Celebrating Our Inborn Wealth of Naturalness

I am flying 35,000 feet above India, in the deep blue, with the thick monsoon cloud blanket in bizarre patterns as infinity of innumerable shades of white, black and grey far under the plane’s belly below.  I am in transit from Goa to the north to conduct some vajrayana or Diamond Path Buddhist ceremonies for friends.  We will do them together as one.  Without investing some high artificial hopes in what we do, we will celebrate peace, abundance and good health for all beings with the help of ancient liturgies.  Through them everything unfolds in a spirit of non-separation, which transcends fear.  We are free of fear because, in some sense, we completely merge with what we do.  There is no room left that fear could exploit.

India has become my home.  I have been living in this country for 20 years.  India may be many different things to many people but for me it will always be the “Land of the Buddha”.  The Buddha walked the earth, here. So did countless siddhas and similarly self-actualized beings in his footsteps.  The teachings and their lifestyle flourished and spread all over the country for 1,500 years until they almost completely vanished 800 years ago.  Yet they still deeply permeate the ground.  They are resurfacing now.  Today, India is experiencing a small renaissance of the Buddha’s ways.

I contribute to the development through mainly two activities: first by sharing traditional teachings of the Buddha and second by exploring the inner energy movements of NadiPrana in small group gatherings.   Doing so, I don’t feel that I am on a mission.  There is no zeal involved, no desire for being right, or proving the teachings right.  It all feels all very natural and down-to-earth, like cooking dinner for friends.  We may sit down and exchange a few words here and there, or prefer sitting silently sharing the tastes and flavors, the basic goodness of the moment—which in essence is the goodness of every moment: the goodness of the five elements; the goodness of our own being, one breath at a time.  Sharing the flavors of a good meal or sharing the teachings, it all unfolds in a similarly straightforward and simple manner.

Despite (or probably because) of all its inconsistencies and contradictions, the world is a good place to be.  What I am saying is that it is beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’. So is life.  Life just IS… everything continues to be interconnected in life and through life.  This is the kind of reality, which is celebrated by vajrayana ceremonies—that of openness and interconnectedness. This is also, what NadiPrana energy movements activate throughout the bodymind: a sense of all-embracing and all-permeating presence.  This can be a deeply healing experience.

But in order to make it happen, we need to activate our ‘connectivity’ sense.  Only then can we feel really imbedded in all of life—our life.  The key to this is in being natural, in feeling fully embodied, fully and naturally present.

Which reminds me of the particular twist of ‘naturalness’ that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche gave to the Tibetan rendering of the word ‘yoga’.  He explains that the Tibetan equivalent for yoga is naljor, and yogis and yoginis in Tibet are therefore called nalrjorpas and naljormas.  When translated into English, the word is exactly pointing to what the processes of yoga or energy movement, according to the Buddha’s transmission are all about.  Naljor, according to Dzongsar Khyentse therefore means ‘being endowed with a wealth of naturalness’.   Yogis and yoginis by connecting to the movement of their inner, subtle energies are capable of flowing with their inborn ‘wealth of natural goodness’.   We can discover this ‘wealth of naturalness’ for ourselves through NadiPrana energy movements.

We discover how to naturally just BE, and when we do we are opening to an innate treasure that we have been carrying without ever knowing!  In energy movement practices, no artificial goal is to be achieved, nothing fantastically, outlandishly special actualized!  Energy movement is all about being natural.  This naturalness is so grounding that everything is grounded in it.  With it, we are effortlessly in a state meditative stabilization, no matter what we do, or where we are.

In our NadiPrana energy movement retreats we are exploring the wealth of naturalness accessible to us by directly feeling and connecting with body, breath and mind.  We rediscover how to be simple, free of emotional and mental complexities: not guided by our impulses of thoughts and emotions, but guided only by our inborn ground of being—free of doubt and anxiety.  Which is a fantastic way to be.  As long as we live our body breath and mind are there to show us.

Ask yourself, “Do I really feel mostly connected with this basic goodness, my own nature?  Do I feel deeply rooted and grounded, NOW? 

Or do I feel cut off, disconnected?  Do I feel tossed about, pulled in different directions by forever proliferating, contradicting thoughts and emotions?”  What really are the forces and dynamics that shape my life? Do they allow me to just be and savor the moment?  Or do they push me around?”

These are questions worth exploring—may be they are the only issues worthy of our attention.  Other issues lead us away from us.  Exploring body breath and mind leads us back to us.  Through it we can find out what kind of attitudes and actions add more life to our life force and what kind of attitudes and actions steal life force from us. 

Sometimes the process of this inquiry or exploration is described as transformative, in the sense of promoting positive change.  However, what we call transformation, in actual fact is more akin to re-discovery.  Transformation when genuine reveals nothing new and nothing special.  It rather lets us feel, appreciate and connect with what has always been there.  In genuine transformation we are not changing into someone or something that we are not.  We are merely rediscovering our own basic goodness.  We connect with our own being, be it through ceremonies or be it through energy movement—in the case of the latter through the alchemy of directly feeling and being with our own body, breath and mind.  And when we finally open to being in this way, we can directly taste how ‘alchemical’ it is.

Indeed, there are parallels between ancient vajrayana liturgies and the energy movements triggered by NadiPrana.  Which is why I like to share both.  Energy work or movement may often feel like a deeply touching ceremony; like a prayer or celebration of body, breath and mind.  It touches us, moves us—into stillness and into equanimity beyond even stillness.  Energy yoga is the body’s very own and very intimate song of equanimity.  It is the body celebrating it’s own energies, its own unfathomable vastness.  It feels like divine energy in moving action.

In energy movement we touch upon the ungraspable, invisible layers of physical existence, without which there would be no physical existence—as it is the invisible that produces the visible.  Likewise, in vajrayana liturgies or ceremonies we call upon invisible beings and their reality, which informs our ordinary reality with magic and power.

As the saying goes, the body is sometimes called the temple of the divine.  May be it is more accurate to say, ‘the body itself is the divine’ albeit not in the ordinary sense of a divinity that we create in our heads as an artificial mental image—to be feared or cherished.  The body is the divine because when really felt and understood it is as unfathomable as space.

One famous Tibetan yogini nailed it as she stated, “When you don’t understand the body, you won’t understand enlightenment.”  Through energy movement we can gradually learn to listen and understand this body of freedom, so different from our ordinary way of seeing it as a vessel of bondage and limitation—manifesting sickness, old age and death.

Similarly, when we do not understand and fail to celebrate all of life through ceremonies and teachings, we fail to understand our own life’s sacredness. 

It feels so much richer and more rewarding to understand the body and to celebrate life.  It is, however, important to understand this as a path working naturally with the situation.  For this, the path itself becomes the working basis, rather than the attainment of a goal.  What we do inspires us, rather than, as Chogyam Trungpa states, “In the style of the carrot and the donkey, promises about certain achievements that lie ahead of us.”  We are more focused on noticing and doing, rather than on getting something specific out of it.  “The goal exists in every moment of our life situation, in every moment of our spiritual journey.”