New York taxis and the world’s axis

Apprentice I have never been at an apprentice retreat when there has been a teaching on the Celebration and what it means. [The Celebration occurs on the last evening of the apprentice group retreat. Apprentices dress in a dignified or splendid manner and make offerings of musical performance or poetry. It is a practice both for the performers and for the audience in terms of integrity and presence.—Ed.] Would it be possible to comment a little on its part in our practice?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Celebration is—or could become at any moment during it enactment—the cavalcade of the phenomenal world. When we engage in celebration we are actually celebrating phenomenal reality—and there will be a sense of phenomena and space dancing as non-referential display. When we celebrate, phenomena become self-celebrated. Space dances with phenomena through our interaction. This is the interface of duality and non-duality. Phenomena blossom and space acknowledges that blossoming through self-radiance. Infinite lights glimmer and sparkle in that context and phenomena accommodate us with unimaginable wealth. From the space of existence everything manifests: trees, rocks, torrents, waterfalls, the moose, iguana, stag beetle, aardvark, albatross, fossilised mastodon tusks, Chevy springs, the .45-120 Sharp’s rifle, yellow New York taxis and the world’s axis, resophonic guitars and residual catarrh, cormorants and deodorants—cretins, Cretans, chrysanthemums, crèvecoeur, crépinette, and crustacea. There is a fabulous array from which patterns form and dissolve. There is no message in these patterns apart from the self-existent message of phenomena dancing with space. We do not have to romanticise it—and we are not just discussing ‘nature’—this is a question of reality as it plays. When we encounter this play, luminosity is self evident and humour is self evident. Humour is crucial because it is fundamental to the nature of the interplay of everything. Phenomena make us smile simply by virtue of their existence, and the humour is that we are not removed from the arising and dissolution of phenomena. That is the perfect irony of it and that is why we celebrate. Humour and celebration cannot be divided, so our Celebration and our primal sense of humour tickle each other—and that, if I may make so bold, is the meaning of kunjè changchug-sem (kun byed byang chub sems)—self-arising all-creating compassion or bodhicitta.