Alan Watts once said, “Life is not a journey, it’s a dance.”
When I heard those words, something stirred in me, not as an idea, but as a memory. I remembered the very words I once spoke to my guru. Long before I knew of Watts, I had tried to express the same truth, fumbling my way through understanding what it means to live as a householder and still walk the path of awareness.
“Now I understand why I am a householder in this lifetime. I need to learn what a householder’s life really is, this dance between attachment and detachment. A householder cannot live in pure detachment love and duty demand attachment. But neither can they drown in it. The discipline lies in moving between the two without clinging. Living, after all, was about dancing, stepping in and stepping out, leaning close and letting go. The dance itself was the sadhana.”
It was only when I heard Watts say it that I realized, we were speaking the same language, just in different rhythms.
The Rhythm of Longing
There are days when I feel the pull of solitude so strongly that it aches, a deep, wordless desire to walk away from everything, to vanish into the forest, to sit by a river with no name, and dissolve into silence.
But when I turn around, I see the faces of those I love : my husband, my daughter and I cannot walk away. Their faces hold me. Their existence anchors me.
Sometimes I wonder, is this a trap?Or is it love?
And then I remember, it is my choice. I chose this life. I chose to love this man, to share this lifetime with him. I chose to bring a child into this world, to have someone to love beyond myself. I cannot walk away from what I chose. It is not a prison it is a path.
My path. I once told my guru that I felt an urge to paint the image of the Devi, the way Devi Bhakta once painted for Matangi.
He stopped me. “No,” he said gently but firmly, “you do not and will not.”
I asked him why.
He looked at me with that knowing stillness and said, “Because once you begin that, it will be as though you have entered the forest and the jungle. You might not come out. You will lose yourself there, and forget your husband, your daughter, and everything that still calls for your attention.”
He paused, then added softly, “You don’t have to paint Her. You become Her. You are Her.”
Those words stayed with me. It wasn’t a denial of devotion, it was an initiation. He was telling me that the sacred isn’t out there on the canvas or in the forest. It is here, in the life I chose, in the breath and burden of being wife, mother, and seeker.
The dance I longed to express was already happening, through me.
The Householder’s Sadhana
In the Tantric tradition, the way of the householder is not lesser than that of the ascetic. It is a path of fire, lived through the demands of love, loss, responsibility, and continuity. To live amidst the world and not be consumed by it.
To love deeply, yet remain awake. To give, yet not lose oneself in the giving. This is the householder’s sadhana, the quiet discipline of balancing the inner and outer worlds.
When I watch Bharatanatyam or Odissi, I see this truth embodied in motion. The dancer’s every gesture is deliberate yet free, her movements precise yet alive. Her body obeys the discipline of form, but her spirit moves through surrender.
There is rhythm and release, structure and softness, the dance of Shiva and Shakti within one frame. This is how life feels to me. Structured by duty, yet pulsing with something vast and mysterious underneath.
And perhaps that’s the whole point, not to escape the choreography, but to move within it with awareness and grace.
Between Solitude and Belonging
The longing for solitude has never left me. It still hums beneath the noise of daily life. a reminder that silence is my original home. But now I see it differently.
The solitude I seek isn’t somewhere out there it lives quietly inside me, even in the midst of love and chaos. To live in the world is not to lose oneself in it, it is to find stillness in motion, presence in responsibility, silence in song.
Maybe that’s what Alan Watts meant after all. Life isn’t something to be completed or conquered. It is something to be danced consciously, gracefully, without clinging. Because the dance itself is the sadhana.
Bhasurananda Natha once said, “We live in a dualistic world. To remain in Oneness is not practical that is why we need to have the dance" He laughed and added, “If you stay in that state of Oneness all the time, people will think you’re mad.”
I understood what he meant. The world needs contrast, the ordinary rhythm of work, laughter, emotion, to keep balance. Oneness is the truth beneath it all, but the dance is what makes it human.
The dance is not a distraction from enlightenment but an expression. We are not here to escape duality but to move within it, to feel its rhythm, and still remember the still point within us.
To live in awareness, not isolation. To serve, love, and create, yet never forget the silence behind the sound.
This is the dance of Oneness in the world of two.
[ October 2025 ]
