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

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The ancient practice of mindfulness is increasingly being shown in scientific studies to have remarkable consequences for healing and well-being across the lifespan. Dancing with Life systematically maps out a rigorous and profoundly loving choreography for cultivating mindfulness in the service of embodying our full potentiality as human beings, utilizing whatever circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. It is a practical and reassuring dharma guide for a great many people in the ongoing development of their practice and lives. It is very different from most dharma books in that it has such an elaborate and friendly structure to it, nested within and around the Four Noble Truths and Ajahn Sumedho’s lovely voicing of dharma. I love the precision of Phillip’s teaching of the embodiment of each insight, and the stories about his students and their challenges. And also, his willingness to share his own trials, travails, and openings along the path.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and Arriving at Your Own Door

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The Four Noble Truths was the Buddha’s first teaching after he found freedom from his own suffering.Super engaging! fun! Morgan was a gem! Many of the students are now interested in more Yoga! Thank you from City Central Learning Centre. After missing a weekend series of talks on the Four Noble Truths, one of the attendees told me that he was awakened to the profound depth of these teachings. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I went in search of books focused on the Four Noble Truths and found this one. Being mindful of when you reach a point where you believe a certain attainment is possible is extremely valuable in the inner development process. I call this point the “imaginative possible.” It is a point of imagination because you can imagine or conceive that some change is possible even though it has not happened. Although almost everyone has had such moments, many people are unaware when they occur. Become interested in the nature of your awareness itself. The capacity for awareness has a mirrorlike quality—it reflects what you like or dislike and what you identify with—but it is a neutral observer. Notice that your awareness does not become excited or afraid or identify with what you are feeling or thinking; it simply knows and reflects what is happening in your body and mind. Becoming acquainted with this awareness can provide much-needed comfort and stability when you get caught in emotional chaos.

Dancing with Life: Recontextualizing Mexican Masks|Hardcover Dancing with Life: Recontextualizing Mexican Masks|Hardcover

In the book’s introduction, Moffitt writes that while serving the dual roles of CEO and editor of Esquire he “felt exiled from my own heart.” The Buddha asked himself such questions 2,500 years ago, and he came to the following realization: The path to happiness and a sense of well-being in this very life lies not in avoiding suffering but in using the conscious, embodied, direct experience of it as a vehicle to gain deep insight into the true nature of life and your own existence. Instead of being a reactionary slave to the inevitable pain, frustration, stress, and sorrow in your life, which the Buddha called dukkha, you can free your mind such that you have a sense of well-being even when dukkha is present, and you create the possibility of finding complete freedom. Why not dance with the constant vicissitudes of life in a manner that is joyful and liberated, rather than feeling like a victim or being flooded with fear and stress? She continued: ‘It takes so much more energy to be hateful, to be horrible, where you could just not say anything or say something positive.’

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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.