Dancing and Death
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007The music for the Vajra Dance taught by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche does not remain at a uniform tempo. Many shifts in speed must be accommodated by dancers used to living at a monotonously hurried pace.
The dance is one perfect mandala of human life. We speed up; we slow down. We use our entire bodies. We breath. We move. We sing. We stumble. We anger. We regret. We enjoy. We celebrate. We cry. With every step, we encounter the infinite potential of the moment, even as it is expressed through our own limitations. Anything can arise.
As my dance teacher says: Everything eventually shows up on the mandala. There is only the question of how much we are going to resist this ceaseless eruption of surprises.
One of the main ways that we resist the natural rhythm of life is by generating speed. We speed up our activities and our thoughts in order to gain a feeling of control and quell our fear of death and nature.
Nearly all contemporary practitioners must slow down in order to begin to inhabit life more fully.
First we slow down by reducing the number of activities we undertake in any one day. Then, following the teachings, our whole sense of life begins to benefit from a growing experience of spaciousness as we let go of the speeding clutter in our lives, our minds, and our hearts.
If you are passing through your own life in a speeding car of activities, emotions, and thoughts, of course you are going to miss most of the experience. Once you slow down, you can begin to enjoy the nuanced rhythm of every moment of life. As fear of life seeps away, wonder at life’s ceaseless creative arising brings opportunities to learn to dance. We can dance with life instead of driving through it at top speed.
What do the movements of this dance look like?
Adapting to the unexpected without fussing or fuming.
Accommodating the other person’s reality with compassion, generosity and graciousness.
Divining the most auspicious direction and following it precisely and gracefully.
Abandoning what needs to be abandoned.
Looking forward without fixation on plans and planning.
Enjoying and exploring.
Many spiritual traditions denigrate the world of impermanence, death, and change. Tantra, and similar traditions, ask us to stop running away from the Reality of our total situation. We have to confront and resolve our fear of change and death in order to arrive at a larger View that encompasses both death and immortality.
We don’t want to escape any aspect of our world; we want to live with total awareness. Intentionally slowing down helps us to recognize and participate in the natural rhythm of life just as it is.
In Matriseva,
Shambhavi
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