Shamans Exploring Dadirri, True Nature and Deep Listening.
Dadirri
From his conversations with their shamans and spiritual elders, Dr. Nandisvara concluded that their spiritual tradition is highly advanced and that their religious beliefs are parallel with those found in the various branches of the Perennial Philosophy.
The Aboriginal elders told Dr. Nandisvara that the spirit of a human being is always in contact with the higher spiritual realms of being, even if there may be no awareness of this contact in one's ordinary state of consciousness. They informed him that this gives to each one of us an extraordinary gift in that there can be direct communication between the human and the divine planes of being without the need for any ecclesiastical intermediary or priest.
In other words, in Aboriginal thought, there is quite simply no great impassable gulf between the human and the divine—a perception that is in direct opposition to most esoteric schools of theology, including Judeo-Christianity. This is why the Aboriginals had no need to develop any organized religion run by a bureaucratized and stratified priesthood. What they have instead is an authentic spiritual egalitarianism in which they, as individuals, can access the Dreamtime through trance, giving them direct and immediate access into the spiritual dimensions through the shamanic techniques of ecstasy.
This ability gives them an unshakable authority to make highly evolved philosophical observations. For example, like the religious thanatologies of other spiritual traditions, the Aboriginals describe the progression of human consciousness after death as "survival in infinity." They know from direct experience that the individual point of contact with the infinitude of cosmic consciousness continues to expand after death until it is co-extensive with it... until it literally 'becomes' it.
This is not a theory for the Aboriginals, nor is it a concept. It is a percept based upon their own direct experience, a revelation that is revealed also in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Hindus and Buddhists use the word Samadhi to describe this state. The Aboriginals call it the Dreamtime, yet it is clear from their descriptions of it that empirically and phenomenologically, these states are the same.
by Hank Wesselman PhD from his 2010 article.
"For the traditional Aboriginals, Miriam Rose proclaims that this contemplative focus permeates their entire way of life, their whole being—that dadirri continually renews them on a day-to-day basis, bringing them peace, creating harmony where there is disharmony, producing balance where there is imbalance, restoring health where there is illness.
There are no great hidden truths here, no 'secret knowledge' hidden away for centuries, waiting for a bunch of New Age charismatics with power point presentations to rediscover them, excavate them, and write a book about them, proclaiming them as the solution to all our problems, personal and collective.
This woman's message conveys a simple and unmistakable truth—that the practice of dadirri makes the Aboriginals feel whole again. She shares that they cannot live good and useful lives unless they practice dadirri and that they learned how to do this from their ancestors.
As a Western anthropologist who has done considerable time in the indigenous world, I can appreciate this traditional woman's words. During my years spent among the tribal peoples of Africa, one of the things that I learned is that they are not threatened by silence. To the contrary, they are completely at home in it. Their traditional ways have taught them how to be still and how to listen to the silence. Accordingly, they do not try to hurry things up. Rather they allow them to follow their natural courses—like the seasons... and they wait.
So the Aboriginal woman's message from Australia conveys a familiar message as well as an extraordinary claim—that those Aboriginals still living in their traditional lifeways don't worry... that they never worry. They know that in the practice of dadirri—the deep listening and quiet stillness of the soul-that all ways will be made clear to them in time.
The Aboriginal Perspective
The traditional Aboriginals are not 'goal oriented' in the same way that we Westerners are programmed to be from childhood, nor do they attempt 'to push the river' which they know with absolute certainty is an exercise in absolute futility.
In Miriam Rose's words: "We are like the tree standing in the middle of a bushfire sweeping through the timber. The leaves are scorched and the tough bark is scarred and burnt, but inside the tree, the sap is still flowing and under the ground, the roots are still strong. Like the tree, we have endured the flames and yet we still have the power to be reborn."
After more than 200 years of assimilationist practices inflicted upon them by church and state alike, the Australian Aboriginals are still here. They are used to the ongoing struggle and to the long waiting. In this sense, they still wait for the white people to understand them better. They have spent many generations learning about Western ways. They have learned to speak our language and have listened to what we have to say. Yet they continue to wait for us to come closer to them. They long for those things they have always hoped for—respect and understanding.
In Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann's words: "We know that our white brothers and sisters carry their own particular burdens. We carry burdens as well. Yet I believe that if they let us come to them, if they would open up their minds and hearts to us and hear what we have to say, we might lighten their burdens. There is a struggle for all of us, but we, unlike them, have not lost our spirit of dadirri."
She concludes her message by observing "I believe that the spirit of dadirri that we have to offer to the world will help you Westerners to blossom and grow, not just within yourselves, but within your nation as well...
"There are deep springs within each of us and within them, there is a sound—the sound of the deep calling to the deep. The time for rebirth is now. If our culture and your culture are alive and well, as well as strong and respected, they will grow. In such a case, our culture will not die, nor will yours, and our spirits will not be lost. We will continue, together, as this was always meant to be."
Aboriginal Philosophy
This wonderful statement reminds me of a paper I read years ago in an anthology called Shamanism: Expanded Views of Reality edited by Shirley Nicholson (1987). The paper is titled 'The Dreamtime, Mysticism, and Liberation: Shamanism in Australia,' and it is authored by the Venerable E. Nandisvara Nayake Thero PhD, then the chief Sanghanayaka of the Theravada Order of Buddhist monks in India.
A former professor of comparative religion at Madras University, as well as director of the Maha Bodhi Society of Sri Lanka and secretary general of the World Sangha Council, Dr. Nandisvara had recently returned from a research expedition with an anthropological team in Australia, where he had lived for some time with a native Aboriginal community—in his words, an extremely ancient race whose way of life (hunting and gathering) had not substantially changed for perhaps 35,000 years.
In his report, Dr. Nandisvara makes an extraordinary statement.
"For the traditional Aboriginals, Miriam Rose proclaims that this contemplative focus permeates their entire way of life, their whole being—that dadirri continually renews them on a day-to-day basis, bringing them peace, creating harmony where there is disharmony, producing balance where there is imbalance, restoring health where there is illness.
There are no great hidden truths here, no 'secret knowledge' hidden away for centuries, waiting for a bunch of New Age charismatics with power point presentations to rediscover them, excavate them, and write a book about them, proclaiming them as the solution to all our problems, personal and collective.
This woman's message conveys a simple and unmistakable truth—that the practice of dadirri makes the Aboriginals feel whole again. She shares that they cannot live good and useful lives unless they practice dadirri and that they learned how to do this from their ancestors.
As a Western anthropologist who has done considerable time in the indigenous world, I can appreciate this traditional woman's words. During my years spent among the tribal peoples of Africa, one of the things that I learned is that they are not threatened by silence. To the contrary, they are completely at home in it. Their traditional ways have taught them how to be still and how to listen to the silence. Accordingly, they do not try to hurry things up. Rather they allow them to follow their natural courses—like the seasons... and they wait.
So the Aboriginal woman's message from Australia conveys a familiar message as well as an extraordinary claim—that those Aboriginals still living in their traditional lifeways don't worry... that they never worry. They know that in the practice of dadirri—the deep listening and quiet stillness of the soul-that all ways will be made clear to them in time.
The Aboriginal Perspective
The traditional Aboriginals are not 'goal oriented' in the same way that we Westerners are programmed to be from childhood, nor do they attempt 'to push the river' which they know with absolute certainty is an exercise in absolute futility.
In Miriam Rose's words: "We are like the tree standing in the middle of a bushfire sweeping through the timber. The leaves are scorched and the tough bark is scarred and burnt, but inside the tree, the sap is still flowing and under the ground, the roots are still strong. Like the tree, we have endured the flames and yet we still have the power to be reborn."
After more than 200 years of assimilationist practices inflicted upon them by church and state alike, the Australian Aboriginals are still here. They are used to the ongoing struggle and to the long waiting. In this sense, they still wait for the white people to understand them better. They have spent many generations learning about Western ways. They have learned to speak our language and have listened to what we have to say. Yet they continue to wait for us to come closer to them. They long for those things they have always hoped for—respect and understanding.
In Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann's words: "We know that our white brothers and sisters carry their own particular burdens. We carry burdens as well. Yet I believe that if they let us come to them, if they would open up their minds and hearts to us and hear what we have to say, we might lighten their burdens. There is a struggle for all of us, but we, unlike them, have not lost our spirit of dadirri."
She concludes her message by observing "I believe that the spirit of dadirri that we have to offer to the world will help you Westerners to blossom and grow, not just within yourselves, but within your nation as well...
"There are deep springs within each of us and within them, there is a sound—the sound of the deep calling to the deep. The time for rebirth is now. If our culture and your culture are alive and well, as well as strong and respected, they will grow. In such a case, our culture will not die, nor will yours, and our spirits will not be lost. We will continue, together, as this was always meant to be."
Aboriginal Philosophy
This wonderful statement reminds me of a paper I read years ago in an anthology called Shamanism: Expanded Views of Reality edited by Shirley Nicholson (1987). The paper is titled 'The Dreamtime, Mysticism, and Liberation: Shamanism in Australia,' and it is authored by the Venerable E. Nandisvara Nayake Thero PhD, then the chief Sanghanayaka of the Theravada Order of Buddhist monks in India.
A former professor of comparative religion at Madras University, as well as director of the Maha Bodhi Society of Sri Lanka and secretary general of the World Sangha Council, Dr. Nandisvara had recently returned from a research expedition with an anthropological team in Australia, where he had lived for some time with a native Aboriginal community—in his words, an extremely ancient race whose way of life (hunting and gathering) had not substantially changed for perhaps 35,000 years.
In his report, Dr. Nandisvara makes an extraordinary statement.
"To those who judge the degree of (a) culture by the degree of (its) technological sophistication, the fact that the Australian natives live in the same fashion now as they did thousands of years ago may imply that they are uncivilized or uncultured."However, I would suggest that if (a) civilization be defined (by) the degree of polishing of an individual's mind and the building of his or her character, and if that culture (reflects) the measure of our self-discipline as well as our level of consciousness, then the Australian Aboriginals are actually one of the most civilized and highly cultured peoples in the world today."
From his conversations with their shamans and spiritual elders, Dr. Nandisvara concluded that their spiritual tradition is highly advanced and that their religious beliefs are parallel with those found in the various branches of the Perennial Philosophy.
The Aboriginal elders told Dr. Nandisvara that the spirit of a human being is always in contact with the higher spiritual realms of being, even if there may be no awareness of this contact in one's ordinary state of consciousness. They informed him that this gives to each one of us an extraordinary gift in that there can be direct communication between the human and the divine planes of being without the need for any ecclesiastical intermediary or priest.
In other words, in Aboriginal thought, there is quite simply no great impassable gulf between the human and the divine—a perception that is in direct opposition to most esoteric schools of theology, including Judeo-Christianity. This is why the Aboriginals had no need to develop any organized religion run by a bureaucratized and stratified priesthood. What they have instead is an authentic spiritual egalitarianism in which they, as individuals, can access the Dreamtime through trance, giving them direct and immediate access into the spiritual dimensions through the shamanic techniques of ecstasy.
This ability gives them an unshakable authority to make highly evolved philosophical observations. For example, like the religious thanatologies of other spiritual traditions, the Aboriginals describe the progression of human consciousness after death as "survival in infinity." They know from direct experience that the individual point of contact with the infinitude of cosmic consciousness continues to expand after death until it is co-extensive with it... until it literally 'becomes' it.
This is not a theory for the Aboriginals, nor is it a concept. It is a percept based upon their own direct experience, a revelation that is revealed also in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Hindus and Buddhists use the word Samadhi to describe this state. The Aboriginals call it the Dreamtime, yet it is clear from their descriptions of it that empirically and phenomenologically, these states are the same.
