Prehistoric people made musical instruments out of bone and ivory soon after reaching Europe
A Science News article, Stone Age flutes found in Germany, reports that people living in Europe more than 35,000 years ago made this flute (shown from three different angles) out of a vulture bone. The magnified portion of the flute at the right provides a closer look at two of the flute’s finger holes.
As far as I can make out, it appears to be a simple end blown flute like the shakuhachi. The blowing technique is similar to blowing across the top of a bottle to produce a pleasant resonant tone. By placing holes in it, you can play a melody (or something melody-like in the case of Buddhist Hon Kyoku).
It feels intriguing being connected to a musical tradition (the end blow flute) that predates civilization as we know it by tens of thousands of years. Keeping that image in mind, while I play it, helps me put ‘tao’ into the blowing Zen. I mean, talk about the thread running through the way!
Where is the jungle?
Where’s the jungle?” I thought. Malaya’s beautiful paved roads weren’t what I had expected at all. Still, I had just left Singapore.
While working in Australia in the early 60’s, I met folks who intrigued me with their stories of traveling over land through India and Southeast Asia. Instead of returning to US as planned, I decided to set out overland to Europe through Asia. Hitchhiking was a must, in view of my budget, though it felt weird considering I’d never hitchhiked before.
As a ‘be prepared’ type of person, I read a book on tropical diseases. Though gruesome, it didn’t deter me. Instead, I packed a few boxes full of meds for every emergency I’d read about. After all, I was headed for the jungles of Southeast Asia, full of snakes, tigers, bugs and bacteria of every sort. Continue reading ‘Into the Jungle?’
"... very majestic, slow and regular,..."
Well, like spermatozoa or any other moving micro organism for that matter. The Science News article (July 4, 2009) on ‘Microswimmers’ described movements of living things in the microscopic world that very much parallel the movement one seeks to experience in Tai Chi.
Consider this quote: “Motion at low Reynolds number is very majestic, slow and regular,” the late physicist E.M. Purcell said in a famous 1976 lecture on the physics of micro-organisms Continue reading ‘Swimming Tai Chi Spermatozoa Style’
Yes, you are! I am! They are! We are! We’ve all been out of touch with nature for millennia so there’s nothing to feel guilty about, I reckon. Essentially, religion is merely a symptom of this out of touch with nature feeling, and of our wish to return to Eden.
Speaking of Eden, there is a curious side to Christianity. Genesis (old testament) parallels the Taoist view of this out of touch with nature state (albeit with some hyperbole): “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die“. Continue reading ‘Are you out of touch with nature?’
And there I was, on the road during a cyclone in Vietnam. I was hitchhiking the length of South Vietnam in the early 60’s (before the Tonkin incident started us down that foolish by-path)!
Earlier, I had shared a house in Saigon with some journalists. They told me that, if I got a ‘press pass’ from the USIA (United States Information Agency), I could hop on any in-country flights. Mind you, I didn’t have to be a journalist, all I had to do was say I was a journalist. I thought to myself, “Now that’s the way to hitchhike!” Continue reading ‘It was a dark and stormy night…’
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