As we hear your voice,
Our bodies sway,
Sent forth and gathered back,
Weaving in complex and subtle rhythms
From the cycles of the moon.
The brilliance of unceasing joy,
Sharp, intense, and pure,
Motionless, devoid of thought
Is the unsparing light of an all-encompassing sun.
Out of the great elements,
So drawn and illuminated,
Our bodies and world arise
Revolving then in this vast song.
*
We hear your song
As an immense ocean
Reverberant and shining with life.
You are the insouciant fluid home
To myriad of unimaginable life-forms.
Whispering and roaring,
You descend to lightless depths
With the power of death.
The glittering crests
1
And wet sliding cobalt troughs
Roll on as you and you limitless gaze
Shapes their edge with land and wind
In an endless flow of accomodation.
Eluding definition,
You are the essence of peace;
Hurled into the sky,
Tearing at the shores,
You are anger itself;
Queen of dissolving,
You bring all to you
Without beginning and to no completion,
Such boundaries never known.
*
We hear your song
As indestructible ground,
Dense expansive earth of gilded heights
And sheltered lowlands.
Your movements are measured,
Slowed to a pace that implies solidity
As if appearance can be held.
You are the nature of treading and building.
If a form can be retained, it is you.
If a dwelling place can seem to be chosen, it is you.
If something can stand upright, be treasured,
And enjoy domain, it is you.
Your golden certainty
Is the great permanence of illusion.
You are the Queen of grasping.
*
Of the flickering glowing tongues
In the heat of dancing fire,
Radiant, devouring, untouchable,
You are the vibrant essence that cannot be stayed.
Clearly perceived only in the ground of emptiness,
Your crackling vermillion flames burn and rise.
You are the quickness at the heart of life,
Sustaining, intoxicating, consuming it completely.
Restless, purposeless, vivid,
You ever ascend in ravenous fiery swirls of love.
You are the Queen of unappeasable yearning.
*
Across trackless starlit space,
Over continents and seas,
The ceaseless winds of binding and dispersion
Race and roar,
Hurricane, tornado, gentle breeze
In the greeen air of a summer storm.
Clothed in bright clouds,
Veiled in silver rain,
Swathed in fire,
Touching the earth with deafening footsteps,
You are the power of action,
Drawing together the other elements
And tearing them apart.
Queen of concept, cause, and action,
All that can be made or destroyed
Is completely your doing.
*
As limitless as animate space,
Unfolding the perfection of form
In the expessions of all phenomena,
The spontaneous rainbow wisdom of your song
Opens as the senses touch.
Queen of Queens,
Twining the blazing of the burning sun
And the cool nectar of the moon,
You are the vibrant wisdom body,
The pulsing melodious and eternal life of all life.
SARVA DAKINI MANDALA SVABHAVA MANGALAM SVAHA
Showing posts with label Trungpa Rinpoche. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trungpa Rinpoche. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Edwin Denby
In the early seventies, Trungpa Rinpoche was newly arrived in the US and was anxious to explore as many cultural scenes as he could. One evening, accompanied by Vivian Kurz, he went to a party of poets and theater people. Robert Wilson, Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Meredith Monk were among the many guests, but when Rinpoche arrived, he immediately took an interest in Edwin Denby.
Denby was, at that time was in his 70’s, a distinguished poet and America’s foremost ballet critic. He was a tidy, fastidious man, and a little bemused to find himself being grilled by a vigorously intense hard-drinking Tibetan. The conversation went on for a half hour before they were swept apart.
Late in the evening, Rinpoche had drunk a good deal and his companions were ready to leave. But he insisted on seeing Denby before he left. Denby was slightly appalled to find this sweating Tibetan man now embracing him and kissing him on the mouth.
“You are a true living Boddhisattve.” Rinpoche told him over and over.
In remembering this story, I have often been moved that Trungpa Rinpoche not only paid such attention to Denby, but also felt it so important to speak to him in this way. The Buddhist term Boddhisattva, one who has vowed to put others before himself and postpone liberation from cyclical existence until all other sentient beings have attained liberation, would have meant little or nothing to Denby. And yet Rinpoche found it urgent for him to know himself in this particular way.
Because of this story and because I am not particularly taken by western classical ballet so would like to understand what eludes me here, I’ve often read, and re-read Denby’s essays on ballet. His writing is astonishing for it’s simplicity, open-heartedness, overall enthusiasm and genuine love, all of which inform a scrupulously detailed way of looking at dance and dancers and inform a lovely clarity of articulation.
For instance this, chosen almost at random:
“When you watch a girl moving about a room you sometimes guess what the quality of movement ‘means’. It I not that she expresses herself by making hand gestures, she does it by the rhythm of her actions. We often understand animals that way and they us. And in love we all know how dramatic such a moment of understanding is. It seems to tell more than any words and say it more irrevocably. And this is the natural phenomenon on which the art of ballet is built as a convincing human expression.” (Dance Writing, Ballet Theatre’s Season May 1945 Edwin Denby, Knopf1986 p.
Denby was, at that time was in his 70’s, a distinguished poet and America’s foremost ballet critic. He was a tidy, fastidious man, and a little bemused to find himself being grilled by a vigorously intense hard-drinking Tibetan. The conversation went on for a half hour before they were swept apart.
Late in the evening, Rinpoche had drunk a good deal and his companions were ready to leave. But he insisted on seeing Denby before he left. Denby was slightly appalled to find this sweating Tibetan man now embracing him and kissing him on the mouth.
“You are a true living Boddhisattve.” Rinpoche told him over and over.
In remembering this story, I have often been moved that Trungpa Rinpoche not only paid such attention to Denby, but also felt it so important to speak to him in this way. The Buddhist term Boddhisattva, one who has vowed to put others before himself and postpone liberation from cyclical existence until all other sentient beings have attained liberation, would have meant little or nothing to Denby. And yet Rinpoche found it urgent for him to know himself in this particular way.
Because of this story and because I am not particularly taken by western classical ballet so would like to understand what eludes me here, I’ve often read, and re-read Denby’s essays on ballet. His writing is astonishing for it’s simplicity, open-heartedness, overall enthusiasm and genuine love, all of which inform a scrupulously detailed way of looking at dance and dancers and inform a lovely clarity of articulation.
For instance this, chosen almost at random:
“When you watch a girl moving about a room you sometimes guess what the quality of movement ‘means’. It I not that she expresses herself by making hand gestures, she does it by the rhythm of her actions. We often understand animals that way and they us. And in love we all know how dramatic such a moment of understanding is. It seems to tell more than any words and say it more irrevocably. And this is the natural phenomenon on which the art of ballet is built as a convincing human expression.” (Dance Writing, Ballet Theatre’s Season May 1945 Edwin Denby, Knopf1986 p.
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