Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, occupies a central place in Tibetan Buddhism as a master of tantric teachings and a powerful figure of spiritual transformation. His life and legends bridge the realms of history, mythology, and ritual performance, reflecting his diverse roles as a mahasiddha (great tantric adept), a healer, a sorcerer, a master of sexual yoga, and a dancer. His identity functions outside of normal time, moving between dimensions of existence. Guru Rinpoche is a composite archetype, a mythic-religious figure so great he is called the Second Buddha for the establishment of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet, and for his continuing protection and dissemination of spiritual teachings.
Padmasambhava, by contrast, was a real person, and the foundation of Guru Rinpoche’s identity. Regarding the actuality of dance, it is sensible to explore the human activities of Padmasambhava, including everything we can know about the dances he learned, performed, and synthesized, as well as the esoteric tantric practices he learned, performed, and evolved.
Mahayana Buddhism was a metaphysical earthquake. What had formerly been a set of practices established by the historical Shakyamuni Buddha became a religion of blown-out metaphysics. Shakyamuni became more like an avatar: one of countless buddhas: buddhas of different eons, buddhas of specific attributes, buddhaverses, buddha-fields, Five Wisdom Buddhas, the Primordial Buddha, on and on, as far as the metaphysical imagination could go.
“The Eight Manifestation of Guru Rinpoche” is one of the earliest textual, liturgical, philosophical, and devotional expressions of Guru Rinpoche and can be found in a hagiographic textual account, The Lotus Born, a religious biography, ascribed to one of Padmasambhava’s sexual tantric consorts, Yeshe Tsogyal. This schematic: “The Eight Manifestations of Guru Rinpoche” is also an early ceremonial cham, or monastic yogic dance, more like a procession, or tableaux vivant, than what we would recognize as dance.
In this new Mahayana construct of avatars and buddhafields, Padmasambhava becomes just one of eight manifestations of Guru Rinpoche. In fact, Shakyamuni Buddha, the source of Buddhism, also becomes an avatar of Guru Rinpoche, one of the eight, and we can see how the metaphysical identity of Guru Rinpoche became an aggregate divine power transversing realms of existence, traveling across time, assuming different shapes, providing teachings over the centuries. Tibet was not a literate society, and a ceremonial cham like “The Eight Manifestations of Guru Rinpoche” instructed the people in the metaphysical identity of Guru Rinpoche, much like stained-glass windows taught Christianity in European cathedrals.
Whether or not any of this true, or merely spiritual fantasy wrapped up as orthodox teaching, the narrative of Padmasambhava/Guru Rinpoche is characterized by dancing. Real dancing by real people. That is the only way dance transmits. Extant dance traditions in Swat, in Kathmandu, in Bhutan, and throughout Tibet, provide a living testimony to the role of dance at the core of Guru Rinpoche’s physical and spiritual journey from Swat to Tibet. Until now, there have been no researchers in dance who could link the stories of Padmasambhava to actual dances. Now we can.
Dance researcher and writer Karen Greenspan is joining me in offering an exciting new workshop course with Yangchenma Arts & Music on Sundays from 27 April–18 May: Padmasanbhava’s Buddhafield of Tantric Dances: Re-establishing Dance in the Narrative of Guru Rinpoche.
Karen and I have dedicated decades of our lives to researching the dances associated with Padmasambhava across the Himalayas, India, and Tibet. We’ve documented them, learned them, shown them in museums and in writing. We’ve written books. We’ve taken many trips. We know many dancers. In this workshop course, Karen Greenspan and I connect the dances to the legends, the geography, the mysticism, and religious teachings associated with the larger-than-life character of Padmasambhava, and re-establish dance in the narrative of Guru Rinpoche. It’s always been there, but perhaps it has been avoided or ignored by Westerners studying Buddhism. This is clearly changing. In fact, there are so many examples of contemporary dance practice connected to Guru Rinpoche that we could not possibly mention them all in our workshop course.
Register here
Each session over the four weeks will focus on one key facet that defines Padmasambhava’s dance aspect:
Week 1: Who is Guru Rinpoche?
Week 2: The Earthly Travels of Padmasambhava (including dances and charnel grounds)
Week 3: Treasures, Treasure Revealers, Treasure Dances
Week 4: Contemporary Dance Practices and Guru Rinpoche
Padmasambhava’s association with dance is particularly significant in the Himalayan region, where the sacred teachings are embodied and preserved in ritual dances. These dances are themselves preserved in religious ceremonies and folk traditions, in solo and group dances, each filled with symbolic meaning, while actualizing consciousness transformation in performance. Padmasambhava was an esoteric master and expert dancer, moving through dancing cultures and several extant dance traditions in Swat, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. It is astonishing that these dance traditions still exist in each of these places.
Guru Rinpoche’s legacy is found not only in texts and personal devotion, but in the dancing body. The dancing body is where his greatest teachings come alive and are preserved, as they have been—some for more than a thousand years—within the bodies of dancers who transmit them to other dancers. This is how dances continue. The dances themselves sustain the legends of Guru Rinpoche, even in the absence of written texts.
While modern academic scholars debate the historicity of Padmasambhava, his impact on cultural and spiritual life is unquestionable. The transmitted dance traditions and living performances connected to his legacy demonstrate a fusion of mythic storytelling, ritual drama, and sacred movement. Dance, in this context, transcends mere performance to become a medium of spiritual practice, a manifestation of enlightened activity, and a means of preserving ancient wisdom.
Sacred dance traditions are repositories of spiritual techniques and teachings. It is only since the 20th century that Westerners have cultivated the skills to approach these dances with any genuine understanding of what they really are. Dance research is a relatively new discipline, especially within Buddhism. Karen and I greatly enjoyed putting this new workshop course together to see what research there was, and to bring it together in one place. Exhilarating, in its own way, when something sensible emerges.
Next month, I will introduce the dances of Swat, Kathmandu, Bhutan and Tibet, which, taken together or rolled out along the temporal sequence corresponding to Padmasambhava’s travels, reveal a coherent process of choreographic evolution and yogic application. The Guru’s dance journey parallels an inner journey and refinement. Padmasambhava traveled as well through charnel grounds en route from Swat to Tibet, learning and practicing tantra with enlightened yoginis. It makes sense that what Padmasambhava learned as a dancer and as a tantric adept, along his way from Swat to Samye, accumulated into the apex of establishing monastic Tantric Buddhism in Tibet by means of a danced subjugation of hostile energies. Samye is where Padmasambhava established Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet and set up the oldest tantric monastic order, the Nyingma, for whom the practice of danced cham was central. For the first time, we can piece together the dances and the tantric practices that defined Padmasambhava’s inner and outer travels. In sifting through what is legend and what is “real,” the dances are real. Please join as we explore the ancient dances connected to Guru Rinpoche.
See more
Related features from BDG
Who is Padmasambhava?
Precious Guru: Tracing the Wild and Sacred Legacy of Padmasambhava
Mystical Dances in the Kingdom of Bhutan, Part 1: A Black Magic Dance at the Core of Bhutan’s Founding
