Dancing with Life
Lama Surya Das is scheduled to be here in April, so in anticipation of his visit, I thought I’d talk this morning about one of his wonderful teachings, entitled, “Dancing with Life” (from his latest book, The Mind is Mightier Than the Sword). It sometimes seems that we make life out to be difficult, even the first Noble Truth reminds us of this fact, but the second Noble Truth is equally important and that is life seems difficult because of the way we perceive ourselves, others and situations. It easy to get into the habit of thinking of life as a struggle. My printer broke on Friday, and I spent two hours trying to fix it. Now I was trying to be mindful, but I could feel my frustration increasing, I could hear myself thinking, “Computers are out to make my life miserable” and “I hate Hewlett Packard”. Why does it have to be so hard???? Why can’t it just work? And on and on. Instead of walking away for a bit to find the humor in the situation, I just kept digging in even deeper. I found myself at the end of the two hours with no printer and a mind and body full of frustration. I certainly wasn’t dancing with life, and if I was, I was stomping on its toes with both my feet.
It seems that there are things that happen in our lives, sometimes little things like a printer breaking and at other times, big things like illness, death and other tragedies, like the terrible earthquake in
So, FIRST waking up. Ken McLeod, in his book Wake up to Your life, describes the central importance of paying attention. He says,
“The essential tool is attention—not the weak, unstable, reactive attention that is part of our autonomic functioning, but the strong, stable and volitional attention cultivated in such disciplines as meditation. Active attention, composed of mindfulness and awareness, is the key. Attention, in this sense, is not intellectual or physical. It is energy. “
So we can experience this active attention, this mindfulness, as a powerful energy. If most of us were honest with ourselves, we spend a good part of most days sleepwalking through life. How many times are we doing something but not fully aware of what’s happening. We lock the front door, then can’t remember for sure if we did it. We drive or walk to work, and don’t fully remember the entire trip. Superficially it might seem okay. We’ve all done certain tasks so many times that we may not need to be mentally present to complete them. BUT, from a Buddhist perspective, we must ask ourselves why would we NOT want to be fully present in our lives? Perhaps it seems too painful at times or too boring. But waking up is the most important action we can take to live our life to the fullest. The word, Buddha, in fact means, the Awakened One. If we’re not aware of what’s happening and equally importantly what we’re thinking about what’s happening, we can never fully appreciate the joy of living. So, in this moment, let’s take a moment to experience being alive. What does alive feel like? Who or what is living? Who or what is breathing? Where is life? Is it in your head or your heart. How does it feel to be alive??? Can you find it? NOW, what are your thoughts telling you about being alive? When you get distracted, where do you go?
As scary as it might seem at first, being actively attentive is like a powerful solvent, that dissolves away years of conditioned behavior, pre-conceived notions, old dysfunctional patterns. We are fearlessly shining a flashlight on our old ways of living, then allowing the attention to dissolve old thoughts and habits away. With practice, we see ourselves and the world more clearly, and over time, things start to seem a whole lot less scary, because we begin to see thoughts as the ephemeral activity that they are. We begin to see thoughts arise and fall away. If we can continue to pour attention over all that is happening, we begin to see emotions arise and fall away. Then, we can truly begin to dance with life.
So, the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, active compassionate attention, is helping us wake up to what is really going on. First, we compassionately face what is currently happening and what we’re thinking, then, SECOND, we can actually change the way we perceive ourselves and others and any situation. The SECOND component of dancing with life is about recognizing the incredible power we have to change our perception of the world. It doesn’t happen overnight, but with steady consistent practice, we can change our thoughts, which will change our perceptions, which will truly change our lives. An extremeexample are some of the responses to the Haiti earthquake. Some individuals have decided that this earthquake was an act of GOD to punish the Haitian people. Now if you believe that there is this being outside of you that punishes you for some perceived sins, then imagine how you would respond to this tragedy. OR, if you see the earthquake as it is, a terrible tragedy, that also is an opportunity for people to reach out and help our brethren in need, this tragedy can reinforce our awareness of the inter-relationship of us all, then imagine how you would respond from that perspective? We each have a choice in every moment about how we perceive everything that happens in our lives. We have a choice: We can either constantly judge ourselves or others as less than, not good enough, somehow damaged, OR we can be kind, we can encourage, motivate, show compassion. Each of us is incredibly powerful, and most days we waste our power on old inaccurate ways of thinking. This was what the Buddha discovered 2500 years ago, and is still intensely true today.
So, FIRST, we can wake up to how we are living our lives, to what is going on. SECOND, we can create new thoughts of encouragement and compassion. These two changes alone can have an incredible impact on how we live our lives. Instead of constantly thinking, “I’m struggling with life”, we can instead see things from the more magical perspective of “I’m dancing with life”, maybe not getting it right all the time, but staying open to the possibilities, open to change, open to seeing new answers to old problems, open to reaching beyond our comfort zones and finding a happiness, joy, wisdom, that we might not have thought possible before.
Right now, imagine that you are dancing with life, swirling around the dance floor, elegantly effortlessly floating through life. As difficult as life seems sometimes, the Buddha discovered this human life is incredible preciousness. When you look at history, the billions of years of evolution that it took to get us to this point, right here, right now, then we can see that life truly is precious. You can’t go back and change the past, no matter how much we would like to, and you can jump ahead to future. You only have one moment at a time to live your life. Lama Surya Das says in the sweepstakes of living, you must be present to win!
So, wake up and decide to dance with life. The point of power in your life, in all our lives, the point of power is the present moment. IT IS THE ONLY POINT in which you can make a change. And if you screwed it up last moment, then another moment is right around the corner waiting to be lived differently, lived better, lived fully awake.
So, as we leave here this morning, as you walk or drive back home, try being fully conscious, fully aware of being alive. Fully awake to the interconnectedness of all beings and all things. Try dancing with life fearlessly, and be prepared for magical things to happen. Every moment can be the best moment.
Phillip Moffett says,
“The path to happiness and a sense of well being in your life lies not in avoiding suffering but in using the direct experience of it as a vehicle to gain deep insight into the true nature of life and your own existence.”
My friend’s card reminded me that, “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain!"
So, this week, try dancing with life, and see what happens.
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