Dancing For Your Whole Life: Yogic Advice
from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra
by Elizabeth
Reninger
zone3
“Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Then, suddenly,
drop to the ground and in this fall be total. There absolute essence is
revealed.”
~ Vijnanabhairava Tantra, verse 111
Each of has the desire (yes?) to become ~ with each breath we take,
with each step of our lives ~ more fully alive … And yet there is the
paradox that each breath we take, each step of our lives, brings us one
step, one breath closer to our death. So how do we work with this? Is
there a “solution” to this paradox?
The traditions of Buddhism as well as Kashmir Shaivism see (the
appearance of) this life of ours as training-ground for (the appearance
of) that moment of our death. They resolve the paradox through the
understanding that only by training ~ in every moment ~ in the art of
being fully alive, fully present here and now, in this moment, in this
moment, in this moment ~ only through a practice such as this are we able
then to be fully present (fully alive!) at the moment of our “death.”
The quotation above, from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra (a text written by
the Shaivite School of Kashmir around the first century A.D.), points to
such a resolution. Let’s take a closer look …
“Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity.” Have you ever
danced, or performed any other activity, so completely, with such total
abandon, such love and absorption, that the point of “exhaustion” (what
distance runners call “the wall”) opens into a whole new realm of
experience, puts you in touch with a whole new flow of energy/inspiration?
It’s the moment when years of training (our accumulated “expertise”) is
allowed to open, to fall away into a “mindless” spontaneity … when
movement becomes both divinely precise and effortless (Michael Jordan,
Baryshnikov, & Jet Li come to mind here) … when “I” am no longer doing
anything, yet all things are still manifesting, radiantly, perfectly. In
the language of Taoism this state of effortless doing is called Wu
Wei.
“Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total.” Have
you ever gone out on a warm summer night, laid on your back on a grassy
hillside, and let your mind & heart & vision travel out into the
starry sky, with its countless galaxies? When we surrender, we surrender
completely … no holding back. We let the whole thing dissolve. We die into
the present moment. In the language of Tibetan Buddhism, this is called
the Completion Stage.
“There absolute essence is revealed.” What if the essence of life and
the essence of death were one and the same? What if both our “wandering”
and our “dancing” were expressions of that one essence, and equally wise?
What if we could touch ~ with each breath, each step, each of our
“awakened” daily activities ~ the sweetness & power that is this
essence?
And now, please feel free …. to Dance!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Reninger holds a Masters degree in Chinese Medicine, is a
published poet, and has been exploring Yoga - in its Taoist, Buddhist
& Hindu varieties ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include
Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. To read more of her
yoga-related essays, please visit her website.
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