Dancing For Your Whole Life: Yogic Advice from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra

Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total. There absolute essence is revealed.?

~ Vijnanabhairava Tantra, verse 111

Each of has the desire (yes?) to become ~ with each breath we take, with each step of our lives ~ more fully alive ? And yet there is the paradox that each breath we take, each step of our lives, brings us one step, one breath closer to our death. So how do we work with this? Is there a ?solution? to this paradox?

The traditions of Buddhism as well as Kashmir Shaivism see (the appearance of) this life of ours as training-ground for (the appearance of) that moment of our death. They resolve the paradox through the understanding that only by training ~ in every moment ~ in the art of being fully alive, fully present here and now, in this moment, in this moment, in this moment ~ only through a practice such as this are we able then to be fully present (fully alive!) at the moment of our ?death.?

The quotation above, from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra (a text written by the Shaivite School of Kashmir around the first century A.D.), points to such a resolution. Let?s take a closer look ?

?Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity.? Have you ever danced, or performed any other activity, so completely, with such total abandon, such love and absorption, that the point of ?exhaustion? (what distance runners call ?the wall?) opens into a whole new realm of experience, puts you in touch with a whole new flow of energy/inspiration? It?s the moment when years of training (our accumulated ?expertise?) is allowed to open, to fall away into a ?mindless? spontaneity ? when movement becomes both divinely precise and effortless (Michael Jordan, Baryshnikov, & Jet Li come to mind here) ? when ?I? am no longer doing anything, yet all things are still manifesting, radiantly, perfectly. In the language of Taoism this state of effortless doing is called Wu Wei.

?Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total.? Have you ever gone out on a warm summer night, laid on your back on a grassy hillside, and let your mind & heart & vision travel out into the starry sky, with its countless galaxies? When we surrender, we surrender completely ? no holding back. We let the whole thing dissolve. We die into the present moment. In the language of Tibetan Buddhism, this is called the Completion Stage.

?There absolute essence is revealed.? What if the essence of life and the essence of death were one and the same? What if both our ?wandering? and our ?dancing? were expressions of that one essence, and equally wise? What if we could touch ~ with each breath, each step, each of our ?awakened? daily activities ~ the sweetness & power that is this essence?

And now, please feel free ?. to Dance!

Elizabeth Reninger holds a Masters degree in Chinese Medicine, is a published poet, and has been exploring Yoga - in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu varieties ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. To read more of her yoga-related essays, please visit her website: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger

Yoga and Meditation

Almost everyone has experienced the fact that when one starts concentrating his mind on any immediate object or an idea, the mind starts wandering. It is very difficult to keep the mind busy with a single thought. The ancient sages too encountered the same problems. Arjuna, in Gita had mentioned that controlling the mind is the impossible thing on the earth. Hence, he was advised by Krishna that though mind control is difficult, it can be made silent and steady by regular practice of vairagya and abhyasa. However, he has warned that yoga is very difficult for people whose minds are not steady and controlled. Pantanjali, in Yoga Sutra has emphasized these two qualities to achieve mind control. Hence these are the very qualities that make the essence of yoga.

Mind is like a disturbed pond with many impurities. First you need to stop the inflow of fresh impurities and then remove the existing impurities to clean the mind. Abhyasa is the one of the practices for purifying the mind. Dhyana is one of the sub practices of abhyasa. This is a stage that the person reaches after practicing concentration for some time. At the start of dhyana, the mind is steadier and only a single thought about the object arises in the mind. Now it is safe to say that the state of dhyana is reached. Here the mind becomes very stable like the flame of a lamp in the calm atmosphere and its contact with the object of experience becomes intense and complete.

There are two varieties of dhyana called sagunadhyana or nirgunadhyana. In the first dhyana, the stillness of mind is associated with an object of experience which can be experienced through the sense organs. The second one is completely mental. It implies complete absorption of mind into itself. Here mind is not associated with any external object. It becomes completely still in this state. This mind is supposed to remain still, silent and sensitive such that it can understand any past, present and future event that might have happened anywhere in the universe.

Kevin Pederson is the webmaster for Yogawiz that provides loads of information on basics of yoga,asanas and poses Dhyana that aim towards harmonizing your mind, body and soul.