Stillness And Movement Sunday June 5, 2005
One of the most beautiful and exciting dynamics I know about is the contrast and relationship between stillness and movement. In the Chinese text the Tao Te Ching, you read that ‘nothing is done and nothing is left undone’, which is a reference to the meditative principle called wu wei, that means non-doing which is paradoxically the most potent kind of action possible. The total action of the universe comes to a stop, the stillness at the centre of manifestation like a calm lake that exists, quietly, forever.
I’ve studied Sufism a little in relation to the books of Idries Shah, the associated ideas of GI Gurdjieff, and occasional investigations, for example with a Sufi centre in West London many years ago, and an adult education course I attended in Brighton called Western Mysticism, taught by a man who – it turned out – was a devotee of Sufism. It’s supposedly the inner core of Islam, although I have an entirely negative opinion about the politics, hostilities and primitive nature of the institutional latter. One of the core ideas of Sufism is what they call ‘time and place’, which refers to the arbitrary and transitory nature of external form, in relation to the mature intelligence that would ideally inform religious practice, but doesn’t. Outer rituals, outer forms, change according to the relativities of time, culture and place, because they are not in themselves any source of insight or wisdom.
Central to Sufism is the dance of the dervish, which is circular and gyratory. It makes the energies of the mind-body spin around, in the same way you used to spin around as a child, until you collapsed in a state of disoriented dizziness. At the heart of that gyration – in theory – is stillness for you to discover and affirm.
One of the internal Chinese martial arts is called Pa Kua, sister art to the well known Tai Chi, and it is exclusively circular in both practice and martial application. Pa Kua means ‘Eight Trigrams’, which refers to the octagonal symbolism of the divination/philosophical text the I Ching. Japanese Aikido is in part derived from Pa Kua, where the dynamic relationship between stillness and movement is perhaps most apparent in all the martial arts. One of the fundamental principles of Aikido is the notion of ‘centre’, and how it is the origin of all manifest power. In psycho-physical terms your ‘centre’ is located at a point in the lower belly called ‘hara’, which the Chinese call ‘tan tien’. Possibly the most sophisticated and profound Aikido book is called Aikido And The Dynamic Sphere, the title referring to the importance of this centre, the fulcrum at the heart of all movement.
As with 99% of religion I suspect that even with Sufism, the symbolism and core significance of dervish dancing has long been lost. You see the same thing with the Kaballa, the esoteric core of Judaism which is a very comprehensive philosophical system made facile, commercial and laughable by Madonna-following crowds.
However it doesn’t matter what you think, what you believe, when you witness this powerful dynamic between stillness and movement. Like yin and yang it is one of the fundamental characteristics of the universe, and in that respect dance is potentially a means of transmitting esoteric information.