Zen and The Art of Rhythm Tap
Introduction:
It seems like a long time ago that this idea manifested — in fact, it is so long ago that I cannot recall exactly when. Was it after I had attended an Intensive Zen retreat up in the Highlands that I realised the importance of creative action within a spiritual context? Or was it when I found self desperately searching for a spiritual practice that made sense to my atheistic mind? The contradiction inherent in that statement jumps out and sings loudly — spirituality for atheists? Not quite what I meant to write but this dark moon day has me struggling to find the words to express myself clearly. I shall start again.
Today marks the first day of an intensive at home retreat during which I intend to develop my own spiritual practice, using a creative practice — well, more than one: I will be writing using the parataxic form, which locates the reader in the present, and documenting each day and its experience, and I will be dancing, using the very specific form of rhythm tap. The form I have chosen for this experiential retreat is one with which I am very familiar, however, the same principles could be applied to other creative forms and practices. I have chosen rhythm tap as it is essentially an improvised dance form, drawing on steps and patterns of steps, meaning that I can immerse myself in it and rely on intuition, or inspiration, or manifestation, but primarily it is rhythm making. Making rhythms is something humankind has been doing since forever.
Making rhythms with the feet is probably the first musical form humans used; the vibrational patterns of rhythmical actions can be heard in all living things and humans mirrored these using their bodies and their feet in an instinctive and completely free manner, which can still be seen in the dances of indigenous peoples around the globe. My interest in using the dance form in this way stems from the time I first started studying Zen. I went on a two week intensive yoga teacher training course at Aman Cara in the Scottish Highlands, run by Zenways — meditation or zazen was how we started our days, after lunch we went on walking meditations and more seated meditation ended the day. I am a terrible fidget and the idea of sitting still for any length of time filled me with despair; I found the sessions difficult and challenging, but when I returned home, I continued to practice morning meditations and to walk in a meditative state whenever I had the opportunity. It was always hard. Gradually it became easier. But it was when I was dancing that I first started to experience moments of bliss. They would alight somehow and invade my generally irritable being making me smile from ear to ear. I then found that I could shift my mood and my generally miserable attitude just by dancing — but it wasn’t just any old dancing — it was the free form of tap dance that is called rhythm tap.
I searched for literature that might illuminate this experience and found it in a little book written in 1953, when Zen was fashionable in the US and scholars and other interested people journeyed to Japan to study with a Zen Master. Eugen Herrigal wrote Zen and the Art of Archery as a way to document his experience and the discovery that it is not about mastering an art form — rather it is about transcending it so that the essential Truth becomes apparent. In the introduction, written by contemporary Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, I found this:
‘Archery is not practiced solely for hitting the target; the swordsman does not wield the sword just for the sake of outdoing his opponent; the dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhythmical movements of the body.
If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an ‘artless art’ growing out of the Unconscious.
This state of Unconscious is realised only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill.’
On reading this I was reminded of the tap dance teachers who had given instructions for improvising such as: ‘dance without thinking’ and ‘dance without listening to yourself’ — I realised that when I tried to do this I found my feet seemed to have a mind of their own. They simply danced, making rhythms I had not even learnt or considered or tried to perform before. It was when I was able to quieten my mind — as in zazen — that I could perform technical feats that I was unfamiliar with and produce complex rhythms within rhythms inside rhythms on top of rhythms and around rhythms taking me to a place of pure bliss. It was spectacular. It is an absolute joy and it makes me very joyful. But can I find my way to the ‘all encompassing Truth?’ (Herrigel, 1953) Can I find my spirit, my own place of truth? My own spiritual practice? I can try. This action — this project — this attempt to explore the value of rhythm tap as a spiritual practice begins today, with this act of writing about it as an introduction. Ten days. Ten days of dance and reflection. Not concurrent as life continues around me but still, it will be intensive and it will be revealing. All will be revealed.
Today I intend to document myself dancing freely as a way of locating a base line for the practice — after the new moon of course: 6.34pm. Tomorrow I begin a series of specific actions designed to develop technique and skill. Each day I will work through a series of rudiments and exercises. I will then dance to music for a while — music that speaks and expresses feelings and moods. Then I will dance without music, making rhythmic patterns freely. This will be documented as a way of reviewing and sharing the work. As well as this, I will write a daily reflection using the parataxic form — this too will be shared. This is the first day. This writing is the first action. I will close with a final statement — call it a research statement or even a research question. This is my hypothesis anyway and all will be revealed, or not, its not the destination that is important here, rather it is the journey:
There is no distinction between spiritual practice and art making — they are the same thing — the art itself is an expression of the spirit and a way in which the spirit communicates.
July 20th 2020
Hackney, London.
Zen and TART — Day One
Time or no time. Slowly, I wake from a deep sleep — one of those sleeps where in your dreams you are solving all the problems of the world…. No time. There will be no marking of time. No looking at the time. No looking. Only being.
I wake to a bright sunny day. The day begins at any time and I love that I don’t have to be anywhere, do anything, think about anything — but this. This action I am undertaking. This reflecting on the process. This typing of keys and as if by magic the words appear on the screen before me. I document, I record, I reflect. The screen displays my dancing body and the speakers throb to the sound of my feet, hitting the boards beneath me. I am confused — who is where? I am here in front of the screen. Inside the screen? But that was the first dance. That dance acts as a baseline and I review it to determine its features: patterns, timings, motion, force, flow — there is no flow — it stutters and stumbles along, changing rhythms that are discordant, disturbing almost. I can see myself trying to hold the rhythm and build a pattern but I can also see myself failing. Failing to flow. I watch as my body moves in an angular, awkward fashion. I watch my face as it contorts — I move my tongue around my mouth when focussing hard and rarely does that intense look of concentration pass. When it does, there is a moment of joy visible as I smile — to myself — for there is nobody else here apart from the me on the screen, or is it the me dancing? And who is this typing words, randomly forming sentences and patterns. I think that I am expressing myself freely. In flow. But I know that this is an illusion and I am far from free. I see the me who struggles. The me I want to leave behind for rarely is there a place of peace that I can slide into. Rarely can I reside in peace. But this action, this at home retreat is meant to address some of that. By just dancing, by just doing this, maybe I can find a place of peace and harmony. We shall see. This is just the first day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Daw9lPcSQE&t=83s
I have crafted this retreat so that it suits my life conditions — it is not the same as being on an actual retreat — although I have only been on three, I feel well versed in the language of spiritual journeying. It is about intention and focus but that is not easy to realise when in the middle of a city, on a major arterial road. Yesterday I took time to prepare — I shopped, I set up the video and sharing features on social media, I wrote an introduction, I started dancing, but I did not manage to stay focused. Today, my phone is on ‘do not disturb’ and I did not start the day looking at social media feeds. I intend to not look at my phone apart from when posting about this project and then to limit my interactions with others to the bare minimum. But I did watch a music documentary and a comedy drama last night and today my head is full of the stories and details I encountered. So from today, I will not be watching anything. I will read when the day is done instead. I have Phillip Pullman’s Book of Dust to finish and I am working my way through Fritjof Capra’s brilliant book, The Tao of Physics. I will allow my mind to engage and explore the esoteric and the wonderful. I will not allow my mind to be invaded by nonsense and reality. What is reality anyway?
I intend to spend each of the retreat days doing these actions: wake in own time; drink hot lemon and honey; do yoga; meditate; walk in nature; journaling/reflection/writing; eat; rudiments; dance to music; walk in nature; dance without music; bodywork (Alexander, Feldenkrais); eat; read; relax; sleep.
In this no time, the only timed action will be a five minute alarm to end the final dance session, which will be documented and shared. I realise that sharing actions provide a discipline, a focus for my over active mind. The mind that needs taming in some way — or is it that it needs calming. Can I calm my mind so that I can be present? Not just here, but present. Completely in the moment — in the action. No time. No action. No mind. Contradictions puzzle and confuse. There is no value in such contradictory concepts unless we consider them as opposite poles that in fact lead to the same place — just the other side of the thing we know is the thing we need to know. Just the other side of the place we are is the place we need to be. Can I find my way there through these actions? To the place of non-knowledge?
I put on my tap shoes and I dance. I will dance. I am dance. I am dancing.
Zen and TART — Day Two
Tired — already I am tired. Not used to quite so much dancing all in one go. Lately, I have been tapping my feet gently at the end of the day — quietly so as to not disturb the neighbours. A glass or two of wine helps to shut down cognition and I allow self to be carried away by the music randomly coming out of the radio and the rhythms my feet create. Its been an age since I taught a tap class and almost as long since I performed… this discipline, this practice will do me good — it is doing me good, isn’t it? The neighbours are away and I can make as much noise as I like but this morning my feet are complaining at me, unused as they are to so much dancing. This morning, I am counting the days — already I am counting the days. At the end of the day yesterday I was hungry — I had forgotten that when on a retreat someone else always prepares the food — it took an age to roast vegetables and I had a long soak in the bath while they were cooking. Much too late to eat. I will be better prepared this evening. I had forgotten what hunger actually felt like. It feels good — it feels like I am alive and its joyful to satiate it with fresh and tasty food that has grown out of the earth. So tasty. Are my senses already excited? Can it be that simple?
Walking in nature is a challenge in a city — here, there is the local nature reserve, an old Cemetery that sits in the hollow at the bottom of the hill — on the ley lines where the underground river flows. In the Cemetery all of nature is laid bare; the seasons change visibly — things grow, things emerge, things fall away, then they reemerge again. And around nature creatures move and groove, getting on with the business of living. Cuckoos, woodpeckers, blackbirds, robins, magpies, butterflies, dragonflies, foxes, rats, squirrels, bees, wasps, ants, midges and flies, moths and caterpillars, and amongst them the humans, smoking, drinking, eating, walking, talking, listening, liaising. Or just being. Like me. Today, I sat on a fallen headstone and watched as the tiny flies danced above me — the sunlight catching them and making them look magical, moving and grooving simply for the sake of it. Reading about the dynamic universe in The Tao of Physics I find reference to Shiva, the Cosmic Dancer, ‘the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe.’ Through dance, Shiva ‘sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance.’ Like the tiny flies, I am dancing. Today I am going to dance.
Yesterday I found it difficult to recall the rudiments and exercises I used to teach. I watched videos to remind me but these seemed difficult to follow and I struggled. But still I danced. I practiced shuffles and flaps, time steps and pick-ups. I danced to Miles Davis’ album Kind of Blue. I listened to the rhythms and tried to respond — the bass, the drums, the trumpet, the piano, the saxophone all merged into a coherent whole — I felt as if my rhythms invaded and contradicted the musical patterns that I know so well, that album has been in my life for ever and I know it intimately. I had not danced to it before. It was inspiring. I saw a documentary recently about Miles Davis and one of the talking heads said that what Miles managed was to create a soft sound unlike the sound of the trumpet in previous incarnations. In fact this had been his intention — to make beautiful music with an instrument that is loud and mostly used in that manner. I recall thinking that this is what I want to do with tapping — to make it musical and not loud. To make it soft and not relentless. To make it flow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri052hiNuo8&t=16s
I watch myself dancing at the end of yesterday and I review. I almost smile. Standing in this space, I am sunlit. The light illuminates what I remember. I started dancing with thinking. I thought about a step, a pattern, a rhythm with which to begin. I tried to let it emerge out of my body but my cognition got in the way and again, I stumble between rhythms, often letting them fall away. At times, they reemerge and I can see that at times I did stop thinking. I did not look at the image on the screen before me as I danced. I did not worry about holding a rhythm. I did not worry about adding in new steps — well, sometimes I did. I have a long way to go. More flow but still a long way to go.
Later, I managed not to look at social media or watch anything on a screen. I read a little, but my eyes were struggling and what I was reading was complex. I picked up Alan Watts’ last book The Watercourse Way and tried to concentrate on his musings about ideograms and the Chinese language. I picked up the Tao Te Ching and randomly opened a page: ‘Too much store is sure to end in immense loss. Know contentment and you will suffer no disgrace; know when to stop and you will meet with no danger. You can then endure.’ I stop.
I find a place to sit where the light is right and I immerse self in The Book of Dust. Reaching the end of Part One feels like an accomplishment. Reaching the end of Day One is an accomplishment. Before I go to bed, I sit and watch the plane tree out of the window as it gently moves with the breeze. Music is playing and my feet naturally start to move. I am dancing without thinking. The patterns my feet find on the floor are lyrical and harmonic. This, I think. This is the way I want to dance. As if It is simply bubbling out of me and I am a just a receptacle for Its delivery. Allowing It to emerge and enter the world. I slept deeply.
Today is a new day. Today I continue without expectation. I intend to be contented with whatever occurs. Whatever happens. I know when to stop. I know when to begin.
Zen and TART — Day Three
Five am. Awake. Looking out at the sky, I see turquoise swathes and shades of grey. I catch the light before looking down at the street below. Police cars lined up on the pavement below. Dawn raids and dramas — as usual. Distracted I try to sleep again, knowing my body is not yet rested. But the light invades the quiet space in my head and I am suddenly full of angst about money and work and I recall conversations had at the end of the day and plans and meetings and birthdays and art events and on it goes… the never ending chatter about things that do not need to be considered at all. Not now anyway. It can wait surely. This is tough this at home retreat. I long for views and skies that go on forever. I long for greens and blues and to feel the earth beneath me. Instead I am here, high on this hill. High. I fall into a distracted slumber and emerge later with a headache. It feels like all the things I cannot contain have taken over. The inmates have taken over the asylum. My neck is stiff and my hip groans and I weep for some reason I cannot express. Distracted again by communications and plans I pause. I sit and look at the tree outside as I drink hot lemon. I drink it as if it will revive me somehow and stave off the darkness, the fuzziness in my head. I try to stop. To stop thinking. I stretch and move through yoga poses that help. I arch my back, I breathe, I chant, I meditate. I am calmer. I walk in nature. I do what has to be done so that now, finally, I can sit and reflect. I can sit and write before beginning. Before I dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5um5VVVeOM&t=4s
I watch self dancing at the end of yesterday. Conscious of self as subject I recall how I tried to allow the rhythms to emerge. I can see that I am less angular, more relaxed. My face does not contort as frequently, my arms do less work. I remember that Savion Glover hardly moves at all when he dances. His gaze is lowered, as in meditation. His arms are loose and he stays in one place — no sliding and stamping, just pure rhythm. I consider how energy is wasted when I move too much. I consider how I give away my energy when I wave my arms, move my body and shake my hands. I give my energy away often. It is a life condition I am trying to address. Earlier this year I went to a few Flamenco classes. The teacher spoke about how the rhythm being created by placing feet on the floor was for you — for me — the dancer. This struck me as a total contrast with how tap dance is performed. In the tap dance scene, dancers use all of their bodies to express themselves — arms as well. Are they wasting their energies? Might their rhythms be tighter if they put all of that energy into their feet. Might my rhythms be tighter if I put all of my energy into my feet? But how can I ground myself when I am here, up here on the second floor? High. I can try.
In The Tao of Physics, I find a quote from Tibetan Journey, a book by Alexandra David-Neel. She describes meeting a Lama who was a ‘master of sound’ — ‘All things… are aggregations of atoms that dance and by their movements produce sounds. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes…’ I notice that this is something that happens when I am dancing. I change sounds, I change rhythms — when I change rhythms, the sounds I make change. Tone. I change the tone of the sounds as well as the rhythm. Or is it that the tone is the sound that changes when the rhythm also changes? It is all in a state of constant change. Flux.
I am in flux today. Between and betwixt I recall the evenings insights — for there were many. The universe is constantly in flux — there are only probabilities — the movement of particles cannot be predicted — change cannot be predicted — it just is. I read about the i-Ching and the five element theory in Watercourse Way. I dance some more to music. I cannot help myself. I know that music is what connects me. I know that dance is how I express myself. Yet I cannot make music with my feet. Not yet. Not yet anyways.
After I bathed last night I massaged my feet. I have never done this before. I might have creamed them on occasion, but last night I actually massaged them. My hands pressed gently on the tender spots on the ball of each foot and I worked on the rough patches, flexing my toes and the bones connecting them to my feet. I continued to massage ankles and calves before laughing out loud at my action. How amazing I thought. How brilliant. This is self care. I have not managed this before. Shifting. Things are shifting.
Yesterday I danced to John Coltrane’s album, My Favourite Things. It is one of my favourite things but I have not danced to it before. It was joyful. The musicians and their instruments seemed to meet me somewhere and I listened to them intently, responding as if in real time. In four dimensional space and time anything is possible. In this time and space anything is possible. All things are potentially possible. It is just that they cannot be predicted with any level of accuracy. Only probabilities — and these are next to useless given what I now know about the universe and my place in it.
Now, I cannot see clearly. I do not know what lies ahead. I embrace the potential of this day. The sun is shining and the light is clear and bright. I place myself in the void. I reflect. I rotate. I move. I make sounds. I make rhythms. I collide.
Zen and TART — Day Four
It moves. It moves not.
It is far, and it is near.
It is within all this,
And it is outside of all this.
(from The Upanishads)
It feels strange today. This returning to a place of retreat after two days of being in the world. I am tired of the world. I am tired of communicating. I am tired of explaining. I am tired of holding it all, yet it is within. I do not need to try. It is outside of all of this and still I try. I try to make sense of my mood and the fact that I cannot seem to contain a thought in my head. As soon as I have the thought I am letting it go. As in meditation. Not intentionally as I want to think right now. I want to reflect. I want to write. I drink coffee. I open the window to let the noise of the street in — to engage and hold me in this moment. I can see the clouds looming and the pigeons sit on the roof opposite, waiting. Or that is how it appears. Maybe it is me who is waiting. But what am I waiting for?
I try to recall the last time I sat here writing. I re read. I feel nothing but a sense of detached amusement. Like I am outside of myself, wondering what on earth it is I am up to. I realise that I have lost faith in this action already. How can I sustain my attention and focus so that I can continue and complete this ritual. This strange at home retreat. I consider myself as if I am not myself. Subject and object confused and fused somehow. Within and without.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EgXX4SfDv0&t=37s
I review myself dancing and I am distracted by myself — by my image on the screen before me. I try to focus on my feet and the rhythms I am making, instead of my lank hair and lacklustre skin. Two minutes in and I finally settle into the sounds, the tones, the rhythms that fall. I see the contrast and the complexity of the patterns and I recall how I was holding a tune in my head when I began and I chastise myself immediately — that is cheating I say out loud. That is not making music with your feet. You are dancing to music, not creating it. I recall taking a workshop with an American tap dancer who said he always has a tune in his head when he starts dancing. He suggested we do the same thing. When I saw Savion Glover perform he danced to music for a while before dancing without. Maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe it is. It is within all this and it is outside.
I had been dancing to an album by 70’s soul singer Leon Bond, a recent find. When I first played it, I wept at almost every beautiful heartfelt song. Sung with passion and pain, the music resides now in my heart and I danced with joy. It was one of his songs that I had in my head as I danced at the end of the day. Maybe that is why I could focus and stay in flow. For I can see that after a while I found a rhythm and I let it play out without trying to alter or influence it — even when it strayed and I struggled to hold onto it. It was there. I could see it. I could hear it. I still waved my arms but I kept my gaze lowered so I did not get distracted by what was going on in the street below. I was not distracted. I stayed in the present. Better. Still not there but it is only Day Four. Six more days to go. Sigh.
This morning I walked around the Wetlands with my granddaughter, picking and eating ripe blackberries where we could find them. We found acorns, walked through long grass, pretending to climb mountains, and watched as a swan family preened themselves on the water. Then it rained. It poured. The clouds seem to come from nowhere and suddenly we were sheltering. Sheltering and laughing at the raindrops that made ripples as they fell. Each drop rippled a tiny circle outwards until it dissipated into the puddles being created. Patterns of change. Vibrations. Resonance. Happenings. Events. So much is happening. Everything is vibrating. The universe is constantly changing. I am constantly changing. Change is the only thing that we can be sure of. Yet it is unpredicatable. I am unpredicatable. I cannot predict what will happen today. All I know is that something is happening.
I consider the actions I am about to undertake. The exercises and rudiments I have been using to develop technique and mastery have become ingrained again and I perform them with ease. I fall into a kind of trance as the rhythms repeat and I repeat them again and again as I like the way it feels — it does not require me to think, just focus. I am aiming to be equidistant so that the rhythms are tight and the speed of the rhythm remains constant. That is all I need to focus on now that my feet remember the patterns. It is strange that my feet tap without me willing it — my body does not seem to need my brain to be engaged. I am aware that once I dance to music I am improvising. Dancing without steps or choreography. Just moving my feet and hitting them against the floor. Rhythmically. Harmoniously. In Watercourse Way, Alan Watts writes about Ch’en Jung, a Zen painter from the 13th century. He quotes: “He made clouds by splashing ink on his pictures. For mists he spat out water… seizing his hat, [he] used it as a brush, roughly smearing the drawing; after which he finished his work with a proper brush.” Watts uses this as an example of how creativity springs from the ‘un — sub — or superconscious’. This is something I understand. I know what this feels like. This springing well like creative urge to make, to write, to mark, to dance. And the joy of just allowing it to spring unfettered and free. Water flowing free. Water flowing free like me. We shall see.
Can I allow the spring to flow? To go somewhere I have never been. We shall see. What will be will be. It is unpredictable yet probable. It moves. It moves me.
Zen and TART — Day Five
The rain woke me. A heavy shower that descended and then stopped. Suddenly. I lay dozing as seagulls shrieked somewhere outside and I imagined cliffs and seascapes and horizons that go on and on and on. Heavy. My head and my heart are heavy. Walking in nature did not shift my mood this morning. I sat under green canopies and waited for the heaviness to lift but the sirens and power tools were louder than the wind in the trees and I walked home with my gaze fixed on the ground before me. Heavy.
I have things to do — with irritation I water the neighbours plants, reply to emails, sweep the floor and put away the washing. Finally ready to sit and reflect I find self hungry and unable to focus. Maybe I need to eat more I think, as I prepare some food and make some biscuits. And not just any old biscuits. I grind hazelnuts to make flour, I whizz oats in the blender and I break up the last of the home made chocolate. I cream the fat and the sugar. I stir, I beat, I fold. I realise that I am present in these actions. I am focussing intently and it feels good. Purposeful. Potentially. I lick the spoon as I tidy. These biscuits will be good — I am certain of it. I have faith. Or do I? I wish I could have completed this retreat in one go — without pause. I wish I was by the seaside dancing. I wish I could see more of the sky. I wish. But this is not having faith is it? Wishing that things were different. Having faith means that everything is already exactly as it should be. I should be here making biscuits. I should be here right now in this place, performing these actions. I should have faith. I should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54AZVAwcl-g&t=9s
I review yesterdays last dance of the day. I did not really need to watch it for I lived it completely. It flowed. It is exactly as if the rhythmic spring welled up inside me and I let It emerge. I feel on top of the rhythms yet I am inside them at the same time. Fourth dimensional time and space converging, emerging into three dimensions and then here on the screen flattened into only two. The visible and the invisible both present and both speaking, for the rhythms themselves do not say all of this. The performer on the screen is not expressing harmony and truth but if you listen really carefully, you can hear the complexity of the rhythms: their irregularities and contradictions. And you can see the joy — it is only just visible but it is there. Just.
Yesterday I danced to a radio show that is on every Sunday — I nearly always dance to this show — it is a real community affair that always makes me feel connected. But the tunes. The tunes are unlike anything else. Low rider, Jamaican soul, tunes that break your heart and then heal it again. But always they flow. Rhythms are smooth and easy — no frantic jazz solos or expressions of frustration — just pure bliss. I danced as they carried me along. I danced without thinking. I danced without listening although I knew my body heard every single note. When I then danced without music, something happened. Something magical. I created music in my head, in my body, and then I danced that tune, that rhythm, I made that sound emerge. This is where I want to go. This is what I wanted to explore. I am relieved and a little joyful but it is here that the work really begins. How can I build on this and take it even further? Can I sustain it even? More questions, more conflict, more stress. Stop it now. Stop thinking. And stop bloody trying. No effort. NO EFFORT. Effortless is where I want to be.
In Zen and the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel quotes his Master, talking to him about how to approach a target shooting ceremony. “Instead of reeling off the ceremony like something learnt from heart, it will then be as it you were creating it under the inspiration of the moment, so that dance and dancer are one and the same.” I know that I am without a Master for this is a path unforged. I am not following a set of instructions — I have made my own. I am not using a form that has a goal — I am not aiming at a target. But I am creating something in the ‘inspiration of the moment’. I am allowing the inspiration of the moment to lead me now. I will not try. I will not listen. I will be as empty. I will be as full.
Later in the book, Eugen refers to the art of swordmanship as comparison and he quotes Zen Master Takuan: “All is emptiness: your own self, the flashing sword, and the arms that wield it. Even the thought of emptiness is no longer there. From this absolute emptiness comes the most wondrous unfoldment of doing.” I love this notion — the unfoldment of doing. Can I unfold what I am doing?
At the end of the day I could not settle to read. I felt too excited. Too troubled. Too aware. My eyes hurt. I found a documentary called The Emptiness of Tao and sat down to watch. The stock images of beautiful people performing yoga and tai chi on mountain tops was distracting and the voice over voice was flat and monotonous. I could not stay awake. I let the sounds drift over me as I gave up the day and my efforts. Tomorrow I will be effortless I think. Tomorrow I will write more clearly. Tomorrow I will dance more freely. But this is surely a contradiction. Being effortless does not mean intending to be, or planning and preparing to be. Being effortless is exactly that. Not trying. Not intending. Not clutching. Not desirous. Not attached to outcome and reception. Not caring what anyone thinks. Yet I do care. I care enough that I have begun. In fact I am half way through. I care enough to continue. I care enough to complete.
Choosing a playlist to dance to I look out at the street. The rain is sporadic and the wind is blowing — the plane tree outside bends and waves its branches. It is not bright today. It is overcast and dowdy. I struggle far too much to express myself in words. Maybe the biscuits will help. I try not to anticipate the rest of the day and the evening ahead. I try to stay present and then I stop. I really must stop trying.
Contradictions. Challenges. Conflict. All of this is self induced. All of this is folly. I surrender to my fallibility. I care. I empty myself of care. I fold. I unfold.
Zen and TART — Day Six
This morning I woke full of anticipation. No more distractions. No more days off. I can allow one day to unfold into another. Four more days. I am still counting. I find self distracted by communications and random meetings when walking and I struggle to focus my attention again. To focus so that I can just be. Here in this space and time. The day is bright and changeable — clouds come and go moving across the sky slowly, gracefully, revealing patches of blue. Auntie Maggie used to say that if there was enough blue in the morning sky to make a pair of sailors trousers, the day would be fine. It often wasn’t but still we enjoyed believing that it would be. We live always in anticipation of brighter days. What is wrong with this day that it is not bright enough? I recall being told that through the practice of Zen, we become brighter. The analogy is that we are cleaning a dirty, dusty window, and as we clean, through our engagement with spiritual practice, our visibility is improved and we and the world become brighter. “Knowing is impossible without seeing; all knowledge has its origin in seeing… Seeing is experiencing enlightenment”. (D. T. Suzuki) I look out of my dirty, dusty windows and see the dirty, dusty street below. Averting my gaze to the clouds, I drift, reminded of the title of Alan Watts’ mountain journal, Cloud-Hidden, Wherabouts Unknown. I pick up the book and open a page randomly, finding him quoting a Zen verse: “Blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains. White clouds are of themselves white clouds.” Confusing — yet I almost understand. I almost know. Another verse on the same page jumps out at me: “If you understand, things are just as they are; If you do not understand, things are just as they are.” Just as they are then. I let that sit as I sit and review the last dance of the day before yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdidJO-giLg&t=26s
It is interesting. I watch as if I am seeing someone else dancing. I am not trying or thinking. I am waving my arms and using them to direct my energy: up, down, in, out, around and inside, without and within. No steps are being performed. Often I just hit my feet on the ground and let them resound, vibrating against the wood beneath. I am reminded of the five elements and consider that I am using wood and metal to create tones and sounds. But the rhythm comes from somewhere else. The rhythm is not intrinsic to the form. Rather the form attempts to contain the rhythm, something that it cannot actually do. For the rhythm is like the Taoist concept of ‘Li’. It is a life force, an energy that is channeled and expressed through the hitting of metal on wood. It is beyond words.
I consider that words fail. Language is problematic. I return to Alan Watts’ writing about the Chinese language and I understand finally what he means when he says that standard European languages pose a metaphysical problem. Sentences are structured in a cause and effect sort of manner: ‘the verb (event) must be set in motion by the noun (thing).’ This is grammatical convention, a supposition, a linguistic rule implying that there is some ‘who or what that knows’. He reminds me that ‘raining needs no rainer and clouding no clouder.’ I am sitting here observing clouds in the sky but neither the clouds nor the sky need me to observe them in order for them to be there. They just are.
If I consider this in relation to the dance, it is not me who is dancing. It is the dance itself, it is the rhythm of the universe that is dancing. I just allow it to be. Without thought, without effort. But there is no beauty in my actions. No light and shade. No contrast. Fast and light my feet make complex rhythms but there are times when I see self pausing. Reaching a place and sitting in it for just a moment. Sometimes smiling as if I had found a place of peace. A stillness. I realise that I cannot dance constantly. That is relentless and It, ‘Li’, nature, the universe is not like that is it? It vibrates and moves, dancing dynamically, but there is stillness. There is pause.
In The Tao of Physics I find a quote from a Taoist text: “The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness. Only when there is stillness in movement can the spiritual rhythm appear which pervades heaven and earth.” Stillness in movement eh? That is a thing beyond my ken. I return to Alan Watts — he reassures. ‘Take it that you are not going anywhere but here, and that there never was, is, or will be any other time than now.’ His words pour over me for I am present in the sentence, in the linguistic convention. It is me who is being referred to. I am the ‘who’ who does not know. He continues: ‘Simply be aware of what actually is… for you are now feeling out reality itself instead of ideas and opinions about it.’
Can I feel the reality of the dance moving inside and outside of me? Can I stop judging and analysing self? Can I let the criticality go? I am expecting the dance to be beautiful, to make something that people will want to see, that will be inspiring and exciting, informative, enlightening even. I am expecting way too much. All I can do is dance. I place self in a place of nonlocality. I can feel the connections, or are they vibrations, moving through space and time. I can feel all the dancers before me. I can feel all the dancers yet to be. I can feel the dance move inside me. It moved me then just as it moves me now. I have always been a dancer. And yet I cannot recall what inspired me to dance. I cannot recall watching dance as a child. I was not introduced to it. All I can remember is that I wanted to dance. And to learn. I begged and begged until it was allowed. I danced inside of class and outside of class. I danced in the shed, in the playground, in the garden, in the park, in the churchyard, in the disco, the nightclub, the bar. I danced in the kitchen as my children played at my feet. I danced at night making shadows on the bedroom wall. I never stopped. I danced always. I still do. It is who I am. It is who I will always be. I put on my shoes and let the particles collide. Metal, wood, air, and me — body, mind and spirit in harmony.
What is is this. This here and now. This time and place. The clouds are still now. Paused. Still. From this here and now, I dance.
Zen and TART — Day Seven
I was woken by the buzzer invading my dreams — pulling me from a place of peace, rudely and insistently. It was time to wake up. The sky was a brilliant blue as I breathed through my yoga practice — the contrast of the colour against the green leaves of the plane tree was stunning — it held my attention as I stretched and twisted and breathed. It seems as if I can now breathe properly and I allow the breath to fill me up before slowly letting it go, releasing, exhaling, sighing deeply. I sit in meditation amazed at how comfortable I am — how my body settles as I sit in half lotus and I feel aligned, upright, correct. I am sitting correctly. I am sitting in zazen. Without any discomfort. No pain. No struggle.
I recall how when walking in nature yesterday I spontaneously wept as I remembered betrayals and hurtful actions. I wept as I let them go. They rose up into the tree tops and the breeze carried them away. My mind was busy all day and I was still reading and thinking at midnight. Thinking and reading. Reading and thinking. I picked up the Tao Te Ching this morning without thinking and read a page at random. It speaks loudly to me and I savour the verse before putting the book down, closing the page. “In their enterprises the people always ruin them when on the verge of success. Be as careful at the end as at the beginning and there will be no ruined enterprises.” I am not yet at the end but it is in sight. Be careful. Do not ruin what you have achieved. But what have I achieved thus far?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk5ahsS784&t=30s
I watch self dancing at the end of yesterday. Is Day Seven different to Day One? I can tell that the technical exercises and rudiments have enabled me to be more dexterous, more fluid. I have more potential now. I notice that as the five minute alarm rings out I am just beginning to find a flow. To ride the waves. To be both inside and outside the rhythm. To be the rhythm itself. Or is that the way of delusion? I consider that real spiritual practitioners would not take my efforts seriously. I doubt that this is valid, purposeful, realistic. It is just an art project I tell myself as I struggle to make sense of what I am doing. Doubt. I was confident enough when I began. Again, the Tao Te Ching reassures: “Difficult things in the world must needs have their beginnings in the easy: big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.” It is small this action of mine. This at home retreat. This exploration of the form. It is creativity that I am exploring I think, correcting myself with irritation. I say this is about the form of rhythm tap but any creative action connects us to the Dao, the source, the Way. Any artist, poet, writer, singer, performer, dancer can tap into this surely. Like I am attempting to do. Here up on this hill. While the world continues beneath me. Equanimity. That is what I am searching for and I truly believe that creative actions can facilitate this. Creativity is an expression of Dao I conclude. Yet it is by taking no action that I can access the source. I have to allow it to surface through me. “… it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great.” (Lao Tzu)
Twisted. It is complex and entangled. I cannot know. It is impossible to know. Alan Watts quotes Huai Nan Tzu: “The Tao of heaven operates mysteriously and secretly; it has no fixed shape; it follows no definite rules; it is so great that you can never come to the end of it; it is so deep that you can never fathom it.” I can only be here, in this place and time. I can only allow things to flow. My main task then is to not damn the flow, not to divert or suspend it. I consider how my experience of music is like this. It takes me somewhere but not anywhere identifiable or describable. I consider that the music I most love is called ‘spiritual jazz’. Listening to it is not really listening — the word fails to describe what it is. In fact I cannot describe what it is. I imagine it is like a river that flows. That flows into another body of water that then flows somewhere else before returning to the source of the river and starting its journey all over again. To experience it fully I dive into the river and let the current carry me along. I do nothing. Yet I am in the phenomena somehow. I become the phenomena. I am phenomenal. And the music resounds inside and outside of me as I flow. It is easy to dance to such music — to let it carry me along.
Today I will dance to Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions. It is not ‘spiritual’ music, yet it has so much spirit. I think it might be my favourite album of all time. I have danced to it before and I love the way I know what is coming next. I recall a neuroscience study that observed dancers anticipating the next phrase of music — I know that I do this too. Sometimes it happens when I don’t know what is coming next. Time stretches. It folds and unfolds around the moment. Around the motion, the action being performed. Time stands still sometimes and it sometimes feels like a clockwork mechanism actually winds down — comes to the end of its springing and stops. My cognition shutting down as I allow the flow to carry me along. This is my song. Carry me along. Surrender. It feels like surrender. Effortless. No mind. Maybe.
The day is bright and later it will be hot in this space. I will have to open the windows and move out of the sunlight. For its brightness illuminates too much. Too many crumbs on the floor. Too many stains on the table. Too much dust on the amplifier. But it also changes the quality of the space, making it seem larger, more spacious. It illuminates the shiny leaves of the succulents on the windowsill. It makes shapes and shadows on the walls. It charges the crystal glass pendant hanging in the window so that it reflects prisms of rainbow lights about the room. They dance around me. They are vibrating, vibrant, beautiful. Then the light will fade, slowly, gently, softly. Inspirations and ideas will appear and I will allow them to. Now though it is time to dance.
Surrender. I see surrender. It is a river flowing, calmly. It is the watercourse as it travels through space and time. I step into the river and allow it to carry me along. The rhythm of life. Within and without.
Zen and TART — Day Eight
This morning I have to wake early to allow access to the building I live in. Irritatingly. I find it hard to concentrate when meditating and I rush through yoga poses, pausing only temporarily to stretch before beginning another day. Another day of this. Still more days to come but I am anticipating the end far too much now. Looking forward. Not present. Not here and now. Today is hot. Already it is hot and I do not walk in nature before I begin. Later I think, when it is cooler. I recall yesterday evening and how entering the Cemetery felt like stepping into a cool still pool of wild water. The green canopies overhead dispelled the heat of the day, the stuffy air of the city, the main road, the roadworks, the dust. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We all return to the earth at some point. We are born of the earth. We are the earth. We are part of the great cosmos, the Dao. Our consciousness entangled with all other things. We are not alone. I am not alone. Connected. I feel connected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmLjY_shF7g&t=23s
I review yesterdays last dance and am distracted by the shadows and light dancing across the ceiling. Yet the sounds are clear. The tapping. The rhythm. There is light and shade. Softness. Hardness. Hard. It is hard this at home retreat. Yet I am ok. I look as if I am concentrating and I was. I tried not to listen but I could not help myself. Too fast. Too soft. Too discordant. Messy. Random. My rhythmic patterns are random. They follow no order, no rules, no timings that make sense. No one two three four. Not even three six nine. There is nothing distinguishable. No steps that I recognise. No motif. No pattern. No consistency. Yet I recall when dancing through the rudiments yesterday that I was consistent. Equidistant. Controlled. The use of exercises as a way to reach a free flow is consistent with tai-chi and martial arts such as Akido, that Alan Watts talks about in Watercourse Way. Instead of sitting, as in zazen, peace is pursued through gentle flowing bodily actions. Attention is placed on the action. Discipline is built through repeated exercises that strengthen the body and make it able. I reflect that today I feel stronger. Strong and capable. Able. The rudiments have been helpful and performing them is meditative. I always knew this. But there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it truthfully.
It is the body that connects me to the Dao. It is through the body that I have found peace. I was born perfect. We all are. But then I was damaged. It has taken me a long time to reach a place of peace with my body. It no longer fights and flights. It no longer creaks and aches. It no longer wakes me at night. It no longer debilitates my days and affects my actions. It no longer causes me concern. I feel free. I know it is through this dance that I have found a way to liberate my body from its tyranny. I already know. This action, this retreat is evidence. Empirical. It is my lived experience and that is the only thing I can be sure of. Yet I do not wish to be determined by my past. I do not wish to be thinking about my future. Way too soon for self congratulation. I am still here. I am still present. I am still.
After walking in nature I sat down to read Alan Watts writing about wu-wei, or not-forcing. This is the ‘lifestyle of one who follows the Tao… the “unconscious intelligence” and… innate wisdom of the nervous system.’ Allowing the body to unfold. Listening. Paying attention. I ignored my enteric nervous system for years. I ignored it until it screamed loudly. Then I paid attention. Then I returned to yoga and Alexander and Fedenkrais and Chi Gong. Then I put on my tap shoes and danced. Wu-wei is ‘the principle that gravity is energy, and the Taoist finds in gravity a constant stream which may be used in the same way as the wind or a current.’ I observed self using this energy when dancing. I lifted my feet and let them fall, let them resound and vibrate against the wood, the ground beneath me. ‘Falling with gravity constitutes the immense energy of the earth spinning in orbit around the sun.’ Falling with gravity. This is something I know. Allowing self to fall into the earth, to feel it supporting and holding. Letting the body go. Allowing. Returning to the earth. Gravity without force. Motion without intention. Effect without cause.
Today I think, I will dance to Songs in the Key of Life, well some of it. It is a double album and it speaks to me of being fifteen when all was ahead of me. I listened to it on repeat for weeks. I carry it with me still. There are versions of versions of Stevie Wonder songs. He has made such a powerful impact on music. On me. Untrained, he worked with the black keys on the piano — the pentaphonic scale that is used in all non-Western music — perfectly harmonious. Perfect. I recall seeing his image on the album cover of Talking Book. He looked like an African shaman. He is a shaman. Ecstatic rhythms and harmonies that make me want to move. To groove. To dance. To dance ecstatically. For it is in the collective joy of ecstatic dance that I flow.
The heat of the day is rising. Reaching the second floor. Soon the sun will wend its way around the building and this time and space will become hot. Too hot. I drink cucumber water and tie back my hair. Preparing. I am prepared. I give myself permission now. To step into the current. To go with the flow.
Here and now. This is the only place. I cannot imagine another. I do not see myself seeing. I do not see myself dancing. The dance is dancing. The dance is dancing me.
Zen and TART — Day Nine
Today. I am suddenly conscious of the day. The place I inhabit is murky and dark. I stay with the darkness as the light streams through the blinds. Slatted light. Strips. Stripes. I try to stay asleep. But bright green light invades my head and I have to rise. I have to face the day. The almost last day. The almost end. I am almost at the end. Too soon. This at home retreat ends too soon. Too many distractions. Too much thinking. Too much heat. Fire is intense. Fire energy is life — one of the elements of life. Inside I feel it burn. My belly is tense and sore. I am too hot. I walk in nature and find cool shade beneath the trees. Dappled light illuminates and discriminates. Flies and butterflies flit and flirt. I watch a robin puff itself up to attract its mate. I watch two white butterflies spin around each other — in a dance of love. Or so I imagine. I ignore phone calls and messages. I clean the coffee maker. I water the plants. I take my sweet time to begin writing. To begin the ending. To end the beginning. To reach a conclusion.
I am aware that ten days is not enough. Not enough for a spiritual retreat. Not when I am at home. Not when. Not now. I imagine self on a beach, a stretch of shore. It continues as far as I can see. Wide. In my imagination I am safe and warm. There is a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. The clouds drift. There are no distractions. No dilemmas to solve. Nobody asking me to do anything. No need to do anything. Nothing to do. But this. All there is is this. Tomorrow I think. Tomorrow I will review. I will reflect. I will close. But today I have to find a way. I cannot just give up. Not now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-ixdnUCNSs&t=12s
I review self dancing. I watch as I float in time and space. I can see that my weight is placed differently — that I use my heels to keep time, to mark a beat. This beat is insistent and constant and I like that it seems to contain the sound somehow, to fold it. To unfold it. To return — to repeatedly return. Like a heartbeat. I am reminded of how I devised a basic step for a routine for The Women’s Tap Collective that served as a motif. At the end of every sequence, we danced the basic step. I felt it worked as a kind of loop. I felt myself sit in it. It felt safe. A place of return. It was not until I started studying Zen that I realised the rhythm was from the Heart Sutra. The exact same rhythm and I used it without knowing. Without being aware of its significance. The words are: Gyate, Gyate, Hara, Gyate. They mean — although the translation varies — Onward, Onward, Always Onward. Most apt. This is not the end of the retreat — it is just the beginning. I can return to this practice whenever I feel to. I can make it part of my regular practice. I can perform the same actions. It is probable that I will. The potential exists as surely as I do. I try not to consider the quality of the dance as I watch. I try not to care. I am not so distracted by myself. I am more at ease — or so it appears. I enjoyed dancing yesterday. But when I began I felt an almost revulsion at the sounds I was making. Like it was too much. I acknowledged this odd feeling and let it pass. It passed swiftly and I settled into the sounds, the actions, the movements, the flow. Today I am going to dance again. I remind self as if I had forgotten. I am still on retreat. Still at home. Still up here. Contained. Safe and warm.
When walking yesterday evening, I found a spot to lie down. The grass beneath me was dry and the earth hard and lumpy. Still, I settled self and watched as the tree above me gently moved in the breeze. Puffs of wispy clouds passed by overhead and a plane soared overhead silently, leaving a trail of white in the sky. Residue. It was peaceful. It was quiet and only once did the sound of sirens invade the silence around me. On returning home I finished reading Watercourse Way. It has carried me along this book — it has shown me much. Things I already knew but did not understand. Things I understood but did not know. I consider that much of my life I have embraced the natural order of things, the Way. I have allowed the universe to guide me. I have paid attention to synchronicities and my heart. There are times when I have been swept along by the current, almost drowning. Chaos was normal. I had no quiet places. I could not connect. I was not grounded. Water is forceful unless one allows it to flow. I know I have floundered. I have struggled to find peace. I fear that this struggle however was just in my mind. I allowed the rest of the world to affect my wellbeing. The rules, the systems, the structures that I aspired to climb, the institutions that I did not fit into. Yet still I tried. Was it this that bothered me? This being out of sorts with everyone around me and the culture that I live in? Alan quotes Lao-tzu: “The five colours blind one’s eyes; the five tones deafen one’s ears; the five tastes ruin one’s palate.” Insisting that everything can be classified and determined, with rules and systems is the problem. There are far more than five tones in the universe. There are far more than five tones in the dance.
Alan Watts again reassures me: ‘…the genius — the person of te — is always going beyond the rules, not because of an obstreperous and antisocial spirit with hostile intent, but because the fountain of creative work is an intelligent questioning of the rules.’ This has always been my location. I am always the person who questions the rules, challenges the conventions, refuses to comply. In tap dance I stand alone. I do not dance to rhythmical rules or use conventional steps. I learnt them but now I do my best to forget. It is not important I say. It matters not. Yet it matters still. Not yet in a place of te — or virtuality — but I see the Way ahead. Rather I cannot see. I just know. I will always be the person on the edge, the outlier, the rule breaker. And it is for this reason that I make art, that I dance. I do not want to dance like Fred Astaire. I want to dance like me. The idea of te, or virtuality is that the power of the universe, the life force, the Dao, is ‘exercised without the use of force and without undue interference with the order of surrounding circumstances. “Entering the forest without moving the grass; Entering the water without raising a ripple.”’ Entering the dance without dancing.
The circumstances are not important — they just are — no force, no interference. The dance exists in this space and time. I enter. I do not dance, I am danced.
Zen and TART — Day Ten
The last day. I have reached the end of this at home retreat. I have reached the beginning. I consider all the words I have written — I re read the passages, correcting, editing, adding, deleting, preparing. For once I am content with content I can rest. I can relax. But I am perplexed by all the things ahead — the things that have been on hold — all the things I will now need to do. But not now. Not yet. Today I can reflect. It is a pause, a place to pause. It is sheltered and I am held in this time and space for just a little longer I think. Just a little more. I move the table back to where it usually sits and clear the tap boards away. I eat chocolate spread on warm bread and look out at the cloudy sky. Soon. Soon I will walk in nature and breathe out. I realise that sitting and writing has me paused — I don’t breathe deeply and I hold my shoulders with tension. I stand and stretch. No need for tension. No need any more.
After the last dance yesterday I walked in nature. Grateful that as it was late in the day, hardly a soul was stirring and I was on my own. Immersed in the cool green shade I was at peace. I breathed in the smell of the pine trees and imagined self in the Highlands, exploring. Mind and body somehow transported to a different plane, an alternate reality. How easy it seems now. How easy to slide into a place of peace. It’s just a step away but it has taken me a long time to take this step. It is small. It is large. It is mine and it is yours for we are all part of the same world, the same universe, the same Dao. In the afterword of Watercourse Way, calligraphist Al Chung-liang Huang writes that the Way is not one person’s way, rather it is ‘the universal way’. He concludes the book with the words: ‘Put the book aside and dance for a while.’ I realise that dance has been used as a descriptor by many writers attempting to express the inexpressible. The notion of dancing related to everything from atoms and quantum theory to Vedic and Eastern mysticism. To dance does not actually mean to dance in the sense of learning and performing patterns and steps. To dance is to be. To express. To inhabit. To allow and unfold. And it is through the dance and these discussions about it that I have come to new understandings. I did not really understand the nature and purpose of Zen koans before. I did not really know what non-duality meant. Maybe I still don’t. Maybe it is better illuminated now, my understanding, maybe I know more. Maybe I know less. But there is always further to travel I think. Always somewhere else to go. For now though I am content to sit in this space and time. I have unfolded experience for the self is now not the self. I have both lost and found. I am both air and earth bound. I am in the stream and on the mountain. I am a tree and a bird, a fish and a crab. I am a dancer and a dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJO3Dti5x3Y&t=3s
I review the last dance. I review all the dances. I watch. I observe. I see what I cannot see. Much is the same — much is different. On Day One there is yang energy and conscious awareness. There is performativity. Patterns emerge and contradict each other. It is like an argument, an intense debate. Nobody wins. Day Two, Day Three… Each day reveals something I did not know. Each day has shifted. Each dance shifts something into and out of being. Here it is hypnotic. There it is almost desperate. Here it is isolating and there it connects. I am both performer and performed. I engage. I disengage. I float above and I gravitate below. I move, I groove even, creating and expressing frustration, irritation, harmony, peace, joy. All of the universe is contained in the dance. Contained and safe. The dance dances me and I finally allow it. I finally stop fighting and contradicting. I finally flow. It is as if I am being danced by the Dao.
I find self unsatisfied. Yet I am also satisfied. It is not important I realise. Usually at the end of a project, there is a faint glow of satisfaction. Something has been completed and most often I am happy with what has been undertaken, achieved even. But here and now? I am glad to be done with this at home retreat but I am mourning already the space and time I have created for self. The space and time to pursue something spiritually. To explore without judgement. To accept outcomes and simply play. To see what will occur. To have faith, to dive in, to let the current carry me along, not caring where it will take me. I realise that I have to take this further. This is just the beginning. I am not yet done. Ten days is really not a long time anyway. Eugen Herrigal spent six years studying archery with a Zen Master. At the end of his book I find this:
‘In spite of the unexampled discipline to which he has patiently and humbly subjected himself he is still a long way from being so permeated and irradiated by Zen that he is sustained by it in everything he does, so that his life knows only good hours. The supreme freedom has still not become a necessity for him. If he is irresistibly drawn towards this goal, he must set out on his way again, take the road to the artless art. He must dare to leap into the Origin.’
I want my life to be ‘only good hours’. To dance with ‘supreme freedom’. I am drawn, irresistibly to this notion. I cannot call it a goal for that implies an end and a conclusion and I know that no such thing exists. Zen seems to be directional. Rational. I want to be happy and to live in peace with myself and the world, not to attain Buddhahood or enlightenment. I struggle with all rationality. I can see no logic, no logos, no system that explains existence and my location in it. All I can know is that I am here now, in this time and place. And if I can shift my experience of this reality so that I flow, that it is with ease that I transverse this existence, why then, maybe then, I can be content and rest. Yin and yang in perfect harmony. But I have to take the plunge, I have to leap into the Origin. I must set out again and find my way to the ‘artless art’. I have travelled far but there is still far to travel. It is about the journey, I remind myself, not the possible, potential, probable destination.
I am reluctant to conclude. I realise I am a little lost. But this is not of concern. When in the Cemetery I often take self off on a non-path. A track made by other explorers, searching for a place of peace. I know most of these paths intimately now but occasionally I find self in a place I have never been before. I love the way this feels. The unfamiliar familiar. The other day on one such track I encountered a massive fallen tree that had fallen into and on top of smaller trees, saplings, gravestones and undergrowth. Everything looked chaotic yet despite this, everything was perfectly harmonious, contained, safe even. The plants and trees had cooperatively allowed this seemingly destructive act to unfold without drama, without tragic response. The natural world simply embraced this act as if it was natural. Nothing was suffering. Nothing was broken. This I think to self. This. If I can manage this I will be happy, content, at peace. Be like the fallen tree and let yourself fall for the soft earth will catch you. Allow everything to settle for it is only in flux that we can know the Way, that we can connect to the Origin, the Truth, the Dao.
I open the windows wide. The sun streams in and the breeze blows gently. I can feel its coolness as I type. Words appear, disappear. They record, they document, they express. Time to put the words away and dance. For it is through the dance that I can be. Rhythm carries me wordlessly to the place I need to be. The rhythm of the universe, expressed through me, without me, and within.
