Personal Liturgy

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think for me it’s really a kind of a devotion to the creative process, to being in contact with creative energy, even if I’m not working on a project in particular, which I’m not right now, 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.

James Shaheen: Hello, and welcome to Tricycle Talks. I’m James Shaheen, and you just heard Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Jefre is an experimental musician, Zen priest, and hospice chaplain based in the Hudson Valley. In my conversation with Jefre, we talk about 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 sees his music as personal liturgy. So here’s my conversation with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma.

James Shaheen: So I’m here with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, an experimental musician, Zen priest, and hospice chaplain. Hi Jefre. It’s great to be with you here today.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Hi James. Thanks for having me.

James Shaheen: So first, can you tell us a bit about your background? How did you first come to Buddhism?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I ran into Buddhism when I lived in San Francisco, which was around 2002. I was in my early thirties and 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, and also just a lot of material from my childhood and my earlier life was starting to really come up. I was at a party one day, and a friend of mine, I was telling him, someone had suggested that I go to therapy, which I did, which I found really helpful, and a friend of mine 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, so I looked up their website, which was, I think at that time it was one page. It was just a one-page website. And I saw zazen instruction, and I just went and I kind of never stopped. Yeah.

James Shaheen: So 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?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: 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 remember sitting down with her and saying, “I think I need to ordain,” and she was shocked. We were both shocked. I had never considered it. I’d never really imagined myself as being a priest. The way I think about it now is that the impulse was always there, but I had to kind of get enough of my own psychological material, doubt, and self-loathing, honestly, really to get out of the way for that impulse, the light of that impulse to really shine through. And when it did, it was unmistakable. So, I followed it. I followed it, and I remember my teacher, being a good Zen teacher, she said, “Well, why do you want to be a priest?” You know, that was her first question. And my answer was, “You know, I honestly, I don’t know. It’s just this impulse is arising that I’m trusting.” And that was enough. So it took another five years. Covid got in the way. But in 2021 I ordained.

James Shaheen: Yeah, 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?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah. That’s great. I’m impressed that you know that. The first part—I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the way that names work in the Zen tradition. So, you know, the first part is kind of where your teacher sees you, and the second part is almost more aspirational where they might see your path headed or maybe even something that you need to work on or work toward. As I said, you know, I started going to San Francisco in 2002, and I kind of never stopped, and that sense of really 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. And clear seeing, yeah, I mean, I certainly aspire to see things as clearly as I can in any given situation. And, I think that’s an area, what’s that called? A working edge. A growing edge for me.

James Shaheen: Right. I think for all of us.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah. And, you know, in a way it’s impossible to do, right? We only have our limited kind of subjective view. So maybe it’s a reminder to be humble as well, to see things clearly as we can, but you know, it’s just our subjective perspective.

James Shaheen: 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 with devotion in its title. So how does devotion factor into your Zen practice and into your music?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think practice is really hard. I think it’s incredibly difficult. It’s really hard. I think it takes an amount of commitment. It really does. It takes an amount of commitment and courage and energy and devotion ultimately to—yeah, to what? That’s the question. I think for each of us, what are we devoted to? I mean, there’s many things we can be devoted to in this life. I think we can be devoted to things where we’re totally unconscious about it, you know, like coffee.

James Shaheen: I certainly have that one.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: So the commitment to stay on the path, the commitment to be as open-hearted and honest and courageous as I can in the midst of the difficulties of just unwinding all of your ancient twisting karma, it’s really hard, and then meeting people who are in pain and being devoted to being open to that, being open to others’ pain. I think for me it’s really a kind of a devotion to the creative process, to being in contact with creative energy, even if I’m not working on a project in particular, which I’m not right now, staying in touch with that very human wellspring of creativity that, you know, is present and always here. It’s just a matter of making space for it. And I’ve always found deep refuge in creativity, whether it’s through music, or I also make ceramics quite a bit now, or even chaplaincy, I see as a deeply creative process, spiritual practice as a creative process. Yeah.

James Shaheen: 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 something about that?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think when I get out of my own way, particularly when I’m in collaboration with other people, 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, you know, two, three, four people get together. You know, it just kind of falls out of the sky. And the next thing you know you’re in the midst of, there’s like another being in the room, which is the music itself, and particularly in the process of, 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, because I’ll have my idea, I’ll go in there like I know exactly what this needs, and it’s like, no, that doesn’t work at all. And it just starts to have that, I think I’ve talked about it before as a kind of sentience that 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 a struggle. It doesn’t become so much of a struggle anymore.

James Shaheen: Right. So do you see a connection between this improvisational style and your, say, chaplaincy work?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah. Yeah. I think it has to do certainly with what I was mentioning before about the creative impulse and walking alongside people who are dying or who are just grieving. There’s a necessity, really, for a kind of creativity that you can’t, if someone asks me, you know, “Why is God doing this to me?” there’s no rote answer for that, really. I can’t just give some pat answer out of a book. It takes responding in the moment with what’s arising, what I maybe know about that person, 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 there. 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 kind of becomes material for improvisation, for the encounter, for something to emerge in the encounter that’s genuine and doesn’t feel like I’m just reading out of a textbook.

James Shaheen: That question comes from our podcast producer Sarah Fleming, who is also a chaplain and does the same work.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Oh, wonderful.

James Shaheen: And to that and to back up, could you tell us more about your work as a hospice chaplain? How did you come to chaplaincy?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Well, when I was in San Francisco, I knew about the Zen Hospice and had friends that were kind of involved volunteering there, and just the circumstances of my life or maybe my own fear at the time, I kind of avoided it. But it planted a seed in me for sure. It definitely planted a seed in me. I moved to New York City at the request of my teacher in 2013 to be part of Brooklyn Zen Center, and my life was just kind of opened up in a way at that time, so it seemed like something, again, drew me into it more than it felt like I woke up one day and was like, “OK, this is what I need to do.” But at some point it became clear to me, and so I did my training in New York City.

James Shaheen: So more broadly, how do you view the relationship between your music and your chaplaincy work? Do they inform each other, or are they entirely separate?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think it would be a stretch to say they’re separate since it’s all kind of coming from my particular subjectivity. It’s also difficult for me to articulate what exactly is going on in those processes that are similar other than what I’ve mentioned already about creativity and responding in a genuine way. But I think I don’t explicitly try to make music about people who are dying, but of course I think about death a lot, and I’m with people who are dying a lot, and I think it infuses many parts of my life: being a parent, how I’m a priest in sangha, and certainly the music I make too.

James Shaheen: So 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 too?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: It is interesting that the beginning of the last record Gift Songs, I had, the musicians, I had us all get together and do some breathing together, and we sat together for just a couple minutes and we did some stretching, some qigong stretching, and I realized I had this impulse in me to mark this moment, to mark it rather than just to kind of fall into it. And certainly this is true with grief as well. It’s, I think, essential to mark loss. It’s deeply human. Even as humans, we’ve probably marked loss, death, change since the beginning. And I try to really respect endings as much as I can as a chaplain and also try to facilitate when possible even small rituals where you acknowledge an ending.

James Shaheen: Mmm. It’s sort of interesting, at the end of the twenty-minute piece that I just listened to, a recent piece, “Sea of,” I don’t remember the title.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah, I don’t remember the title now.

James Shaheen: It’s the A-side that takes up twenty minutes just as if it were a vinyl, but anyway, at the end of that, and we’ll think of the name, there are vocals, a woman’s vocals come into it. And I was wondering, is this mournful or joyful? It seems to contain both, but maybe that’s a silly interpretation.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: It’s also not for me to say either. That song you’re referring to is called “Palace of Time.” It’s a song actually from my record from 2019, Tracing Back the Radiance. So that record in particular, I was just sending people one little piano piece, like a little snippet of piano, and letting them respond to it, and then I was weaving that all together. So I tend not, I try to find a balance between giving people direction, but also just letting their own voice emerge without too much direction. Then it just becomes about what I want, and again, then the sentience of the music isn’t really able to emerge. I’m so much more interested in what’s possible when I’m not necessarily controlling the direction. I’m certainly like, let’s go over there and see what happens, but allowing the creative process to have its own life. So those vocals Meara O’Reilly is her name. I didn’t give her much direction: You do your thing here, take this and you do your thing and I’ll trust you and we’ll see if I can make it work.

James Shaheen: So in an earlier interview with Tricycle, you mentioned that as a child you were always deeply moved by liturgy, and frankly, so was I, so I found that particularly interesting. 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? Sorry to ask such hard questions.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: No, they’re beautiful. They’re really beautiful. They’re just giving me pause because I just really need to feel into it. I’m taken back to just being a child in Texas, and I, what’s coming up for me is being in church was, it was a place of safety, and 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. And then, now as a priest, you know, 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 so much gratitude for the path and the lineage of ancestors, people who maintained the practice and passed it on and devoted themselves to it. So in terms of music, I think when I end up working in these kind of more long form pieces, yeah, I certainly see a resonance with liturgy, particularly the repetition. You know, liturgy is not made to entertain you. It’s meant to evoke something. So 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.

James Shaheen: That’s so interesting. I mean, my experience of liturgy was the same. I mean, I felt completely safe during a Mass. I know that’s not true for everybody, but I did, and 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, and, likewise, when I was very young, the Latin ritual, the Latin liturgy, and I remember not knowing, 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. And that’s the sense I get from what you were saying.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: 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.

James Shaheen: Right.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: That we’re in the body of something that has existed for a very long time and sort of exists outside of time.

James Shaheen: Yeah. And it’s kind of sad, or one feels bereft when ritual is so callously dismissed in our culture, and it’s unavoidable, really, you know.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah, it’s really painful, and becoming a priest and feeling such a deep amount of gratitude for the rituals we have in Zen and what they can evoke and how it actually is practice. It’s not something extra. It’s not just like an extra thing that’s been added on. It actually is practice. It’s there to inscribe the teachings on our hearts. So, you know, there have many moments when the words from, in our tradition, we chant the Metta Sutta, which is not Zen at all, but when those words will come out of nowhere, sometimes at the most appropriate moment—you know, be kind, Jefre. Just be kind, you know? That’s the most important thing.

James Shaheen: You know, there’s another article I’m going to have to send to you by Anne Klein. She’s a Tibetan Buddhist, and she writes about ritual and how as a Western rational person she came to ritual and struggled with it until she embraced it and understood that it was really missing in her life. But that’s a poor paraphrase of her piece, but I will send it to you. But I wonder then, what specific rituals have you found powerful in this sort of post-Catholic life? I’ve had to find them too.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Right. Honestly, one ritual that I feel the burden of if I don’t do it, maybe burden’s the wrong word, I feel kind of the disappointment 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. We have one ancestral altar with Quan Yin on it, and, you know, the gift that we have, this life, is really that It comes from people that we don’t even know and we never will. And it just keeps that sense of gratitude alive. And also then my direct ancestors that I did know, my grandmother, just the deep gratitude I feel for her and love. It’s so helpful for me to just stay connected to that, that my life is not just my life. It’s interwoven with this history, and it feels nourishing to just acknowledge that, just acknowledge that I just didn’t pop out of thin air.

James Shaheen: Yeah.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah, and also to help my daughter see that too. So we celebrate the birthdays of ancestors that have died that we know.

James Shaheen: Yeah, you mentioned how ritual connects us to something ancient or something. We’re part of a continuity, and there’s so much meaning that we’re offered with ritual, and I think when we lose that, meaning becomes a real struggle. You know, we try to extract meaning or expect or demand meaning rather than receive it.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah, absolutely.

James Shaheen: I don’t know if that makes sense.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: It does. It also gives us a container, and I see this lot as a chaplain. When I can create rituals, say, around the bed of the person who’s dying or died, and just gather people in a circle and have everyone say something to the person, it allows, it creates a space for people to express. It creates a space to hold what’s being felt, but you know, of course, many times we don’t want to give voice to it, so it creates something much larger and there’s other people there that are holding it for us.

James Shaheen: Yeah, that’s really nice. I mentioned an album from 2019, confusing it with the current one, but your latest album, Gift Songs, definitely has a liturgical feel to it. So first, can you tell us the story behind the title, Gift Songs?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: For some years, for quite a long time I’ve loved—the Shakers had the idea of gift drawings, and these drawings that were just received just explicitly acknowledging that creativity is this flowing river of energy that we are just swimming in and we don’t own. It’s just like it’s being received for them. It was received from God. But I just always found that acknowledgment to be really descriptive of my own experience: you know, 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. So I don’t know. I probably had written that title down at some point. You know, me and many of my friends have lists of titles, you know, just ongoing lists, and I guess it felt appropriate at some point in the process of making the record that this was the one for Gift Songs.

James Shaheen: Yeah, just to practice due diligence, I did look up those Shaker drawings, and they’re really quite beautiful.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Oh, had you never seen those before?

James Shaheen: I don’t think I had. I mean, I’ve certainly seen their furniture. But I hadn’t really seen the drawings, but they really were, you found them very compelling, so did I. But why don’t you say something about that?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I just found them really stunning. There was a show at the Drawing Center many years ago, and then they produced a book, which I think you can still get, which is called, I’m pretty sure it’s called Gift Drawings. And it just, the earnestness, the simplicity, the acknowledgment that this was in service, it was creativity in service. It was in service of their community, which is probably the origin of music, that we would do it together in community for each other. So, yeah, those drawings, I still find them really captivating.

James Shaheen: You know, I certainly know who the Shakers are, but maybe some of our listeners don’t. Could you say something more about who the Shakers were or are?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah, I think there actually are one or two Shakers left. They were started—I’m no expert, but just broad strokes, religious movement, Protestant religious movement, started in England in the 18th century, I think late 18th century, maybe early, and moved to the United States because of persecution in England and settled mostly in New England. There are a couple of colonies you can visit. There’s one in Massachusetts, not far from us, but they didn’t believe in sex, so it kind of died out.

James Shaheen: Right.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Yeah.

James Shaheen: They should have started adopting people, you know?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think they actually did for a while. I think they would get people who didn’t have family or otherwise on their own.

James Shaheen: Right. So more generally, how do you think about your music as an offering? As a gift, so to speak.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I think in a way, it goes back to what I said earlier about it’s not for me to say. I try not to hit people over the head with what the music, how they should feel, or what they should be experiencing. I try to, I hope to create music that’ll have some space 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. I mean, and of course there’s no lyrics, so I don’t have anything to say, so that certainly helps. But my hope is to create music with a lot of space and a lot of generosity that allows, I find it evocative, right? I find the things that go out into the world, I find them interesting. They bring up certain emotions or images for me, and sometimes the titles are telling of that. But my hope is that there is enough room in there, that the field is wide enough that people can enter into it and bring their own stories and have their own relationship with the music.

James Shaheen: Yeah, there’s a musical tradition in southeast Asia that Trent Walker is a specialist in, and it is meant to be evocative of dharmic sensibilities, like samvega, for instance. And your music is described as American experimental music, it’s described as ambient. Maybe this is a deceptively difficult question, but how do you describe your music?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Oh goodness.

James Shaheen: I warned you, it’s deceptively difficult.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: You know, honestly, it’s so rare these days that someone’s like, “How should I describe your music?” Because it’s already so in the world, and there’s already so many tags and labels and everything has to be genre-fied because it has to be, you know, it has to fit within some particular kind of playlist. And can you hear my annoyance, James?

James Shaheen: Yeah. Yeah. So this is your opportunity to come up with something else. Forget tags and search terms.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: OK. Well, maybe it’s personal liturgy. Maybe it’s my personal liturgy.

James Shaheen: That’s wonderful. Good answer.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: And thank you. Well, thanks for that question.

James Shaheen: OK, so what are you working on now?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Mostly ceramics, which I really enjoy doing. My undergrad degree is in fine art. I am always, there’s always something bubbling in the background because as we talked about before, I am devoted to staying in touch with some kind of creative process. So it’s either ceramics, or I’ve been playing guitar a lot lately. And I tend to not do these things with a lot of aim. So right now I don’t have, there’s not a lot that I’m aiming towards. Something will emerge eventually. I just like staying in touch with creativity and being in relationship with music making or art making. And there’s some friends I have that we usually meet weekly and play music together, some other dad musician friends, and that’s a very nourishing thing to do. But there, you know, that’s a perfect example of how that process didn’t start by saying, “Hey, let’s get together and make a record.” It’s like, “Hey, let’s get together and spend time together and talk and eat food and and play music and be communal.”

James Shaheen: Nice.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: So yeah, there’s no projects.

James Shaheen: Yeah. So were you doing ceramics for a long time and now you’re focusing on it again? Or is it a new direction you’ve taken?

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: I’ve been pretty active for at least, oh, twelve years or so now doing ceramics, mostly just making things for myself and friends and gifts for people.

James Shaheen: So Jefre, before we close, would you like to say anything else? This has been a wonderful conversation for me.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: No, I’d just like to say thank you. Thanks for having me. And it’s a pleasure to be able to talk about these two worlds, which I feel like have for so long in my own experience been really separate. So now it’s almost like the secret’s out. People know like I practice and I’m a creative person in the world as well. So, yeah, thank you for having me, and I really do enjoy many of the conversations you have on this podcast, so thanks for that too.

James Shaheen: Oh, great. You know, as I told you before we started, Ocean Vuong said he enjoyed being here because he got to talk about Buddhism, so now you got to talk about Buddhism.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Thank you very much.

James Shaheen: Well, Jefre, thanks so much for joining. It’s been a great pleasure. For our listeners, be sure to check out Jefre’s latest album, Gift Songs, available now. Thanks again, Jefre.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Thank you.

James Shaheen:  ​​You’ve been listening to Tricycle Talks with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Tricycle is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to making Buddhist teachings and practices broadly available. We are pleased to offer our podcasts freely. If you would like to support the podcast, please consider subscribing to Tricycle or making a donation at tricycle.org/donate. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, so write us at feedback@tricycle.org to let us know what you think. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. To keep up with the show, you can follow Tricycle Talks wherever you listen to podcasts. Tricycle Talks is produced by Sarah Fleming and the Podglomerate. I’m James Shaheen, editor-in-chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Thanks for listening!