The western view of human development is that musical creativity blossoms in childhood. Music education research tends, therefore, to focus on children's musical development. Many studies have examined aspects of children's musical behaviours and responses pertaining to how and when they emerge. While these studies provide a useful perspective for music educators, the findings often carry little meaning for adult learners. Hays et al. (Reference HAYS, BRIGHT and MINICHIELLO2002) argue that other perspectives are necessary to explore adult learners’ experiences of music; such dimensions include, for example, identity, well-being, ageing and spirituality (also see Pitts, Reference PITTS2005). For many adult learners, especially those who start learning music late, the purpose of learning music is to engage in self-cultivation, self-fulfilment and to explore the meaning of life through joining a community of music practice.

In education research, spirituality is becoming an important area of investigation, as it plays a significant role in all stages of human learning; ranging from schooling (Erricker et al., Reference ERRICKER, OTA and ERRICKER2001) to higher education (Shahjahan, Reference SHAHJAHAN2004a, Reference SHAHJAHAN2004b) and continuing and vocational education (Merriam & Brockett, Reference MERRIAM and BROCKETT1997/2007). For instance, spirituality is the defining aspect of holistic education that aims at nurturing the development of the whole person. Miller (Reference MILLER, Miller, Karsten, Denton, Orr and Kates2005) argues that progressive education and humanistic education dealt with the intellectual, emotional, physical, social and aesthetic, but generally ignored the spiritual dimension. Reviewing a decade of research in adult and continuing education, Merriam and Brockett (Reference MERRIAM and BROCKETT1997/2007) observe that the field has witnessed a prominent trend that embraces ‘a more holistic understanding of learning, that is, how our bodies, our emotions, and our spirits are connected to knowing’ (p. 301). For Merriam and Brockett and others, spirituality is a secular concept, as expressed by such concepts as secular spirituality (Van Ness, Reference VAN NESS1996) and everyday spirituality (Noddings, Reference NODDINGS2003). Van Ness (Reference VAN NESS1996) argues that spirituality is a series of lived experiences of self-transformation and subsequent gradual development. Noddings (Reference NODDINGS2003) sees spirituality as a realisation of the most profound realities of one's world and a consciousness of the self in the fullest sense. She observes that the glorification of suffering in mortal life in favour of afterlife happiness – repeatedly emphasised in religious traditions – influences our image of spirituality. What is lacking, according to Noddings, is a vision of everyday spirituality that leads to here-and-now happiness that can be pursued directly without resorting to esoteric pathways.

Instead of promoting a particular type of spirituality, educators often emphasise the role of art, music, poetry, photography and drama as a method of deepening understanding of self and the world (Lawrence, Reference LAWRENCE2005). In fact, music has been the most powerful media for humans to express their profound experience of the world, and spirituality has been a significant part of human expression of music. Music has served to awaken people's higher levels of consciousness, reaffirms the covenants between humankind and nature, and connects people in different (or the same) times and places. In fact, scholars have discussed the spiritual dimensions of human musical experience using psychological concepts, such as ‘flow’ and ‘transcendence’ (Palmer, Reference PALMER2006; Bernard, Reference BERNARD2009). Some posit that aesthetics is a modern rendition of spirituality: Boyce-Tillman (Reference BOYCE-TILLMAN, Harvey and Ralls2000) observes that music is the last remaining ubiquitous spiritual experience in many secularised Western cultures. In the area of spirituality, ‘notions of the aesthetic have replaced God, and notions of healing were replaced by notions of personal individualised enlightenment and amelioration’ (Boyce-Tillman, Reference BOYCE-TILLMAN2004, p. 114). In fact, experience of the arts is often seen as the only venue in the public domain where the exploration of spirituality is accepted. Often, with this connection to the arts, the word ‘spirituality’ is used in a more ‘innocuous’ way (Hay & Nye, Reference HAY and NYE1998, p. 8). Coincidentally, it is in the field of arts education that spirituality has been researched (e.g. London, Reference LONDON1989; Campbell, Reference CAMPBELL2003; Gradle, Reference GRADLE and Bresler2007). One of the sections of the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (2007) is devoted to issues of spirituality in education. Section editor Rita Irwin (Reference IRWIN and Bresler2007) observes that, despite major trends and changes in education, ‘people are still longing for more meaning in their lives and in their educational pursuits . . . Our roles as parents, educators, and artists have become the focus of our existence’ (p. 1401).

Reviewing research progress in related fields suggests that the holistic paradigm of educational inquiry serves to enlarge the framework of music education by recognising the importance of the spiritual dimension of music experience. Just as progressive education is criticised by holistic educators such as Miller (Reference MILLER, Miller, Karsten, Denton, Orr and Kates2005), music education is not seen to have embraced the spiritual as much as it has the intellectual, emotional, physical, social and aesthetic. What does it mean to engage in music with our spirits, and how does music help adult learners grow spiritually and become fully engaged in life? Most importantly, what makes their music learning spiritually satisfying and meaningful to them? In this paper, I present a case study of North American adult students of Japanese music, specifically shakuhachi music, to explore their experiences of spirituality. With its association with Zen, the shakuhachi, a type of end-blown bamboo flute from Japan, has recently experienced a new wave of attention both inside and outside Japan. For many shakuhachi practitioners, including the participants in this study, the shakuhachi is a tool for self-cultivation. This paper highlights their approaches to learning music from a spirituality framework that sheds light on the inner richness of musical experience. Drawing on their lived experiences of music, I argue that spirituality is not only for advanced students but can be acquired by beginners regardless of their levels of musical expression.

Research on music spirituality as educational inquiry

The starting assumption of this inquiry is that research into spirituality, or anything similar, is an educational inquiry because spirituality involves both temporal and long-term dimensions of human growth. The former dimension is provided by Hay and Nye's (Reference HAY and NYE1998) perspective of awareness sensing. They argue that spirituality, however defined, refers to heightened awareness of ourselves and our intimate relationship with everything that is beyond ourselves. They highlight five dimensions of such awareness sensing, which provide a useful perspective for the analysis of spiritual engagement in music:

1. 1. The here-and-now experience: A complete immersion into the experience of the present moment, being intensely committed to the immediacy of the here-and-now in its full concreteness.

2. 2. Tuning: A complete ‘resonance’ or ‘being in tune’ with something outside of oneself, such as a musical performance or nature.

3. 3. Flow: A total absorption in the performance of a task, with the feeling that the activity, rather than the performer, is managing itself.

4. 4. Focusing: The ‘bodily felt sense’ of any experience; an expression of the wisdom of the body (Ho, Reference HO, Erricker, Ota and Erricker2001, p. 171).

5. 5. Relational consciousness: A deep-felt sense of connectedness with others and within oneself; person-God consciousness, person-people consciousness, person-world consciousness, and person-self consciousness (Hay & Nye, Reference HAY and NYE1998).

Hay and Nye's spirituality framework, when applied to the analysis of participants’ shakuhachi learning experiences, highlighted such moments as: (a) playing simple music in nature that facilitated the formation of an embodied sense of the self merged into the environment; (b) playing in a group to form a heightened awareness of connectedness and sense of mutual tuning-in; and (c) engaging in a long-tone practice that promoted the members’ heightened awareness of the here-and-now and synchronisation into the vivid present.

Spiritual practice of music, like any form of spiritual engagement, does not necessarily warrant its results as educationally meaningful. Noddings (Reference NODDINGS2003) warns that spirituality can turn people selfishly inward for a source of private comfort instead of leading them to the public realm. It can also turn people emptily outward for technical developments without facilitating their inner development. Thus, what is necessary for the exploration of adult music students’ spirituality is a working framework that posits that spiritual engagement in music is educationally meaningful. Van Ness (Reference VAN NESS1996) provides such a perspective. His observations of spirituality address both its inward and outward dimensions:

Van Ness claims that the spiritual dimension of human existence is hypothesised to have an outer and an inner complexion and that both sides are interdependent and closely related. This framework suggests that it requires effort for spirituality to integrate the outward and inward dimensions of a life experience; for example, one's effort to strive outward for musical perfection coincides with his or her attempt to engage inward in the process of self-cultivation. For someone enthusiastic about performing music, musical engagement takes an embodied task of realising his or her truest self in the context of music practice towards an ideal image of music performance. Van Ness posits that spirituality is educational because it leads to a project of attaining the optimal relationship between one's musical pursuit and enduring self-cultivation. In other words, spirituality is an extended project of life-integration, an effort to transcend the separation of mind and body, self and world, process and product, musical expression and self-cultivation, which manifests itself in an integrated synthesis of growth and development. This framework, applied to my analysis of North American adult students’ shakuhachi learning experience, underscores the relationship between their musical and spiritual pursuits through the shakuhachi practice as a life integration project.

Musical epiphany

A beginner at shakuhachi music, Andrew is an expert in hip-hop. As such, his point of reference for understanding shakuhachi playing is his own experience of hip-hop performance. His narrative reflects both his background in electronic music and his shakuhachi adventure. The gap between these contrasting orientations to music practice and underlying value differences gave him a fresh perspective to look at his life experience as a musician. He received a strong impact through the shakuhachi so far as to say, ‘Shakuhachi taught me so much. It helped to change my path and life permanently.’ The vision of spirituality as a life-integration project is clearly exemplified in his narrative. He reflected on his musical path:

Andrew sees his familiar world of hip-hop music and electronic music as requiring more and more. In contrast, the shakuhachi reminds him to go for ‘less and less’. Andrew suggests that the awareness of the properties of music, such as rhythm and pitch, can be hindrances to gaining an intimate, organic experience of music. For him, simplicity is the key to the experience of shakuhachi playing, through which he has transformed his view of music. He remarked:

As explained later, Andrew's practice of shakuhachi involves focusing on a simple expression such as a single tone. He elaborates this aspect of shakuhachi experience using his knowledge of jazz. He hears the sound of the shakuhachi as expressing ‘no structure, no restrictions, merely tension and energy’, which is very similar to his experience of jazz. He stated:

For Andrew, the shakuhachi need not be a musical instrument but a tool to explore his feelings. It becomes an expression of ‘concentration’, ‘tension’ and ‘energy’ rather than of ‘music’ that is often accompanied by a series of rules and restrictions.

Andrew continued to talk about the organic aspect of shakuhachi making in relation to his concern of more natural life. He saw the analogue process of harvesting bamboo, making flutes out of nature, and playing music using self-made flutes, as a counter practice of what he had hoped to achieve through digital music making. The shakuhachi provided him with a medium to reinterpret his life experiences of music through these digital-analogue, artificial-organic binary lenses. Using the shakuhachi, he irresistibly transformed his perception and path of music. This spiritually satisfying involvement in music was achieved by his realisation that less-is-more approaches to music making can bring about an intimate, organic experience of music.

Making connections

The ‘less is more’ approach to music making allowed Andrew to engage in the here-and-now and what Hay and Nye (Reference HAY and NYE1998) called ‘tuning’. The following anecdote underscores long-tone practice on the shakuhachi (known as ro-buki) as a form of tuning. The idea behind long-tone practice on the shakuhachi is that if one practices the basic tone (called ro) over a period of time, his or her breathing strength will be extended. So will the mind. ‘Ro-buki ten minutes a day’ is an adage that legendary shakuhachi player Watazumi Doso (1910–1992) emphasised as a form of effective shakuhachi practice. Although many shakuhachi practitioners use ro-buki for a more utilitarian purpose as a method of forming a firm embouchure and muscle around the lips, its spiritual value is still present when they speak of ichion-jobutsu, a concept meaning ‘the attainment of enlightenment through perfecting a single tone’ (Gutzwiller, Reference GUTZWILLER1974, Reference GUTZWILLER1984; Howard, Reference HOWARD, Bebbington and Gustavson1992; Lee, Reference LEE1992; Shimura, Reference SHIMURA2002; Keister, Reference KEISTER2004; Matsunobu, Reference MATSUNOBU and Bresler2007). This idea of pursuing spirituality by focusing on a single tone has been used to represent the spirit of the fuke shakuhachi tradition in which practitioners – historically monks – performed the classical repertoire of shakuhachi music (called honkyoku) as a form of self-cultivation (Shimura, Reference SHIMURA2002). The chief goal of ichion-jobutsu is not to experience aesthetic pleasure but to achieve personal and spiritual maturity through the realisation of the ‘ultimate tone’. This indigenous notion, derived from Japan, is often employed in the West when alluding to the emphasis of shakuhachi expression on the shade and colour of each tone rather than on the structure of music, as reflected in Andrew's narrative of shakuhachi experience.

One day in the spring, Andrew and I went out to play the shakuhachi outdoors. Facing a lake near the downtown area, we started blowing into our flutes. We quietly played long tones as if we were knitting a cloth. Although our self-made flutes were different in size and pitch, they sounded quite similar in quality as if they were embracing each other. The doubled tones create a vibration rather than a volume. The long notes we produced merged into the environment. Time flew into our consciousness. In this heightened moment, human existence was felt as something continuous with the rest of nature. As we played, we noticed that groups of ducks came closer to us. As we rested, they flew away. As we blew again, they came back. Some eventually remained in the same place and did not seem to be moving away. They gave us a rhythm and sense of repetition in nature. Then, a beaver slowly floated past as if she was listening to us. After a while she disappeared towards a bush, then after 15 minutes she appeared again as if she was checking what we were doing. Enchanted, we talked to each other about what we had seen. Later, Andrew reflected on the moment:

The above description of our musical engagement through long-tone playing can be explained through Hay and Nye's framework of spiritual awareness: when focusing on playing a simple note, Andrew was engaged in the here-and-now. The vibration of the flute made him feel he was synchronised into the vivid present. In the moment that the animals appeared, his feeling of being part of nature (or ‘tuning’) was even enhanced. We played very quietly to feel each other's breath and life. When two of us worked on the same notes together and attracted wild animals, the sense of mutual synchronisation was strongly shared, which Schutz (Reference SCHUTZ and Broderson1971) would explain through the concept of ‘mutual tuning-in’. Mutual tuning-in is a kind of heightened awareness of connectedness that arises when engaging in musical acts. By sharing the other's flux of experience in direct inner time, the person participates in the act of tuning through music in which ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ are experienced as ‘We’. Andrew and I played some simple notes together instead of performing melodies and pieces. The result was tuning into the wholeness of being and the corporeal feeling of being together in the present. It was an experience of body-mind, self-world integration.

Andrew pointed out that one significant aspect of learning indigenous forms of music is to develop a sense of connection; connections to oneself, other people, one's surrounding environment, and also to the past. He believes that:

For him, indigenous musical practices that developed long ago inevitably carry sensitivity to the time and remind us of what it would be like to engage in music and life organically. In the case of the shakuhachi, this feeling of connectedness is gained not only from playing old, vintage flutes that were made hundreds of years ago but also from engaging in the process of making flutes out of self-harvested bamboo. He believes that, by engaging in the shakuhachi practice, we are able to feel that we are connected to a more profound sensitivity and spirituality. It is in this organic realm of musical experience that he explored the meaning of life and reorganised his life experiences.

Efficacy of experience

As the above anecdote indicates, ro-buki long-tone practice for Andrew and the other participants is distinctively different to what we think of long-tone practice as ‘exercise’ that is intended to build muscle. The underlying assumption of such an exercise is that it is useful for technical development but devoid of content. In contrast, ro-buki as a spiritual exercise is conducted with the means and end integrated into the context. In other words, ro-buki itself becomes the end of the practice when its goal is to pursue ichion-jobutsu. When engaging in ro-buki therefore, the separations between technique and music, content and form, mind and body, and the disparity between means and end, become least evident.

Viewed using the Van Ness framework, one distinctive character of engaging in music through the shakuhachi practice – as far as the participants were concerned – is that it facilitated the attainment of an ‘optimal relationship’ between the practitioners’ musical pursuit and self-cultivation through a ‘simple’ media, such as a single tone. By intentionally limiting the scope of outward expression, they tried to maximise the possibility of experiencing the inner richness of music. The shakuhachi was suitable for this type of musical engagement because the emphasis of its expression is placed more on the colour of each tone than the structure of music (as represented in the notion of ichion-jobutsu). Some of the participants were inclined to play simple long tones rather than executing complex musical forms with technical dexterity. Rather than playing so many pieces and so many notes, they played a limited number of pieces and notes. If these practitioners are situated on one end of the continuum, many professional musicians are on the other end. The latter group strives towards the attainment of spirituality by undergoing an arduous training, overcoming the pressure to maximise the efficiency of their practice, and satisfying their desire to achieve the highest level of expression. In contrast, the participants revealed a different path: They strove to achieve the depth of experience by ‘minimising’ the scope of outward expression of music and thereby balancing the inner-outer dimensions of the experience.

The importance of simple forms of expression was emphasised when one student stated, ‘Because bamboo is so simple, we can learn so much about ourselves. With such a simple instrument, we cannot do much. We can only face ourselves. It's not about bamboo but us’. The teacher responded: The flute is like a mirror of one's mind. Because the instrument is so simple, it reflects the player's mind; by looking at the mirror, we can tell if we are alive and breathing. He stated there are many forms of music that fulfil our needs. But most of them are like ‘stained glass’: They are decorative and therefore beautiful but not as reflective and reverberant as a pure mirror, like the shakuhachi.

The participants indicated that spirituality can be experienced regardless of the level of outward expression. In fact, Andrew's narrative of shakuhachi engagement illustrated that, even though he has been a beginner for many years, playing the shakuhachi has, for him, been a series of life-changing, life-integrating experiences. He revealed that even playing a single tone can lead to a profound level of spirituality. The shakuhachi practice, as a form of spiritual engagement, suggests that if the purpose of a music practice is to attain an optimal relationship between the inward-outward dimensions of musical realisation, outward expression can be minimised in favour of the depth of experience. In other words, the path of spirituality in music is not necessarily gained through the effort of striving for excellence in performance. It further suggests that both experienced players and beginners can experience what the spirituality of music means through certain forms of music practice, including the shakuhachi practice, which follow the principle of ‘less is more’.

Concluding remarks

Van Ness's framework, which captures the inward-outward dimensions of experience, is of great significance in the context of learning music, as the practice of music, especially that which promotes meditation or self-cultivation, would not otherwise be interpreted as a meaningful activity due to the lack of visible external production. It also highlights the means and end balance in learning music. The message is that we can achieve the true end by reducing the scope of means. The end should be an enhancement of life's meaning. The mastery of skills and connoisseurship should be the means. Aristotle posits in his Nicomachean Ethics that a good action has itself as its own end. Such action is so gratifying that people are willing to do so for its own sake, explained as the state of ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, Reference CSIKSZENTMIHALYI1990).

Second, the principle of ‘less is more’ addresses the form and content balance. If the depth of music is expressed in a single tone, there is no demarcation between form and content: The simplest form of music bears both form and content. In other words, form becomes content attendant. Thus, in the effort of realising such a level of simplicity, the practitioner can minimise the possibility of having empty training that is devoid of meaning and maximise the feeling that the activity itself, rather than the result, is meaningful. It is suggested that when music is practiced for practitioner's self-cultivation through the less-is-more approach, the activity would move from the level of a more product-oriented quality to that of a more spiritually satisfying state. This satisfying fulfilment plays a significant role in adult students’ shakuhachi learning.

The kind of spiritual approach employed by the participants is characterised by their intention to minimise the emptiness of external expression in an effort to maximise the richness of internal experiences. It is the opposite of what we normally see in educational settings, which are generally aimed towards achieving more and more: more songs, more concepts, more complicated forms, more advanced technique, and more creative products. The findings of this study provide a new way to look at the practice of music from a reversed standpoint, one that is to contribute to the formation of music pedagogy for adult music learners.

Finally, the argument provided above does not suggest that we can romanticise and appropriate Eastern practices of music as timeless, mystical and spiritual. Some may hold an image that Eastern music is practiced in the timeless past. It has both raw and vital energy, and its simplicity conveyed virtue. This paper does not promote such a view, nor does it encourage a commodification of Eastern traditions for Western consumption (Averill, Reference AVERILL and Ohmann1996; Taylor, Reference TAYLOR1997; Hesmondhalgh, Reference HESMONDHALGH, Kiely and Marfleet1998; Carrette & King, Reference CARRETTE and KING2005). The issue of representation and appropriation of music from other cultures concerns not only ethnomusicologists but also music educators. On the contrary, this paper encourages us to be aware of the traditional approach: The shakuhachi for many people is a difficult instrument to master, and developing a decent level of technique requires prolonged hard training. The ‘less-is-more’ approach revealed in this paper is among many ways to engage in the spirit of shakuhachi playing. Cross-cultural borrowing of educational ideas is to be legitimised when it serves as a mirror to draw out what we are missing in our teaching contexts (Tobin et al., Reference TOBIN, WU and DAVIDSON1989; Brand, Reference BRAND2002; Matsunobu, Reference MATSUNOBU and Bresler2007). This paper challenges us to reflect further on our values of music, education and means for spirituality.