Lalita: the Dance

At first, most people are impressed with the open spaces involved with clarity. With experience and familiarity, some people begin to identify more with the space than with any limited sense of self. Mahamudra philosophy expresses this stage really well, speaking of the union between openness and the blissful awareness that it allows. The self and world can take on a very consistently bright quality that "enlightens" so-called negative emotions and experiences just as clarity can make ordinary situations seem fascinating and important.

Chogyam Trungpa said that we go up the mountain for ourselves but we come down the mountain for others. We strive for the peak experiences partially because they are simply worth experiencing, but then there is the further step of making the two one or bringing about the perspective where we are able to experience peak and ordinary or "negative" experiences as similarly vital and unique. When we can consistently bring the awareness that ordinary is good and extraordinary is good, we're looking at moving beyond good and bad and into a way of living in which we do not feel apart from the people around us and the moments we are in right now. In this sense, in bringing this awareness and sharing the vitality, we end up living for others and with others. As we exhibit grace in the presence of adversity and abundance, we become the example we would choose while living in an unadulterated communion with those people and circumstances which surround and enrich us. In John Daido Loori's words (commenting on the Bodhisattva vows): you cannot save all sentient beings without being saved by all sentient beings. In more Christian language, we speak of service to others, stewardship of God's Creation, that everything was originally created through the divine Word which is also Messiah, and we recognize that the Holy Spirit is everywhere-existent while being inseparable from the Father and Son.

Here, rather than having some clear purpose like a well-oiled machine, we sometimes seem to have purpose and sometimes seem to have no purpose in the particular dance steps we are taking right here and now. Before this step, we have not taken the full measure of joy that is possible in this universe. This step is complete harmony and joy. If there is a further step, the experience of it may be influenced by one's ideas and experience up through this point, but there will be no need to explain how openness, communion, and reality-as-is have never been separate from any beginning.