Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘When we were working on a record, if there was some idea that he wanted to transfer to us, he wouldn’t tell us what to play; he would find some metaphor. Which really is the heart of what he wanted. ‘Cause with a metaphor, then you, the musician, has to translate it into your own terms, and figure out how to describe that metaphor in musical terms.

Because even if he had a single idea – and this is something that I came to believe long after those first experiences with Miles [Davis] – the musical idea is only one example of the metaphor. And so the metaphor carries the heart of what that idea is really about. It can express itself in many different ways.

But if you tell a person what to play, first of all, it’s you telling him, and you’re not playing that instrument. He’s a trumpet player. He’s not going to play piano. He is not playing drums, or the bass. So he wanted each of us to create our own parts and create our own avenue, or our own character, within the performance.

So the metaphor would give us a chance to ponder the spirit of the idea he had and come up with an expression of it that we create. See, that’s what a master teacher does: he doesn’t give you the answers; he tells you a way to find the answers for yourself.

He never told us if he liked something, either. But, you know, the fact that we still had a gig – I had that gig for about five and a half years – that means he must have liked it. [Laughs] I could just tell that Miles loved for us to create with a lot of question marks. That he would have to maneuver through, To create music. He lived in that. If he knew what we were going to play, he would be bored to tears. If we threw a curve at him, he loved that. That’s what he could do.’ (from Jazz Photo Archives on Instagram)

So many of the things express here translate naturally to zen teachers as well.