Marking Time and Making Meaning

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist and composer, Zen priest, and hospice chaplain based in the Hudson Valley. Since his first foray into experimental music in the 1990s, he has been a pillar of the American music underground, collaborating with a variety of artists including Liz Harris, Félicia Atkinson, and Ilyas Ahmed. Although his music has often been labeled experimental or ambient, he himself describes it as personal liturgy.

Cantu-Ledesma’s latest album, Gift Songs, takes inspiration from the forms of liturgy and ritual he has found meaningful as a Zen priest and hospice chaplain, as well as from the Shaker notion of “gift drawings,” where art is seen as a gift from God. Through minimalist acoustic arrangements and evocative improvisations, Gift Songs foregrounds chance and collaboration, putting forth a vision of art as an offering.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Cantu-Ledesma to discuss what first brought him to Buddhism, the role of devotion in his work and practice, the synergies between creative practice and chaplaincy work, and why he views his music as an offering.

First, can you tell us a bit about your background? How did you first come to Buddhism? I ran into Buddhism when I lived in San Francisco, which was around 2002. I was in my early thirties, and I was at that point in life when things were really starting to fall apart, and it begins to dawn on you that things may not work out the way you want them to. One day, I was at a party, and I was telling a friend of mine that someone had suggested that I go to therapy, which I found really helpful, and my friend said, “Oh, you might like this book,” and it was Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck. It just so happened I lived a seven-minute bike ride away from the San Francisco Zen Center. I looked up their website, and I just went, and I never stopped.

In 2021, after nearly two decades of Zen practice, you were ordained as a Zen priest. So how did this come about, and what was your path to ordination like? Honestly, it’s as much of a mystery to me today as it was then. I remember telling my root teacher, Teah Strozer, who ordained me, “I think I need to ordain,” and she was shocked. We were both shocked. I had never considered it; I had never really imagined myself as a priest. The way I think about it now is that the impulse was always there, but I had to get enough of my own psychological material—doubt and self-loathing—out of the way for the light of that impulse to really shine through. And when it did, it was unmistakable, so I followed it. I remember my teacher, being a good Zen teacher, asked, “Why do you want to be a priest?” And my answer was, “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s just this impulse that is arising that I’m trusting.” And that was enough. So it took another five years, but in 2021 I ordained.

As a priest, your dharma name is Devotion Moon, Clear Seeing. Can you say more about this name and how you’ve come to understand or relate to it? I’m impressed that you know that. The way that names work in the Zen tradition is that the first part is where your teacher sees you, and the second part is almost more aspirational—it’s where they might see your path headed or maybe even something that you need to work on or work toward. As I said, I started going to San Francisco Zen Center in 2002, and I kind of never stopped. That sense of devotion to practice has always been there, and a devotion to awakening and a devotion to love. It’s the through line through my years of practice, and I think my teacher recognizes that in me. As for clear seeing, I certainly aspire to see things as clearly as I can in any given situation. I think that’s a growing edge for me.

Right, I think for all of us. Yeah, and in a way it’s impossible to do, right? We only have our limited, subjective view. So maybe it’s a reminder to be humble as well, to see things clearly as we can, but it’s just our subjective perspective.

Well, with regard to the first part of your name, devotion certainly seems to be a major theme in your work, and you even have an album called DEVOTION. So how does devotion factor into your Zen practice and into your music? I think practice is really hard. The commitment to stay on the path, the commitment to be as open-hearted and honest and courageous as you can in the midst of the difficulties of unwinding all of your ancient twisting karma—it’s really hard. It takes an incredible amount of commitment and courage and energy and devotion, ultimately—[but] devotion to what? That’s the question for each of us: What are we devoted to? There are many things we can be devoted to in this life. We can be devoted to things where we’re totally unconscious of it, like coffee. I think for me it’s a kind of devotion to the creative process, to being in contact with creative energy. Even if I’m not working on a particular project, it’s staying in touch with that very human wellspring of creativity that is present and always here. It’s just a matter of making space for it. I’ve always found deep refuge in creativity, whether it’s through music or ceramics or even chaplaincy. I see spiritual practice as a deeply creative process.

One of the things I found interesting is that when you talk about the process of writing music, it’s as if the music itself is making decisions and taking direction and expressing itself. Can you say more about that? A lot of the music that I create is improvised, so we have no idea where the music’s going to go. We have no idea what’s really going to emerge when two, three, or four people get together. You know, it just kind of falls out of the sky, and the next thing you know it’s like there’s another being in the room, which is the music itself. My music often starts with improvisations, and then I go back and add things. That additive process is where the music starts to have its own identity because I’ll try multiple things, and it just won’t work. I’ll have my idea, and I’ll go in there thinking I know exactly what it needs, and it’s like, no, that doesn’t work at all. It’s like the music has a kind of sentience—the music is just sitting there waiting until I figure it out. And then the funny thing is, once it’s clear, it’s just like, “Oh, OK, this is what it’s supposed to be,” and there’s like a bodily kind of resonance with it. It’s not as much of a struggle anymore.

Do you see a connection between this improvisational style and your chaplaincy work? I think it has to do with the creative impulse. In walking alongside people who are dying or who are grieving, there’s a necessity, really, for a kind of creativity. If someone asks me, “Why is God doing this to me?,” there’s no rote answer for that. I can’t just give some pat answer out of a book. It takes responding in the moment with what’s arising, what I might know about that person, and what’s coming up for me. When I cross the threshold of a home, even if it’s a home I’ve been into a dozen times before, I have no idea what’s going to be on the other side—I don’t know what condition the person’s going to be in; maybe there’s a family member there I’ve never met. And so this all becomes material for improvisation, for something to emerge in the encounter that’s genuine and doesn’t feel like I’m just reading out of a textbook.

In other interviews, you’ve talked about the importance of having rituals around grief and mourning. Could you say more about the role of ritual in your work? Does this factor into your music? For the beginning of the last record, Gift Songs, I had all the musicians get together and do some breathing together. We sat together for a couple minutes and did some qigong, and I realized I had this impulse to mark this moment—to mark it rather than just fall into it. And certainly this is true with grief as well. I think it’s essential to mark loss. It’s deeply human. As humans, we’ve probably marked loss, death, and change since the beginning, and I try to respect endings as much as I can as a chaplain and try to facilitate, when possible, small rituals to acknowledge an ending.

In an earlier interview with Tricycle, you mentioned that as a child you were always deeply moved by liturgy. Can you say more about this? What’s your relationship to liturgy like as a priest, and how has that love of liturgy influenced how you approach making music? With that question I’m taken back to being a child in Texas, and what’s coming up for me is that being in church was a place of safety. I didn’t understand what people were saying from the pulpit, but I could be enveloped by the singing; I could be enveloped by the music. So it just deeply affected me as a child. Now, as a priest, if I’m leading service, even if I’m in service, sometimes it’s difficult for me not to weep. I just feel so much gratitude for the practice and for the path and the lineage of ancestors, the people who maintained the practice and passed it on and devoted themselves to it. In terms of music, when I end up working on more long-form pieces, I certainly see a resonance with liturgy, particularly the repetition. Liturgy is not made to entertain you. It’s meant to evoke something. I really relate to that as a musician. I don’t need to write a song—I’m much more interested in invoking a mood or feeling.

That’s so interesting. My experience of liturgy was the same. I felt completely safe during a Mass, especially on certain holidays when we’d go to the Maronite Mass and they would say the liturgy in Aramaic, and it was rhythmic and I didn’t understand what they were saying, but between the language, its rhythm, and the music, it was a whole world with a beginning, middle, and end, and things seemed to make sense. That’s the sense I get from what you were saying. Yeah, and listening to you, James, what came up for me is that I think there’s an innate sense that we’re participating in something that’s very old, that we’re in the body of something that has existed for a very long time and sort of exists outside of time. As a priest, I feel such a deep amount of gratitude for the rituals we have in Zen and what they can evoke. Ritual is not something extra that’s been added on. It actually is practice. It’s there to inscribe the teachings on our hearts. In our tradition, we chant the Metta Sutta, and I’ve found that those words will come out of nowhere, sometimes at the most appropriate moment—“Be kind, Jefre. Just be kind. That’s the most important thing.”

Ritual is not something extra that’s been added on. It actually is practice. It’s there to inscribe the teachings on our hearts.

I wonder, then, what specific rituals have you found powerful? One ritual that I feel disappointed in myself if I don’t do it is a daily ritual of offerings, making offerings to my ancestors and also my partner’s ancestors. The gift that we have of this life is really that it comes from people that we don’t even know and never will. That just keeps that sense of gratitude alive. Then there are also my direct ancestors that I did know, like my grandmother, and the deep gratitude and love I feel for her. It’s so helpful for me to stay connected to that. My life is not just my life. It’s interwoven with this history, and it feels nourishing to acknowledge that I just didn’t pop out of thin air.

Your latest album, Gift Songs, definitely has a ritualistic or liturgical feel to it. So first, can you tell us the story behind the title? For quite a long time I’ve loved the Shakers’ idea of gift drawings, or drawings that were received [from God], explicitly acknowledging that creativity is this flowing river of energy that we are just swimming in and we don’t own. I always found that acknowledgment to be really descriptive of my own experience: Where do these songs come from? They just come out of nowhere. You just get some people in a room, and something emerges, and it’s like a gift. [I loved] the earnestness, simplicity, and acknowledgment that this was in service. It was creativity in service of their community, which is probably the origin of music: that we would do it together in community for each other. I probably had written that title down at some point, and I guess it felt appropriate at some point in the process of making the record that this was the one for Gift Songs. 

The gift that we have of this life is really that it comes from people that we don’t even know and never will.

How do you think about your own music as an offering, or as a gift? I think in a way, it’s not for me to say. I try not to hit people over the head with how they should feel or what they should be experiencing with the music. I hope to create music that’ll have some space so that you, the listener, can come into it with your own experience and find meaning in it rather than me whacking you over the head with it. Of course, there are no lyrics, so I don’t have anything to say, and that certainly helps. But my hope is to create music with a lot of space and a lot of generosity, where there’s enough room in there so that people can enter into it and bring their own stories and have their own relationship with the music.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.