Song of the Dharma Dance
Ema Ho!
Thus, in the manner of cham dance, with stamping double-steps and section-by-section transitions, he sang:
The secret treasury of the celestial ḍākinīs,
The supreme place, Lhadrak Yangdzong.
Samaya-holding yogins, master and disciples,
Assembly of vajra siblings gathered here:
On the dance-ground of the celestial ḍākinīs,
In this place of uncontrived self-perfected presence,
Fortunate siblings, self-aware,
Having arrived effortlessly and spontaneously in the pure realm of Khecara—
Let us dance a joyful dharma dance!
Again, O vajra siblings,
Look at your own undeluded mind!
The experience of bliss, clarity, and non-conceptuality,
Within the expanse of the vast boundless horizon,[1]
The stamping dance of undeluded self-liberation—
Dance it as non-dual, bliss-emptiness!
Again, O vajra siblings,
Look at your own undeluded mind!
Mind itself, groundless and rootless,
Within the expanse of the sameness of whatever arises,
The stamping dance of non-grasping, free-from-elaboration—
Dance it as the union of clarity-emptiness!
Again, O vajra siblings,
Look at your own undeluded mind!
Where appearance and mind inseparably merge,
Within the expanse where no one thing has true existence,
The stamping dance of undistracted one-taste—
Perform the dharma dance of appearances with unobstructed openness!
Again, O vajra siblings,
Look at your own undeluded mind!
Free from meditator and meditated,
Within the expanse of non-dual saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,
The stamping dance of non-meditation, non-distraction—
Dance it as great awareness-emptiness!
Again, O vajra siblings!
Look at your own undeluded mind!
To the supreme kind refuge:
Mind-itself, rootless and groundless,
The buddhas of the three times,
The dynamic display of self-awareness and emptiness,
Arising as non-dual spontaneous presence—
We make the offering of unobstructed non-grasping
As undeluded self-liberation!
The siddhi of the unsurpassable secret—
Please grant it most swiftly!
Thus, at the supreme sacred place Lhadrak Pema Yangdzong, in response to the request of the monastic student Chöphel, I, Śākya Śrī, disciple of Tenpe Nyima, wrote this Song of the Dharma Dance as a song of experience.
May it be virtuous!
COLOPHON
None
NOTES
[1] Khor yug chen po, literally “the great encompassing expanse,” is a literary method in which to create the sense of the largest spatial image the tradition affords—possibly echoing the Abhidharma mahācakravāla, the iron-mountain ring at the outermost edge of the world-system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Togden Shakya Shri (rTogs ldan shākya shrī). gSung ʼbum shākya shrī. 1 vols. Kathmandu: Khenpo Shedup Tenzin And Lama Thinley Namgyal, 1998. pp.687-690. BDRC MW23563.
Abstract
Song of the Dharma Dance is a song of realisation (nyams mgur) composed by the nineteenth-century Nyingma master Śākya Śrī at Lhadrak Pema Yangdzong, a sacred site in the Himalayan borderlands, in response to a request from his monastic student Chöphel. Drawing on the imagery of cham—the ritual dance performed at Tibetan Buddhist monasteries—Śākya Śrī structures the song as a series of parallel stanzas, each opening with the same vocative refrain calling vajra siblings to look at their own undeluded minds, before guiding them through successive contemplative instructions rooted in Dzogchen: from the recognition of bliss-emptiness and clarity-emptiness, through the inseparability of appearance and mind, to the ultimate dance of great awareness-emptiness free from meditation and distraction. The physical vocabulary of dance—stamping steps, the open dance-ground, the celestial realm of Khecara—serves throughout as a direct analogue for the unobstructed, effortless quality of awakened awareness itself.
LISTEN TO AUDIO
TRADITION
Nyingma
Kagyu
INCARNATION LINE
N/A
HISTORICAL PERIOD
18th Century
19th Century
TEACHERS
TRANSLATOR
Tib Shelf
INSTITUTIONS
STUDENTS
AUTHOR
Śākya Śrī