to you.
They may simply consist of sound itself, rather than music.
Even if there are hundreds of millions of people around, each one of them indubitably lives a singular life. As a single unit of karma filling this world, one continues one’s unique operation and eventually disappears into this very same world of karma. This is especially why one gives out one’s original sound. It is not to communicate with others, but this life which is made alive just reverberates. Will that take a form? That is an unfathomable subject.
Thus, if I were asked what I am making, I would answer “nembutsu.”
shindo_onoz
---
Based on the Oriental sense of time/space,
and the Buddhist worldview, shindo_onoz has been
pursuing his own ambient world of sound.
【endless wind】
The wind is not the music. It doesn't sing of love or sadness. It's exempt from exhilaration or fascination. Here, the wind blows upon all living beings and tangible things. It blows desolately into the scenery and all tired, distressed minds and bodies. The wind is not music, yet I want to linger and listen to the wind. As though I was born from the wind, I want to remain standing motionless in the soothing sound of the wind. I want to stay sitting quietly in an indistinct realm between the wind and myself. I can allow my body to sink, supported by a force of incomparable certainty, and just carve out the sounds. The endless wind... This sound doesn't sing of love or sadness. It's exempt from exhilaration or fascination.
【penetrating sound】
As if in confrontation with the endlessly tranquil sky, a crouching black rock lying on the bare mountain sometimes lets loose a scream, which nobody gets to hear.
Its rhythm shoots straight through the unlimited space, seeming to be the base power that penetrates the void, and spectacularly reflects at the bottom.
Wildlife, emit your own sound.
Sound as you are.
Refuse to be captured and sung in chorus,
And thump this world.
Brutal being, make a striking sound.
Rise to your feet as a solitary soaring being,
And thump this world.
【desolate rove】
The ancient noble said that this world is an utter manifestation of chances and there is no real existence.
Bodhisattva, with her boundless compassion, grieved in pity for our inability to relieve our own suffering.
Tens of millions of souls must have subsisted on that mercy.
Hundreds of millions of souls must have expired in that merciful embrace.
Depending on that mercy, we roam the infinite loneliness of this world where there is no actual being.
【take】
The bamboo stands tall,
Upright,
Rustling and swaying in the wind,
Glowing blue, giving off a subtle scent,
And never becoming anything else.
The unsung,
The unnamed,
The untouched,
The unheard,
The uncolored.
It pierces them,
Straight,
Standing tall.
【ring】
A round ring, we stay in the sunshine,
We relax and drink tea.
There are complications of this and that,
Let us forget them all and doze off.
We may have existed,
Spent long years until now,
For this very moment.
A round ring,
We stay in the sunshine.
【carved】
Old mind, see the bark.
Look at the color roughened with distress.
Look at the life that’s frayed with pain.
Old mind,
In the darkening forest.
Stand still, indefinitely, and then,
Look at the Buddha that appears there.
【dusk】
Under the twilight sky,
In a scarlet wind.
I listen to a quiet heart,
Which beats to no time,
Saying, “That’s fine.”
But,
Why does it sound
So infinitely sad?
That,
I don’t know.
【breath】
Growing haziness may not be due to my eyesight or age.
Cloaked in a novel shade, something may be coming to light.
The faint light that comes and goes in the fog,
The subtle vibration, like a voice,
The fragrant scent, like a breeze,
It’s a landscape that I encounter for the first time.
Yet, the truth is,
I may have been previously familiar with it.
