Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering

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Emotional Chaos to Clarity is a wonderful contribution to the self-help field. It is one that deserves to stand out and be recognized. Moffitt’s messages are universal, while the manner in which he conveys them is poignant, proper and downright perfect. After that first meeting, I returned to Rishikesh many times to study with Balyogi. And, for years, I practiced the teachings such that I had a direct experience with what Balyogi was pointing me toward. When I was ready, I shared my experiences of these teachings with experienced meditation students on a limited basis. Many students found them to be of great value and asked for more in-depth exposure. Due to this student response and at Balyogi’s urging, I resolved to write a thorough explanation of my own understandings of consciousness that have arisen from working with these teachings. Stay with your suffering. Be curious about it. Use "beginner's mind," never beliving that you know all there is to know about suffering.

More than a decade ago, two local government organizations in Lincolnshire, U.K., partnered to create a program called Dance4Life to promote community health and well-being. Ultimately, they set up over 30 dance classes that attracted nearly 2,000 people. Suggestion: In groups of three or four, take turns reporting your individual history with self-violence, whether it’s over-scheduling, self-criticism, or denying yourself opportunity. How would clarity of intention and mindfulness balance these tendencies? Awakening through the Nine Bodies is at once a vivid map connecting the vast territories of consciousness, a practical guide that can immediately be put to liberating use, the tale of a unique spiritual apprenticeship, transmission of a precious lineage that otherwise might be lost, a bridge between various yogic and Buddhist models, and an invigorating call to awaken.” Overcoming wholesome craving is harder: have morals, use meditation to cultivate wisdom, accept that all outcomes cannot be controlled. Rippon herself is a glorious retort to our youth-obsessed culture. When she turned 50, BBC director-general John Birt took her aside at a party and told her she’d “had her day”. Recalling the encounter in 2020, Rippon dismissed that as “patronising twaddle” – and she’s certainly been proved right.A few years ago, Phillip wrote a beautiful treatise on the Four Noble Truths and now, such a short time later, he shares another great gift for transforming our lives into a sacred journey where everything is workable and nothing is trivial. With this book in particular one doesn’t need to be a Buddhist practitioner to fully understand and apply the life enhancing principles Philip has presented. His writing is direct and personal, extremely practical, and often peppered with convincing anecdotal evidence supporting the intrinsic human capacity for consequential transformation when given appropriate support and skills. This is a book I can give to just about anyone interested in living aligned with loving awareness!” Like Phillip Moffitt who left Esquire, and the industry, in 1987 after an apparently stressful stint as CEO and editor-in-chief, to devote himself to what he calls “the inner life.” In the two decades since, he has been ordained a Buddhist priest and, in 1991, founded the Life Balance Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to the study and practice of spiritual values. (He didn’t leave the industry altogether. From 1998 to 2005 he penned a bi-monthly column for Yoga Journal called “Dharma Wisdom.”)

Researchers Maristela Moura Silva Lima and Alba Pedreira Vieira observed that the elderly dancers gained a sense of confidence, self-esteem, and elegance over the course of the year. Through dance, “the body may change from being a source of oppression to a source of freedom,” they write. This beautiful book offers subtle and vast teachings on the mystery of the body and mind—combined with paintings by an Indian master that evoke deepening states of meditative awareness.”The Buddha discovered a path for finding freedom from dukkha or suffering, which he called the Four Noble Truths. This set of attitudes and practices he prescribed doesn’t require you to create some new and improved version of you—one that you can only hope will someday emerge. You can take these steps as the “you” who exists right now—the one who gets lost, afraid, angry, and caught up in desire, despite good intentions. All that’s required is that you let go of your preconceived notions about suffering and open yourself to exploring the role that it plays in your life.

Moffitt quotes Ajahn Chah: “There are two kinds of suffering: the suffering that leads to more suffering and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, you will surely continue to experience the first.” V. Some students can become discouraged because they perceive the Four Noble Truths to only be about suffering. In fact, every insight brings less suffering and, therefore, more happiness joy and meaning. As you begin to have realizations around the First Noble Truth, you will have more happiness based on conditions because your mind is not so reactive to conditions. As you start to realize the insights of the Second Noble Truth, you begin to experience the second kind of happiness because your mind states are healthier and you’re less caught in grasping. Finally, even a foretaste of cessation brings such unconditioned happiness and provides a new basis for meaning and joy. Dancing With Life is divided into four books—one for each of the Four Noble Truths—each containing three insights. The Venerable Ajahn Sumedho, who wrote the preface to Dancing with Life, writes that “. . . the lucid way in which Phillip has written about how to actualize the twelve insights is a real achievement.” Asked about her time on the show by presenter Tess Daly, Angela said: "I have to tell you that the last nine weeks have probably been the most terrifying, the most fantastic, the most glorious, the most joyful that I have spent for a very long time in my profession. "I have had the time of my life, people keep making reference to the fact that I presented Come Dancing, but that was 40 years ago, that was a different time! If life is going to dance with you, then what kind of dance partner do you wish to be? Finding a way to be at ease with the dance itself is a crucial skill in finding freedom and meaning in life.
Dancing with Life teaches you how to move from suffering to joy in your life.How often in your adult life have you experienced the queasiness and unease that come from a sense of meaninglessness in your life? Think of all those occasions when you felt as though you were wasting your life, or sleepwalking through it, or not living from your deepest, most heart-felt sense of your self. Remember the times when you’ve felt as though there is little you do each day that has any real, lasting significance. We’ve all fallen prey at some point in our lives to such constricted, dreaded, almost unbearable dark times of self-doubt and existential angst. Based on meditation practices Phillip Moffitt learned twenty years ago from Himalayan yoga master Sri Swami Balyogi Premvarni, this beautifully illustrated book is a guide to exploring the nature of mind and gaining a better understanding of experiences that arise during meditation. The Nine Bodies teachings map out a journey that starts with consciousness that arises in the physical body and is directly observable, and then travels through ever more subtle levels of consciousness to that which is not manifest and is only potential, and therefore has to be inferred. The book includes a series of mysterious illustrations that Balyogi created during his time of intense Samadhi explorations. Each illustration is a rich composition of symbols that express aspects of inner experiences that are almost impossible to express with language. Rippon greatly appreciated Widdrington’s patience in the training room. “Every time I would get into a panic about learning something, he’d say ‘Of course you can’t do it – I’ve only just asked you. I’ve been doing it for 20 years; you’ve been doing it for 20 minutes.’ But just watching him was marvellous: his entire body is musical.”