In his new book on learning how to play honkyoku (the ancient "original music") on the Japanese shakuhachi flute, Blowing Zen, Ray Brooks describes his entry into Japanese culture, the history of the flute, his teachers (including the great Katsuya Yokoyama). At one point he goes and visits an old player who has become a Zen monk in a far western monastery. In the course of their conversation, the monk is asked what is meant by a meaningful life. He replies: "First it's important to see how we are really living in our daily lives. It is more important to look and clear away what isn't true or meaningful in our lives than to spend a lifetime searching elsewhere for what is true and meaningful. This clearing away takes a great deal of energy. Then to see what you're left with when you've cleared away what isn't true and meaningful." This is a stronger, clearer, nearer road to the true and the meaningful: drawing towards those things that are true and meaningful in our lives already, and away from those that are not.