A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Dogugaeshi at Spoleto. When we walked into the theater area, immediately the environment was altered. It was dark, and paper lanterns cast a soft glow that led the way to our seats. Even though we were at an auditorium, the darkness and the ceiling emphasized the smallness of the side hall. On the ceiling black gauze was draped in billows from the back of the theater all the way to the stage.
Basil Twist, the puppeteer, came out and prefaced what we were about to see. Dogugaeshi is a traditional Japanese art form (almost lost) comprised of sliding screens that make intricate patterns. It became its own art form from Japanese puppetry in the 16th century. Twist has become a steward of the tradition and will quite possibly revitalize it.
The show began with all of us sitting in a quiet, pitch-black room. Then a gauze screen appeared that glowed like the lanterns. It moved out of the way to reveal more layers of gauze screen that in its own time moved out of the way. I realized that this was how people made moving pictures before film. Candles were used behind a gauze screen to create shadow silhouettes that could move and tell a story.
On stage, the silhouette of boats riding on a sea appeared. Japanese music accompanied the movement of the boats. Then the screens became actual panels that moved together to make sometimes a mural, sometimes just a beautiful design. The panels shifted and moved until it was a perspective that ended at a tiny vanishing point. The music and the panels progressed from a blank screen to a play of silhouettes to murals and designs. When the screens stopped moving we were looking at a room of infinite screens. A fox appeared. It appeared in one spot, then another, then from the ceiling, then far away in the distance.
Descriptions of the experience of meditation are described as at first, overcoming the distractions of the mind and its myriad tactics to continuously create screens that cover up our still centers. When we penetrate the screens of the mind, it fights. Many descriptions recount a period of fear and darkness that the mind generates as the meditator cultivates his/her meditative state. The mind pulls the fear card too. And so, as we watched, the music became discordant, the screens began to shake and fall to the side. Perhaps a description of the destruction that takes place of our mind's screens as we penetrate deeper. It was as if the world were coming to an end. Then silence.
The screens went away, and it was pitch black again in the room. Then the fox reappeared dancing to the music. The puppeteer was dressed in black and could be seen. It was then that I saw how a universal self or spirit animates us. Our attention is anchored to worldly things and experiences, but we are all animated by this universal emptiness. This universal self, which is really nothing, dances with this world through us.
It's all very funny, and the fox's dance was funny. It swirled with grace, then pranced and did a sachet with it's tail like a diva with a feather boa, then it was engaged in dance with the music and beautiful because it was entranced.
The screens came back. The fox went back to exploring the spaces in the screens. At this point I realized that the way the theater was set up with the gauze billowing from the ceiling, that we are in this infinite space of screens ourselves. We are part of the screens. The Self animates us while simultaneously we are part of this picture that reaches into infinity.
To see a short video clip from Dogugaeshi click here. There is more to this show than what I have described and regardless of your pursuit in meditation, well worth seeing. Anytime that a Basil Twist show comes near here, I will certainly be there to watch.
Seeing this show along with meeting someone who knew Chogyam Trungpa, the subject of my next post, makes me feel that some more of the way has been pointed out to me. And maybe here recently I have gotten a double reminder of what it is to catch a glimpse past the screens.
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