Hi to "you" (who is not really the "you" you think you are), 
These days, I like to try to explain the Buddhist concept of "Sunyata" (Emptiness) using the image of a .... 'Dance' ... 'Dancing' ... 'Dancers and Dancing' ...
A universe of dancers (including you and me, all beings) are danced up in this dance that the whole universe is dancing ... each dancer seemingly standing apart on her own two feet ... yet each dancer simultaneously seen as just the dance-dancing-the-dance. It is important to envision this "dance of all things" as leaving nothing out, and so all encompassing that we cannot even speak ... from each dancer's perspective ... of "before" the dance or "after" (such that each dancer is always dancing, right from the moment of her seeming birth to death. There is no dancer who is not dancing from the moment of becoming a dancer ... there is not "off stage" and taking a break ... not so long as we live and breathe anyway ... and no dancer apart from the dance or who is not now dancing.). There is nothing but the dance and the motion, the separation lost in a lively, enlivening, living blur ...
The whole universe dancing ... whole universes dancing with universes ...
In fact, the swirling and forming of the dance constantly spins out, gives temporary form to, the dancers themselves ... you and me ... and we are no more solid than eddies in swirling water ... dust devils in the breeze ... flashes of lighting casting momentary illumination and shadows ... there for awhile before fading back into the dance. The dance of forces of nature in motion seems to spin you out and then spins you back in ... seeming 'birth and death' ... but always just the dance all along.
'A Dance of Dances dancing out sentient dancers whose dancing makes real the Dance' ...
All of reality swirling and twirling in partnership with all of reality, constantly changing partners, such that nothing and nobody is truly sitting still ... such that all is caught up and spun up by all ... such that there is nobody and nothing remaining but the dance ... this Ballet of Inter-being ...
You sometimes feel as just a separate dancer, yet sometimes you can vanish in the dance ...
The dancers each are appearing seemingly as individuals, yet swept up in the dance ... moving, ever changing ... the separate dancers may be forgotten such that only the dancing remains. Soon in the spin and twirling, the individuality of the dancers can barely be seen ... there yet not ...
Can we truly say that there are dancers, so encompassing is that dance? And endless dances are going on within each dancer, each cell and each atom just dancing, more swirling dance within each cell and atom, ultimately beyond that ... just dancing in dancing ...
That is why I am turning more and more to the "Dance" image for some feeling of "Emptiness" ... all of reality engaged and engaging in one great jazzy, creative, non-stop, powerful dance ... dancers and all reality absolutely absorbed in the constant motion of the Dance --- no distinction of dancers and dance remains.
Yet it is not chaos! Something wonderful is created from it all, which we call this world ... which we call this world and all it contains ... which we call you and me ...
Each Sentient Being can 'lose herself' in the power of dance ... truly loses her little self as the dance ... thus to find herself again ... to find their True Self as The Dance itself, as the Dancing itself ... as a unique and precious Dancer creating life with each step ...
You are just a dancer, a lonely dancer. You are just the whole start to finish dance. Both ways of experiencing the dance, and your life as a dancer, are precious and vital.
And each dancer can 'find hereself', finds her identity in the dance ... because your life is a dance too (a dance within the Great Dance), and your grace, balance, direction ... the choices you make in each step by step) ... create the dance as you go. You make the dance of your life! Oh, some of it is up to the circumstances where you find yourself dancing ... and you do not have the whole stage to yourself. However, where our personal life dances goes from here on is also up to each individual dancer! Each step by step, leap and twirl, trip and fall is your life ... and when falling, get up and keep dancing! (If you can get up. If one cannot get up ... well, it was lovely, thank you for the dance! Though we sometimes trip and fall or crash into each other ... yet that too becomes just part of the life of the dance! ... Though we may fall, there is no place to fall outside the dance that is not just the dance itself!) Each step by step of your life is constant arrival ... and also the first step of all that comes next for you!
There is no dance outside you, no you inside the dance (though we may day to day see the world as such) ... There is no dance inside you, no you outside the dance (in fact, abandon all thoughts of 'inside' and 'out') ...
Neither is there really a 'Dance' as a thing ... solid, frozen ...
For where is "it", this thing you call a "dance"? It is just an ongoing swirl ... just dance-dancing-the-dance ... nothing to "nail down" ... There is not a "thing" there, only the constant swirling and twirling and naked interconnected motion and expression .. all fully exerting ... Never standing still enough ... never in one place enough ... to be nailed down.
Yet, neither is it vacuous, meaningless, nihilistic chaos ... "Emptyness is not empty!"
Dancers dancing each for themselves, sometimes bumping into other dancers, tripping on their own feet ... yet sometimes able to see beyond themselves to the great harmony of the total Dance ... such grace is there, such balance ... this dance has gone on and on for all time ... timeless dance ...
We feel as dancers in a dance, across a stage we run,
each dancer dancing solo, our connection nearly none.
But when our steps are flowing, as leaves in wind a’frenzy spun,
it’s not hard to see that dancers, stage and dance are truly one.
It is free, yet it is not chaos. It is not nothing, not a vacuum or meaningless vibration. There may be some rules to the dance, some choreography ... but much of it seems up to us, free will, how we choose to go with each step. LIFE DANCE! It all changes and turns with your every chosen step and gesture.
Lose your self in that, lose your "self" in that great Dancing which is your Self Dancing. It's going is your going.
Anyway ... something like that.
Perhaps a Zendo is a kind of dance school ... and our task to be as graceful dancers as we can (even when we fall) ... avoiding to stumble into greed, anger, ignorance ... seeking to keep our balance amid the constantly changing conditions of life ... seeking to stay on our toes (even as we know that there is no place to fall). Our way is to go with the flow of the dance, and just let the dance ... its up and it downs ... just be the dancing.
Don't just understand the concept of this dance intellectually. Instead, truly feel what it is to be swept up in this dance. Truly lose and find yourself in this very step-step-stepping now.
Where this dance has come from, where it is going ... this is not as important as the dance that is truly realized ... made real ... right here, in our every leap and gesture. No matter where it is heading, for the dancing is not there but only here. It has always been right here. The dance is ever right underfoot ... so just dance, right here and now, without thought of any other place to go or which you can go.
Life Dance! Great Dance!
Gassho, Jundo
These days, I like to try to explain the Buddhist concept of "Sunyata" (Emptiness) using the image of a .... 'Dance' ... 'Dancing' ... 'Dancers and Dancing' ...
A universe of dancers (including you and me, all beings) are danced up in this dance that the whole universe is dancing ... each dancer seemingly standing apart on her own two feet ... yet each dancer simultaneously seen as just the dance-dancing-the-dance. It is important to envision this "dance of all things" as leaving nothing out, and so all encompassing that we cannot even speak ... from each dancer's perspective ... of "before" the dance or "after" (such that each dancer is always dancing, right from the moment of her seeming birth to death. There is no dancer who is not dancing from the moment of becoming a dancer ... there is not "off stage" and taking a break ... not so long as we live and breathe anyway ... and no dancer apart from the dance or who is not now dancing.). There is nothing but the dance and the motion, the separation lost in a lively, enlivening, living blur ...
The whole universe dancing ... whole universes dancing with universes ...
In fact, the swirling and forming of the dance constantly spins out, gives temporary form to, the dancers themselves ... you and me ... and we are no more solid than eddies in swirling water ... dust devils in the breeze ... flashes of lighting casting momentary illumination and shadows ... there for awhile before fading back into the dance. The dance of forces of nature in motion seems to spin you out and then spins you back in ... seeming 'birth and death' ... but always just the dance all along.
'A Dance of Dances dancing out sentient dancers whose dancing makes real the Dance' ...
All of reality swirling and twirling in partnership with all of reality, constantly changing partners, such that nothing and nobody is truly sitting still ... such that all is caught up and spun up by all ... such that there is nobody and nothing remaining but the dance ... this Ballet of Inter-being ...
You sometimes feel as just a separate dancer, yet sometimes you can vanish in the dance ...
The dancers each are appearing seemingly as individuals, yet swept up in the dance ... moving, ever changing ... the separate dancers may be forgotten such that only the dancing remains. Soon in the spin and twirling, the individuality of the dancers can barely be seen ... there yet not ...
Can we truly say that there are dancers, so encompassing is that dance? And endless dances are going on within each dancer, each cell and each atom just dancing, more swirling dance within each cell and atom, ultimately beyond that ... just dancing in dancing ...
That is why I am turning more and more to the "Dance" image for some feeling of "Emptiness" ... all of reality engaged and engaging in one great jazzy, creative, non-stop, powerful dance ... dancers and all reality absolutely absorbed in the constant motion of the Dance --- no distinction of dancers and dance remains.
Yet it is not chaos! Something wonderful is created from it all, which we call this world ... which we call this world and all it contains ... which we call you and me ...
Each Sentient Being can 'lose herself' in the power of dance ... truly loses her little self as the dance ... thus to find herself again ... to find their True Self as The Dance itself, as the Dancing itself ... as a unique and precious Dancer creating life with each step ...
You are just a dancer, a lonely dancer. You are just the whole start to finish dance. Both ways of experiencing the dance, and your life as a dancer, are precious and vital.
And each dancer can 'find hereself', finds her identity in the dance ... because your life is a dance too (a dance within the Great Dance), and your grace, balance, direction ... the choices you make in each step by step) ... create the dance as you go. You make the dance of your life! Oh, some of it is up to the circumstances where you find yourself dancing ... and you do not have the whole stage to yourself. However, where our personal life dances goes from here on is also up to each individual dancer! Each step by step, leap and twirl, trip and fall is your life ... and when falling, get up and keep dancing! (If you can get up. If one cannot get up ... well, it was lovely, thank you for the dance! Though we sometimes trip and fall or crash into each other ... yet that too becomes just part of the life of the dance! ... Though we may fall, there is no place to fall outside the dance that is not just the dance itself!) Each step by step of your life is constant arrival ... and also the first step of all that comes next for you!
There is no dance outside you, no you inside the dance (though we may day to day see the world as such) ... There is no dance inside you, no you outside the dance (in fact, abandon all thoughts of 'inside' and 'out') ...
Neither is there really a 'Dance' as a thing ... solid, frozen ...
For where is "it", this thing you call a "dance"? It is just an ongoing swirl ... just dance-dancing-the-dance ... nothing to "nail down" ... There is not a "thing" there, only the constant swirling and twirling and naked interconnected motion and expression .. all fully exerting ... Never standing still enough ... never in one place enough ... to be nailed down.
Yet, neither is it vacuous, meaningless, nihilistic chaos ... "Emptyness is not empty!"
Dancers dancing each for themselves, sometimes bumping into other dancers, tripping on their own feet ... yet sometimes able to see beyond themselves to the great harmony of the total Dance ... such grace is there, such balance ... this dance has gone on and on for all time ... timeless dance ...
We feel as dancers in a dance, across a stage we run,
each dancer dancing solo, our connection nearly none.
But when our steps are flowing, as leaves in wind a’frenzy spun,
it’s not hard to see that dancers, stage and dance are truly one.
It is free, yet it is not chaos. It is not nothing, not a vacuum or meaningless vibration. There may be some rules to the dance, some choreography ... but much of it seems up to us, free will, how we choose to go with each step. LIFE DANCE! It all changes and turns with your every chosen step and gesture.
Lose your self in that, lose your "self" in that great Dancing which is your Self Dancing. It's going is your going.
Anyway ... something like that.
Perhaps a Zendo is a kind of dance school ... and our task to be as graceful dancers as we can (even when we fall) ... avoiding to stumble into greed, anger, ignorance ... seeking to keep our balance amid the constantly changing conditions of life ... seeking to stay on our toes (even as we know that there is no place to fall). Our way is to go with the flow of the dance, and just let the dance ... its up and it downs ... just be the dancing.
Don't just understand the concept of this dance intellectually. Instead, truly feel what it is to be swept up in this dance. Truly lose and find yourself in this very step-step-stepping now.
Where this dance has come from, where it is going ... this is not as important as the dance that is truly realized ... made real ... right here, in our every leap and gesture. No matter where it is heading, for the dancing is not there but only here. It has always been right here. The dance is ever right underfoot ... so just dance, right here and now, without thought of any other place to go or which you can go.
Life Dance! Great Dance!
Gassho, Jundo
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