Tibetan Sacred Dance Part II

This is continued from Part I...

Padmasambhava came to Tibet in the eighth century C.E. and is often revered by Tibetans as the second Buddha. He established Buddhism on a firm basis and built and consecrated Samye, the first monastery. Under his direction Tibetan scholars translated innumerable tantras, commentaries, and ritual texts. The lineage of Padmasambhava is called the Nyingma Tradition and was the sole guardian of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition from the ninth to the eleven centuries. Other lineages prospered as well, from the eleventh century onward on the basis of new translations of Sanskrit texts. It is said that Padmasambhava entrusted his disciples with secret teachings in the form of parchments written in symbolic language that he hid in the sky, the earth, a rock, a lake, or a sacred image. The tradition of “revealed treasures” (terma) has played an important role up to the present day. Such revealed teachings are considered to have particular potency because they are specifically adapted to the epoch in which they appear (Govinda, 1996).

A number of these treasures contain instructions for new forms of sacred dance. The best known is that of Guru Chowang (1212-1270). In a vision he found himself riding a white horse that carried him aloft through the air to the glorious copper-colored mountain, the paradise of Padmasambhava. There he met Padmasambhava’s eight manifestations and received teaching from them on the nature of mind (Trungpa, 1992, 2001). He also saw a vast gathering of celestial beings dancing before the master. After this transformation experience he inaugurated the festival of the tenth day, which celebrates in the dance the coming to Tibet of Padamasambhava and the establishment of Buddhism (Govinda, 1996).

This process of new dances being created as a result of visionary experiences has been repeated again and again over the centuries. An example of one of these visions goes as follows: the great Bhutanese treasure revealer Pema Lingpa (1450-1521) had a dream in which Yeshe Tsogyel, the principle consort and spiritual disciple of Padmasambhava, showed him the dance of the five dakinis (feminine deities). When Pema Lingpa awoke he clearly remembered the images of the dance. He taught himself to execute the movements and then transmitted them to his disciples. Another example of this is in the sixteenth century when the great teacher Khamtrul Kunga Tenzin, in retreat in a mountain hermitage, had a vision in which the whole universe became the mythical pure land of Padmasambhava where he saw wonderful dances were being danced. Padmasambhava appeared and told Kunga Tenzin to leave his retreat and work for the benefit of all beings by teaching the dances he was seeing, for they would bring great blessings to those who saw them. Kunga Tenzin was responsible for establishing the Gar Cham, a dance festival that took place at Khampar in eastern Tibet and continues today at Tashijong in northern India (Govinda, 1996).

Training for these dances often takes place in the evening in the middle of the monastery courtyard under the watchful eye of the dance master who indicates the rhythm by tapping the cymbals he carries. The dancer monks often continue the training in the lamplight until late at night. To coordinate their movements they count the steps in a slow recitative. The boy monks are often enthusiastic spectators, and sometimes imitate their elders in a corner of the courtyard. When it is their turn to learn, they will already know most of the dances by heart. Once or twice a year the monks’ prowess is tested in the presence of the abbot and the dance master. They are the dance students in the monastery and are marked on their capacity to memorize the movements, their expressiveness, or, in the case of some dances, on their sheer athleticism (Garcham, 1992).

Drudi is a dance master who came from Tibet to transmit his knowledge of this art to the young monks of Shechen in Nepal. He explains the basic principles of what makes cham a dancing meditation. As in any spiritual practice, the dancer has to apply three essential points. Firstly he should prepare himself beforehand by having the right motivation, which means to have the ‘mind of enlightenment’, the wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Secondly, when he dances he should be perfectly concentrated, with an awareness that all phenomena are like dreams. His mind should be clear, watchful, serene, free from attachment, and conscious of the illusory nature of things. With his body, he should faithfully represent the positions and expressions of the mandala (Kyabogon, pg, 108, 1992).

The richness and vigor of the Tibetan religious tradition can be seen in its rituals, which often last all day. In a type of annual ceremony known as drupchen the ritual continues day and night nonstop for nine days and nine nights. A ritual is a call to reflection, contemplation, prayer, and meditation. The chanting of the liturgy is interspersed with bursts of musical offerings, which mingle with the sounds of long trumpets, bells, drums, and cymbals. For these grand ceremonies, a mandala is created which represents the pure land of divinity. Symbolically mandalas can be seen as meditation objects whose purpose is to gradually transform our way of perceiving the world until we rediscover its intrinsic purity. Externally a mandala takes the form of a diagram painted on canvas or drawn with colored powders. First the dancer monks dance the patterns of a mandala. Then the monks who are the painters in the monasteries, in meticulous detail, using colored powders, draw it. At the end of the ritual, the mandala is swept away, symbolizing the impermanence of all things. The powders are gathered up and thrown in the river, so that all who use the water, animals or humans, may be blessed (Garcham, 1992).

Sometimes the ceremonies end with dances which serve as a visual teaching, in which the world is transformed, negative forces subdued, and beings awakened to their ultimate nature and freed from suffering. Every hour in the monastery is considered precious, whether it is spent in study, in performing rituals, or contemplation. Each day brings a new enrichment and leads a little further toward perfection, at the same time helping to maintain the continuity of the universal values and truths, that many people feel, are essential not only for Tibetans but for the whole of mankind (Trungpa, 1992, 2001).

Tibetan Sacred Dance Part I

In this post I am going to cover some of the history of Tibetan Sacred Dance and how this dance form is evolving today and where. I will also give insight into the spiritual meanings and implications of these dances and how they tie into the Tibetan Buddhist Religion. Since the Chinese invasion in 1959, much of Tibetan culture and religion has existed in exile. In Nepal, Bhutan, and India the festivals of sacred dance have been able to continue without constraint. For example, Nepal straddles the Himalayas between Tibet and India and has a very rich heritage of peoples, cultures, and spiritual traditions. The people that dwell in the mountains of Nepal are mostly Tibetan refugees who are Buddhists; this is also true of the peoples of the Mustang and Dolpo regions. On the other hand, the religion and culture of the people of the valleys are mainly Hindu of Indian origin. The constant mingling of peoples and cultures between the valleys and the mountains has created a religious coexistence characterized by exceptional tolerance. This has allowed places like the monastery of Shenchen in Bodhnath, in Katmandu valley, to become a haven for the development of sacred art and dance (Kyabogon, 1992).

The traditional Tibetan Buddhist understanding of sacred dance, or cham, originated in India with Buddhism, and then diffused to Tibet where it flourished for centuries. In Tibetan Buddhist philosophy sacred dance has a different basis than secular dance, which often engages the emotions; contrastingly sacred dance pacifies the emotions (Trungpa, 1992, 2001). When the monks of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition dance ceremonially, they are meditating while offering a spiritual gift to the witnessing lay community. Through “symbolic gesture” and sound the monks transmit an experience that is the culmination of long contemplative visionary experience and meditation, and it is believed that this kind of dance liberates the audience. When I say liberate I am referencing the Buddhist idea of liberating oneself from the bondage of the five poisons that work against inner peace: hatred, covetousness, ignorance, pride, and jealousy (Khyentse, 1992).



In the West, we usually understand creativity to be the expression of the impulses that arise from personal subjective experience. From a contemplative standpoint this approach is not necessarily creative in its fullest sense because that subjective experience itself is limited by what Buddhism calls basic ignorance. Thus, what one considers to be an original creation is often the result of exploring one’s habitual tendencies and impulses that maintain the vicious circle of samsara, the wheel of existence. From this spiritual point of view, true creativity means casting off the veils of ignorance to discover the ultimate nature of mind and phenomena. In fact, sacred art is an element of the spiritual path. It takes courage to practice it, because its goal is to destroy the attachment to the ego. Furthermore, Tibetan dances are full of symbolic meaning. For instance, when a lone dancer in a stag mask cuts up an effigy with a sword it is not an act of violence but symbolizes destroying the ego with the sword of wisdom. The masked dancers who chase each other in a colorful noisy riot do not represent the pursuit of demons but the movements of inner energy, which give rise to the mental activity that continually agitates our mind. However, a few symbolic elements like these cannot encompass the profound meaning that the dances find in the much vaster sphere of the meditation on pure vision, the perception of the primordial purity of all phenomena, both animate and inanimate (Kyabogon, 1992).



At the time of the Buddha, in the sixth century B.C.E. in India, it is said that the Buddha appeared to certain particularly gifted disciples in the form of various wrathful deities, whose awesome appearance symbolized the indestructibility of compassion. These deities were said to have danced in a thousand majestic ways, symbolizing their innumerable activities to help all sentient beings. This is how the sacred dances came into being in India. The sacred dances were danced at spiritual feasts known as ganachakra where the monks would dance spontaneously, without hesitation or inhibition. Over the years the dances came to be codified and taught and their significance was explained. An uninterrupted transmission from teacher to disciple continues in some monasteries today, maintaining the continuity of the practice to the present (Garcham, 1992).

The fifth Dalai Lama explains that the trained dancer should flourish the tails of his robe like a great garuda gliding through the firmament, and shake his hair like a now lion shaking its turquoise mane. His body should have the grace of a tiger gliding through the Indian jungle; his trunk should be straight, his waist should form an elegant curve; his calves should be elastic, his elbows and knees fast-moving, his footwork elegant, and every movement of his body should be ample and majestic, full of ease and grace, precise and clearly defined. It is also said that the dancer should move as if his feet were drawing a lotus on the ground, and that his movements should be like the wing-beats of an eagle, (Kyabogon, pg, 157, 1992).

The symbols that the dancers hold are often in the form of weapons symbolizing the combat of enlightenment against ignorance and the victory of serene clarity over the whirlwind of emotions. The terrible laughter and song put to flight the legions of Mara, the demon who embodies attachment to the notion of self, the belief in the reality of oneself and phenomena, (Kyabogon, 1992).

This post continues....