Carl Abbott

Doing without doing, following without exception rules
Chapter 3 of the Tao Te Ching offers useful, though somewhat inscrutable, hints on the secret to blowing Zen.

Not to value worthy people, enables people […]

I’m uploading a series of informal videos (with some tips) that may help one play honkyoku by heart. For me, playing by heart has brought me deeper into the sound than I ever achieved over my decades of playing […]

I intend to do all I can to help others play honkyoku by heart. Of course, I don’t really know what I’m going to do, or in fact what I’m doing. This playing by heart has been a recent revelation for me. I just […]

First, here is the PDF of these two honkyoku:  HiFuMi & Akebono
*** Play them by heart ***
I wrote this post as a duet to attempt. That is rather difficult to accomplish given the need for 2 very different […]

Akita Sugagaki #4 to #6
Akita Sugagaki #6 to #7
Akita Sugagaki #7 to End
Note: This is the rest of this piece. I’m not sure how helpful this approach is, so I thought I’d try something else next time. Perhaps […]

Akita Sugagaki #3 to  #4
Note: This section goes from HA-YURI-RO of line 3 to HA-YURI-RO of line 4. I play it twice, straight and diagonal (although I don’t know if the diagonal view is that useful)

The […]

Akita Sugagaki #1 to  #3
The notation for these honkyoku are in Blowing Zen Expanded Edition and Blowing Zen II
Honkyoku Line by Line
Every now and then I’ll post a small section of honkyoku. My guess is th […]

Akita Sugagaki #2
The notation for these honkyoku are in Blowing Zen Expanded Edition and Blowing Zen II
Honkyoku Line by Line
Every now and then I’ll post a small section of honkyoku. My guess is that b […]

Akita Sugagaki #1
 The notation for these honkyoku are in Blowing Zen Expanded Edition and Blowing Zen II
Honkyoku Line by Line
Every now and then I’ll post a small section of honkyoku. My guess is that br […]

Every now and then I’ll post a small section of honkyoku (1). My guess is that breaking honkyoku down into bite size parts may help some at the beginning of this journey… or not. This is an experiment, after a […]

Hi Fu Mi – Part A & C

The notation for these honkyoku are in Blowing Zen Expanded Edition and Blowing Zen II
Honkyoku Line by Line
Every now and then I’ll post a small section of honkyoku (1). My guess is t […]

Kyle meets Takeo & Yamaguchi Goro’s Shakuhachi! I met Takeo at Yamaguchi san’s house. Yamaguchi’s practice was to schedule students in such a way as to have a few lined up and observing him and the current student […]

I began my latest book, Blowing Zen Honkyoku with the secret I found to playing honkyoku… playing it by heart. In Chinese,  心 xīn: the heart; heart; mind; feeling; intention; centre; core. Playing by heart permi […]

I was going to name this post The Real Lesson, but somehow that felt a little off base, so I named it after my shakuhachi flute teacher, Yamaguchi Goro. This photo is of him and Aoki Reibo playing a beautiful […]

Google [Stone Age flutes found in Germany] for a report on people living in Europe 35,000 years ago who made this flute out of a vulture bone. It’s shown here from three different angles with a magnified portion o […]

I imagine everyone is naturally both over-rigorous and under-rigorous… just in different areas, according to their natures. It is when over or under rigor causes pain for us that it becomes problematic. The […]

What we seek lies within us. The more confused we get, the more likely we will look deeper within for resolution. This process corresponds to the Taoist view, If you would have a thing shrink, You must first […]

Yes! This is true for the Buddhist Honkyoku. What you do need, however, is to pay attention. Yet, you don’t even need to do that. Of course, if you don’t really listen to what you are doing, you will not enjoy […]