"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!
Elizabeth Reninger, M.S. (Oriental Medicine) has been exploring Yoga/Qigong - in its Daoist, Buddhist and Hindu varieties - for upwards of twenty-five years. She maintains a private acupuncture practice in Boulder, Colorado, and is a published poet. For more of Elizabeth's writing, on related topics, please visit taoism.about.com taoism.about.com
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