Dr Rabin Man Shakya
Portland, March 12 (Nepal Oregon News): Little is known about when the Charya Nritya - which is an ancient dance form that used to be exclusively performed by Vajracharyas within the Buddhist Newah community in Nepal - exactly originated.
But Prajwal Vajracharya, co-founder of Nritya Mandala Mahavihara in Portland, says that this Buddhist ritual dance which is an essential part of Newar Buddhism dates back to more than a thousand years.
Charya dance - which was on the verge of extinction in the 1960s - has again made a comeback. Tremendous strides have recently been made towards its preservation and dissemination of knowledge about the Charya dances and credit for it goes to luminaries like late pundit Asha Kaji Vajracharya, late pundit Ratna Kaji Vajracharya and Guru Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya and so on.
For the past 11 years, Prajwal has served as the Nritya Mandala Mahavihara's co-founder. His students - mainly the American Charya dancers and American Vajrayana Buddhists - describe him as a versatile teacher, compassionate human being, charismatic speaker and a very hard working person.
Today, Charya Nritya's presence and popularity is already strong and effective in Nepal, the USA and other countries. The top priority of Nritya Mandala Mahavihara is to further popularize, enrich and enhance it. Lately, the Charya Nritya seems to have undergone a complete transformation.
"Sacred Buddhist Dance of Nepal" is a three month weekly course with pundit Prajwal Vajracharya. This course is offered live on zoom from Feb 20 to May 8, 2021 every Saturday. 90 minutes class on zoom every Saturday on Charya dances is, so far, participated by 50 students from 15 countries across the world, says Vajracharya.
This course is a three part training in Charya Nritya dance, a unique Newari Buddhist Nepali tradition dating back over a thousand years, that uses the physical body as a vehicle for liberating the mind, he says. By uniting movement, visualization and awareness, he says, a student learns to emulate and then fully embody the qualities of variety of Buddhist deities - male and women, peaceful and wrathful - and to genuinely express those enlightened qualities through one's own body, speech, mind and activities.
Part one of this course is 'Foundations' which lays the groundwork for all to-be- continued studies in the tradition of sacred Buddhist dance of Nepal, Prajwal adds. "Participants will learn the history of this ancient practice, train our bodies in the movements, exercises, hand and foot mudras, and techniques that are the foundations of Charya dance and practice the Refuge and the 16 offering Goddess dances", Prajwal informed the Nepal Oregon News.
He further went on saying:"In part two of this course, participants will learn the dance of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of compassion, and practice the art of embodying and expressing his enlightened qualities through our gestures, facial expressions and physical movements, paired with focused awareness."
In part three of this course, he says, students will learn the dance of Tara, the female Buddha of Liberating Activities, and practice how to embody and express her all-pervasive enlightened qualities through body, energy and mind.
(Nepal Oregon News writer Rabin Man Shakya is a Nepali journalist in USA)
No comments:
Post a Comment