The belief in the inherent emptiness of phenomena and the interrelationship of all things that is fundamental to Buddhism is also at the heart of the philosophy of music of some of the best jazz musicians. Some of those who espouse the philosophy of life and music I am referring to are Larry Coryell, with whom I grew up (in a sense), in Westport, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, all of whom practice Nichiren Buddhism, and chant the mantra, "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo"in an effort to awaken their Buddha nature and tap into their deepest layers of existence. While I am not a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, but another kind of Buddhism--which is as diverse as the rivers of the world--I do share with these musicians/artists a series of core strands of beliefs which I feel makes their music as well as my appreciation of it all the richer.
Shorter is one of those Buddhists who believes that dedication to his practice can actually spark a human revolution. One of our great living jazz treasures, he is a vibrant innovator who has inspired many musicians and artists around the globe and has won numerous Grammy Awards, among them the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition for "Aung Sang Suu Kyi," a lyrical and haunting composition dedicated to the Buddhist Burmese Nobel Laureate who was freed not long ago after years of enduring house arrest in her land.
Along these same lines, it's interesting to note that while some of the greatest musicians such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk were not Buddhists per se, they espoused an essentially Buddhist philosophy of transcendence and purity in their music. In his biography of Miles, So What -- The Life of Miles Davis, John Szwed quotes Shorter on the subject of Miles Davis. Shorter was with Miles' group from 1964 to 1970, then left with Miles' keyboardist Joe Zawinul to form a fusion group, Weather Report.
Shorter on Davis: "Many musicians talked of Davis's approach to music in terms of its purity, an integrity that transcends style. He aimed for a music that reached beyond voice, beyond music itself, even to the unplayable: to playing what's not there."
Shorter goes further into describing what he believes Miles was trying to do in his music, which was not to only achieve transcendence, but a spiritual understanding through the medium.
"Sometimes when Miles was doing things, we would say, 'Miles is messing up.' He wasn't messing up. He was trying to destroy something, a learned thing or something he had done before or repeated. It was like he was stumbling through something. And then the stumbling became beautiful, but he wasn't actually stumbling. He was and he wasn't. It was seamless. It was a seamless process going on. What he was doing was a dramatization of struggle in life: what the hell music might be for. To another degree it's figuring out what life is for. We have so many ways to express what life is for that we have to be careful of getting hung up on the formality of something, a mold or a way of doing something which is not the way of life."
To these artists and musicians who consciously strive to integrate their music and spirituality, I offer up the homage of the sacred Buddhist mantra, OM GATE GATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SOHA, which is the essence of The Heart Sutra on Emptiness. The mantra means literally, "Gone, gone, gone altogether beyond."
