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

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Dance may have been an important human behavior evolved to encourage social closeness between strangers,” write Bronwyn Tarr and her coauthors. You have an inner life in which love can flourish, even if your outer life is filled with challenges.

Why do you suffer? Is there a purpose to your pain? What about the amount of suffering you experience—is it fair, based on some understandable system of cause and effect, or is it simply arbitrary? Can you affect how much you suffer? If so, how?In this deeply spiritual book that is sure to become a Buddhist classic, Moffitt explores the twelve insights that underlie the Buddha’s core teaching–the Four Noble Truths–and uses these often neglected ideas to guide readers to a more meaningful relationship to suffering. Moffitt write: “These twelve insights teach you to dance with both the joy and pain, finding peace in a balanced mind and calm spirit. As the most specific, practical life instructions I have ever encountered, they serve as an invaluable tool for anyone who seeks a life filled with meaning and well-being.” Practicing these twelve insights, as Moffitt suggests, will help readers experience life’s difficulties without being filled with stress and anguish, and they will enhance their moments of happiness. Right speech is true, timely and useful. Goals are good for direction, but presence in the moment is what will get you there. Mountain climbers who do not focus on one step at a time fall off the cliff. III. Some students have difficulty distinguishing between the first and second or the second and third insights of the first two Noble Truths, so it might be helpful to have a group discussion in which the whole group verbalizes the differences. Dancing With Life offers us a way to face “the second kind of suffering” and thus have a more meaningful relation- ship with our lives—for this is it! Why wouldn’t we want our participation to be as rich as possible? We may not be living the lives we wished we lived: but, nonetheless, this is the life we have. This book details the path of bringing as much mindfulness to our daily experience and enriching our lives in that manner.

Instead of clinging, live your life from your deepest core values at every moment, regardless of outcome.You are not controlled by your views and opinions or the story of your past, but rather you have a “don’t know” mind that responds wisely to whatever you encounter in life. If you are curious to explore these teachings with me, I will be leading several Nine Bodies retreats in the coming months. Suggestion: Have each person describe the ways they are skillful in forgiving others (and themselves). Also have them name a situation in which they have struggled with forgiveness and how it felt. Discuss how gratitude can help with forgiveness.