ZEN AND THE PULSE OF HEART AWAKENING

An interview with Gerardo Maza

The late afternoon sun is about to dip below the edge of the gleaming Pacific as an ethereal light fleets across the outstretched limbs of several grand, flamboyant trees just outside the room where I have been meditating. I feel a subtle glow gradually building deep within the heart of Nature, and my own soul. As I carefully consider all that has transpired this splendid afternoon, the most gratifying blessing is reconnecting with Gerardo Maza, one of the most versatile musical geniuses to grace the balmy shores of Hawaii.

Meeting again after some time apart, we sit and chat amiably about simple things: the weather, his son Armando, and exchange the latest news of our artistic endeavors. I tell him of my current video projects and read some of my writings, and Gerardo expounds on his favorite subject, music. In the last few years he has produced several well-received albums featuring his own compositions. Building on this inspired momentum, he is currently recording a new album titled DREAMSTONE with a group of fellow musicians and singers. Right here in his Oahu home is his Earth Wave Productions studio facility, where Gerardo finds himself involved in all the different aspects of his business. This includes composing, recording and mixing, creating the graphic design for his cds and web site, duplicating and packaging his product line and fulfilling online orders.

Together, we enjoy listening to some of his latest music. His unusual compositions are intriguing, and his philosophy interests me as well. I’ve enjoyed his commentaries on the nature of existence, and accounts of his determined efforts to share his musical acumen with the world. Before we know it, the fading twilight has all but disappeared. Gerardo leans forward from his zazen sitting position and shoots me the most non-quizzical look of the century. It is the glance of a maestro, one who has been around the block and is relaxed enough to be completely at ease. In return, I flash him a transparent smile, which gradually broadens, when I think of the humor of our sharing's. The silence grows so long between us and its aura of presence is so potent that it seems to suspend all conception of time. As I glance into Nature, I behold the shimmering flamboyant tree, whose glorious red blossoms have grown richer by the moment.

Yes, Gerardo, I exclaim, Now I understand the serendipitous Reality of the moment. But could you say a few words about Zen?
After a long pause, Gerardo's glowing countenance takes on a look of wisdom as he elaborates, There is much to share. I want to speak about Zen and tell you about my own evolution.

Listening closely, I discover that after his birth in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he accompanied his parents in their wandering quests across continents. His Argentine father, a prolific painter of imaginary geometric landscapes, and his American-born mother, lived in New York, Spain and London after their South American travels. He later moved with his mother to the Big Apple and spent formative years there absorbing the New York music scene. While visiting his father at an art colony just outside Paris he had a "chance" meeting with a Korean Zen teacher whose temple was in Honolulu. Intrigued by the meeting, he accepted her invitation to live there. Serendipitously, his maternal grandmother had already taken up residence on the same island. So completing one of those mysterious circles that are invisibly traced, he made his home on Oahu, which is known as "the gathering place."

Gerardo has been showered with many blessings. From his earliest years, he was surrounded by talented family members and friends in a nurturing arts and music environment, which he came to greatly love. Early on, Gerardo loved to dance. Moving to and with music came naturally to him. Friends of his parents recalled Gerardo's first musical inclinations banging on pots and pans at about age three. During this formative period, his father, who plays music himself and is an aficionado of jazz and tango, took his son to see Mongo Santa Maria perform live in New York's Central Park. A fertile seed had been planted. It was only after many years that he learned that his father had always wanted his son to become a musician.

The enthusiasm for rhythm continued to emerge. At age eleven Gerardo got some drumsticks and would spend his time practicing to music on a drum pad. This lasted for about a year, at which point he realized that getting a drum set was not appropriate due to noise factors in his home environment. Consequently he took up the guitar, an instrument his father, uncle and cousins played. Shortly thereafter, Gerardo was given his first guitar, a wonderful classical instrument that he still utilizes today.

Destiny continued to be in his favor. When Gerardo returned to New York, after living in Europe for ten years, he found the cultural scene a terrific melting pot of talented musicians and intriguing musical styles. His mother, a lover of World Music, took him on outings to select African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern concerts. Meanwhile, he was meeting and interacting with musicians on his own. During part of his teen years, he worked at a Manhattan club known as Soundscape, where he was exposed to the most stimulating Afro-Cuban jazz played by the masters of the trade.

Gerardo is quick to point out the important influence that certain mentors had on his life. His music teachers, including Bruce Johnson, a great jazz guitarist, and Nana Vasconcelos, the world-renowned Brazilian percussionist, were a source of great inspiration for many years.

Listening is everything, Nana told him, whatever practice you do, it’s all related ... it's all going to help, it all goes toward the completeness of your being and into your music. Whatever things you do in your life, your experiences, your meditations, your prayers, all of that comes together, all contributes to who you are.

Inspired by Nana’s energy and his own deep connection to rhythm, Gerardo, after seven years of studying and playing the guitar, renewed his focus on percussion and subsequently spent the next four years developing and exploring its many pathways. After six months living at a New York zendo, he discovered his new calling was to move into his own studio in order to create original drum compositions. There, Gerardo learned to listen to the invisible realms, and they became his muse. At this point, he relates:

I was starting to hear ancient spirits chanting when I was playing. At first, it was almost distracting, and it was hard to go on playing without losing the beat. I thought of Odysseus and his men, who had to stuff their ears so they wouldn't jump overboard and drown when they heard the beautiful singing of the sirens. You know the story. Another example would be when you are walking down an unlit pathway at night and you sense that someone is following you, but when you turn around no one is there.

With this eerie accompaniment and a combination of the ethnic styles taught by Nana and drum rudiments, he began to develop new polyrhythmic and multi-tonal drumming systems, which he later incorporated into many of his compositions. Some of these pieces included "Procession" on the album Rainforest Awakening, "Ancestors" on The Conscious Flow Of Dreams, and "Timeline" on Grain Of Sand.

Many influences shaped Gerardo’s being and his teen years. Some nuances reflected certain darker aspects of his surroundings and his own questing spirit. Experimentation with drugs became part of his life, until one night when he was held-up at gunpoint. Realizing that he had narrowly escaped death, he turned inward to deeply reflect. This spawned a radical change, prompting him to explore other avenues of living. While still a youth, he began to seek in-depth spiritual renewal. Gerardo began to frequent the New York center of the Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn. It is said that once you light your lamp, the guide that you need appears. He plunged into this Buddhist practice with characteristic depth, sincerity, and enthusiasm. It helped him discover an anchor for his life at a time when many of his friends were still caught in drug-based lifestyles. This Zen school included practices that included chanting and drumming, a perfect match for Gerardo as an expression of his increasingly conscious connection with the rhythms of the Universe.

As I sat with Gerardo, simply listening to his tales, I became more and more spellbound. Listening, after all, is a very special art, one in which the Universe etches its ardor into one’s soul. Gerardo had been guided in the practice by Master Seung Sahn, who taught his students to listen to sounds without naming or identifying them, non-judgmentally and non-conceptually, not holding on to anything, just experiencing the energy of sound in the moment, so that the sound carries the listener into that sublime moment of awareness, of presence. While doing this practice, Gerardo became finely attuned to the wider range of available "pure" sound in the environment. Taking up the challenge of innovation led him to explore beyond the usual repertoire in his own musical compositions.

Sound is such a potent force. Gerardo says that many of us are so wrapped up in our daily routine that we tend to to be oblivious to the sounds in our environment, spending little time in nature listening to her harmonies. He mentions that the intent of his creative talents are to empower each recording with a transformative spirit and life of their own. So that they awaken a new awareness in the listener. He says of his own compositions This music is not created so much as a performance, or entertainment, but as a way of life, an expression of the Great Spirit.

As a child, he had been able to freely roam the mountains and the coastal regions of Mallorca. Returning as a teenager, he brought his new musical and spiritual awareness back with him into the forest. This deep contact with his surroundings later took on a new life as he incorporated his sensitivity to Nature's many moods in his compositions.

On his own initiative, during vacations visiting his father in Spain, Gerardo undertook long periods of solitary retreat, where he chanted and meditated in isolated spots of great natural wonder. These were ideal surroundings of great beauty, perfect for practicing the fine art of inner listening. It was here that he was able to appreciate sound and rhythm amplified by Nature, which blended his spiritual aspirations with the sounds of the ocean, bubbling brooks, and the cries of birds.

Back in New York, he began to have visionary experiences, including one in the company of a fellow musician and Yoruba priest, in which he felt himself visited by a being from the spirit world. Later, he woke up in his own room to find that same spirit appearing to him in the guise of an old, drunken man. Gerardo was able to muster the strength and determination to seize the entity by the arm and throw him out of his room, thus, in a way, confirming his intention to become master of his own life.

After that shamanic act of power, he came in contact with an assortment of mentors who were representatives of worldwide shamanic traditions, including the Native American medicine man, Turtle Heart, whose Anishinabe roots traveled with him in the form of a variety of ceremonial objects, medicine bundles, and ritual observances. Under his guidance, Gerardo experienced sweat lodge ceremonies and learned numerous shamanic meditative practices.

From another far-flung quarter of the world came a Moroccan Sufi teacher, Jabrane Sebnat, whose tribal origins led him to blend Sufism with indigenous shamanism. This was Gerardo’s first introduction to Sufism, a path that paralleled and enriched the understanding gained from Zen and one that later, after his arrival in Hawaii, became a primary source of spiritual illumination. In Hawaii, too, he studied the Huna teachings of Serge Kahili King and practiced many of the ancient ways of Polynesia.

Gerardo also devoted time to practicing various forms of Chi Kung/special energy work and Martial Arts. Some of them he learned from Soeng Sahn and others he acquired from other teachers along the way.

Once, while performing an exercise introduced by one of his mother’s Japanese teachers, Gerardo spun into spontaneous, uncontrollable movement and found himself laughing hysterically one moment and crying the next, with only a split second of difference between the two - a simultaneous expression of the extremes of the Universe which is only possible when an aspirant is willing to abandon self. This, too, was something that Seung Sahn had wisely anticipated, when he told his student Good music is an expression of great love and/or great sadness.

Now, looking back on his years of Zen practice, Gerardo says, It was fortunate for me to come in contact with a great teacher, Seung Sahn Soen Sa Nim, early in my life. One of the things the Master did was to dissuade his students from reading too many spiritual books. Since then, I’ve often seen people become confused as they create complex and empty fantasies about reality without being able to see what is right in front of them. In Zen, this would be called attachment to name and form, and this malady often afflicts people with rigid religious and socio-political beliefs.

Instead, Seung Sahn emphasized experiential learning through practice and together action, which is, as Gerardo explains:
Learning to live together as an expression of oneness. For instance, when you meet someone, you say hello, when you receive something, you say thank you, when a person is hungry, you offer food, and so on. This direction leads to world peace. There’s no real difference between formal practice - sitting, standing, walking, chanting mantras, bowing, etc., and the everyday practice of doing the dishes, eating, going to work, watching a movie, playing music, or whatever you feel the need to do.

Seung Sahn uttered a saying that has been a guidepost for Gerardo ever since: The goal is to become one with the Universe, and then to create music in harmony with it. Meditation and music go hand in hand. Following the famous Zen adage, "Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water," Gerardo offers his own version: The message embodied in spiritual presence is: Whatever you're engaged in, give it a hundred percent!

Gerardo's musings gave me a lot to think about. By exploring such a diversity of spiritual ideals, I better understand the unity of the world's great inner traditions, the all-pervasive tapestry of Light that upholds the cosmos. I was reminded, again, of the Sufi tradition, which offers a deep opening to the Universe, through the awakening of the heart.

Gerardo's countenance lit up as he spoke fondly of his connecting with the Sufi path. His original contact was with Jabrane Sebnat in New York. Later on, he encountered and began to practice with the Helveti Jerrahi group in Honolulu. A couple years later, in New York, his Sufi practices continued in the company of musician friends and others who were also drawn to it. Out of these experiences emerged two CDs, one called You, consisting of contributions from various Helveti Jerrahi dervishes, and the other, Gerardo’s own Grain of Sand album, on which many of the dervish musicians can be heard.

Unlike traditional Islam, which forbids music and dancing, the Sufi teachings incorporate poetry, singing, dance, music, the dhikr chant and silent inner contemplation. The aim is the union with God within the heart.

As I continue to quietly sit, listening to Gerardo express his love for the Sufi way of inspiration, he elaborates on this, emphasizing, There is no reality apart from the One Reality. God is the All-knowing, the All-seeing, the All-hearing, the All-doing, the One closer to us than we are to ourselves, the One that knows us better than we know ourselves.

Gerardo, like many artists, feels that although his life has contained many elements of struggle, he and his family have been richly blessed. He is grateful to be part of this delicate process of evolution, wholeheartedly embracing the quest for truth and authenticity through his art. Emerging out of suffering there is a sense of deliverance, limitless joy in the bliss of creative excellence.

He feels no need to discriminate between the different traditions he has encountered. The essential fact is opening to universal energy, which has many names and identities. He comments Above all, Spirit power is a force that moves through you and creates a spontaneity that can manifest in an infinite number of ways, as non-directed movement or as sound, compositions joining elements of free jazz, avant-garde, and tribal music.

For me, the inspirational highlight of Gerardo's spiritual gleanings is contained in his concluding remarks Music is a language that takes one beyond the boundaries of culture and belief, creating a bridge to communicate beyond ideas, out of mundane time and space and into the sacred time and space, and even into the timeless state of the eternal presence. He reiterates, In that sense, meditation, Zen, music, it’s all unified, and all the forms, all the names become one.

At the conclusion of our visit, I am drawn back into the depth of my own inner experience. I am left with a sense of déjà vu, the awareness of cycles coming full circle into completion. Some years ago, I helped Gerardo to conceptualize his music by stressing the necessity of saving Mother Earth’s vanishing rainforests. The resulting shamanic album, Rainforest Awakening, incorporating natural sounds and trance-initiated effects, can be viewed as an important part of his gift to the world. Now, listening to it in the fading twilight, I re-live the original inspiration, which complements the beautiful glow felt within. Together we sit, drinking in the peace, honoring the sacred presence where all paths merge.

It is time to dance with Creation ... rise, and shine!