ImprovisationToday, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading
Take down a musical instrument
Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
— Rumi What is improvisation? In the context of spiritual practice, improvisation is responding to what is in front of us with attention and love, with spontaneity and creativity. Simply, what is an appropriate response? In this moment, am I acting in alignment with my heart, my intention, my commitment to practice? We are seeing tremendous change and disturbance in the world today. Remaining tethered to practice as a way of life is my lifeline to Reality and clarity in these days of delusion, confusion and collapse. These changing times invite—and even require—us to open the door to improvising in our spiritual life. My guru Lee moved freely through the world offering an abundance of practices and projects, artistic and business ventures, music, poetry, writing, while travelling or in informal gatherings. In so many ways, he was making it up as he went along, and he was able to do that because he was resonant and transparent to the Divine. His example is an inspiration of spiritual improvisation, all of it offered at his guru’s feet. Lee gave his students many spiritual practices that offer a structure around which to organize sadhana and develop spiritual sanity. They include things like meditation, exercise, study, diet, right livelihood, right sexuality. Then there are the core practices of inner attention, inquiry, breath, paying attention and remembering, and self-observation. He gave essential statements to contemplate, like “Be that which nothing can take root in.” And there’s more! Lee emphasized kindness, generosity, and compassion as practices; he empowered writing, poetry, theatre, music, parenting, retreats, chanting, creativity and sacred art as elements of sadhana. What a rich smorgasbord, a veritable feast! It’s more than I can ever hope to fully embody. At the foundation of all of these, he gave the practice of remembering, speaking or chanting the name of Yogi Ramsuratkumar, the south Indian beggar saint who was Lee’s guru and personal beloved. He held out the possibility that, as we discover the inner secrets of any practice, it is revealed as one of the “names of God.” As a teacher and a servant to dharma, Lee held a space for us to discover both the forms of practice and the groundlessness of everything. Lee spoke of being creative in the presence of the guru. As in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm: When we are resonant to the field of divine influence, to this harmonic scale, our practice can adapt and flow with what is needed and wanted. After a time, it is not “me” doing the practice or the action; the practices are “doing” me. Our heart’s presence becomes the dharma gate, and in this way, we bring heaven to earth. Divine improvisation—seeing and responding to what is in front of us with attention and love—involves our total participation. It requires paying attention to spaces, to timing, and to hospitality. Then, just as the door opens, we can feed the space and create something new. This offers us some license to reliably risk being vulnerable and improvise—to riff on the instrument of dharma that our teacher has tuned within us. I am also learning to be okay when my efforts don’t go well, when I crash and burn. I learn to crash with elegance, to crash well, to remain soft and in my centre, when all hell has broken loose. Can I be vulnerable to breakdown? Do I even have a choice anymore? Is this why I have said “yes” to the dharma? How can I reliably improvise in a world of increasing instability, and not lose my balance? Can I listen for feedback in a mood of sweet remembrance and not reach for solutions? Can I rely on community and friends, on my sangha for safety, planning, support and feedback when I am under the influence of destabilizing forces? Can I fall to my knees and pray? Here in the Australian landscape many of our plant species need fire for their seeds to open. I have marveled at the world heritage forests recovering from the recent firestorms, when the sky turned to lava and the sun was lost. Now those forests are filled with the beautiful red flowers of the waratah. The golden flower orbs of the sunshine wattles—balls of light that remind me of the Divine—have been everywhere, blossoming in the peak of winter, at the darkest moment of light’s absence. The fire is needed for rebirth and renewal of the forest. Without fire, these seeds will not open and flower. Unsettled, fiery times are asking us to bring adaption and improvisation into the world. We are being asked to remember that sometimes fire is necessary for our own growth and renewal. Out of the deeper matrix of my practice I can improvise. I can dance. I am trusting, I am held. I’m focusing my attention in the world on what’s directly in front of me, confident that the basic sanity of practice offers wonderful possibilities in a field that is charged, alchemized, energized by the blessings of the lineage that graces my life. Can I trust that I am improvising reliably in my sadhana? Maybe it is as simple as just showing up each day to make my small offering of practice. My sense of improv reflects a deep intention and awareness to serve the spaces I am in, even in small ways. In some small way, I am training myself to say “yes,” to be still and remain in my heart, to turn towards the fire of intensity—the inner burn. Improvisation happens when I remain soft, calm and allow space for an appropriate response to arise. Then, like the wildflowers of Australia responding to fire, rain, and light, the blossoms of improv open in beauty. Then, I remember the name of the Divine, and I have access to the prana or life force that creates an inner body of light. Paying attention to this mysterious life and improvising, a momentous flow of love and silence washes through the world, and we create the world to come. We sing the world into being. Mic Clarke
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