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Separate web page uploaded on January 27, 2023
Overall conclusion that has manifested itself as the inevitable outcome
of the present, more than 4 decades long research project
No matter what you may be feeling or reasoning, these are the plain and simple facts:
The asserted history and alleged characteristics of Ascetic Shakuhachi Culture in Japan
have been most purposefully "constructed" since the very early beginnings.
This more or less constantly ongoing activity of deliberate source falsification, forging and fanciful myth fabrication is taking place still, this very day -
generated by "professionals" and "amateurs" alike,
inside as well as outside of Japan - be they both shakuhachi musicians and players, musicologists and "history" writers, book editors and publishers
- beside a wide variety of enough so sincerely devoted shakuhachi "admirers" in general.
Very little indeed of what you can find and read in most of the books and articles, in phonogram cover notes
and on the internet - be that on websites or weblogs presented in a variety of languages - can actually be soberly corroborated when first one is investigating the totality of known,
preserved text and picture source materials etc. - the multitude, comprehensiveness and complexity of which is not only aweinspiring but truly terrifying.
The very most central and important fact having now been revealed is that there were absolutely no socalled 'Komusō',
虚無僧,
"Pseudo-monks of Non-Duality & None-ness",
in existence and action in Japan before the middle decades of 17th century, at the earliest!
Neither did the Edo Period 'Komusō' in their writings about themselves, nor any outsiders writing about the 'Komusō', present, document and share any kind of
specific, collective and descriptive term for any ascetic use of the 'shakuhachi' for "mind-body enlightenment therapeutic" purposes
- a.k.a. "meditation", "mindfulness", "healing" in the West.
Anything like that only became "reality" in Japan after 1950, when the term 'Suizen',
吹禅 -
best interpreted as "Non-dual Ascetic Shakuhachi Practice" -
was, eventually, invented and established by the Myōan Temple in Kyōto to characterize and represent
the extraordinary original ascetic shakuhachi culture celebrated and preserved within the circles of the Myōan Taizan-ha Tradition
of so called 'Fuke Shakuhachi'.
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