“We talk about not knowing, bearing witness, and compassionate action as though they happen independently, but I think they are in deep commune with each other, moment to moment,” says dancer and choreographer Keely Garfield, who has recently begun a new job as director of Spiritual Care and Palliative Care Chaplain with Northwell Health at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, New York. “For me, dancing utilizes the same skills, and I would say that my showing up in the dance studio has a similar quality about it.” 

Born and raised in London, after Keely completed her dance studies there in the 1980s, she headed west. “The modern dance world was very much centered in New York, and I thought that I would hop along here and stay for about maybe three months, taking classes and seeing performances and really soaking in the life of a dancer. And thirty-seven years have gone by.”

This past spring in New York, Keely Garfield Dance presented The Invisible Project, which, Keely explains, was “informed by my role as a chaplain working in end-of-life and trauma. Chaplains employ a set of skills, or competencies; among them are compassionate presence, reflective listening, bearing witness to suffering, affirming strengths, facilitating expression of feelings, and meaning-making.”

Did you grow up in a religious tradition? My mother was Jewish and my father was Catholic, and there was a certain ambivalence from the beginning toward religion. And yet I so wanted to belong. My mother would ignore the High Holidays, and then, at sundown, she would frantically search for the candles and whip us off to the synagogue at the end of the street, where we would stand sheepishly at the back or outside. It was very painful. But that pain that I inherited from my elders also turned me into a spiritual seeker. I took a deep dive into Judaism here in New York; I studied the Shekhinah and Hebrew prayer through the lens of the feminine. I also spent many, many Christmas Eves at midnight mass. And I became a yogi, a yoga teacher, singing my heart out at kirtans and studying Sanskrit and Vedic philosophy and theology. And it all comes to bear when, in my work, I’m called to recite the Shema here, the Lord’s Prayer there, or the Mahamantra for my Hindu patients. It’s a grace.

I think that the first time that I really felt included, that there was a place for me to be, was when I walked into the sangha I practice with now, the Village Zendo, with our abbot, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. Like a lot of spiritual homes, it is a convening of misfits and mishaps and wonderment. I’m very happy to have found my brick-and-mortar spiritual home.

What brought you to the threshold of your brick-and-mortar spiritual home? In 2007, I started a wonderful yearlong training program called Urban Zen Integrative Therapy, learning about yoga therapeutics and Reiki and essential oils and meditation. The contemplative care part of that training was led by Roshi Joan Halifax. One afternoon, the Village Zendo joined us in this beautiful event space in the West Village. I found myself sitting next to what looked like a bunch of earnest monks in their black robes and rakusus, and I just thought: I want this. And now I’m one of those strange people in a black robe with the rakusu sitting on a cushion enveloped by silence. 

When were you ordained? In 2013, I took Jukai, and in 2021, I was ordained as a Buddhist chaplain. My teacher, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, gave me the dharma name Rakushin. It means bliss body, or body of joy. It’s descriptive: I’m a mother (my two children are the loves of my life), a dancer, a yogi—and it’s prescriptive: go out and use that, with the awareness that I too will succumb to old age, sickness, and death.

What inspired your move toward chaplaincy? A few years ago, I was working as a professor in dance at the New School, very engaged with my dance company, teaching yoga, and working in wellness, and I had no thought about a career change. Then, one day, after an Ango intensive practice retreat, friends and I were all heading for an espresso at the nearest place. In the car, my dharma sister, who was a chaplain, turned to me and said something like: have you ever thought about becoming a chaplain? And it was at that moment that I was like: I am thinking it now!

The teachers have really been key. The Rev. Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson had come to the Zendo to teach us about death and dying, I’d studied Being with Dying with Roshi Joan through Urban Zen, and had focused on caring for the caregiver with New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. So the scene was set. 

When I learned that Jinpu was leading the CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) program at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, I knew I was going. I traveled up to Poughkeepsie two or three days a week and studied with her and my wonderful CPE intern group, and then I did my residency at Mount Sinai in the middle of COVID and worked at NYU Langone. And here I am.

What are some of the joys and challenges of chaplaincy? The joys and challenges are intertwined. It’s not that one is over in yonder field and the other is over in a different field. I’m a big fan of the Zen monk poet Ryokan, who tried to cultivate throughout his life and practice the ability to see that there were no differences between himself and everything around him. There are no differences between myself and everything around me. That is both a challenge and a joy.

Also, I try to cultivate the idea of being the “reliable other.” If I can become that reliable other, it feels joyful, and it’s a challenge to become that for someone. I’m not always that for myself.

And then, I think, the struggle is very simple: being with people who are really suffering day after day, sometimes in ways that are unimaginable. How does one take that on and not become completely overwhelmed and ineffectual? And sometimes that does happen, and it’s a moment to take a step back and another step back and take some time. It’s like the Japanese saying: fall down seven times, get up eight. The challenge is to get up again for the eighth or ninth or tenth time.

Buddhist chaplains often mention the lack of a supportive structure; many of us don’t have opportunities to meet and debrief with other chaplains in person. Is this a challenge for you? Absolutely. There may be a lot of chaplains where I am, but people are busy. We know that part of the power of healing in this work is the narrative, it’s the story. We have to tell our stories too—we can’t just bottle them up or push them aside. We do need more systemic support for how we tend to ourselves as chaplains so we can keep being useful and do the work. 

For me, taking some time to go sit in the chapel and do zazen there, or sitting down on the cushion and getting quiet goes a long way. In silence you can hear the groaning of the world, right? So in my own silence I can hear the groaning, bow to it, and that enables it to move back into the stream of things.

You’ve also worked in trauma. Yes, I feel like I’ve encountered some things that will probably stay with me till the end of time, things that are horrid and cruel and violent, and this only deepens my sense of compassion. I lived down in Battery Park during the events of 9/11/2001, and I was in the World Trade Center Plaza that morning as the catastrophe unfolded. I had dropped my son at school a couple of blocks away and was taking my daughter to the mall in the World Trade Center to buy some shoes. In that moment I experienced a sense of terror, for sure, but also great despair. It was a long road back. It was hard for me to come back into a place of trust. 

I think that experience has helped me recognize in people who are traumatized, especially by violence or catastrophic events, the sense of shock and kind of severing between who you were, who you are now, and dreadful uncertainty about who you’ll become. As a chaplain, I am always sitting with who you are right now. Sometimes—like when I was one of the first responders after the Sunset Park subway shooting last year—I meet you in the ED and follow you through the ICU, stepdown, rehab, and even discharge. Again, it’s really about accompanying, about being on that journey as the reliable other. And, if I’m lucky, I can join you in reimagining who you are now and who you will become. 

A trauma victim once said to me, “My greatest fear is that this is going to make me hate people. And I don’t want to hate people, so I’m going to choose to continue to love them.” It’s weird to say, but maybe that was my journey too from my own experience with trauma and catastrophe back toward love.

Your life experiences have been so rich and varied. Has this chaplaincy chapter taught you anything new about yourself? It’s a hard question. I think this is a great practice for me at this point in my life because my essential nature is relatively fiery and flamboyant, and I think of myself as an activist. I’ll be the first one to put myself forward for something difficult or “no can do.” Taking the opportunity to learn how to be softer and more gentle, how to take a step back, how to play more with silence as love—what a wonderful opportunity to learn about that right now in my life. I certainly know how to get on a stage with a giant light over my head and leap. But learning how to sit still and listen, and to have a simple practice, is really, really something right now.

The post Dancing into Silence as Love appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

We came to Nepal as pilgrims. From the US, Canada, and Hong Kong, we came to dance and sing in the power places of the Kathmandu Valley—also known as the Nepal Mandala. A mandala is an archetypal blueprint of a pure land, or sacred realm of a deity. This fertile valley at the foot of the great Himalayan range has been coined by Buddhist scholar Keith Dowman as “the playground of the Himalayan gods” due to countless myths of divine beings taking place at its many sites. Thus, the Nepal Mandala is considered to be a major power place graced by divine presence and visited by many Buddhist sages, yogis, and pilgrims throughout the ages. We came to connect with the energy of this place, to revitalize it with our own joyful devotion, and to spark an interior journey. What that inner journey would be, I could not predict.

We were a group of practitioners of Charya Nritya, the Newar Vajrayana practice, more than a thousand years old, of singing and dancing as a spiritual discipline. (Newar refers to the indigenous people and culture of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.) Our teacher is Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya, a 35th-generation Newar Vajrayana priest. Prajwal (as we call him) was born and raised within the nonmonastic, priestly Vajracharya caste in Kathmandu, at a time when knowledge of the Charya Nritya traditions was waning. This decline was due to the secrecy of the practices, political challenges of existing in a Hindu-majority country, and modernization. At an early age, Prajwal was instructed by his father, the renowned priest and scholar Ratna Kaji Vajracharya, to take their teachings out into the world and make them public. In fulfillment of that charge, Prajwal now lives and teaches at the Nritya Mandala Mahavihara in Portland, Oregon, which he cofounded in 2009. 

As world travel started to reopen after COVID-19 lockdowns, Prajwal decided it was time to return to his homeland and demonstrate to the local community how their traditions have been embraced and taken root in the West. We would be invigorating our own practice by connecting with the people, geography, rituals, art, and architecture that formed and framed the traditions we had learned from him.

The Kathmandu Valley is a fifteen-mile-long, elliptical-shaped mandala protected by the great Himalayan range to the north and tropical jungles to the south. Within this protected valley, Newar Buddhism, with its highly ritualistic blend of Himalayan and Indian cultural elements and Sanskrit liturgies, has remained intact since medieval times. It offers a uniquely sensorial experience of the dharma through physical practices, from creating individual pictorial mandalas during rituals to sacred dancing during deity meditation.

Deep reverence for and worship of the divine feminine as the mother-goddess, or devi, pervades both the Buddhist and Hindu religious views in this mandala. Even the exquisitely carved wooden roof-struts on Newar temples and many secular buildings pay visual homage to the endless array of goddesses wielding their innumerable gifts and weapons. In fact, the goddesses (as struts) literally emerge from the building exteriors to hold up the roof!

In Newar Buddhism, the sacred feminine frequently takes the form of Vajrayogini. Her name means “Adamantine Yogini,” and she manifests a pure and utterly blissful state of indestructible enlightenment. Her naked, red, dancing body marks her as a dynamic and joyful agent of transformation. As the supreme female Buddha of the tantric pantheon, she appears in multiple emanations, and the valley is saturated with her presence and energy. She is the central focus for much esoteric meditation and ritual—though on a mundane level, she is worshiped as a source of beneficence and blessing. Her presence is so pervasive that the sacred places devoted to her worship form their own mandala—a yogini mandala—within the greater Nepal Mandala.

Four yogini temples make up this yogini mandala: Pharping Vajrayogini Temple, Sankhu Khadga Yogini Temple, Pashupatinath Guhyeshwari Temple, and Bijeshwori Temple. Each temple honors a different form of the deity.

In Buddhist iconography, each of Vajrayogini’s forms is rendered naked, wearing only jewel and bone ornaments that sway and ripple as she moves. Her red color radiates energetic, creative power. Her left hand holds a drinking vessel made from a human skull from which she drinks blood, which she transforms into ambrosia. Meanwhile, her right hand holds a flaying knife (drigud) used to chop up dead bodies in cemeteries to feed to the animals—a reminder to dismember our own dualistic thinking and fixed notions. In fact, the yogini’s ornaments and implements are all remnants from the cemetery—a common locale for tantric meditation—with its reminders of death and impermanence to be converted into tools of spiritual practice leading to transformation.

I had learned the Vajrayogini charya dance a year prior to our trip. The goddess’s assured movements wielding her transformational tools (skull-bowl and chopper), conveying decisive action in the service of fearless presence, had powered me through a year of unimaginable challenges. I had emerged victorious, and I brought my personal experience of dancing Vajrayogini to her mandala. 

We made the hour’s drive to the town of Pharping, about nineteen kilometers south of Kathmandu. This major Buddhist pilgrimage destination was packed with devotees of Vajrayogini bringing offerings—colored powders, food, flowers, incense, butter lamps, money—and seeking blessings at her temple. Adjacent to this Newari-style structure are sites of deep import to the Tibetan tradition: the legendary cave complex of Guru Rinpoche (Asura and Yangleshod Caves) and a Tara Temple (Drolma Lhakhang) with a self-arising Tara image. 

At Pharping, we initiated our danced devotions. We performed the Charya Nritya, “Dance of Refuge,” a danced prayer of refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and “Dance of the Sixteen Offering Goddesses” at each place we visited. Sometimes we were inspired to include an additional charya dance of a particular deity as well. We had learned these dances through online or in-person workshops with Prajwal. Metaphorically speaking, we were planting these dances back into the earth where they were spawned.

The Newar village of Sankhu lies in the northeast corner of the Kathmandu Valley on the old trade route to Tibet. Here, Vajrayogini takes the form of Khadga Yogini (Sword Dakini), who wields a sword. The temple is a three-roofed pagoda with a gilt copper roof. Housed within the sanctum is the yogini statue—her red face and four arms barely peek out from beneath countless layers of adorning silks and glittering metal ornaments. The shrine room on the upper floor contains a larger gilded copper statue of Khadga Yogini, which is paraded through the town of Sankhu by the Vajracharya priests on the annual religious procession, or jatra. 

More than the statues, I was taken with the gilt-copper repoussé torana above the door to the sanctum. Its central figure is Khadga Yogini in a warrior stance, her feet trampling two kneeling figures. A force not to be trifled with, her eight arms hold eight implements: an upraised sword, a lotus, an arrow, a bow, a vajra, a cattle prod, a hooked knife, and a skull-cup. She stands flanked by two more four-armed versions of herself. 

Although the temple of Guhyeshwari (meaning “hidden” or “secret goddess”) contains no image of the goddess, it packs a visceral punch with its evocation of female generative energy. The temple of Guhyeshwari honors the goddess in the form of Vajra Varahi, who is a more wrathful expression of Vajrayogini. (“Wrathful” in this context indicates an energetic intensity, not an emotion.) The central shrine is believed to house her womb, which is said to sustain all of Kathmandu. A spring in the well of the central shrine overflows with red water that is said to be the amniotic fluid of the goddess. Thus, Vajra Varahi’s womb is the object of veneration here.

The half-hour flight to Lumbini allowed us to stretch the yogini mandala to include the birthplace of the historical Buddha. We made the 20-minute walk along the central avenue of Lumbini, amid the tropical woodland, up to the temple monument to Queen Mahamaya, the Buddha’s mother. The large, white, stately Maya Devi Temple marks the spot where it is said that the queen took hold of the branch of a fig tree in a flowering grove for support while she labored and gave birth to the Buddha. Just outside the temple, beside the sacred pool, we danced the charya dances in gratitude to this great mother observed by pilgrim onlookers from all over the world.

We completed the yogini mandala at Bijeshwori Temple, situated above the Bishnumati River in the Swayambhu neighborhood of Kathmandu, originally at the epicenter of an ancient cremation ground. The principal statue in the temple’s altar is of the goddess Vidyadhari (“Bijeshwori” is the Newar pronunciation), meaning “Lady of Awareness.” Frequently referred to as “Akash Yogini,” or “Flying Vajrayogini,” her body is displayed in flight, with her left leg pulled up high and her right leg behind her bent at the knee. Her left hand holds a skull-bowl to her mouth, while her right arm is extended behind her holding a chopper. She cradles a khatvanga (tantric staff) in the crook of her arm, resting it against her left shoulder. 

Akash Yogini is surrounded by a sisterhood of three other yoginis. To the left of the central image is Vajra Varahi in her ecstatic dancing posture (her left foot stomps on a Hindu deity representing ignorance, while the right leg is raised up and bent), and to the right of the central image is Uddhapada Vajrayogini (Foot-in-the-Sky Yogini). The fourth yogini stands against the north wall of the temple taking the warrior stance of Naro Khechari (Naropa’s Dakini, the form envisioned by the Mahasiddha Naropa). All four yoginis hold their emblematic implements.

Our day at Bijeshwori was no ordinary visit. We were there to receive an initiation into the practice of Vajrayogini. Deity practice, also called “deity yoga,” is a Vajrayana meditation in which the practitioner adopts an archetypal role model of enlightenment (deity) to contemplate and identify with to reveal one’s own buddhanature. The ritual entry process into the tantric practice of a deity can be granted only by an empowered lineage holder, a requirement that maintains the integrity of the teachings and practices. Our initiation was performed by Prajwal’s older brother Sarbagya Ratna Bajracharya, who is a much-in-demand Vajracharya priest in Kathmandu. Prajwal served as his ritual assistant, and his extended family attended as witnesses. 

After removing our shoes, we climbed the ladder-like wooden stairs to the second floor of the temple, where we sat in two rows facing the center in the long, narrow meeting room. As in the other Newar rituals we attended, we each worked with our own personal mandala, drawn onto the floor with chalk, and an accompanying platter of varied offering substances (flowers, grains, fruit, incense, water, milk, colored powders, etc.). The chalk-drawn mandala circle is a representational model of ourselves used in the ritual process. For example, we placed offerings inside the mandala to symbolically purify our body, speech, and mind as the priest and assistant chanted prayers and performed offerings to Vajrayogini. Indeed, all the ingredients we had for our personal mandalas were multiplied fiftyfold for the ministrations performed by Prajwal and his brother at the front of the room.

The two-hour ceremony came to a powerful climax when Prajwal walked down each row and one by one gave us Vajrayogini’s tools of transformation to hold—the ritual skull-bowl in our left hand and the chopper in our right. Prajwal repeated his rounds, this time placing Vajrayogini’s mark of blessing (a tika) upon our forehead, with the tip of a vajra dipped in a black paste. He attended each one of us again, placing her metal vajra crown upon our head, giving us the necessary time to fully sense it. Feeling the physical and symbolic weight of these implements made a profound impression. 

I was shocked when I looked in the mirror. Wearing all of Vajrayogini’s iconographic adornments, I didn’t recognize myself.

After enjoying a home-cooked Nepali meal prepared by Prajwal’s family, we returned downstairs to the temple courtyard to dance. As we danced the sixteen offerings, I was reminded of Prajwal’s explanation, “The deities don’t need offerings. They have everything they need. Rather, the offerings serve to open the practitioner’s senses and provide us with the energy to engage in sacred practice.” We completed our celebration with the “Dance of Bijeshwori (Sky Dakini)” and its repeated flying posture just as the light rays flooding into Vajrayogini’s courtyard performed a sublime dance to complement our own.

Our pilgrimage concluded with a special performance at Itum Bahal, one of the largest Newar Buddhist monasteries in the old town of Kathmandu and headquarters of the Vajracharya Conservation Society. Unlike most travelers who come to see the sights, we were the performers, offering the charya dances back to the local community as a gift. The program was completely voluntary, and I had not planned to perform, as there seemed to be plenty of people who were eager to do so. The performers from our group decided on the deities they would dance—Ganesha, Avalokiteshvara, Green Tara, Vajra Varahi. But when I saw that no one was performing Vajrayogini, I changed my mind. I had danced her for a year; now, I would wear her red costume, bone ornaments, and dakini crown and publicly perform her dance to offer the energy she had given me. 

We arrived at Itum Bahal in the late afternoon and immediately began marking our dances in the courtyard, getting accustomed to the space. When a local Charya Nritya performer arrived with a suitcase full of costumes in tow, we retired with her to one of the temple rooms to transform ourselves. I was shocked when I looked in the mirror. Wearing all of Vajrayogini’s iconographic adornments, I didn’t recognize myself. 

The sun set, and the temple courtyard filled with locals and even a few tourists. The space had been set with stage lights to project the color of each deity and amplification for the two vocalists (one of whom is the chant leader from the Portland temple). They would sing the accompanying Sanskrit charya giti (vajra songs). As per our ritual, Prajwal led our group in the dances of refuge and offerings. Then we proceeded with our solos. Each dancer began by walking out toward the lit space, bowing to touch a hand to the earth, the heart center, and forehead—the gesture of gratitude and respect. Then one by one, we brought the deities to life with their dances of divine qualities and action.

The performance clearly moved those in the audience, because several days later, when most of us had headed home, Prajwal was flooded with a host of media interviews. Additionally, he was honored with several awards, including recognition for uplifting the glory of Newar ritual and its sacred dance. Prajwal is currently planning to lead another pilgrimage this spring. As for me, I now dance Vajrayogini both inside and beyond the confines of my practice room—allowing myself to acknowledge and animate the radiant Vajrayogini, who dances within me.

The post Becoming Vajrayogini appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

You might think this rather odd advice to come from my dog, Brooklyn. After all, let’s be honest: She herself doesn’t even really dance.

Well, unless I’m dancing with her, that is—which I admittedly do sometimes. I pick her up in my arms and we waltz around the kitchen to old-school hip-hop or Jamaican ska or random mambo beats, her front paws hanging over my shoulder, a distant, bemused, almost bored look in her eyes. Brooklyn is not a small dog, either—maybe thirty-three pounds or so, including a good couple pounds of scruff—and so I know she looks a little ridiculous in my arms, too big to be carried around that way, but I cannot help myself: The moments I get to dance with my dog are some of my happiest. I could say Brooklyn likes it, too—or perhaps at least that she doesn’t seem to mind—but maybe a more truthful way of putting it is that she tolerates it.

Anyway, as I was saying, excepting our little waltzes in the kitchen, Brooklyn doesn’t “dance” in the traditional sense of the word.

But she does have moves.

For instance, her wiggle-butt—that full-tilt, whole-body wag, every atom of her ecstatic, shimmying with good vibrations.

Or the way, hoping for a treat, she’ll look up at us with expectant eyes and do an eager little two-step with her front legs, a sort of deerlike prance of sorts, her toenails clicking against the kitchen floor.

Or the way when she’s really excited, she’ll run off and grab one of her little stuffed toys—her flamingo, or her rhinoceros, or her moose—and then trot back in proudly with the thing in her mouth to show it off to us.

Or the way she’ll look up at us and tilt her head with perfect curiosity, as if trying to figure out just what the hell we’re talking about.

In fact, it’s hard to think of anything Brooklyn does that’s not a move of sorts, almost as if her whole life is in fact a kind of dance, every instant of it a work of art. After all, dogs have this remarkable way of inhabiting their bodies with a kind of unqualified ease, and the result is that there is something exact—something perfect and irrevocable—about their every movement. Even when Brooklyn’s not moving—say, for instance, when she’s sprawled out, asleep—she does so in positions that have a certain flawlessness, as if they cannot be improved (though, apparently, in her own mind, they can be, for every now and then Brooklyn will rise to her feet, make a few determined circles, paw at her dog bed a little bit to soften it up, and then settle back down again, often in almost exactly the same spot: which is of course yet another ridiculously cute move).

And it’s not like Brooklyn’s trying to take these poses—or trying to do anything, really—she’s just being herself, doing her thing. But there’s something truly enviable nevertheless about the way dogs are so present and at home in their bodies, in their skin. About their existence, so natural and fluid. Yes, even with all the collars and the leashes and the crates, dogs are free in a way it sometimes feels we humans can only dream of: that ability to just be themselves without any apparent self-consciousness—their calm, easy presence. And the result, unintentional, is that dogs emanate a kind of languid grace. A simple, unadulterated perfection.

Of course, whether we realize it or not, we humans are not actually so different. We, too, are wholly complete, though we may not always feel that way. Each of our lives is a unique and marvelous dance, utterly our own, and beautiful, too—though for some strange reason it seems easier to recognize this in a dog than in ourselves. But consider this: At any random moment, if your simple posture or your lovely, sad eyes could be captured in paint by a true master, the result would be a masterpiece. Because you are a masterpiece—you just can’t see it. As it is with dogs, so it is with us: At any moment—in every moment—each of us is this great, fathomless treasure.

The problem is, if it doesn’t feel that way, who cares? If we humans go through existence feeling separate and awkward, rather than beautiful and whole, isn’t that, then, the reality of it? And if that’s the reality we’re experiencing, what can be done?

Like the helpless wag of a dog’s tail, dancing, too, is an expression of joy.

Well, one solution, as Brooklyn might suggest, is to dance. Put on some funky music and shake your butt a little bit! (After all, let’s not forget that shaking your butt is basically the same thing as wagging your tail.) And the great thing about dancing is that it gets us out of our brains and into our bodies, into the moment. Yes, start moving our muscles, and suddenly we’re not thinking so goddamn much anymore, thank God. For once, like dogs, we’re just existing, we’re just moving, jumping up and down and shaking ourselves free from ourselves and all our ridiculous fears and inhibitions—we’re being a little silly and having a little fun—and it feels really, really good . . .

Yes, and let’s not forget that this is the point of dancing: to celebrate. After all, like the helpless wag of a dog’s tail, dancing, too, is an expression of joy. It is to be at play; it is, for once, to be free.

How wonderful it would be to go through your whole life like this, with the simple, joyful presence of a dog. The funny thing is, if you’re truly going to inhabit the moment the way dogs do, you almost have to dance. Because the nature of the here and now is that it’s ever-shifting, and so to remain with it requires that you stay on your toes. You need to be alive to what’s in front of you—almost as if life itself were your dance partner—you need to be able to be flexible, respond, adjust. You step to the side, do a pirouette, take two steps forward, two steps back, do the cha-cha. And then, all of a sudden, it’s clear that you, too, are free—that you’ve always been free—and that in each and every moment, you can make of your life whatever you want, as big and beautiful as you please. You can make of your life a work of art, a dance—which is what it already was—only now, you no longer feel so separate from it.

Of course, admittedly, this is mostly conjecture on my part. I myself catch only the most fleeting glimpses of the moment—and rather than waltzing freely through my life, alive and responsive, I often feel stuck in mud. But I do believe it’s possible that we can be more present, that, like dogs, we can be lighter on our feet, and in our hearts—though for me this is, as I say, a work in progress. All I really know for sure is that I like dancing with my dog—and she likes dancing through her life. I bet we would, too.

♦

Originally published here on Love, Dog, an online publication that explores the companionship between humans and dogs.

The post Lessons from a (Mostly) Good Dog: #5: Dance appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Though its history goes back over a thousand years, Charya Nritya, a sacred dance practice belonging to the Newar Buddhists of Nepal, has been in danger of dying out. Younger generations are losing interest, and, as Kathmandu Post arts and culture reporter Srizu Bajracharya explains, community members have historically resisted sharing this central practice of their Nepalese Vajrayana tradition. In the West, Newar Buddhism itself, let alone this specific dance practice, receives little attention relative to other traditions. 

Prajwal Vajracharya, a 35th-generation Vajrayana priest, is working to change that. Prajwal began his training in Charya Nritya at eight years old under the tutelage of his father, Buddhist scholar and ritual master Ratna Kaji Vajracharya. In 1996, he founded Dance Mandal: Foundation for Sacred Buddhist Arts of Nepal, based in Portland, Oregon, and in 2009, he opened Nritya Mandala Mahavihara, the first Newar temple in the West. I recently sat down with Prajwal to learn more about Newar Buddhism, the sacred art of Charya Nritya, and the importance of physical movement for Buddhist practice.

Could you tell us a little about who the Newar people are? The Newar people have been living for thousands of years in the Kathmandu Valley, which is the center of Nepal. Our history goes back 5,000 years. Nepal is a Hindu kingdom. If you go to the government, none of the Buddhists are in parliament; it is run by Hindus. Only five to six percent of the whole of Nepal is Newar. That’s why [Newar] Buddhism is not growing that much there. But our people are strong in their practice of the Vajrayana, or tantric Buddhism. The Newar people are just living quietly and that’s why they are not known in the outside world.

What are some of the things that make Newar Buddhism unique? If you go into Buddhist history, it is only the Newar people that have kept the texts in Sanskrit for a thousand years. So that’s one unique part. The other unique part with Newar Buddhism is the emphasis on equality. In 1953, Buddhists were kicked out of Nepal. All the monks and nuns were being kicked out [by the Hindu government]. Our Buddhist practice became a secret because we were not allowed to practice openly. So we went underground. Newar Buddhists are householders. They keep their own practice in family traditions and then live normal lives. We became lay priests [vajracharya] so we could have an easy time with normal people—we don’t see ourselves as different from other people.

What also seems very unique and special to Newar Buddhism is the storytelling and dance traditions. Back in the old days, get-togethers in the vihara house [temple] would always include Jataka tales, [stories of the Buddha’s past lives, for inspiration. Then there was singing and dancing—every ritual had to have singing and dancing. Newar Buddhists believe that your practice is not only sitting meditation. You have to be connected to the physical body and to move. Once you get physically strong, the mind will be more clear. Sometimes people have a mind that is more clear, but the physical body is in pain and suffering, and it doesn’t work in the practice of the dharma. 

Vajrayogini dancer Corinne Nakamura. “Vajrayogini, the Adamantine yogini, is the supreme female Buddha of the tantric pantheon. Bright red and dancing joyfully, she epitomizes the wholeness and freedom of buddhahood. Hers is a state of pure, passionate intensity that is fully engaged with the dynamic flow of reality. She blazes with wisdom and yogic fire. Her right hand wields a crescent-shaped knife that she uses to cut off negative mind states wherever they arise. Her left hand bears the skull-bowl from which she drinks the nectar of supreme bliss. When we see her dancing, we are to understand that this energy, the essence of the world, is blissful, radiant, and pure, and that it can be encountered directly.” —Prajwal Vajracharya

Yogini Mandala from Boise groups. “This dance depicts Vajrayogini, Nairatmya, Kadga Yogini, and Akasha Yogini as they form a three-dimensional cosmic diagram of the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. Each of the four goddesses has a major temple site that maps out the Kathmandu Valley as their mandala, their sacred place. The four divine dakinis bless the Kathmandu Valley with their enlightened, blissful presence.”  —Prajwal Vajracharya

Kurukulla dance by Lianne Hunt. “Kurukulla is a female Buddha who enchants with her beauty, weaponry, and powers of liberation. Her body is red, the color of passion. Her hair streams behind her as she leaps and aims her weapons. Kurukulla uses her magic to bestow love, harmony, and highest bliss. Kurukulla’s power is the unconquerable force of love. Her drawn arrow, poised in front of her heart, becomes saturated with her wisdom and compassion. To be pierced by her arrow is to be transformed and to taste the nectar of enlightened awareness.” —Prajwal Vajracharya

Buddhist priest and Charya Nritya master Prajwal Vajracharya performing the Vajrasattva ritual. Meditation on Vajrasattva, who represents the essence of all Buddhas and the source of the tantric teachings, is central to Newar Buddhist meditative and ritual practices. “Its purpose is the full purification of all negative karma, mind states, and motivations. Before performing any ritual—such as in initiation or ritual of healing, offering, or consecration—Newar gurus or priests envision themselves as Vajrasattva so they may perform the ritual with pure motivation, in a state of unity with him. This assures that the ritual will be undertaken not out of any selfish motive but solely for the intention of the uplift, inspiration, and enlightenment of all living beings.” —Prajwal Vajracharya 

Could you explain what Charya Nritya is? Charya means “practice” in Sanskrit. Nritya means “dance” in the present day, but it comes from the word nitya, meaning “daily” or “every day.” So Charya Nritya is “everyday practice.” We call it “dance as a spiritual discipline.” The discipline is keeping the awareness so what you are doing is transformed in your body into complete awareness. Every gesture in Charya dance is more than just a gesture. It has to be connected to the spirit, iconography, and history. Each gesture has a meaning.

Take the tribangha [posture where the body bends in one direction at the knees, the other direction at the hip, and then the other again at the shoulders and neck]. The posture is connected to three different nadi chakras. So when you blend movement together, it comes into the central channel. There is a 1-2-4 step we have in Charya dance where we move from one side to the other side with the hip and head. Where the hip is, the head is. When you move the hip and head from one side to the other side, it generates a wave inside. So you can work on the central channel. It’s like a reflexological way of moving in the body. My father says when you become like a Charya dancer, you feel like a different person. 

What qualifies someone to be a student of Charya dance? Anyone can be a Charya dancer. You can sit in a chair and be qualified for Charya dance. It’s about joyfully dancing and the energy and it can be easily done.

So if people read this interview and then decide they would like to learn Charya dance, how can they go about doing that? If you have a sangha, I’m happy to teach the dance online. I’m doing that for groups in London and Singapore. And for people living in Portland, Oregon, two or three times a year we usually have a weekend retreat. From 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Friday to Sunday, we practice, practice, practice and focus only on one deity dance. But with the pandemic, it’s not happening right now.

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Weekend retreats may be on pause, but Nritya Mandala Mahavihara and Prajwal himself host regular courses and events, online and in-person. Prajwal just wrapped up a four-week online dance course. Recordings are available here. Every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. PST, the temple hosts a sadhana (spiritual practice) and bhajan (devotional song) practice, and on Friday at 8 p.m. PST, Prajwal leads a singing practice where participants learn the songs of Charya Dance. There are also larger events, like the upcoming New Year Purification ritual or the Full Moon Namasangiti chant. Last month, the temple celebrated its 12th anniversary with a series of dance offerings. For more information on dance classes, workshops, and lectures, visit the Dance Mandal’s website.

The 12th-anniversary celebration for the Nritya Mandala Mahavihara

The post The Sacred Art of Charya Nritya appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The nuns of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery (DGL) in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh have instituted a new tradition: dakini dance. This practice actually dates back to the beginnings of Vajrayana when ritual dance was performed by both female and male participants (as later described in the 8th century text the Hevajra-tantra). But as Buddhism went on to be practiced and promulgated in the monasteries of Tibet and the Himalayas, the public performance of sacred dance (Tib., cham) became the purview of male practitioners─until recently. Under the leadership of renowned nun Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, these female practitioners have been reclaiming their right to fully participate in all aspects of Himalayan Buddhist tradition, and providing a positive model for more equitable and dynamic Buddhist communities.

Dakini (Tib., khandroma) is often translated as “skydancer” or “she who moves through the sky” and refers to a feminine energy being who facilitates, or even instigates, one’s spiritual progress. Judith Simmer-Brown, in her book Dakini’s Warm Breath, discusses how the dakini, in Buddhist tantra, were elevated beyond particular beings into a greater principle where the feminine represents wisdom itself. Here, wisdom is interpreted as insight into emptiness, or the abiding awareness of the inter-relativity and impermanence of all phenomena. The dakini, frequently portrayed iconographically as dancing, moves with ease in the boundless space of emptiness. Indeed, dancing metaphors pervade Buddhist archetypes of enlightenment in both art and text because they demonstrate ideals such as dynamism, fluidity, stability, fierce energy, and equipoise.

Dakini dances, like all cham, are embodiments of divine activity and Buddhist teachings. They are often performed while generating a visualization of a Buddha field, or field of spiritual support—which would include buddhas, bodhisattvas, lineage ancestors, teachers, meditation deities, dakinis, dakas (“spiritual warriors”), and dharma protectors—within the framework of a larger ritual.   

The dances are performed in colorful brocade gowns decorated with elaborate bone ornaments─belt, apron, necklaces, bracelets, earrings─and topped with a golden five-lobed crown. These accessories are worn to stimulate the six paramitas, or perfections. The necklace is worn to rouse generosity. The armlets and bracelets encourage ethics, the earrings instill patience, the head ornaments stir joyful effort, the belt and apron promote concentration, and the female practitioner’s body symbolizes wisdom. The dancers vibrate a double-headed damaru drum with the right hand to represent compassion, and ring the drilbu (“bell”) with the left to signify emptiness. They sound these instruments with each step of the dance as a display of these two equalities of enlightened awareness. 

Because tantric practitioners traditionally practiced in cremation grounds and repurposed the remains encountered there into ritual implements, skulls were often used to make the damaru drums, and ritual skull cups and small bones were transformed into delicate ornaments to be worn. These elements of the dakini costume are reminders of how the practitioner confronts places and experiences that scare us, such as death, but can use these encounters for spiritual practice. 

Back in 2003, the nuns of Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, were empowered to dance cham by the head of their lineage, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, and their practice has grown and flourished ever since.

Having seen the Druk Amitabha Mountain nuns performing these dakini dances, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo in 2013 asked to send a group of five senior nuns from her nunnery to Druk Amitabha to learn the dances. (Jetsunma is also instituting another tradition at DGL: that of the female lineage of Togdenma yogini meditators, a tradition lost due to the communist takeover of Tibet.) The Gyalwang Drukpa not only agreed to Jetsunma’s request, but also subsidized the nuns’ journey and gifted them ten dakini costumes, complete with ornaments.

The DGL nuns first performed the dances in public for the inauguration of their temple in 2014. According to Jetsunma, “At that time about 1,000 people came, including all our Rinpoches, monks, and lay people from Tashi Jong, [a nearby community]. The lamas and monks were deeply impressed with the nuns’ performance. Later they danced at various events, including the inauguration of the temple of Choegon Rinpoche, which also included a large audience.” Noting that the nuns could not rely on such special events to keep the dances well-rehearsed, Jetsunma suggested that the dances become an annual part of DGL’s Lhabab Duchen celebration. This major holy day commemorates the Buddha’s return to Earth from his three-month sojourn in heaven to impart the dharma to his mother and other celestial beings─a perfect occasion to perform these dances, which are sacred expressions of the enlightened feminine.  

For Lhabab Duchen last year, the DGL nuns began the morning festivities with Khandro Denga, the Dance of Five Dakinis. The dance is also called Khandro Tenzhug, or Long-life Prayer to the Dakinis, and is usually performed as part of longevity rituals meant to remove obstacles to the long lives of the great lamas, spiritual teachers, and all beings. In Himalayan Buddhism, prayers requesting that a spiritual teacher remain in this world are frequently composed and recited because the teacher’s longevity is considered practitioners’ best opportunity for enlightenment. The tradition holds that the dakinis and other celestial beings, meanwhile, desire these great teachers to move on to other buddha realms and summon them to leave this life. The tenzhug (“long-life”) ritual and accompanying dance are performed to avert the call of the dakinis, or as one such prayer proclaims, “Gather back the silken beckoning cord of the viras [‘heroes’] and dakinis.” 

The dance begins with five dancers entering the dance ground to the blasts of long horns while they energetically skip, leap, and turn. They continue the movements after having formed a circle; the circle eventually unfolds into a wide row (usually facing the lama or beneficiary of the prayer). The dancers represent the five wisdom dakinis from the five buddha families and the corresponding aspects of enlightened mind: buddha (spacious), ratna (enriching), vajra (indestructible), padma (magnetizing), karma (accomplishing). Each dakini is identified by costume and ritual attributes in the color of her buddha family─white, gold, red, green, and blue─which are associated with the five natural elements. 

From the row of dakinis, one steps forward and dances, presenting a torma (a butter cake offering) and ceremonial khata (“scarf”) to the celestial dakini being invoked in the prayer. She holds them in her outstretched hands as gifts to ensure the long life of the lama. Her movements are echoed by the other dancers behind her. Having made her offering, the featured dakini dances away and kneels to the invoked dakini, the lama, and the assembly—both envisioned and embodied—before exiting amidst prayers requesting the removal of obstacles to long life. Afterward, the next dakini begins her offering dance. The dance is complete once the last dakini exits and the prayers are finished.

The nuns went on to perform Rigma Chudruk Cham, or Dance of Sixteen Goddesses, at the Lhabab Duchen ceremony. In this dance, sixteen dakinis enter with a swirl of energy to the blasts of the horns, much like the earlier dance, and form a circle. They move around the circle, hopping and turning, their arms spiraling overhead with the rattle and ring of the damaru and drilbu. The instrumental accompaniment stops, and the nuns chant another long-life prayer while continuing to dance. Moving around the circle, they hinge their torsos forward, hopping on one leg with the other extended forward, while sounding the damaru and drilbu. 

Then, standing in place and facing the center, they vibrate their instruments upward to the right and left, around in circles several times, and downward to the left and right. The dancers raise one arm and hop a revolution in one direction and then turn, reversing the direction. Once the hymn is completed the cymbals and horns assume the accompaniment and the dancers move toward the center, pressing the hand with the bell forward before turning to move back outward, pressing with the hand holding the damaru.

As this year’s Lhabab Duchen approaches, the DGL nuns are currently rehearsing the dakini dances and more young ones are learning them. They are also preparing plays and comedy skits, which everyone will enjoy during the festive picnic. Meanwhile, despite the continuing lockdown, the nuns carry on much as usual with their studies (philosophy, debate, classical Tibetan, prayer and ritual, English, computer skills), ritual practices, physical yoga, nunnery chores, and now gardening. Their regimen is punctuated with academic exams, Buddhist festivals, and an annual two-month rainy day retreat (where even the little ones maintain their silence). Jetsunma has also embraced the experience of Zoom sessions with dharma groups from around the world, and the nunnery plans to livestream this year’s Lhabab Duchen dances on Jetsuma’s Facebook page. The holy day will conclude with evening puja (prayer service), followed by animated debating under the decorative fairy lights, which are currently being hung to festoon the DGL temple.

When the original five DGL nuns traveled to Druk Amitabha, they were given a formal meeting with the Gyalwang Drukpa, who asked them to demonstrate their competence by performing the dances for him and their nun instructors. Though everyone was pleased with the results, the nuns later admitted to feeling nervous. They have since taught the dakini dances to some forty or fifty nuns—and counting. In this way, one spark lights a fire and centuries-old restrictions to female capability and practice gradually become obsolete.

♦

Watch this year’s Lhabab Duchen dances on Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo’s Facebook page on October 26.

Thank you to Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo of Dongyu Gatsal Ling and Lopon Jigme Tingdzin of Druk Amitabha Mountain for generously providing explanations and visual media.

The post Dakini Dances appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Every year, Tamzhing Monastery in Bhutan hosts a display of Buddhist dances and cultural expressions that were “discovered,” taught, recorded, and practiced by the great Bhutanese lama Pema Lingpa (1450-1521), the Himalayan kingdom’s homegrown religious visionary and prolific treasure revealer, or terton. Through his amassed treasure teachings and his own compositions, Pema Lingpa shaped Bhutanese cultural and spiritual life, contributing prayers and practices deeply embedded in the country’s religious ecosystem. The most public and visible aspect of his legacy? The repertoire of cham (sacred dances) attributed to him and performed at religious rituals and festivals throughout Bhutan, including those performed at Tamzhing. Through these vibrant dances, every Bhutanese experiences Pema Lingpa’s influence.

This year marks 500 years of the influential legacy of the Great Treasure Revealer, and in February 2021 (on the anniversary of his passing), Bhutan launched a year-long celebration to honor him. Though an upsurge of COVID-19 cases in Bhutan makes public celebrations uncertain, the widely broadcast ceremonies of the previous year reveal a thriving tradition.

The Great Terton

Born in the Bumthang Valley, the spiritual center of Bhutan, Pema Lingpa was raised by his maternal grandfather, who taught him the skill of blacksmithing. With respect to spiritual and intellectual learning, he was for the most part self-taught. But some say that he received his education directly from Padmasambhava, the Tantric mystic who is credited with bringing Buddhism from India to the Himalayan region in the mid-eighth century, and his chief disciple, the female adept Yeshe Tsogyal.

Pema Lingpa began “discovering treasures” at the age of 27. In the Nyingma tradition, the oldest school of Himalayan Buddhism, many sacred texts, objects, visions, and dances are considered to be the rediscovered hidden teachings of Padmasambhava. These “treasures” are believed to have been hidden by Padmasambhava and his immediate disciples in the eighth century for rediscovery in later times, affording a kind of spiritual renaissance when the need would arise. 

There were those who challenged Pema Lingpa’s authenticity, which led him to perform public revelations, including the famous underwater treasure extraction at Membar Tsho (Burning Lake), in which he carried a burning butter lamp that remained unextinguished while submerged. His influence was not limited to his locale. Pema Lingpa’s teachings impacted the greater Tibetan Vajrayana landscape, as evidenced by the inclusion of episodes from his life and practices on the murals within the Dalai Lamas’ private Lukhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet. In an age when Tibet was the central source of Vajrayana knowledge and skill, Pema Lingpa was a sought-after spiritual resource and inspiration for many renowned lamas and leaders including the fifth and sixth Dalai Lamas and the seventh Karmapa─reversing the usual flow of spiritual information.

Pema Lingpa’s tercham (treasure dances) were typically revealed during dream or meditative states in which choreographic instructions were imparted to him. The dances are spiritual teachings, prayers, and rituals that form a seamless expression of “body, speech, and mind,” three doorways to enlightenment. They continue to be practiced in a line of uninterrupted transmission in many Buddhist establishments in Bhutan.

Tamzhing─The Temple of the Good Message

In 1501, Pema Lingpa  began construction on the monastery known as Tamzhing in the district of Bumthang. The story is told that when Pema Lingpa was looking for a suitable location for his monastery, the earth spirits sent a miraculous pig to indicate the auspicious site and level the ground for its construction. Another version says that Pema Lingpa’s yidam (meditation deity), the female deity Vajravarahi, appeared in the form of a pig and presented him with the design for the monastery. It is further believed that the dakinis (female wisdom facilitators) laid the foundation wall and sculpted many of the interior statues.

Before the consecration of the temple, Pema Lingpa is said to have had a visionary dream in which Vajravarahi again appeared, this time performing a dance and telling him to learn it for the temple consecration ceremony. Upon awakening, he wrote down the steps, taught the dance to his disciples, and introduced Phag Cham (Dance of the Pig) at the temple’s consecration ceremony as an offering of gratitude to the pig. Every year the performance of this dance commemorates this providential event as it opens the Tamzhing Phala Choepa, or the Tamzhing Festival of the Pig.

Video courtesy the Pema Lingpa Foundation

The Fall 2020 Rollout

As this past fall approached, I waited expectantly for the rollout of the Bhutanese festivals, of which Tamzhing Phala Choepa is only one. The autumn calendar of religious festivals fell on the heels of a strict three-week national lockdown. From the outbreak of the pandemic, the monarchy, elected government, and central religious administration—Bhutan is a Vajrayana Buddhist country—had aligned in issuing strict COVID-19 measures restricting social gatherings. The festivals are annual community affairs that draw tightly packed crowds to the monasteries and temples for dramatic cham dances, community folk dances, and monks’ rituals and ceremonies─all held in the spirit of collective renewal and blessings. 

As it turned out, the monasteries held the sacred festivals “behind closed doors,” respecting the government’s admonition against public gatherings. This meant that all the rituals and dances were performed by the monks of the hosting monasteries, but the public was not invited to attend. Now, this is not entirely unusual. Some dances and rituals are frequently unseen by the public and performed solely for an envisioned audience of enlightened beings. But this past year, national television, the newspapers, and each of the religious institutions holding the festivals streamed the proceedings for the benefit of all to see─even rituals and dances that are normally not open to the public. And just as online technology has opened so many events for global participation, I was able to take in four overlapping festivals, which would not have been possible in previous years. 

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A Few Highlights from Pema Lingpa’s Treasure Dances 

The year before I had attended the Tamzhing Festival in person and beheld the bountiful dance legacy of Pema Lingpa performed there. My helpful guide for this three-day event was Lopon Phuntsho, the Discipline Master and former champon (cham dance master) of Tamzhing.

Within the Pema Lingpa, or Peling, tradition, there are both dances performed by monks and those performed by lay volunteers. The opening solo, Phag Cham, is usually danced by the lay champon (different from the monk champon). He wears the mask of a boar and carries a leafy weeping willow branch in each hand─sweeping and swirling them as he leaps about dancing to each of the four directions to sprinkle blessings. (The sprinkling was literal, as it was raining.) Incense filled the air with scent and smoke to purify the space for ritual activity. Phag Cham is unique to Tamzhing Monastery and not performed anywhere else in Bhutan, or, for that matter, the world. 

The lay champon, Pema Rigzin, shared that each household from three Bumthang villages is responsible for sending a volunteer to dance at the festival─either a male to perform the lay masked dances or a female to perform the folk dances. Pema Rigzin explained that they all begin rehearsing 20 days in advance. He had been performing these cham for 11 years. 

When I asked if he looked forward to dancing at the festival each year, Pema Rigzin responded, “Because these dances are sacred, I will continue to perform them until I cannot.”

Tshering Pem, the leader of the female folk dancers, had been volunteering as a dancer for more than 20 years and had been inspired by her aunt, who had also danced. She offered that the group collectively decides which dances to perform and that each dancer is responsible for buying her own costume. 

One of the most important Pema Lingpa tercham was only performed during the chamjug, or rehearsal. This Zhanag Cham (Black Hat Dance) called Phurbai Gi Tsacham was received in a visionary dream with instructions to include it in the rituals for the consecration of the Tamzhing Temple. When Pema Lingpa awoke from his dream, he wrote down the steps in a text called Phurba Soggi Pudri (Life Razor Kilaya Teaching). He connected the dance steps with the lines of the prayer to the wrathful deity Vajrakilaya. In this dance, according to Lopon Phuntsho, the champon recites the prayer-dance sequence as he dances, thus informing the dancers when to change steps. The dancers carry a phurba (three-bladed ritual dagger) in the right hand and a skull cup in the left. In public performances, they would wear the brocade monks’ robes and Tantric black hats.

The most commonly performed Pema Lingpa tercham in Bhutan may be the trilogy of dances called Peling Ging Sum. These dances originated in the revealed text Lama Norbu Jamtsho from Mendo Cliff at Lhodrak in southeastern Tibet (just north of Bumthang). The text contains the instructions for the dances to be performed as part of a prayer cycle that is also included in the treasure text. The contents of this prayer are both chanted and danced and considered a means of identifying and subduing obstacles, as well as cultivating enlightenment. Although Peling Ging Sum is performed at festivals throughout the country, two different versions are performed at Tamzhing─a monks’ version and a laymen’s version.

The two versions of Peling Ging Sum performed at Tamzhing bring up a significant story. The dance master Lopon Phuntsho explained that the lay dance tradition was danced by the local disciples of Pema Lingpa in Bumthang from the time of the consecration of Tamzhing. With Pema Lingpa’s frequent journeys to Lhodrak, Tibet, he was given the monastery of Lhalung as a base of operations there. The monks at Lhalung adopted and danced the Peling traditions as well. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, some of the monks from Lhalung, including the umdze (chant master) and champon, made their way to Tamzhing. They brought with them the dance traditions they had practiced in Tibet. Today, both traditions are performed alternately during the festival, demonstrating the extraordinary richness of the Peling legacy.

The serene Khandroi Gar Cham (Dance of the Dakinis) is another tercham resulting from one of Pema Lingpa’s dance lessons with Yeshe Tsogyal during a visionary trip to Zangtopelri (The Copper-Colored Mountain Paradise of Padmasambhava). The dancing monks require some assistance from other monks and dancers in donning the elaborate dakini costumes with their layers of detail: colorful brocade robes, delicate aprons of bone ornaments, braided wigs, five lobed crowns, and the central topknot of enlightenment. They move slowly and mindfully in various formations while playing the damaru (small, double-sided hand-drum) with the right hand and ringing the drilbu (small bell) with the left. The sounds produced by these instruments are corresponding reminders of impermanence and emptiness.  During the dance, dakini prayer cycles are recited by the monks. 

A delightful and unique Pema Lingpa treasure is Tshang Mai Ging Cham, sometimes called Tamzhing Tercham. Again, this dance is said to be the result of one of Pema Lingpa’s visionary encounters with Guru Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal, during which they taught him the steps. Twelve lay dancers perform this simple, folksy dance wearing yellow kerchief skirts, human-faced masks, and a white khata (ceremonial scarf) covering the top of their heads. One of the masks is said to be the craftwork of Pema Lingpa. When I asked if the champon wears it, I was told that more practical matters go into choosing who wears which mask. As the mask is quite small, it is worn by a dancer with a small head. The dancers carry and play a damaru with the right hand and ring the small drilbu with their left in simple repeated rhythms as they hop, turn, and step in various formations. 

Periodically, the performers stop while two village leaders bring out khatas and money given by family and friends to show appreciation to the dance volunteers. The village leaders approach the chosen dancers and tie the offered khata across their torso. Meanwhile, the dancer’s wife or mother usually accepts and holds the monetary offerings as the dance recommences. By the end, so many white scarves have accumulated around the dancers’ midriffs that they appear quite transformed. The spontaneous elements of the dance make it a veritable love fest.

The festival at Tamzhing ends in a grand tradition called Uday Wang, which celebrates the manifestation of the local deity Tseo Marpo, including his adoration by and blessings upon the community. Initially, five monks perform a slow and somber welcome dance for Tseo Marpo. Next, masked dancers process with the deity with pomp and musical fanfare to his throne for offerings of dance, music, incense, oblations, and a white ceremonial scarf. The local villagers perform prostrations and form a line to receive blessings from their local deity that assure a state of purification. With this final expression of community identity and local custom, the Tamzhing Phala Choepa concludes, leaving everyone sated with age-old traditions and the promise of blessings for the coming year.

The post The Bhutanese Dance Legacy of Pema Lingpa─Still Thriving after 500 Years appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

A steady drumbeat sets the pace as the tinkling of ritual bells and wailing bleats of the kangling trumpets weave a rich sonic tapestry. Dressed in wine-colored robes and stately, golden, crescent-shaped hats, a group of Buddhist nuns move with ceremonial purpose through the monastery grounds to an open-air court. Some carry and play instruments. Some bear standards, victory banners, and flags. Others carry trays of ritual implements. The offering master waves a bundle of incense purifying the way for a small cohort that hauls a tray with a large terrifying effigy surrounded by a painted cardboard aura of flames. A final group emerges, robed in the dramatic costumes of Tantric Black Hat Masters. These advanced practitioners are about to dance and chant an elaborate ritual to transform the mundane world into a field of enlightened energy. 

At Druk Amitabha Mountain, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, this ritual, called torgyab, is performed by the Drukpa nuns, widely known as the Kung Fu Nuns, and no strangers to breaking glass ceilings. 

In Vajrayana, or tantric Buddhism, meditations and ritual activity centering on fierce deities are performed to generate the energy needed to overcome both internal and external obstacles to spiritual advancement. Torgyab is a Vajrayana ritual performed across the Himalayas in a lead-up to Losar, the Tibetan new year, to rid the community and universe of negativity and promote excellent conditions for the incoming year. Performed on the final day of the annual drubchen (intense period of meditation, prayer, and ritual) dedicated to Vajrakilaya, a wrathful form of the Buddha Vajrasattva, the torgyab ritual invites this fierce deity of compassion to dispel obstructive forces. 

The torgyab ritual is accomplished with a powerful dance called Zorcham. But the nuns—being women—were not previously allowed to perform Zorcham until recently.

In the Himalayan Buddhist monastic environment, the performance of these rituals and their sacred dances (cham) has traditionally been forbidden to female practitioners. But the Drukpa nuns—guided by the visionary leadership of His Holiness the 12^th Gyalwang Drukpa, the dynamic spiritual leader of the more than 1,000-year-old Drukpa lineage of Himalayan Buddhism—started to perform the religious rituals and prayers of the lineage in 2001. Two years later, the Gyalwang Drukpa began to teach the nuns the cham dances that are part of the rituals. He later initiated their training in kung fu in 2008 after observing nuns in Vietnam practicing the martial art.

For the past 20 years, the nuns have engaged in daily worship and ritual activities that are still prohibited to women in most Himalayan monastic communities. Now, the nuns are streaming their daily worship online extending the reach and effect of their radical practice. During this finale of their annual three-day Vajrakilaya Drubchen for the removal of obstacles, the nuns performed Zorcham as part of this enacted symbolic exorcism of negativity.

By publicly performing Zorcham, these nun practitioners defy prevailing attitudes of what is feminine within Vajrayana communities. They are redefining themselves, the purview of Buddhist women practitioners, and the possibilities for girls and women everywhere─not only as full participants, but as instigators and facilitators of a more positive world.

How to Watch the Dance—and What It Means 

In February 2020, I was set to travel to Druk Amitabha Mountain to witness these sacred activities and dances. But as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, public attendance of the drubchen was canceled. I searched the nuns’ Facebook page and noticed that they were posting video clips of their activities for their followers. (The Gyalwang Drukpa has active sanghas all over the world─in Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Americas.) The Facebook posts evolved to offer complete recordings of their daily sadhana (worship) practices and special events—including the cham. Now anyone can watch the ritual online. But what is actually going on and what does it mean? Allow me to explain.

Note: video has no sound. 

The long horns churn out rhythmic blasts as the officiants arrive at the ceremonial ground prepared with a pyramid of stacked wood and branches for the torgyab. The Drukpa nuns continue the procession─dancing a two-step─as they circumambulate the ceremonial ground creating the outer boundary of a sacred mandala, or buddhafield. The wrathful effigy at the center of their orbit sits on a table under the protection of a black parasol opposite the pyramid of wood.

You’ll see the Black Hat dancers wearing their tall hats and aprons painted with the face of a ferocious deity. Every aspect of the costume and hand implements is an intentional cue for the dancer and the viewer to support spiritual transformation. They dance holding a bell in the left hand (symbolizing emptiness) and a kapala (skullcup) in the right (representing the transformation of our ordinary body, speech, and mind into enlightened body, speech, and mind). The defining black hat represents a mandala. The circular black base and cupula are painted with symbols to infuse it with power. 

The dancers form a semicircle and dance assertive hops, spins, and leaps. “We have to jump as wrathfully as possible,” says Lopon Jigme Tingdzin, the cham master of the nunnery. “You have to fully visualize yourself as Vajrakilaya. You are no longer an ordinary girl, a nun. All of these dualistic concepts have to be totally demolished, so while you are dancing the dances, you are 100 percent concentrated on being Vajrakilaya.”  

But they are also meditating on boundless compassion, a key component to the dance, which is the culmination of three days of drubchen practices to visualize and generate oneself as this deity of fierce compassion. 

When the dancers halt, the chanting nuns intone a hymn referring to the horizontal pecha strips of text that several of the nuns hold. The robust horn section plays a series of groaning blasts from the 7-foot-long instruments called dungchen. The sounding of each of the sacred instruments serves a symbolic purpose. The dungchen frequently announce the arrival of a deity or the dancers. The kangling (trumpets, sometimes made from a human tibia or femur or from metal) call or propitiate spirits or deities. The horns are all played in pairs and this is to provoke a meditation on the union of wisdom and compassion.

The video clip ends here. Another hymn commences as the offering master gestures her arm in dramatic, upward sweeps sprinkling the effigy with consecrated water symbolically demolishing its solidity and merging it into emptiness. The long horns blast as the Black Hats repeatedly toss black streamers they hold with their right hand toward the effigy to attract negative energy to it.

Another hymn is sung. The cymbals crash. The horns groan. The streamers fly.

Tension builds, and the nuns chant another hymn─this time, faster with the driving beat of the drums.

The cymbals crash. The horns groan. The streamers fly.

The chanting resumes to a faster, more insistent drumbeat. The streamers fly. 

The dancers begin a slow, controlled dance to a somber chant. They lift one leg in the air and balance on the other leg while pivoting and then switch legs. Lopon Jigme Tindzin explains, “When you lift up your leg, you are freeing yourself from samsara and when the leg is lifted to the sky, it signifies a release into nirvana.” All the while they are moving closer to the effigy. The dancers stop, and the chorus takes over─chanting a beautifully harmonized, metered hymn to the beat of the drums. At its completion, the horns and cymbals announce the ritual action at hand. The dorje lopon, ritual master, takes a phurba (three-bladed ritual dagger, symbol of Vajrakilaya) and pierces two small dough effigies (symbolizing our afflictive emotions and self-concept) contained in a triangular box. Although this ritual “act of liberation” is performed by the dorje lopon, the entire “team” is fully concentrating on dissolving all dualistic concepts into emptiness and generating benevolent compassion to transform toxic forces into wholesome energy.

The dorje lopon takes a bow and shoots three arrows─upward, forward, and to the ground─to further subdue all obstacles as the chorus reprises the harmonized hymn. In this brilliantly orchestrated confluence of movement and sound, dramatic tension mounts as the dance continues─moving closer to the wrathful image.

The melody grows faster transitioning into rapid, spoken liturgy to the pulse of the cymbals. Finally, a new recitation begins to the insistent beat of the drum and the branches are lit. Within moments, a raging fire is ablaze. Several nuns assist the dorje lopon in lifting the heavy tray with the ritual effigy. They hurl the fearsome construction with its protective parasol and other symbolic objects into the fire to burn away negativity, delusion, and confusion. The dungchen sounds a continuous tone, allowing everyone to relax into the experience of auspiciousness or tashi, as everything is consumed. After a final hymn, everyone files back through the campus having accomplished the task of cleansing and preparing the environment (inner and outer) for the New Year.

***

Thank you to Lopon Jigme Tingdzin of Druk Amitabha Mountain for generously providing explanations and visual media.

The post The Kung Fu Nuns Dance a Powerful Ritual appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“Chalo, chalo,” I urged the taxi driver through the winding turns. I was headed to a small house far from the touristy sections of Kathmandu, and the more chickens and goats we passed the more he’d realized he wasn’t going to find a return fare. When we finally pulled up alongside the house, a striking woman in a red sari and bright red lipstick walked out. Tipping the cabbie enough to mollify him, I followed her inside. The woman was Amira Mathai, a student of the late dzogchen master Tulku Urgyen, and I was here to study charya, a tantric dance that dates back a thousand years.

A few weeks before, in India, I attended a prayer ceremony held by Tibetan Buddhist master Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. I sat in a massive hall alongside a thousand monks all chanting the Tara sadhana (prayer), in front of a shrine piled high with offerings: paintings of Tara’s twenty-one aspects, bottles of olive oil and whiskey, Indian sweets, cookies, coconuts, and lots of marigolds. At the end of the ceremony, a dancer stepped forward, dressed in white and gold. She looked familiar and I realized I knew her as one of Rinpoche’s students. Usually laid back, her demeanor had completely changed. Her expressions and gestures morphed from serene to magnetizing to wrathful, and she held a tightly coiled energy I’d never noticed in her before. As the dance progressed, to my surprise, I found tears rolling down my face. Watching her glide through the movements shifted something in me that I couldn’t understand, let alone articulate. All I knew was that I wanted more. I asked my friend whom she had learned this from. A month later, I was at Amira’s door.

 Amira handed me a pair of chams—bells twisted around a rope—and taught me how to tie them tightly above my ankles. I sat on her couch, calves throbbing from the sensation of being bound, watching her students practice. Nepali high schoolers dressed in school uniforms, they giggled and pushed each other between dances. When they started dancing, however, they were transformed, the same way my friend had been. Once again I found myself in tears. I was bewildered. This was more tears than I’d seen in the last two years. Clearly, this dance affected me. I just didn’t know how or why. 

“Charya communicates directly with the five elements of the body,” Amira said, noticing my reaction. “It penetrates the body and works with the chakras.” She went on to explain that charya bypassed the rational brain entirely. It made sense. My “rational” mind didn’t understand my emotions at all. Perhaps they never had. This dance was reaching them in a way I never could.

 “The goal of the dancer is not just to invoke the dakini,” Amira said, talking about a sacred female spirit in Tibetan Buddhism. “By the end of the dance you are the dakini. This is what you have to believe.”

Amira’s statement reiterated the view that underscored all tantric teachings. My Buddhist teachers always said that the true nature of every sentient being was already enlightened. That a “path” was necessary only because we didn’t recognize this. For this reason we needed to pray, meditate, dance, chant, supplicate, and long for the dakini—all to bring us closer to this recognition. Ultimately, the dakini was none other than the true nature of our own minds.

On my way back from Amira’s place, my phone pinged. It was Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, who wanted feedback on a draft of his film script. I’d worked with Rinpoche a little on his previous film Hema Hema, and we’d discussed his latest idea. The story centered around a young Tibetan entrepreneur, Tenzin, whose ambition was to open Kathmandu’s best coffee shop. As he rushed around the city, scouting locations and wooing investors, he was haunted by hallucinations of mystical women. He pushed them away but they persisted. Finally, he consulted a monk, only to be told that these were omens of his impending death. In order to save his own life, he needed to find a dakini who could return his life force. The problem? Tenzin had no idea what a dakini was, or how to find one. This script eventually became the film Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Mustache. 

As I read through Rinpoche’s story, I was struck by the similarities between Tenzin’s struggle and my own. Tenzin buried himself in his work, ambition and desire leading him to disconnect from his culture. I was also dedicated to work, albeit for different reasons. I’d come twenty years ago to America for college and stayed, while my parents and entire family remained in India. I focused on building a career to cover up the insecurity I felt in a new country, without the stabilizing effect of family or community.

 As a freelance television director, I said “yes” to every show I was offered. Gigs meant money, money meant stability, and stability was what I craved in a country that was, at best, ambivalent about my presence. But 15 years into my career, I found myself listless and unhappy. My body, exhausted by ever-tightening network deadlines, shrinking budgets and my own creative perfectionism, had stopped finding joy in my work.

I take vacations, I reasoned, I sleep in on weekends. I get a massage every now and then. There’s no reason for me to be tired. My body’s signals didn’t seem “rational,” so I ignored them and kept going. But the signals only got worse. I started feeling as though I had leg-irons strapped to my ankles. Getting to work felt like wading through a river upstream. I stopped going out after work, too tired by the end of the day to enjoy my friends and the wealth of entertainment New York City offered.

I endured a year of this, forcing myself to continue working, although each month felt like a lifetime. Finally, I went into my boss’s office, intending to ask for a short vacation. Instead, I found myself quitting my job.

“I just need to go home,” I said, shocking both of us.

The moment I said that, relief flooded my body. This signal that I’d done the right thing was unmistakable and for once, I pushed aside the fear that without money or a career, survival in America would be impossible. Subletting my apartment, I went to India and then, eventually, found my way to Amira’s doorstep.

 “White Tara is the healer,” Amira said. “Invoking the dakini will heal your mind and body.”

I hoped she was right. As I danced in her small, dark living room, the numb places in my shoulders burned as they reanimated. Practicing this dance felt like a celebration of this step I’d taken to move away from fear—away from a survival mindset that was shutting off the oxygen in my system, extinguishing the magic of the world.

Amira instructed me to offer everything to the dakini—not just flowers, incense or prayers, but also the emotions written into the biology of my body. The constant anxiety in my stomach, the numbness in my arms, the tingling in my neck. All the places I held fears—of failure, of pain, loneliness, insecurity, of showing weakness, of admitting vulnerability. In dancing over and over, I was exposing these places, offering them, releasing my belief that they defined me. Over the course of that summer in Kathmandu, as dancing re-introduced me to myself, I came to have renewed hope. Hope that a different ending was possible. That I could realign my body and mind, and reopen the borders of my trapped emotions. That I could live from a place of trust rather than fear.

In our last session together, Amira had me dance for her other students. Tightening my chams I performed the opening salutation. If life is a practice, I’d rather it be a dance, I thought, one where I am unafraid to make mistakes, to start over, and to find joy in it all. I didn’t know what my next steps would be. All I knew was that I would try to surrender, to listen, and that guidance would come. Then, stretching out my arms, I stepped into the dance. Invoking the dakini, becoming the dakini.

The post Becoming the Dakini appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

My alarm clock urges me into semi-consciousness on my 53rd day of coronavirus quarantine. I am quickly reminded of my commitment to join via Zoom with a group of people, most of whom I have never met, to participate in my daily Buddhist practice—dancing Tara. 

The dances are a sadhana, a Buddhist practice meant to help us embody a particular deity—in this case, Tara, a female buddha associated with wisdom and compassion as well as healing and protection. I learned the Tara Dances about a year ago from dharma teacher Prema Dasara, who generated them in 1985 with the blessings of her Tibetan lamas. Dasara travels the world teaching workshops that often culminate in a presentation of the dances to renowned Buddhist teachers, and has inspired the formation of new Tara Dance circles. 

During this time of disease, unspeakable anguish, and multiplying difficulties, many spiritual teachers seeking to address suffering with teachings and meditation, both classical and inventive, have turned to Tara for inspiration—and to the webinar for means of communication. Likewise, the Tara Dances have moved online.

Since learning the Tara Dances, I had sporadically integrated them into my personal meditation practice, until COVID-19 and the shelter-in-place order forced me to spend the majority of my life isolated from regular contact. Faced with an undefined amount of unstructured time before me, I decided to perform this dance meditation every day. Then, at the start of quarantine, one of my fellow Tara dancers initiated a daily morning Zoom meeting for our practice. I wanted to support her creative effort and knew it would bolster my own, so I set my alarm. 

During this pandemic, the idea of dancing may sound counterintuitive or even callous, but I have found incredible solace and strength in engaging in a daily practice of bringing the wisdom, compassion, and energy of Tara into my body, speech, and mind through dance. The practice launches my days with a sense of purpose, structure, and social connection─highly desired commodities right now. 

The dance practice of Tara is an embodied deity yoga practice. The original meaning of the Sanskrit word yoga is “to yoke, or harness.” For millennia, before being redefined by the Western fitness industry, yoga indicated more broadly a spiritual discipline. In the Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhist practice of deity yoga, one yokes oneself to, or unites with, a deity, an archetype of an enlightened divine being. The practice involves invoking, visualizing, and absorbing into oneself the deity in a meditative process designed to unlock the divine qualities residing inside ourselves. While deity yoga is often practiced in a sitting meditation posture, it is also practiced in the form of dance. 

Sacred dance, or cham, has been used in Tantric Buddhist ritual for centuries. Our knowledge of its earliest performance goes back to the mid-eighth century, when the tantric master Padmasambhava (commonly known as Guru Rinpoche) brought Buddhism from India to the Himalayan region, and performed cham to subdue indigenous deities who opposed the new faith. Cham is designed to integrate the body (through movement and gesture), speech (through chanting mantra), and mind (through visualization) in a process of transformation into a compassionate, awakened being─a buddha. This embodied expression of the dharma, sacred dance, is an essential component of Himalayan Buddhist ritual.

Each morning we dance the choreography of the Dance of Tara’s Qualities, which is based on a popular Buddhist prayer The 21 Praises of Tara. The dance unfolds in sadhana form and incorporates meditation and visualization. The simple gestures and basic floor patterns are performed while chanting Tara’s mantra (Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha) and reciting her 21 manifestations. (At Prema Dasara’s dance circles, she stands in the center—clad in her batik muumuu with her long silver tresses rippling about her shoulders—and beats a drum strapped around her torso as she calls out each line of Tara’s mantra for all to sing back in collective refrain.) These 21 manifestations are a distillation of the countless forms attributed to her—each with a different energy and virtue. 

Tara is considered an emanation of the great goddess Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom), the mother of all the Buddhas. As such, she personifies transcendent wisdom─a concept expounded upon in a group of sutras that also bear this name, composed around the beginning of the first millennium. A central theme of the prajnaparamita teachings is the idea of emptiness, or shunyata. Emptiness, sometimes misunderstood as “nothingness,” actually describes a state of no fixed, separate, or default identity─hence, a dynamic state of limitless potential and relativity. The Dance of Tara’s Qualities actionalizes this teaching.

Our Tara practice begins as many Vajrayana practices do─with the three preliminaries: a statement of motivation, taking refuge (in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha), and the bodhisattva commitment to work for the enlightenment of all beings. We do this, however, with three opening dances.

We continue with the Dance of Tara’s Qualities, the centerpiece of our practice, during which the practitioner proclaims and dances each quality of Tara in an act of investigating it and absorbing it within herself. Some mornings I can’t imagine how I will move my body─much less dance Tara the Swift Protector. But I log into Zoom and feel a burst of joy as each grid box pops open to reveal the smiling face of a person who has made the effort to show up. Along with these fellow practitioners, I dance the forms of Invincible Courage (open chest with two uplifted arms to the sides clenching strong fists), True Refuge (a cradling motion), Transformer of Poison (forearms spin in front of the torso until fingers flick open as the hands and arms stretch away from the body), and Remover of Sorrow (right arm presses away from the body in a gesture of “stand back” followed by the left hand motioning as if to wipe sadness from one’s brow and press it away). In between the gestures of each quality, the dancer chants a refrain of Tara’s mantra while revolving around herself.

The dance concludes with a choreographed tonglen meditation. Tonglen is typically a stationary practice of visualizing oneself taking in the suffering of others and sending out light and love.  Here, the dancers employ gestures and movement to physically send out compassionate and healing energy and gather in negative feelings  (of the world or of a specific person) and transform them. As I move, I visualize negative energy transmuting into radiant light and lovingkindness. The dance session ends with a dedication of merit—the positive energy we have generated—to all beings. 

This embodied practice encourages each dancer to internalize the confidence, dignity, and qualities of Tara’s essence. Dasara explains, “Sadhanas serve to stimulate and reorient our mind into awakened action.” The dance also encourages the practitioners to take this internally generated self-confidence and turn it outward─honoring and empowering each other like mirrors reflecting each dancer as an emanation of Tara. 

When we dance and move our bodies in purposeful sequential patterns, the body responds by developing physical attributes such as strength, coordination, balance, agility, and endurance. “Every movement made and remembered shapes how an organism grows─what it senses and how it responds,” said scholar of religion Kimerer LaMothe in her essay “The Dancing Species: How Moving Together in Time Helps Make Us Human.” In other words, through physical movement we create the body with which we experience the world. 

The thrilling connection occurs when the dynamic processes engendered by dance-meditation meet with the Buddhist understanding of the momentary nature of phenomena. This view proposes that when one observes change in a person or thing, it’s not that a fixed entity is passing through time and changing. Rather, at each individual moment, the entity is being replaced. We are a continuum of instants that are constantly being replaced. The physical and mental activity of dancing the Dance of Tara’s Qualities changes my mind and body, which then inform my internal states, activities, and social interactions from moment to moment. These inform future experiences of the dance, which then inform future internal states, activities and social interactions in a continuous course of change and transformation that reverberates outward.

Dasara’s guiding teacher, H. E. Tai Situ Rinpoche of the Karma Kagyu School of Himalayan Buddhism, declared the Tara Dances to be a cham of Tara’s lineage and a precious vehicle of enlightened mind. In response to his advice to protect the integrity of the practice, Dasara formed the organization named Tara Dhatu (the Pure Realm of Tara) and has created a robust teacher training program that provides training, guidance, and support materials for those who want to lead Tara Dance circles. These student-teachers have until now led live monthly gatherings in their communities worldwide. Since the COVID-19 order to shelter in place spurred the launch of the New York Zoom circle, other Tara circles have taken to Zooming at other times of day. The Tara Zoom screens are filled with people logging in from all over─from places as far away as Brazil, Canada, and New Zealand. 

***

It is 8:15 AM. I join the rectangular grid, which is for now the new and beautiful shape of a Tara Dance Circle. As I begin the practice, I sense that moment of infinite potential and possibility. Then I plant my feet on the ground, and I dance and sing with a resounding “Om Tare!”

Ferocious Compassion: practitioners motion the wrathful action of pounding the right fist on top of the left, then bring the arms lovingly across the heart. The movements, performed in succession, are an expression of the fiercely protective energy that a parent must sometimes use to protect a child from imminent danger.

Impeccable Virtue: the right hand presses flat on top of the left upturned palm.

Some of many qualities of Tara:
Top Row: Remover of Sorrow, Irresistible Truth, All Victorious, True Refuge
Middle Row: True Refuge, Invincible Courage, Serene Peace, Impeccable Virtue
Bottom Row: Worthy of Honor, True Refuge

Sublime Intelligence: the right forefinger points at the side of the head while the left forefinger points at the heart—showing that true intelligence arises from the heart as well as the brain.

Worthy of Honor: practitioners motion the act of cloaking themselves in an aura of worthiness and honor.

Photos and video by Amber Roniger

The post Dancing Tara through COVID-19 appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week. 

A New Spin on Dharma in Kyoto: Two Buddhist Monks Breakdance Together 

They’re from two different Buddhist schools, but that didn’t stop 24-year-old Japanese monks Koki Kawahara and Jojitsu Asukai from becoming breakdancing buddies. Kawahara is a Buddhist monk at Chion-in, the head temple of the Jodo (Pure Land) school in Kyoto, while Asukai is a staff member at the Tendai Buddhist headquarters in the nearby city of Otsu. The two have formed a breakdancing duo called Kaiten Bozu (Spinning Monks) in the hopes of conveying Buddhist philosophy through movement, according to the Japan News. Their most recent performance in early November, in front of the large early 17th century Sanmon gate at Chion-in, drew an audience of about 300 people. “I was relieved to receive a positive response [from the audience]. We’re considering appearing in other events if it gives us an opportunity to have people experience the teachings of Buddhism through breakdancing,” Kawahara said. In a country where Buddhism is largely seen as a “funeral religion,” the two young monks believe that combining dance and dharma can spark a new interest in Buddhism among their peers. Incidentally, Asukai’s signature breakdancing pose involves him standing on his head, while joining his hands in a prayer––a gassho for the new decade. 

Iranian Monk Arrested While Crossing Indian Border 

Indian authorities last week arrested a Buddhist monk who has lived in Bodhgaya, India, for over a decade when he attempted to cross into Nepal without valid documents, according to the Hindustan Times, stoking additional fear among the region’s immigrants following the passing of a discriminatory citizenship law last month. An immigration official in the town of Raxaul at the Indo-Nepal border said that Hamed Akbari, who had Iranian citizenship, stayed in the Indian state of Bihar for 11 years without an Indian visa. Since August, at least six other foreign nationals have been arrested while attempting to cross the border into Nepal in the same area, according to the Times. The crackdown on immigrants takes place as Indians continue to protest against a proposed citizens’ register and new legislation that eases the way for non-Muslim minorities from neighboring Muslim-majority nations to obtain Indian citizenship, both put forward by the ruling conservative BJP party. Critics of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens have expressed fear that the laws will be used to strip Muslim people of their citizenship. According to the New York Times, thousands of people across India have demonstrated since the CAA went into effect on December 12. 

Dalai Lama Spends Christmas Near the Bodhi Tree 

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama spent the holidays in Bodhgaya, India, a major pilgrimage site. On Christmas Day, the Tibetan spiritual leader posted a photo to Instagram of himself and two monks standing in front of the Mahabodhi Stupa, which marks the spot where the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.  

 

 

 

 

 

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HHDL, with the Mahabodhi Stupa in the background, departing after his pilgrimage to the Stupa in Bodhgaya, Bihar, India on December 25, 2019. Photo by Tenzin Choejor #dalailama

A post shared by Dalai Lama (@dalailama) on Dec 25, 2019 at 2:31am PST

Also on Christmas, the Dalai Lama spoke to reporters about the ongoing struggle for Tibetan independence. “We have the power of truth. Chinese communists have the power of [the] gun. In the long run, [the] power of truth is much stronger than [the] power of [the] gun,” he said. On Thursday, His Holiness began a five day teaching program in Bodhgaya, which included an Avalokitesvara [bodhisattva of compassion] initiation, according to his website. 

FPMT Launches Independent Investigation into Dagri Rinpoche Allegations

The Tibetan Buddhist organization Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) has hired an independent organization to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Buddhist teacher Dagri Rinpoche. In May 2019, the FPMT suspended the Tibetan Buddhist tulku (reincarnated lama) from their list of teachers, after several women came forward with accusations that Dagri Rinpoche had touched them inappropriately. On December 20, FPMT posted a statement on their website that said it had hired the nonprofit FaithTrust Institute to conduct a “fact-finding assessment” after an individual who represents three women sent the organization a report outlining their allegations of sexual misconduct. “[W]e believe that using an independent organization to conduct the assessment will encourage people to speak more freely,” the statement said.  Anyone who experienced or witnessed harm by Dagri Rinpoche at FPMT centers is encouraged to contact the FaithTrust Institute, either by email or a confidential phone or Skype interview. 

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