Dharma Jam

This Month: Water Pouring Water: Dancing with Emptiness

This month we’ll go through a process of dissolving and healing our samsaric afflictions by identifying and dancing with a sense of selflessness and emptiness.  We will first go through the process internally through a 20-30 minute guided meditation (please arrive by 8 to set this ground).  Inviting our experience into movement, we’ll spend the next 45 minutes jamming with a DJed soundscape, closing with sharing of reflections and dedications.  The following quotes are offered as seeds to germinate over the next week:

…visualization[can] transform the world of appearances  to accord more closely with its actual nature, thereby allowing greater opportunity for the practitioner to enact change. Buddhist Thought, Paul Williams with Anthony Tribe

Samsara is highly organized, versatile, and sophisticated; it assaults us from every angle with its propaganda, and creates an almost impregnable environment of addiction around us.
In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara...
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche

At the point when anger and [desire] are generated, reality is not seen; rather, an unreal mental projection of extreme badness of extreme goodness is seen, evoking twisted, unrealistic actions.
How to See Yourself As You Really Are, H.H. Dalia Lama

Fundamentally it is not the act of leaving behind the material world that Buddhists cherish but the ability to see the habitual clinging to this world and ourselves and to renounce the clinging.
What Makes You Not a Buddhist, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

For the Buddhist it is this gap between the way we see things to be and the way things actually are which engenders suffering and frustration.
Buddhist Thought, Paul Williams with Anthony Tribe

…even though the essence of everything is empty and “pure from the very beginning,” its nature is rich in noble qualities, pregnant with every possibility, a limitless, incessantly and dynamically creative field that is always spontaneously perfect.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche

October: Blessing the Present

   For this month's jam we will focus on blessing each other with presence- with the awareness, heartfulness, and curiosity we arrive at in the moment.  Below are three quotes and an excerpt from a paper I wrote, offered to arouse reflection and inspiration in advance of our coming together on the night of October 20.

When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic.

The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa

A blessing is a positive transformation within your mind.  Viewing it as an external event that happens to you with no effort on your part is a misunderstanding.  The primary cause of receiving a blessing comes from you, and the main cause that is needed from your own side is faith.

Practicing the Path, Yangsi Rinpoche

…existence is basically a kind of dancing or music- an immensely complex energy pattern which needs no explanation other than itself- just as we do not ask what is the meaning of fugues by Bach or sonatas by Mozart.  We do not dance to reach a certain point on the floor, but simply to dance.

Cloud Hidden: Whereabouts Unknown, Alan Watts

Excerpt from The Embodied Path: A Call For Kinesthetic Learning in Religious Studies, Harrison Blum

   Both dance and the religious experience require presence in the moment. As a dancer must be cognizant of each muscle sensation, so too must the devout be attuned to the intention held by the entirety of one’s being.  Sondra Fraleigh, an insightful source on the philosophy of dance, holds that “the present-centered moment … [is] the vital moment of both art and religion” (157). To be present, one must be not only mentally, but also physically aware. Being in the moment requires embodiment. Judith Rock, professional choreographer and writer, makes a direct comparison in stating that dance “can call us to be momentarily quiet and receptive to reality in much the same way that contemplative prayer does” (187). 
    Attuned to the present moment, the dancer may touch upon deep truths, such as embodied identity and impermanence. Fraleigh states, “[d]ancing is a spiritual endeavor in the sense that it is a quest for self-unification. The dancer seeks to become one with her acts, which are none other than her own” (41). As the dancer connects more closely with her dance experience, she realizes the truth in the ancient Hindu phrase “tat tvam asi,” though art that. The dancer is the dance, which is none other than body. Having intimately touched upon the present, the dancer is also confronted with the fleeting quality of that moment and of life in general. “Dance points toward our moving and perishable embodied existence, holding it before us, filling and freeing present time that we may dwell whole within it” (Fraleigh xvii). 
    Beyond inviting the dancer into the impermanent moment, movement also invokes the capacity for transcendence. Again, Fraleigh expounds, “[d]ance brings forward the metaphysical in the physical, the transcendent in ourselves” (170). “The transcendent metaphysic,” she continues, “lived in the present center … is recognized in many religions. In dance, we practice this metaphysic” (177).

Come join the dance sangha!

Where: The Dance Complex, Central Square, MA.

When: Mondays monthly: September 15

                                      October 20

                                      November 17

                                      December 22

Time: 7:30-8pm...arrival, stretching, mindful mingling

          8pm...........opening circle - please arrive in time to participate

          9:30pm......closing circle

Cost: $7-10

     Bring a cushion for sitting if it's your prefernce, and no street shoes please.

“Dance points toward our moving and perishable embodied existence, holding it before us, filling and freeing present time that we may dwell whole within it."

Sondra H. Fraleigh

Dance and the Lived Body