< Issue No. 5 (2009)Article
Uncaged: Buddhism, John Cage and the Freeing of the World
Timmerman, Peter, York University
Abstract
John Cage is generally regarded as the most influential avant-garde musician of the last half of the 20th century. His music and its interpretation form one of the most important examples of Buddhist teaching in the West in the last 50 years. Of particular interest is his continuous exploration of the meaning of music, noise, sounds, silence, and the role of the musician/artist as a facilitator of their expression of their own “buddha-nature”. This is compared and contrasted with the work of Soetsu Yanagi, the originator of mingei (folk craft) theory in Japan, whose framing of the roles of the traditional craftsman and the modern individual artist in terms of Pure Land Buddhism sheds light on issues of “self” and “other power” in creativity.