“Our bodies do not belong to us.” ~Kōdō Sawaki Roshi
Our bodies do not belong to us. They are the true activity of the life of the great universe. That is to say, our bodies are the great universal life. The proof that this body is the life of the universe is in zazen. In zazen, you place your hands like this and cross your legs and do nothing at all with regard to yourself. By doing zazen in this manner, your body will become the reality of the great universe.
Our bodies do not belong to us; the dance does not belong to us. The dance is the true activity of the life of the great Cosmos. Life is Dance. Our body is the Cosmic body dancing. The proof of this can be found in Tango. You take a woman (or a man) in your arms and do nothing at all. You connect fully and allow yourself to be moved. Your body and your dance then become the reality of the great Cosmos.
“Zazen is the purity of one’s own nature through the body . . . . In zazen . . . [you] take a pause from everything. Don’t think in terms of good or bad, or judge right from wrong. Stop the movement of consciousness. Refrain from the calculation of ideas. Don’t seek to be a Buddha . . .”
“The universe and I are of the same root. The myriad things and I are one body. That is zazen.”
“If you sit with faith in zazen, you will be a Buddha.”
“We stop the one who can’t cease from seeking things outside, and practice with our bodies with a posture that seeks absolutely nothing. This is zazen.”
“Though it is thought that zazen and faith are different and said that zazen is not [related] to faith, doing zazen in this way, becoming intimate with the self, creating a very clear self, is what I call faith.”
Fate and freedom are promised to each other. Fate is encountered only by him that actualizes freedom. That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me . . . he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance––this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate––with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light––looks like grace itself.
. . . . One day I asked the Master: “How can the shot be loosed if ‘I’ do not do it?”
“‘It’” shoots,” he replied.
“I have heard you say that several times before, so let me put it another way: How can I wait self-obliviously for the shot if ‘I’ am no longer there?”
“‘It’” waits at the highest tension.”
“And who or what is this ‘It’?”
“Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of me. And if I tried to give you a clue at the expense of your own experience, I would be the worst of teachers and would deserve to be sacked! So let’s stop talking about it and go on practicing.”
. . . . Then one day, after a shot, the Master made a deep bow and broke off the lesson. “Just then ‘It’ shot!” he cried, as I stared at him bewildered. And when I at last understood what he meant I couldn’t suppress a sudden whoop of delight.
“What I have said,” the Master told me severely, “was not praise, only a statement that ought not to touch you. Nor was my bow meant for you, for you are entirely innocent of this shot. You remained this time absolutely self-oblivious and without purpose in the highest tension, so that the shot fell from you like a ripe fruit. Now go on practicing as if nothing had happened.”
Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a clear idea of what poets of strong ages have called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. –– If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one’s system, one could hardly reject altogether the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely a medium of overpowering forces. The concept of revelation––in the sense that suddenly, with indescribable certainty and subtlety, something becomes visible, audible, something that shakes one to the last depths and throws one down––that merely describes the facts. One hears, one does not seek; one accepts, one does not ask who gives; like lightning, a thought flashes up, with necessity, without hesitation regarding its form––I never had any choice.
A rapture whose tremendous tension occasionally discharges itself in a flood of tears––now the pace quickens involuntarily, now it becomes slow; one is altogether beside oneself, with the distinct consciousness of subtle shudders and of one’s skin creeping down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which even what is most painful and gloomy does not seem something opposite but rather conditioned, provoked, a necessary color in such a superabundance of light; an instinct for rhythmic relationships that arches over wide spaces of forms––length, the need for rhythm with wide arches, is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension.
Everything happens involuntarily in the highest degree but as in a gale of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity. –– The involuntariness of image and metaphor is strangest of all; one no longer has any notion of what is an image or a metaphor: everything offers itself as the nearest, most obvious, simplest expression. It actually seems, to allude to something Zarathustra says, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors (“Here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you; for they want to ride on your back. On every metaphor you ride to every truth . . . Here the words and wordshrines of all being open up before you; here all being wishes to become word, all becoming wishes to learn from you how to speak”).
Do you think I know what I’m doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing,
or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
The bodhisattva with 1000 arms can be a helpful figure for students of the Alexander Technique. This bodhisattva is an icon of non-doing, and allowing it to work on us can help us see more clearly into the nature of the four skills.
There is a classic story about a grasshopper and a centipede. The grasshopper sees the centipede and is taken aback. “How is it possible,” he asks, “that you can walk with all those legs?! How on earth do you do it?!” The centipede stops and says, “I don’t know.” The grasshopper insists on knowing. He says, “Come now! Don’t keep it a secret! Tell me! I must know how you do it. If you really don’t know, then think about it! I want you to tell me how you control all those legs.” The centipede starts thinking about it, and after a few minutes he realizes he can no longer walk. He is totally confused, and now he can’t get his legs to work at all.
Imagine what a grasshopper would think of the bodhisattva with 1000 arms. These are not just insect legs, but human arms, each with human hands capable of sophisticated movement. The image is so baffling that we too should become like the grasshopper and marvel at it. Or maybe we gloss over it, viewing it as just another religious image. What kind of religious image is it? What is a bodhisattva, and who is this bodhisattva with 1000 arms?
In a nutshell, a bodhisattva is an “enlightenment being,” one who has vowed to attain enlightenment for the sake of helping all sentient beings. They sit in meditation to save all sentient beings, they practice compassion for the sake of all sentient beings, they follow the Way for the sake of all sentient beings, and when they die they vow to keep returning to the world of samsara until all sentient beings are free. The very essence of a bodhisattva is compassion.
Some bodhisattvas are very well known. Avalokiteshvara may be the most famous of them all. He is known by many names and manifests in many forms. In Tibet he is known as Chenrezig. The Dalai Lama is viewed as a manifestation or emanation of Chenrezig. In China the most famous form of this bodhisattva is Kwan Yin, a female version. In Japan, Kwan Yin is called Kannon. Any of these versions of Avalokiteshvara may manifest in the form of a being having one thousand arms, one of 108 forms through which he may manifest.
Here are links to a couple images of this bodhisattva. The first link contains an explanation of how the bodhisattva came to have 1000 arms:
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/guanyin.htm
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/bowers/01.html
That’s the background. To get into the substance of why this bodhisattva is an icon for the Alexander Technique, let’s return to the question of how we look at such an image in the first place. I’m going to do a smart thing and turn to Zen Master Takuan. His comments on this figure get right to the point, and one could hardly find a better source. The following long quote is taken from Immovable Wisdom, a translation of Takuan’s writings done by Nobuko Hirose. The title is well chosen. One could say the Alexander Technique seeks to cultivate a wisdom that is immovable but not fixed. We all have it, we just tend to cover it up. Takuan touches on this in his discussion of the thousand-armed bodhisattva, in this case appearing in male form (you might ask why this bodhisattva of compassion needs weapons):
Senju Kannon (the thousand-armed Kannon) is represented with a thousand arms, each arm holding a different weapon, but despite having a thousand arms, if his mind ‘stops’ with the one that uses a bow, for example, all the remaining 999 arms will be of no use whatever. Only if his mind does not ‘stop’ with the use of one arm can his other arms work efficiently and the thousand weapons be useful.One thing I find so surprising in Takuan’s comments is the way they echo Joseph Campbell. Campbell believed that our mythologies are poetry mistakenly read as journalism. If you read the Bible or stories from ancient Greek religion as journalism you may be tempted to say, “It’s a lie!” Or, you may accept this or that image as real, and it may lead you to look at images revered by other cultures and say, “It’s a lie!” Campbell felt the images of all great mythologies (i.e. past and present religions) were metaphoric of human potential. These images are telling us what we are. If you believe in Kannon the way Takuan suggests, with intelligence and doubt rather than “blind” faith, you will see for yourself.
As for Kannon, how can it have a thousand arms on one body? This figure is intended to show us that when a man realizes immovable wisdom, even with as many as a thousand arms on one body, he is able to use each and every one in one way or another.
. . . . Ordinary people regard Kannon with reverence for no reason. They simply believe in Kannon as an extraordinary being because it has a thousand arms and eyes on its body. Some people with superficial knowledge deny Kannon and say, ‘How can one have as many arms and eyes as a thousand on one body? It is a lie.’ Not only do they deny Kannon, but they abuse Buddhism. But one who knows Buddhism more deeply will neither blindly believe nor deny it. Because one understands the reason for things and pays respect, so one believes in Kannon.
Buddhist teaching often manifests its principles in a form. This is also the case with all other Way, especially Shintoism (the old indigenous religion in Japan). These figures are symbols and a means of teaching. One who sees and thinks only on the surface is ordinary. On the other hand, one who abuses Buddhism is worse. Everything has its reason. One must see behind phenomena. This school, that school, there are many schools, but they all boil down to this.
“Krishna defeated the great serpent Kaliya by dancing on its head. Just dancing. And the murderous, poisonous, life-obscuring demon submitted to beauty, goodness, and truth.” –Aiden O’Shea
The history of tango is the history of everything. The tigers of the mind prowl in jungles of tango rhythm, and the angels and devils of the soul do unspeakable things in the peaks and valleys of tango melodies. The superstrings of the universe vibrate to an infinite tango, and the words of the gods are phrased in counts of eight. Nothing we know would look the same without tango, because creation happened forward and backward from tango’s inception. For instance, when there was no tango, color began with orange. Red was invented for the tango dancer’s dress, for the blood of the men who dance with her, for her lips as she says, “Good night.” Before then, wine looked like grape juice, Mars was the god of tantrums, and Nietzsche discovered the Will to Cower. Before tango, the Apple of Knowledge tempted no appetites, and when it fell in Newton’s garden, it fell too lightly to inspire. Without gravity, the universe began to vanish, until, suddenly, a tired immigrant bought a glass of whiskey in a brothel in Buenos Aires. The energy of every atom in the Cosmos entered his innocent veins. He was not drunk. He was insane. He grabbed a fellow ranch worker and started to dance to the music of a little trio of musicians playing in the corner of the room. His friend was somewhat frightened. The dance looked a bit like a fight, a bit like an ornamental display of power and grace meant to impress his favorite working girl. Then everything changed. Adam took a bite of the Fruit, and Buddha went and sat under the Tree. An apple became a celestial body, and stardust became the seeds of humankind. The curves of an integral calculus traced the sway of a dancing girl’s hips, and men of passion found themselves leaping on the moon.
Nickolas Knightly is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique offering private and group lessons, workshops, and lectures on the Technique. He specializes in working with artists, dancers, spiritual practitioners, NGO's, and sustainable businesses. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Click HERE to go to the main website for more information.
The Tango Principle is clearly illustrated in the story of Cook Ting told by Chuang-tzu:
The king's cook was cutting up an ox.
Out went a hand, down went a shoulder,
he planted a foot, he pressed with a knee,
the ox fell apart with a whisper,
the bright cleaver murmured
like a gentle breeze.
Rhythm! Timing!
Like a sacred dance,
like ancient music.
"Good work!" the king exclaimed. "Your method is faultless!"
"Method?" said the cook, laying aside his shining cleaver,
"What I follow is beyond all method.
"When I first began to cut up oxen
I would see before me the whole ox, all in one mass.
"After three years I no longer saw this mass.
I saw the distinctions.
"But now, I see nothing with the eye.
My whole being apprehends.
My senses are idle. The spirit is free
to work, without a plan, following its own intelligence
guided by the secret opening, the hidden space,
my cleaver finds its own way. I cut through no joint, chop no bone.
"A good cook needs a new chopper once a year---he CUTS.
A poor cook needs a new chopper once a month---he HACKS.
"There are spaces in the joints; the blade is thin and keen:
when this thinness finds that space, there is all the room you need!
It goes like the wind!
"True, there are sometimes tough joints. I feel them coming, I slow down,
I watch closely, hold back, barely move the blade. And whump!
The part falls away, landing like a clump of earth. Then I withdraw the blade,
I stand still and let the joy of the work sink in.
I clean the blade and put it away."
The king shouted, "This is it! My cook has shown me how to live my life!"
It is interesting that this lesson in living given by the cook contains a great emphasis on rhythm and timing, with an explicit reference to music and dance. There is also a good deal of indirect advice on leading and following. A leader who hacks his way through the dance cannot get the pieces of the dance to fall easily into place. The follower who hacks can never find the spaciousness resting in the joints of the dance. Neither will receive the blessings that come when the most refined joys of the dance sink deeply into one’s marrow.
The most surprising coincidence between these two stories revealed itself in a workshop I took some time ago with Susana Miller, a well known teacher of Argentine Tango. In the middle of the workshop, with no prior reference to anything even vaguely Taoist, she told a story that seamlessly fit with a point she was trying to make. She said, “One time a great dancer said to me, ‘Miller, take a look at my shoes.’ And I said, ‘Yes, what about them?’ ‘How old do you think they are?’ I looked at them, and they looked very new. So I said, ‘I don’t know, maybe a couple of months.’ He said, ‘Try a couple of years!’” The best dancers have steps that are balanced and grounded, and yet so light you think they must be angels. They move in their shoes the way Cook Ting moved with his cleaver. They cut right through the flesh and bone of tango without becoming dull. Some dancers never get past the surface, even though their shoes wear out with their efforts.(1)
Chuang-tzu wanted to tell us vitalizing things, secrets about how to live passionately and peacefully. He chose some fabulous metaphors to do so: butterflies, cooks, fish, and birds dance their way through his poetic prose. Since Chuang-tzu’s day we have learned a thing or two about how to make such metaphors come to life. When you read about Cook Ting, you don’t get much insight into the psychological and physiological requirements for doing what he does. By what means does this mysterious cook operate? How could one adapt it to the boardroom or the classroom, to the artist’s studio or the yoga studio? How indeed can we even adapt it to our own kitchen?
The Alexander Technique offers pragmatic answers to these questions. From the Alexander Technique we get the Tango Principle itself: it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Cook Ting would agree. To DO tango is to HACK. Only when we follow non-doing will we step like angels. The Technique then goes further by showing us the psychological and physiological skills required for living and dancing like Cook Ting. We only succeed in Tango and in life because of these skills. Even when we hack, the hacking has tiny elements of these fundamental skills. They are so powerful that they still get the job done. The problem is that our knife gets dull and the work lacks beauty for us and for those watching. In tango and in life, we are the knife and we are the work. Why wear ourselves to dullness? Why not allow our experience to be beautiful?
Cook Ting's advice on dealing with tough joints is particularly important in tango and in life. Any resistance we encounter in life tempts us to DO, to hack, to tense, to react, to become fearful. The means disappear in our anxiety for the ends, the goal, the idea, the thing we desire. Cook Ting reminds us that non-dong is not for special occasions. It is the only way anything ever happens. So when we encounter resistance, we need to slow down. We know we will try to DO, but this doing will only interfere. We will succeed only in spite of the doing. But if we slow down, we will have more beauty, peace, and joy in the movement.
When a follower begins to hesitate, don’t hack. When you start to go off balance, don’t hack. When you are trying to learn a new step, don’t hack. Slow down. There is plenty of space. You can breathe. You can let the blade of mindfulness slip effortlessly through this joint. The dance will always dance itself if you let it.
Something wonderful about the process is that what counts as a tough joint will change over time. The joint that slows you today will seem like nothing tomorrow. Your leading or your following becomes more powerful because you allow more and more non-doing to enter it. And the same is true in daily life. What used to set you off now seems a trifle. You can deal with this stimulus and that stimulus without the same of stress, tension, reaction, and fear. More and more, life becomes “like a sacred dance, like ancient music.”
Note:
1. It is important to consider the implications for sustainability. What does it mean on a wider scale when our tango walk stops grating against the world? It means we can walk in this world without leaving a trace, with steps that touch the earth so intimately that we make everything more real.
Humanity's footsteps have such a mindless quality that the shoes of our existence have worn thin. Our feet are blistered, we stagger and stumble. Yet, we walk so mindlessly we fail to notice, or we notice a little but manage to ignore the scale of the problem. If we could truly begin to follow Cook Ting's advice in our walk, we could make steps toward a more sustainable world. We can look at any situation and ask how heavy our steps have fallen there. What has our ego kicked and trampled? Where have we tripped? What is the quality of our walk right now? Can we just LET?
By turning our attention to our steps at every moment, we practice tango in the most profound way. Good dancing tranlsates into sustainable living, and sustainable living translates into good dancing. To live well is just to dance our lives with the lightest, most connected steps. A sustainable future depends on our practice of tango.
You can read about the idea of not leaving a trace in many books on Zen. Chuang-tzu gets at it from another angle by discussing what it means to be hidden in the universe. I also like the way the idea appears in Native American spiritual traditions. The matter is put plainly in the song "Mother Earth" by Arvel Bird & One Nation. They were nominated for "Best Song Single" in the 2007 Native American Music Awards. You can hear the song (and cast your vote for your favorites) on the NAMA voting site or go to the band's website.
Post Script:
I recently came across the following anecdote from Joan Halifax Roshi (you can find it in One Bird One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories by Sean Murphy):
"One day when I was walking down a canyon path, I realized I was making a literal impression upon the Earth. I stopped and turned around to look at my footprints and they were even and smooth, a kind of script in the dust. That was on Thursaday. On Friday, I hurried to the office on the central part of the land and halfway there I caught myself, stopped and turned around to look at my tracks. There was a different message on the Earth. It was then that I saw how completely each step that we take is a message of alienation or awareness to Earth."
Nickolas Knightly is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique offering private and group lessons, workshops, and lectures on the Technique. He specializes in working with artists, dancers, spiritual practitioners, NGO's, and sustainable businesses. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Click HERE to go to the main website for more information.