Exhalation, Creation: The Zen of Breath in Japanese Art

As long as people have been able to talk the breath with which they exhaled their words was accorded the honor of being the physical manifestation of the soul. According to Biblical tradition, the first human was created when God breathed into the dust, thus giving "life" or a "soul" to inanimate material. The Indian subcontinent's earliest religious text, the 5,000 year-old Rig Veda, likewise talks of an ancient and chaotic sea to which a breath would bring forth life. In more modern times the breath has been equated time and again with life and with the soul itself: a lovers' kiss was once seen as a uniting of spirits, and the smacking of a baby and the crying it produced hailed vivification.

Though in recent years reverence for breathing, along with a good many other natural powers and processes, has dwindled, Zen Buddhism continues to teach that in the breath there is enlightenment itself. In Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki equates the breath with the concept of "I;" "I" is merely the "swinging door" of inhalation and exhalation (Suzuki 1991). Suzuki further states that in meditation, focus on the breath is crucial to enlightenment, as breathing is an act identifiable with the activities of the universal mind.

Zen not only stresses the importance of breath in meditation but has further integrated the philosophy into several of its arts. In the Japanese tradition of suizen, or "breathing meditation," a monk plays the bamboo flute with the earnest intention of achieving enlightenment. As the music of the Japanese shakuhachi is usually more evocative of a natural scene than traditionally melodic the player is required to momentarily unify the physical breath and the metaphysical spirit. The saying ichion jobutsu, or "One sound, become Buddha," paraphrases this concept. In evoking the chiming of bells or a windswept valley, the monk or lay player is making an attempt at awakening as dedicated and rigorous as meditation itself.