When I was a teenager, I tried very hard to play blues harmonica. I tried to copy what I heard exactly. I tried very hard, but produced only sounds that even I did not like. I failed because my effort was misplaced. Like paddling upstream. More effort did not translate into better music.

Then one night I found myself on stage with a blues harp in my hand. I had accepted a dare from a friend's band, and didn't expect them to ask me to solo. They did. The drummer and bass player were still playing. The guitar player went back to the table and sat down. I had to do something.

But I didn't know where the notes were on a harmonica! I didn't even know the song. That's when it happened. Zen. Music. Spontaneous, improvisational, full of energy. Instantaneous enlightenment. I literally learned how to play harmonica overnight by discovering the tao of the harp (way of the harp). Zen.

So what changed? What enabled me to suddenly play an instrument that had baffled me for 20 years? Zen. Which I will do my best to describe (no words can describe Zen, as they are like the hand pointing to the moon. The words are not the moon.)  

I had been playing bass guitar for a couple of years. We played a lot of blues. It was Zen, but I did not know it. Zen by practice. Zen by boredom (did I mention I was playing bass)? But then like Zen, it suddenly appeared. The 12 bar blues progression. I did not count measures anymore (counting is left brain). I simply knew when the chord changes were going to happen (very right brain).

I had become one with the problem - problem - resolution structure of the blues progression. I had learned it the Zen way. An instant realization. Books and teachers must describe this structure to bring the student near it. But the names of the chords, the names of the structure, the terms, notes, language are merely the hand pointing at the moon. They are not the moon. They are not the blues.

Like life, every verse of the blues tells a story. It is analogous to a story, movie, or book: Set the scene, elaborate on it, build to a climax, end (resolve). The elements of every great story.

So the first key to Zen was discovered by accident. Practice. Practice. Practice. Except, I hadn't been trying to learn the blues progression, I was trying to learn to play the bass.

Ah, more Zen. Wu-Wei. Acting without doing. Had I tried to find the Zen of the blues progression, I likely would not have found it so intuitively. I found it without effort.

Ah, more Zen. Practice practice practice, but without effort. That is but one paradox of Zen. A paradox that makes perfect sense in a moment of enlightenment.

I was also in the moment. More Zen.

The last great piece of the puzzle was preparation. In this case, my friend had handed me a harmonica in the right key. Without the right tool, no amount of Zen or being in the moment would have done me much good. Or, I would have spontaneously created a sculpture instead (true Zen) and that would have been a different story.